Lord Paddy Ashdown
Politician and peer on new book, Nein!: Standing up to Hitler 1935-1944
army officers. They were armed by Canaris and were ready in the Reich Chancellery. With a reserve of about 150 men, the plan was to capture Hitler and have him declared mad by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s father, who was a psychologist. There was also a little coup within the coup that would have killed him on the way.
During that day, ammunition rounds were being pushed into magazines by the plotters with literally 30 minutes to go. However, in the last half-hour Chamberlain proposed the final meeting for the Munich Agreement. Suddenly the Sudetenland was given away without a shot being fired, and the coup collapsed.
This coup was backed by all the German generals in the army, all the German commanders of the forces in Berlin as well as the capital’s chief of police and the Foreign Office. This was huge high-level support.
TO WHAT EXTENT WAS THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S DISMISSAL Of REPEATED GERMAN WARNINGS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTBREAK Of WAR AND ITS SUBSEQUENT COURSE?
Before the war, Chamberlain saw himself as a great peacemaker, which was not a sinful or evil thing to do. He didn’t trust these people in Germany and believed Hitler was open to rational argument, but he never was: Hitler was determined on war whatever happened. With Chamberlain, you can either call it vanity or a desperate attempt not to repeat the carnage of WWI, and there’s no doubt that he knew about the September 1938 plot. I think that he flew to Munich in part to frustrate the plot and believed there was a better chance of avoiding war by having the peace conference. This was a catastrophic misjudgment of Hitler’s personality.
As for British Intelligence, the Venlo Incident devastated them in November 1939. This catastrophe was an extraordinary counterintelligence coup by Reinhard Heydrich when he captured two British Intelligence officers and it wracked MI6 across Europe. It was deeply embarrassing to MI6 and Chamberlain when it was discovered that he had been seeking an early peace around that time. After that incident, every piece of information the British received from the Germans was taken to be another example of misinformation. You’ll find that with intelligences services today, where people don’t believe the information they’re receiving because they think it is too good to be true.
ADMIRAL WILHELM CANARIS EMERGES AS ONE Of THE MOST IMPORTANT RESISTANCE FIGURES IN THE book. WHAT ARE your THOUGHTS ON HIM?
He’s the most multilayered character. He had an extraordinarily adventurous youth and became one of the prime movers of the extreme right-wing movement in Germany, but he was a man who was constantly changing.
It’s classic for a spy chief to be a chameleon who is always changing his position, but it wasn’t from opportunism. Towards the end of his life it was from a position of moral commitment.
As head of the Abwehr he was an extraordinarily powerful figure. However, he became a sort of hermit, waiting for his close friend Heydrich to take him away to the gallows. This was a result of strain, duplicity and serving a master like Hitler while also undermining him.
He’s a very strange personality, but he is fascinating and mercurial.
He was greatly loved by those who served under him and admired for his moral courage. Nevertheless, he was undoubtedly capable of doing things that were not always good in the short term in order to pursue a moral course in the long run.
“In the end the enlightened always win through and the age of populism Will be replaced by one that we can have easier confidence in”
WHAT IS your OPINION Of THE high-level GERMANS WHO PLOTTED HITLER’S downfall?
These were not flawless people. They were, in part, involved in getting Hitler to power and the army officers were partially complicit in turning a blind eye to some of the slaughters.
Nevertheless, they had the moral courage to see the resistance through to the very end, at the cost of their lives. It seems to me to be a shocking tragedy, if not a scandal, that their memory has completely vanished.
I also have to say that younger officers like Henning von Tresckow showed outstanding moral courage, but they were almost all slaughtered or committed suicide after the 20 July plot in 1944. If they hadn’t died I really think they would have been part of a golden generation when Germany was reconstructed after the war.
you have previously SAID THAT “THE PARALLELS BETWEEN THE 1930S AND TODAY ARE FRIGHTENING”. TO WHAT EXTENT do you THINK THAT IS TRUE?
We do have stable ages, and we have clear moral compasses by which to carry out our public and private actions. There are also moments in history when these are swept aside. We call this an ‘Age of Populism’ and I think it is.
I am struck by the similarities between the 1930s and the age we live in. Having said that I do enter a strong caveat.
First of all, I’m not comparing anybody with Hitler. He was utterly unique in his evil and combined an almost genius for the management of power. There is no such person around today intent on war, although one might argue that the conditions are ripe for one to emerge. The second thing is that the Weimar Republic was a very rickety form of democracy. Our democracies are not like that and they could not be so easily overturned today. I am sure that this could not happen in the same way that it happened in the 1930s.
I’m also quite sure that in the end the enlightened always win through, and the age of populism will be replaced by one that we can have easier confidence in. In drawing these parallels I’m not saying that we are bound to the same destination. We need to remember that even in the worst of times there are people who have great moral courage and are prepared to risk everything.