Ludwig Beck - Plotting

Plotting

In the following years, Beck lived in retirement in his Berlin apartment and ceased to have any meaningful influence on German military affairs. His opposition to Hitler had brought him in contact with a small number of senior officers intent on deposing the dictator and his home became the headquarters of the small circle of opposition. He increasingly came to rely upon contacts with the British in the hope that London would successfully exert its influence on Hitler, where he had failed to, through threats and warnings.

Beck and his conspirators knew that Germany faced certain and rapid defeat if France and Great Britain came to the Czechs' aid in 1938. Accordingly, they contacted the British Foreign Office, informed Britain of their plot, and asked for a firm British warning to deter Hitler from attacking Czechoslovakia. In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French President Édouard Daladier and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement, compelling Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland, which put an end to the crisis, and hence Beck's efforts at a putsch.

In the autumn of 1939, Beck was in contact with certain Germany Army officers, politicians, and civil servants, including General Halder, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Carl Goerdeler, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, and Colonel Hans Oster about the possibility of staging a putsch to overthrow the Nazi regime. By this time, Beck had come to accept that it was not possible to overthrow the Nazi regime while keeping Hitler in power. In the event of the putsch being successful, Germany was to be governed by a triumvirate of Beck, Goerdeler and Schacht who would negotiate a peace with Britain and France that would allow Germany to keep most of the Nazi conquests made up until that time, including Austria, all of western Poland, and the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. In January–February 1940, a series of meetings between Goerdeler, Beck, Hassell and Johannes Popitz produced agreement that when the Nazi regime was overthrown that Beck was to head the Council of Regency that would govern Germany. In 1940–1941, Beck spent much time discussing together with Goerdeler, Hassell, and Erwin von Witzleben certain aspects of the new proposed state after the successful overthrowing of the Nazi regime.