Valkyrie: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler
by Hans Bernd Gisevius
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hans Bernd GiseviusEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-12-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Book Reviews of Valkyrie: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler
Book Review: An irreplaceable testimony
Summary: 4 Stars
The movie Valkyrie made me seek out this book, which the only account of the July 20 1944 plot against Hitler written by a surviving participant. The author, Hans-Bernd Gisevius, was a civilian, a former police official, a diplomat posted in Switzerland during the war, and a long-term associate of plot leaders Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler. Gisevius returned to Berlin the week before the attempt on Hitler to participate in the coup. These events, however, are only the last few chapters of a two-volume history of German opposition to Nazism from the Reichstag fire of 1934 to the attempt on Hitler's life on July 20, 1944.
The book published under the title "Valkyrie: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler" is an abridged translation of the original German Volume 2 of Bis zum Bittern Ende, which is out of print, but I was able to find used, on rough yellowed paper printed in Gothic script. The original German book covers the events since early 1938; Valkyrie, since the beginning of the war in 1939.
The book is a depressing story of intelligent and courageous men ineffectively trying to overthrow one of the worst political systems in history. Gisevius doesn't just tell you what happened, but also reflects on the events and shares ideas that I believe are useful to those who have the misfortune of having to combat totalitarianism in their countries.
For example, Ludwig Beck's resignation as chief of staff of the German army in 1938 in opposition to Hitler's reckless expansionism prompts Gisevius to discuss whether it is more effective to stealthily sabotage the system from within or to leave it and become a dissident. Gisevius notes that every country occupied by the Nazis had a resistance movement, and that these movements achieved some results, while the people who stayed in official positions were reviled as traitors. He also notes that the situation was different in Germany, home of the Nazis, where open opposition was tantamount to suicide, and exiles abroad never managed to influence events inside the country. The only way to achieve anything as an opponent was to rise to the highest possible position within the system and subvert it from within, which Beck didn't do but the other July 20 plotters did.
65 years after Gisevius wrote this theory, it explains how totalitarian regimes failed in different ways, depending on whether they were homegrown or imposed from outside. Homegrown totalitarian regimes like Franco's in Spain, or communism in the Soviet Union and China were all brought down by high-level insiders: king Juan-Carlos in Spain, Mikhail Gorbachov in Russia, and Teng Hsiao-Ping in China. By contrast, communist dictatorships imposed from the outside in Poland or Czechoslovakia were brought down by dissidents like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel.
When discussing the future of Germany with co-conspirators in Berlin in the week leading up to July 20, 1944, Gisevius also pondered the problem of denazification. His goal in overthrowing Hitler was to bring back the rule of law in Germany, which would have required removing all Nazis from positions of authority. To do this promptly would require special courts, which he felt was inconsistent with bringing back the rule of law. Two years later, the allies did set up a special court in Nuremberg, and created new international law in the process.
The conspirators also had a; variety of far-fetched, unlikely schemes to end the war. Stauffenberg, the insider with enough access to Hitler to deliver the bomb, had an "Eastern strategy" to make peace and an alliance with the Soviet Union to repulse the Anglo-Saxon invaders in the West. Gisevius had a "Western strategy" in which the leader of German forces in France, Rommel, signed a cease-fire with the western allies and marched together with them to purge Germany of the Nazis.
What is most astonishing about the conspirators is that they were able to meet, exchange ideas, hatch and abort plots for six years without drawing the attention of the nazi secret police. Stauffenberg even met in late 1943 with German socialist and communist party leaders to discuss his Eastern strategy. They were not even discreet. Beck, for example, kept notes of his meetings and had a roster of members for a new German cabinet in plain text. These documents, found by the Gestapo in a search of Beck's apartment on July 21 helped it round up the conspirators as well as many sympathizers who had neither participated in the July 20 plot nor been aware of it.
The July 20 plotters may have been clumsy, and, in these late-night conversations, they may have sounded like college students remaking the world, but, a week later, they were dead, except for Gisevius who lived to tell their story. Gisevius is a witness, not a historian, and should be taken as such.
Summary of Valkyrie: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler
When on July 20, 1944, a bomb?boldly placed inside Hitler?s headquarters by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg? exploded without killing the Führer, the subsequent coup d?état against the Third Reich collapsed. The conspirators were summarily shot or condemned in show trials and sadistically hanged. One of the few survivors of the conspiracy was Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had used his positions in the Gestapo and the Abwehr (military intelligence) to further the anti-Nazi plot. Valkyrie, an abridgment of Gisevius?s classic insider?s account To the Bitter End, is an intimate memoir as riveting as it is exceptional.
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