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      Worm in the Apple German Traitors and Other Influences That Pushed the World Into War: The little-known story of the men who destroyed Adolf Hitler's Germany Friedrich Lenz 19. Verdicts of the victors and the German justice system But just imagine now how our opponents must have grinned - Churchill already told us about it - when they heard the binding promises regarding Hitler's elimination! Individual parties to any war have at all times invested enormous sums in such assistance, and here it was being promised free of charge and with delivery postpaid, as it were. Our own statesmen, on the other hand, were shocked when they learned of these things in Nuremberg - and this was by no means the last thing they learned before their deaths. Foreign Minister v. Ribbentrop, for example, said: "It's no wonder then that Britain did not shy away from the war and the Polish Ambassador spoke of revolution and a Polish march on Berlin. These groups of conspirators thus had a decisive part in bringing about the outbreak of the war. They undermined and thwarted all of the Führer's and my own efforts at peaceful resolution in the last days of August, and were a pivotal factor in the British decision to go to war." Now the war against Germany was no longer any risk at all. Britain only needed to declare war - and sit back and wait. That is approximately how Mr. Lindley Fraser explained the purpose of the help that had been promised Poland. That the fulfilment of the promise was delayed is a different matter; the main thing was that the promise had been made and the conclusions drawn therefrom. The plotters love to cite moral reasons for their numerous attempts on Hitler's life - without considering that other innocent people also lost their lives in the process. But once the invasion had succeeded and some individual conspirators felt that the assassination would no longer serve a purpose, the chief assassins argued that it should take place anyhow, the purpose now no longer being the practical aim but rather that of demonstrating to the world and to history that the German Resistance Movement had dared to take the decisive step. And all the while the decisive step had already been taken in 1938, without their ever having looked beyond their simple-mindedness to notice this fact!
Incidentally, when one reads through the very voluminous literature on this subject, one cannot
help but be amazed at what the traitors did consider. They even sought guarantees from
the enemy to the effect that these latter would not intervene militarily while the Resisters were in
the midst of coup activities. Later, when the war was already on, they asked for better conditions
once that nasty Hitler had been removed.
As for the assassination attempt itself, the August 9, 1944 edition of the New York Times commented that the details of the attempt were more reminiscent of "the atmosphere of the dark criminal underground" than of what "one would normally expect from the officers corps of a civilized nation." The newspaper was appalled that high-ranking officers had spent years on plans "to abduct or kill the Head of their State, the Commander-in-Chief of their army - and with a bomb, no less, that weapon typical of the criminal underworld." The same day, the Herald Tribune remarked in an anything but sentimental manner that the Americans on the whole had no regrets that Hitler had survived the bomb attack, so that he could now get rid of his Generals. Churchill, on the other hand, was really a bit too unappreciative - which, however, might be expected from such a historical giant - when he commented that the entire affair was merely some in-fighting among a pack of curs. Like Napoleon, he loved treason while hating traitors. Freisler, the infamous judge at the equally infamous People's Court, could not resist directing the attention of one of the conspirators to the cynical fliers in which the British gratitude to the traitors was expressed as follows: "The participants and those who had arranged the event were not worth even a plug nickel. At best it was all done out of a perverse love for Germany." But we have forgotten the District Court of Braunschweig! It expressed a different view in its verdict, and concluded: "1. The conspirators did not act in the intent to harm their people and the strength of the Reich, but strictly in the honest desire, born out of patriotism, to benefit both. The charge of treason is thus inappropriate to such men.... "2. Insofar as the Resistance fighters of July 20, 1944 had established connections abroad in order to sound out the enemy's attitude towards the intended internal coup, they cannot morally and hence not juridically be charged with any misdemeanor.... "3. This Criminal Court is of the opinion that the National-Socialist state was not a state under the rule of law, but one under the sway of a lawless regime not serving the interests and benefit of the German people. It is beside the point here to consider the question of the constitutional legitimacy of the NS state. All that the German people have had to endure, from the burning of the Reichstag to June 30, 1934 to November 9, 1938, was a glaring injustice whose rectification was imperative." That was dated 1952; now where on earth have I read it before, couched in somewhat less official phrases? Right - it was in an interesting article published by Resistance fighter Hanns Erich Haack in issue 9/47 of Rudolf Pechel's Deutsche Rundschau. I will quote some excerpts: "Those men who acted out of a spirit of patriotism to establish those connections abroad by no means took these steps lightly. They did not take this measure until it had become clear that no other way was possible in light of the immeasurable extent of the impending murder, hardship and suffering. A rebellion against the tyrant is obedience to God, that is the motto that was constantly before their mind's eye.... "Further, the claim advanced by the German opponents to the Resistance Movement, namely that co-operation with abroad must invariably yield the greatest benefits for the foreign participants, is invalid. In this respect Europe is truly indivisible, none of its nations can live in 'splendid isolation' any longer and all are mutually so interdependent on each other that even the need for a redefinition of the term 'national' is becoming more and more pressing. Anyone who acts for Europe as a whole is acting in a national spirit - and anyone who acts against Europe is committing treason in the true sense. "Dictatorship may be defined as an unlawful infringement on a substantial portion of human rights, specifically on freedom. Thus, any act directed against a dictatorship is automatically a lawful one." And Herr Pechel himself, who bragged of his "burning hatred" of Hitler, concluded "...that the battle against National-Socialism was waged by an elite of the German people, as a binding obligation to God and for the greatest values and good of mankind, without the slightest motive of personal ambition or striving for personal gain." Thus, it is clear that the views expressed by the Court are in agreement with those of the traitors. If the verdict were to be upheld by the Appeal Court it would mean that the German people would have to accept an official opinion on historical events as legally binding, which in turn would of course be at odds with the demands for freedom of thought and other basic rights. Nevertheless, I believe that regardless of how the Appeal Court may decide, the final verdict in this matter will be passed by history guided by common sense. I will summarize my opinion on the verdict quoted as follows: Re. 1. The conspirators had already fought for years against the Führer of the Reich who, however, had come to power legally and had been favored with the confidence and trust of the overwhelming popular majority time and again in numerous referenda. They repeatedly planned attempts on his life and established contacts abroad in order to bring about foreign intervention against him and to procure help in their attempts to thwart his further plans to rectify the injustices of Versailles and to establish a Greater German Reich. They could not have assumed that the acts committed against the Führer would affect only him and not also the people whose leadership he had. There is far too much counter-evidence in the conspirators' literature to allow for such an assumption. The bomb that was intended for Hitler and took the lives of innocent bystanders, as was to be expected in any case, was also used in a premeditated manner. Re. 2. For the most part, the conspirators maintained their connections to the enemy behind the back of the responsible government even after the war had broken out - and in the eyes of the law this constitutes treason no matter how one looks at it. Beyond that, their intentions were by no means merely to sound out the foreign leadership's attitude towards their plans for a coup; rather, they repeatedly requested foreign intervention against Hitler and promised a coup involving Hitler's arrest or murder. These connections were maintained unceasingly until the war's end, even though the foreign leaderships confined themselves to passing on messages and to squeezing the conspirators for information, and never once made even the slightest promises regarding a more favorable peace treaty for Germany in the event of Hitler's removal. Since these contacts also involved the giving out of information on Germany's alleged or real military strength, this again constitutes treason beyond any shadow of doubt. Re. 3. I might take the easy way out here and say, de gustibus non est disputandum - there is no accounting for taste! But it is not hard to understand that people such as these have no concept of what constitutes a state under the rule of law - people such as these, who set up or support a state which, aside from perpetrating other monstrosities against the most basic principles of morals and law, also launched the greatest Inquisition of our age, the denazification process, whose boundless stupidity and brutal arbitrariness of 'law' is revealed by the well-known periodical Der Stern under the rather harmless title "The Great Hoax". Further, I would remind the German people and especially the gentlemen of the Braunschweig Criminal Court that the number of suicides committed since Germany's collapse, out of fear of reprisals and due to other deplorable conditions, by far exceeds the numbers of suicides and so-called politically motivated murders committed under that "lawless regime". If we consider, further, what a small percentage of accused have in fact been convicted since 1945 (in contrast to what one might expect in light of the mendacious propaganda about alleged crimes and atrocities), and we then subtract from this number those accused who could never have been convicted if the law had been applied correctly and as intended, then the difference is mind-boggling. And if one took a closer look at the remainder, one would observe, interestingly enough, that those were for the most part cases where the acts in question were committed in the name of the National-Socialist state solely for the purpose of camouflaging personal criminal intentions. If, on the other hand, one wanted to legally and correctly prosecute all those crimes perpetrated against the Germans and against humanity which are so graphically described in Freda Utley's book The High Cost of Vengeance, then the German courts alone would be booked solid and working overtime for the next twenty years. The partiality with which the Criminal Court lays this touchy subject to Germany's charge already becomes apparent from the fact that it blames the NS State for the burning of the Reichstag, which in fact was proven to have been the personal and individual crime of a certain van der Lubbe. Even if we do not as yet have a complete and historically accurate account of the Röhm putsch, the unbiased description given by Meissner, the former Secretary of State, suffices to convince any person capable of objective thought that Hitler must have had weighty political reasons for quelling a revolt detrimental to the state by taking rapid and severe measures and dispensing with time-consuming procedures towards that end, and if he also rid himself of potential opponents in the process - as he allegedly put it - then one will have to judge the matter somewhat differently when one considers that Herr Schleicher was in fact planning a military revolt in order to prevent Hitler's lawful assumption of power and had negotiated with France behind Hitler's back right until June 30, 1934 in order to ensure the recognition of the government he planned to establish together with Röhm. In any case, by taking steps against Röhm and his revolutionary hangers-on, Hitler acted as protective shield to the conservative social stratum - which never so much as thanked him for it. I must of course refrain from an adequately detailed discussion of acts which were done in the Third Reich in the spirit of National-Socialist statecraft for the purpose of very specific higher aims and which were considered by the opponents of this approach to be 'injustices', whereas the popular majority considered them just, and I must confine myself to pointing out that considerable sectors of the population today already hold conflicting and quite vivid opinions on the various concepts of 'state under the sway of a lawless regime', 'dictatorship', 'democracy', 'freedom', 'humanity', etc. What will this spectrum of opinion be like in a few more years, after we have lived through either the Bolshevization or the 'de-Bolshevization' of Europe! On Elba, Napoleon wrote about the Germans: "I never needed to sow the seeds of discord among them. I only needed to set up my nets and they ran into them of their own accord. They strangled each other, believing thus to be doing their duty. No other people on earth is dumber than they. No lie can be dreamed up that is too crude for them to believe. They always fight more bitterly against each other than against the enemy." This was the realization that informed not only Churchill when he set up his nets, but also Adolf Hitler when he tried to direct his people into a common line of approach towards the achievement of great aims. Hitler's goal was the fulfilment of a prophetic statement by Friedrich Schiller:
But the day of the Germans is the harvest of all time. At harvest time everyone must work together and take on more labor and restrictions. Hitler's attempt was gladly supported with cheerful co-operation by those who understood, and decried as compulsion and injustice by those who did not. Millions, for example, willingly complied with the ban on listening to foreign radio stations - a measure intended to minimize the effects of their propaganda lies - and they were no less healthy and happy for it than those hundreds of thousands who believed that they absolutely had to hear them. It is ridiculous for Herr Pechel to suggest that the fight against Hitler originated with an elite. No, it was a clique in the most typical sense of the word. And that is why it is paradoxical for the 'Resistance fighters' to cite in their own support that well-known passage of Hitler's Mein Kampf: "If the means of governmental authority serve to lead a nation to its downfall, then rebellion is not only the right, but the duty, of each and every member of such a nation. Human rights take precedence over national law." It is interesting that Herr Strölin quotes an open letter from Hitler to Brüning from 1932 in which Hitler himself cites this view. I can only refer to what Gert P. Spindler, writing under the significant heading "Falschmünzer der Geschichte" ["Falsifier of History"; -trans.] in the May 25, 1951 issue of Fortschritt, says about that time and its seven million unemployed: "Do those parties from the Weimar Republic, who have since resurfaced, really perceive the sole cause of their failure up to 1933 to lie in their not having combated National-Socialism with bans and prison terms? Does the arrogance and smug self-satisfaction of these politicians of then and now really go so far that they consider their post-war resurgence to be due to true popular demand? They must be reminded that National-Socialism did not come to power through the abuse of democratic freedoms but rather through the incompetence of the Weimar government, which failed to deal appropriately with the consequences of the peace treaty of Versailles and with the economic and social problems of the time. All those constructs of rationale by means of which the leading personalities of the Weimar Republic sought to disguise their own total failure by claiming that Hitler had seized the reins of government illegally, are in fact nothing other than the exaggeration of individual facts which fail to explain the phenomenon of his rise to power. They are to be regarded as falsifications of the overall historical scene, originating with the understandable desire to divert attention away from their own inadequacies. "The unsolved problems of pre-1933 were the fertile soil on which Hitler understood how to cultivate the support of the masses. The unreasonableness of the victors of 1918 were the drums on which he beat his tune."
Did Hitler lead his people to their downfall when, in
If I am going to make any concessions, then it is this, that I do not hold it against anyone who
doubted the German chances for victory after the invasion and drew their own
conclusions in consequence - provided that they had loyally done their duty up until then.
Unfortunately, however, I have often noticed that we had more men in uniform than soldiers. It
is
admittedly difficult to bring oneself to adopt the truly soldierly maxim that says, "sweet and
honorable it is to die for one's country."33 Only those who could
really internalize this ideal will understand that a true German soldier could not have done
otherwise than to fight for as long as he was ordered to do so, regardless of whether the situation
looked rosy or bleak. Where would Old Fritz have been if his soldiers had run off whenever one
of
his "hopeless situations" cropped up? But anyone who made plans for a coup even prior
to
the invasion cannot claim any sympathy; and if Hanns Erich Haack then even tries to tell us that
those treasonous activities were in the interests of Europe, then this is downright ridiculous and
does not warrant the effort of a detailed rebuttal in light of the danger and the hopeless situation
in
which Europe presently finds herself. The claim that the war was lost before it even began is
equally nonsensical. There can be no serious mention of a 'critical' state of affairs for us until
after
Stalingrad - and even then the war would not inevitably have been lost, but this is not a point of
debate here.
33Even though this sentiment is
already more than 2,000 years old, Hoffmeister, the leader of the SPD, came to the 'nobler'
insight
that the bottom line of a heroic death was merely a
lump of mashed-up flesh wrapped in a strip of canvas. ...back...   
Worm in the Apple German Traitors and Other Influences That Pushed the World Into War: The little-known story of the men who destroyed Adolf Hitler's Germany |
But since they failed to deliver the coup by the date promised, the
opponents had their own views on the matter. Chamberlain's attitude was "chilly", Roosevelt
considered personal contact to be "imprudent" and in 1942 informed a liaison that his request for
contact was "most embarrassing to official policy". The conspirators' most servile
offers of peace - without Hitler - were acknowledged by Eden with the comment that the case
was
closed, and by Churchill with the declaration that the Atlantic Charter did not include the Axis
Powers. And when the offers made by the plotters piled up, and took on a wording that "differed
from unconditional surrender only in name", they reaped their first rewards in Casablanca in
January 1943, where the Allies did indeed demand unconditional capitulation. And when the
"decisive step" of attempted assassination was finally taken in 1944, the beneficiaries thereof
showed their gratitude by proclaiming the Morgenthau Plan.