Why July 20, 1944 plot was hopeless

[The Lone Centurion]

the plotters were living in fantasy land. Germany was NOT going to be allowed to keep Austria, Danzig, the Sudetenland etc, just as the Japanese dreams of keeping Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan were NOT going to happen. Speaking of the Japanese, there's this persistent belief that the Japanese government were good, kind people who were begging for peace when the Evil Americans nuked them for shts and giggles. The Japanese leaders were completely detached from rational thought and morality. Remember the attempted coup to stop the surrender?

 

[Alex Richards]

Considering Decisive Darkness, yes on the latter point.

Is there actually something about this you want to discuss?

 

[Resurgam]

I'm not quite sure what you want to hear from us. A counter? A way to make the coup work? To point out at least SOMEONE tried SOMETHING?

 

[Skinny87]

While like the others I'm not certain what your point was, I was pondering the other day that, while we rightly celebrate Von Stauffenberg and the other plotters and their sacrifices, what's often completely forgotten is the background of the plotters themselves.

While most of them, including Von Stauffenberg, seem to have been fairly honourable individuals, and wanted Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy gone, this was often only because the war in the East was going badly enough to stir them into action. They were still very much conservatives who wanted to retain territory in the East and in France and the occupied territories where possible, and can hardly expected to have been friendly to Jews and other minorities

There does seem to be a general perception of them as Good Germans Fighting for Democracy, when it was actually Fairly Decent Germans Fighting For A Return to 1940 Without Those Horrible Nazis

 

[Resurgam]

@Skinny87

While you're right I wouldn't be completely dismissive of them regarding Jews and minorities. I think some of them were motivated to join the resistance because of what was going on in the east. But, no, I don't see them acting out of human rights but that Germany was headed towards a self-imposed apocalypse.

 

[The Lone Centurion]

If the coup hadn't been tried - it was too incompetent to have succeeded - a lot of senior Weimar-era politicians who were executed in the after-math would have survived, with odd political effects on the Bonn Republic and the GDR.

 

[Resurgam]

If the coup hadn't been tried - it was too incompetent to have succeeded - a lot of senior Weimar-era politicians who were executed in the after-math would have survived, with odd political effects on the Bonn Republic and the GDR.

That's assuming they survive to the end of the war - both from the Allies and the Nazis.

 

[Alex Richards]

If the coup hadn't been tried - it was too incompetent to have succeeded - a lot of senior Weimar-era politicians who were executed in the after-math would have survived, with odd political effects on the Bonn Republic and the GDR.

I suspect sooner or later most of them would have been killed anyway- it's worth remembering that the Theresienstadt Camp lasted until Autumn of 1944 before the Nazis finally decided to dispense with the 'model Jewish settlement' fiction and sent them to Auschwitz.

 

[The Lone Centurion]

Still, it would've been interesting if the Bonn Republic had been able to have someone more senior than a city Mayor as their first Chancellor.

 

[Beata Beatrix]

Still, it would've been interesting if the Bonn Republic had been able to have someone more senior than a city Mayor as their first Chancellor.

I'm honestly not certain that it wouldn't have been Adenauer. He'd been discussed as a potential Chancellor since the late 20s, for one thing, and his anti-fascist credentials were seen as fairly impressive. More likely you have people like Josef Wirmer as ministers in the *CDU government, maybe becoming Chancellors or whatnot later on.

 

[Coiler]

I've seen a lot of conclusions(including the excellent AH TL Twilight of the Valkyries) that the most likely result is a Wehrmacht counter-coup. Getting Hitler is the easy part, if one of the other higher-ups survives due to a likely slip-up by the plotters, he might stand a chance, but all of them had baggage of some kind.

Near-term, the western advance might be slowed down if the Germans can return to the Seine and dig in rather than throw their army away at Mortain and then run away in panic as they did in OTL. Bagration might make it a little further if the plot and later fighting disrupts reinforcements, which means there's a chance the Soviets can take Warsaw as part of it with all the butterflies that opens up.

 

[The Lone Centurion]

The moral high ground idea came about in the 1950s when West Germany needed to rearm for the possibility of war with the Soviet Union. So they basically came up with the idea to elevate the plotters as the martyrs of German military leadership doing the right thing for the new military establishment to look up to. Prior to that they were still considered traitors by a large number of Germans.

 

[Japhy]

The moral high ground idea came about in the 1950s when West Germany needed to rearm for the possibility of war with the Soviet Union. So they basically came up with the idea to elevate the plotters as the martyrs of German military leadership doing the right thing for the new military establishment to look up to. Prior to that they were still considered traitors by a large number of Germans.

You've got to get some points for trying to kill Hitler.

 

[Roger II]

I do wonder what the odds of a anti-Hitler plot that involved something more of an actual concession* to non-Nazis and the WAllies succeeding would be. Probably slim to none but it's interesting.

*Concessions being "withdrawal from all occupied and invaded territories, plans for a plebiscite in Sudentenland and Chezchoslovakia, and shutdown of concentration camp system, release of all prisoners, and handing over of all war and internal criminals as well as persons involved directly in the genocides to an international tribunal".

 

[The Lone Centurion]

I do wonder what the odds of a anti-Hitler plot that involved something more of an actual concession* to non-Nazis and the WAllies succeeding would be. Probably slim to none but it's interesting.

*Concessions being "withdrawal from all occupied and invaded territories, plans for a plebiscite in Sudentenland and Chezchoslovakia, and shutdown of concentration camp system, release of all prisoners, and handing over of all war and internal criminals as well as persons involved directly in the genocides to an international tribunal".

The July 20 plotters wanted German war criminals tried solely by the Germans, not an international tribunal.

 

[Roger II]

Oh, I know they were not exactly that great themselves, I was curious about a different sort of plot or a differently developed July 20 plot happening.

 

[Ciclavex]

You've got to get some points for trying to kill Hitler.

To some degree, of course, but this line of thinking ends with the logic that you have to hand it to Hitler at least for getting the “Kill Hitler” thing right.

 

[Artaxerxes]

You've got to get some points for trying to kill Hitler.

Honestly every time traveller and his dog have devalued the idea.

 

[lordroel]

Honestly every time traveller and his dog have devalued the idea.

Reminds me of this cartoon.