John Wheeler-Bennett - Wheeler-Bennett's Views On The German Resistance

Wheeler-Bennett's Views On The German Resistance

As a member of the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department, he wrote on 25 July 1944 that:

"It may now be said with some definiteness that we are better off with things as they are today than if the plot of July 20th had succeeded and Hitler had been assassinated... By the failure of the plot we have been spared the embarrassments, both at home and in the United States, which might have resulted from such a move, and, moreover, the present purge is presumably removing from the scene numerous individuals which might have caused us difficulty, not only had the plot succeeded, but also after the defeat of Nazi Germany... The Gestapo and the SS have done us an appreciable service in removing a selection of those who would undoubtedly have posed as 'good' Germans after the war... It is to our advantage therefore that the purge should continue, since the killing of Germans by Germans will save us from future embarrassment of many kinds." (British National Archives file FO 371/39062)

Wheeler-Bennett's views on Germany and the German Resistance caused unease to some of his wartime colleagues, an internal February 1944 paper of his being condemned by Professor Thomas Marshall - of the Foreign Office Research Department - as a "vitriolic little paper" and "hardly worthy of its distinguished author." (British National Archives file FO 371/39137)