To the Bitter End

When on July 20, 1944 a bomb - boldly placed inside the Wolf's Lair (Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia) by the German Anti-Nazi Resistance - exploded without killing the Fuhrer, the subsequent coup d'etat against the Third Reich collapsed. The conspirators were summarily shot or condemned in show trials and sadistically hanged. Unfortunately, the image (initiated by Hitler himself) of a small, inept faction of disgruntled generals desperate to delay defeat has prevailed in the public's mind. The reality of the conspiracy, which involved a wide circle of former politicians, diplomats, and government officials as well as senior military men, is far more dramatic. The Resistance, largely motivated by moral outrage than by political expediency, had started as early as 1933 and involved several putsches and assassination attempts. One of the most active plotters, and later a prosecution witness at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Hans B. Gisevius (1904-1974) used his positions in the Gestapo and the Abwehr (military intelligence) to further the anti-Nazi conspiracy. He knew well or met the major figures - including Beck, Canaris, Oster, Goerdeler, and von Stauffenberg - and barely escaped after the coup's failure. One of the few survivors of the German Anti-Nazi Resistance, Gisevius traces its history, from the 1933 Reichstag fire to Germany's defeat in 1945, in a book as riveting as it is exceptional.