Good that Stauffenberg failed?
by Scoop Shachtman, 23 August 2007
Ian Kershaw discusses what would have happened if Stauffenberg had successfully killed Hitler:
the war in Europe would have continued until Germany’s defeat or capitulation. This, though, would almost certainly have come much earlier with Hitler dead. Millions of lives and immense destruction would have been avoided had Stauffenberg been successful.
What about within Germany? Perversely, the chances of democracy being rapidly established might have been diminished rather than enhanced by a successful coup. There would certainly have been a new “stab-in-the-back” legend, of the sort that had bedevilled German democracy. And the leading figures in the antiHitler plot, divided among themselves apart from the need to be rid of Hitler and end the war, were not democrats. Some even wanted to hold on to Nazi territorial gains. A natural human reaction is to regret Stauffenberg’s failure to kill Hitler. But it was probably better that Germany’s defeat was total, and inflicted from outside, so that Germans, too, could see the full extent of the disaster which Nazism had inflicted upon their country, and on the world.
By Kershaw’s own reasoning millions of lives and immense destruction could have been avoided, yet he argues (on the basis of longer term political concerns about Germany) that complete defeat was necessary - perhaps as a good historian should. Kershaw’s argument seems strong with regard to the long term political goals, but given that if Stauffenberg’s had succeeded millions of lives may have been saved, isn’t it a little bit more than a “natural human reaction” to regret his failure?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 1:01
Indeed, millions of lives might have been saved. Or just as easily millions more lives might have been lost had Stauffenberg succeeded. Not only from the specter of some hypothetical resurgent German ultra-nationalism from a Germany insufficiently defeated. There is no guarantee had Hitler died the coup would have succeeded against the Nazi party; almost any surviving senior member of Hitler’s junta would have been more competent to command the war than a micro-managing, delusional Hitler. And any one would certainly have been in a better position to negotiate an independent peace with the West. Even more so a military government suing for peace with Britain but continuing its war with the East.
The results of Stauffenberg’s failure are quite literally incalculable.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 15:51
Following on from Flea - what the article doesn’t consider is the reaction of the Soviet Union, which is unlikely to have accepted a deal with a still-militarised Germany, still in control of parts of Eastern Europe. The likelihood is that Stalin would therefore have fought on regardless, even more embittered by a sense of western betrayal.
One imponderable is the reaction of the British and Americans to this scenario. There is bound to have been additional pressure from the Tories and Republicans to do a deal with whatever new strongman emerged in Germany, in order to stop communism (and in order to concentrate on Japan and restore their influence in the Pacific), and this might have been popular with a war-weary public. So - a Germany able to concentrate on the eastern front, no (or at least much delayed) liberation of Auschwitz.
Maybe Kershaw is right.