Oster Conspiracy

The Oster Conspiracy of 1938 was a proposed plan to overthrow German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime if Germany went to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. It was led by General Hans Oster, deputy head of the Abwehr (Germany's counter-espionage agency) and prominent figures within the German military who opposed the regime for its behaviour that was threatening to bring Germany into a war that they believed it was not ready to fight.[1] They planned to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi regime through a planned storming of the Reich Chancellery by forces loyal to the plot to take control of the government, who would either arrest or assassinate Hitler, and most of the members involved agreed that they would support the restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy of Kaiser Wilhelm II and that had been residing in exile in the Netherlands since 1918.[2]

Background

Hans Oster in 1939

The plot was organised and developed by Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster of the Abwehr; he drew into the conspiracy such people as Ludwig Beck (a former Chief of Army General Staff), Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch (Commander in Chief of the Army), Franz Halder (Chief of the Army General Staff), Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (Chief of the Abwehr), and Erwin von Witzleben (Commander of the Wehrkreis). First, Count Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal would lead a storm party into the Reichkanzlei and kill Hitler. It would then be necessary to neutralise the Nazi Party apparatus in order to stop them from proceeding with the aggression against Czechoslovakia.

Therefore, in addition to these military figures, the conspirators had contact with Secretary of State Ernst von Weizsäcker and the diplomats Theodor and Erich Kordt. Theodor Kordt was considered a vital contact with the British on whom the success of the plot depended; the conspirators needed strong British opposition to Hitler's seizure of the Sudetenland.

However, Neville Chamberlain, apprehensive of the possibility of war, negotiated interminably with Hitler and eventually conceded to him. This destroyed any chance of the plot's succeeding, since Hitler was then seen in Germany as the "greatest statesman of all times at the moment of his greatest triumph".

Aftermath

The plotters survived to become leaders of the German Resistance to Hitler and Nazism during the Second World War. Oster himself survived until April 1945, when he was executed following the discovery in Canaris' diaries that he had opposed Hitler since before the war.

References

  1. ↑ Nigel Jones. Countdown to Valkyrie: The July Plot to Assassinate Hitler. Pp. 73-74.
  2. ↑ Nigel Jones. Countdown to Valkyrie: The July Plot to Assassinate Hitler. Pp. 73-74.