Tapping Hitler's Generals

?: Providence will preserve HITLER for a harder punishment.

? SPONECK: I think if HITLER were dead, this business with HIMMLER would probably have come about just the same. I am convinced now that HIMMLER will twist this whole business to his advantage. That was always the intention.

THOMA: I mean they have obviously had an inkling(?) that something like this would happen. HIMMLER has become considerably less sure of himself since HEYDRICH is dead. HEYDRICH was bloodthirsty. HIMMLER is only a… I have always heard from those around him that HIMMLER is a silly fool. As a boy he was… his father was always complaining that he should have such a stupid son.

SPONECK: I could imagine GUDERIAN[392] having done that in order, say, to try to bring in some sort of order.

THOMA: But with a man like HIMMLER?!

BROICH: GUDERIAN is an honourable man.

THOMA: Yes, certainly. But he is bound to them now. Anyone who has been cursed like that and then… from HIMMLER–he accepted a stolen estate, so he is bound to them.[393]

SPONECK: He couldn’t refuse it.

BROICH: He couldn’t refuse it, so what could he do?

THOMA: I think he should at least have said: ‘I will wait until the war is over.’

SPONECK: Oh, that’s frightfully difficult.

THOMA: LEEB[394] and those sort of people refused it.

?: Yes, but they have been removed.

THOMA: But they did refuse it!

SPONECK: GUDERIAN wanted to be somebody, I can believe that.

THOMA: Well, he won’t be anybody now.

SPONECK: Let’s wait and see, I have got confidence in GUDERIAN.

THOMA: Not with HIMMLER! They will let hell loose now on all and sundry.

?: Obviously, they will let fly at all the Generals now.

SPONECK: I would like to say that, however terribly the rage of the Nazis against the Generals is now, it may not be at all a bad thing for the future. One fine day the Nazis will disappear and then those people, who were hounded by the Nazis will…

?: Yes, that’s true.

SPONECK: The officers’ party. On the whole those who are being persecuted now by the Gestapo will be better off in the future. Perhaps this deed is something which the people will put to our credit one day.[395]

?: Yes, the people will say: ‘That was our Army, we have always pinned our hopes in the Army, they tried to do something.’ (Laughter).

Document 147

CSDIC (UK), GRGG 162

Report on information obtained from Senior Officers (PW) on 19–22 July 44 [TNA, WO 208/4363]

THOMA: Do you know who has got command of the GAF? STUMPFF.

BASSENGE: That’s the best solution. He doesn’t decide anything, he doesn’t decide anything at all, he just dithers about until the opportunity has gone by. That is the best thing they could do; he is such an idiot. I believe I am beginning to see daylight, Sir. It was a put-up job–that attempt to blow HITLER up was a fake–it was a put-up job in order to have a pretext for getting rid of all the unwanted people at one blow!

THOMA: Yes, it may be that a second 30 June is coming, seeing that they pulled that off so well. That’s quite clear to me. But at any rate the STAUFFENBERG business could be–from his nature and his ways, it is quite possible for him… but they make propaganda too.

BASSENGE: He wouldn’t be so stupid as to make a plot with insufficient means; he wouldn’t do that, he is certainly much too clever for that; and to plant a little bomb like that in HITLER’s room, which doesn’t even work, which was probably nothing but a hand grenade done up in cardboard… Perhaps they knew, HIMMLER knew, that STAUFFENBERG was the leader of some counter-movement.

THOMA: STAUFFENBERG held his tongue just as little as I have and spoke just as openly.

BASSENGE: They got wind of it and said: ‘How can we do it? Either we suppress it completely and don’t publish any communiqué at all, in which case this movement will be damned or destroyed for the moment, but that is no good because a new one will be formed immediately. We will do it like this: we will invent a story that a murderous attempt has been made by this movement, we will make a big affair out of it and in that way we can get popular support in introducing measures for suppressing any and every opposition. We will lock them all up and dismiss them all.’

THOMA: They will shoot… You wait and see; the SS men will come into the units and the devil alone knows–but it won’t do them any good now.