Largely due to the energies of Blomberg and Fritsch, the German Army had by 1937 grown to considerable size and strength, and to incredible quality. Hitler was, however, dissatisfied by the speed of the army’s program of expansion. He sent for his military leaders to tell them so. The Hossbach Conference (called after Hitler’s adjutant. Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, who, in the absence of a secretary, kept the notes of this secret meeting) was primarily intended to spur Fritsch into faster action.
The conference, on 5 November 1937, was attended by the Foreign Minister, Baron von Neurath, as well as by Blomberg, Goring,
Fritsch, and the naval Commander in Chief, Admiral Raeder. Hitler expounded his ideas about the way in which a policy of aggression should be timed. He believed that Germany’s greatest strength would come between 1943 and 1945 and that war could not be delayed later than that. He wanted Italy to be encouraged into Mediterranean adventures, which would occupy the attention of France and Britain, while Germany moved against Austria and Czechoslovakia, using threats, bluff, and force.
Living space (Lebensraum) for Germans had been a constant theme of Hitler’s ever since Mein Kampf, but his views about getting it by means of war were not shared by his advisers, with the exception of Hermann Goring. Blomberg believed that France and Britain would move against Germany at the first sign of expansion and bring defeat and misery as they had in 1918. Fritsch agreed—and had moral objections too. Furthermore, Fritsch disliked the way in which the army was becoming a political force.
Neurath was so appalled by Hitler’s theme that he subsequently suffered a heart attack. Raeder sat silent, thinking only of the tiny navy he had managed to build and what was likely to happen to it in confrontation with the huge fleets of Britain and France. Only Goring spoke in favor of Hitler’s ideas and, when Blomberg and Fritsch argued against them, there was a heated exchange.9
The Hossbach Conference was an historic moment in Hitler’s determined move to war. There is little doubt that Hitler was surprised at the lack of enthusiasm for his plans shown by his generals. He had always assumed that all the army’s generals wanted war, and now he could not find one who did. To what extent the conference persuaded Hitler to get rid of Blomberg and Fritsch can only be guessed. But Goring must have noticed how Blomberg—at one time Hitler’s favorite—was no longer in such high regard. Blomberg’s job, as War Minister, commanding all three services, was the one that Goring most wanted.
Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, also had a lot to gain from the removal of Blomberg and Fritsch, and he was by now as formidable an enemy of the two as Goring. Himmler’s powers had increased enormously since Goring had helped him to get rid of Rohm. Himmler was now the head of the whole German police service and, during 1937, was in the process of merging it into the SS. As well as his part-time SS units, he commanded all the Totenkopfverbdnde (Death’s Head Units) guarding the concentration camps, which were also under his control.
But Himmler’s contest with the army generals centered on his SS-VerfUgungstruppe (Special Task Troops), which had been created on 16 March 1935, also the day on which conscription had been announced. These SS men were organized and trained as soldiers. By the end of 1937 there were three large infantry regiments— Deutschland, Germania, and Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler—plus a combat engineer company and communications unit. The SS-Verfiigungstruppe (generally known as SS-VT and eventually called the Waffen-SS) had the same field gray uniforms as the army, the officers came from two excellent training academies, and to lead them there was retired Generalleutnant Paul Hausser, now SS Brigade-fiihrer. All this had been achieved in the face of great opposition from the army, notably from Blomberg and Fritsch. What Himmler wanted now was heavy artillery and tanks for his soldiers and positions in the Army High Command for his senior officers. With the removal of Blomberg and Fritsch he might get his way.
It began by chance. In Berlin a small-time crook named Otto Schmidt specialized in spying on homosexuals and blackmailing them. During interrogation by the police he boasted that some famous people had been his victims, including the Potsdam police president, the Minister of Economics, and “General Fritsch.” The matter was referred to the Gestapo office that dealt with the suppression of homosexuality. There Schmidt was shown a photo of the Commander in Chief of the Army and asked if this was the same man (the name is not very uncommon in Germany). Schmidt identified Fritsch as the man he had seen committing a homosexual act with a youth picked up at Wannsee railway station in Berlin. Fritsch had paid blackmail money after taking Schmidt to a house in Ferdinandstrasse, Lichter-felde. After more statements, Himmler personally took the file to Hitler in the Reich Chancellery. Hitler glanced through the file and told Himmler to bum “this muck.” There the matter might have ended except that Field Marshal von Blomberg got married.
On 12 January 1938 Blomberg, a handsome fifty-nine-year-old widower, married Fraulein Erna Gruhn, a typist from the Reich Egg Marketing Board. Goring and Hitler were the only witnesses at a civil ceremony. It was kept so secret that Fritsch—Blomberg’s closest colleague—was virtually the only other person informed. There were no press reports, so few people knew the face or the name of the new Frau Generalfeldmarschall. But such ignorance did not extend to the head of the Reich Identification Office of the Criminal Police in Berlin. Across the naked bodies shown in some lewd photos a vaguely familiar name had been written. Reference to the files produced an identification photo of the girl and a change of address registration—the new address was that of Blomberg.
Scarcely able to believe his eyes, the police president deliberately by-passed Himmler and went to Blomberg’s Ministry. Unable to find the Minister, he went to General Wilhelm Keitel, who was now in charge of the Armed Forces Office through which the Minister’s orders went to the service chiefs.
Keitel said he could not name the woman in the police identification photographs. Although Keitel’s daughter was about to marry Blomberg’s son, Keitel had not been at the wedding ceremony and had seen Blomberg’s wife only once, heavily veiled. Out of stupidity or malice, Keitel suggested that Goring—who had been present— would be the best person to look at the photograph.
The Field Marshal’s new wife had posed only once for pornographic photos and only a few of them had been sold before the police took the vendor into custody. But a hasty reading of the police file could suggest that the girl was registered with the police as a prostitute. Although untrue, it was not a suggestion that Blomberg’s enemies would be in any hurry to deny. Even today, many history books say incorrectly that she was a police-registered prostitute.
By the evening of 23 January, less than two weeks after the wedding. Goring was in a position to destroy the career of Blomberg, the man who was, in his opinion, not giving the Air Minister’s new air force the priorities it deserved.* And if the War Minister was disgraced and dismissed, who would get the Ministry? There was little chance that an admiral would be considered. The most suitable contender would be Goring, Commander in Chief of the Air Force and controller of the Air Ministry and of Lufthansa, the German airline. But whatever Goring’s claims, the man most likely to become War Minister was Fritsch, a man with whom Goring had had a bitter argument at the Hossbach Conference, when he had called Goring
* It is usually said that stories about Blomberg’s wife were in wide circulation by the time that Goring saw the papers, but the actions of the police, in having to consult the files to aid their memory and then consulting Keitel and the time between these events, suggest otherwise. From all the many accounts of this bizarre episode, I have mostly used that in The Order of the Death*s Head, by H. Hohne. R. J. O’Neill’s The German Army and the Nazi Party says that the police president’s visit to Keitel was an attempt to deal with the matter without Himmler’s knowledge. This also suggests that rumors were not widely current, as does Goring’s reluctance to let the scandal take its natural course.
A “dilettante.” There was no reason to remove Blomberg unless Fritsch, his obvious successor, could be removed too.
Goring told Hitler about Blomberg’s wife the following evening. Meanwhile, orders had gone to the Gestapo to reactivate the file on Fritsch. (Himmler’s unscrupulous intelligence chief, Heydrich, had made photocopies of the file before obeying the Fuhrer’s order to bum the original.) After work that lasted all night, the Fritsch file was sent to Hitler, so that it arrived in the early hours of 25 January. Disobeying strict orders. Hitler’s military adjutant. Colonel Hossbach, went to warn Fritsch that he was going to be charged on the basis of the evidence. “It’s a stinking lie,” said Fritsch, incoherent with indignation. Like everyone else who knew Fritsch well, Hossbach was convinced that the charges against Fritsch were false. He persuaded Hitler to see the Commander in Chief of the Army and judge for himself.
On the evening of 26 January, Hitler summoned Fritsch and, in the presence of Goring, confronted him with Otto Schmidt. Fritsch gave his word of honor that he had never seen Schmidt before, but Hitler was unconvinced by this. Delighted at the way Fritsch had failed to convince the Fiihrer, Goring ran out of the room and threw himself onto a sofa, shrieking with delight.
The next day Blomberg resigned as War Minister and went to Italy. If he expected his army to show him some measure of support, or even compassion, he was to be disappointed. But Fritsch was not so easy to dispense with. He resigned as Commander in Chief of the Army, but he would not accept Hitler’s offer to let the whole matter be forgotten. He insisted upon a hearing. Hitler suggested the secrecy of a “special court,” but the Wehrmacht’s Legal Section head insisted that Fritsch be treated in compliance with the Military Legal Code. For an officer of Fritsch’s rank, this meant a court-martial with the Commanders in Chief of the three services in judgment. The Reich Minister of Justice—no close ally of Himmler—supported this demand. Hitler agreed but made Goring president of the court.
On 18 March the court found Fritsch innocent on all counts. His defense counsel had merely gone to the address in Ferdinandstrasse given in Schmidt’s early statement. There they found a Captain von Frisch (retired), who calmly admitted to both the homosexual act and payment of the blackmail, which could be checked against his bank statements. The Gestapo, said the captain, knew all about it. They had found him as long ago as 15 January.
Colonel General Werner Freiherr von Fritsch had proved his innocence, but he was not reinstated in his position of Commander in Chief of the Army. Those who still believed that the generals would provide any united front against the criminal activities of the Nazis had now to revise their opinions. Far from protesting at the way their Commander in Chief was dismissed, one of them (General Walter von Brauchitsch) accepted his job without even waiting for the outcome of the trial.
The resignation of Blomberg had marked another step in the Hitlerization of the German armed forces. Furiously angry at Goring, who so obviously arranged his downfall, and at his fellow generals, who had failed him in his hour of need, the wily Blomberg suggested that Hitler should take over the job of War Minister. Now Hitler had tight control of all three services, both as Supreme Commander (the President’s title) and as War Minister.
So that there should be no mistake about his intentions. Hitler immediately changed the title of the War Ministry. It became the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehr-macht). General Wilhelm Keitel (whom Blomberg had described to Hitler as “just a man who runs my office”) was given the grand title of Chef des OKW. He continued to be little more than an office manager, but now he worked under Hitler’s direct control.
The resignations. of Blomberg and Fritsch were accompanied by a drastic reshuffie of men who had shown little enthusiasm for Nazi ideas. Sixteen generals left the army and forty-four were transferred. General von Manstein, for instance, was moved from his vital job as Deputy Chief of the General Staff to command a division. Foreign Minister von Neurath also lost his job. To help Goring over his disappointment, he was made a Field Marshal.
For Fritsch the events of 1938 were a tragedy from which he did not recover. His brilliant but formal mind could not adapt to the evil that confronted him. Permitted eventually to return to the army, he went to Poland with his regiment in 1939 and contrived to get killed as soon as he possibly could.
World History
