Wednesday, July 28, 2004 AD
Why it's a Good Thing that Hitler wasn't assassinated
A fascinating and persuasive article by Frank Johnson on how "The Stauffenberg plot to kill Hitler failed — and a good thing too". Johnson describes the unsuccessful attempt by a conspiracy of German officers to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944, and goes on to consider what might have happened had they succeeded:
Even if [the conspirators] had killed Hitler, they seemed disunited as to what should happen next. Some, perhaps most, wanted to make peace in the West and fight on in the East. The Western Allies would never have accepted that. On 20 July there were no enemy troops on German soil, just as there had not been at the 1918 armistice. There would have been another ‘stab in the back’ legend: Germany had not been defeated in the field but had been stabbed in the back by treacherous politicians and defeatist officers.
We can imagine the Nazis, and the crowds, greeting the returning troops in 1944 as betrayed heroes. It is reasonable to speculate that there would have been something like civil war, with perhaps the Russians moving in to support the Communists. The Nazis would have argued that at the moment of betrayal, Hitler was perfecting the secret weapons, such as the V-rockets, which would have turned the war, and was probably about to build a nuclear bomb too. There could have been strife in Germany for years.
The July conspirators could not have imposed de-Nazification on such division. Only the occupying Allies did that.
