Carl Friedrich Goerdeler - The End

The End

In May 1944, Goerdeler revived his idea of 1943 of talking Hitler into resigning as a way of achieving a peaceful end to Nazi Germany. Again, Goerdeler proposed to meet with Hitler, explain to him why his leadership was defective, and hoped that Hitler would resign and appoint Goerdeler his successor. Again, it took considerable effort on the part of Goerdeler's friends to talk him out of this plan, which they considered to be as bizarre as it was impractical. The British historian Ian Kershaw commented Goerdeler's plans to talk Hitler into resigning reflected a certain lack of realism on his part. In June 1944, Goerdeler finished off his final Cabinet list. Had the putsch of 20 July 1944 succeeded, the Cabinet that would have taken power included the following:

• President of Germany (Regent-Reichsverweser) : Colonel General Ludwig Beck
• State Secretary to the Regent: Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld
• Chancellor: Goerdeler (DNVP)
• State Secretary to the Chancellor: Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg
• Vice-Chancellor: Wilhelm Leuschner (SPD)
• Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Jakob Kaiser (Christian Trade Union leader)
• Minister of War: General Friedrich Olbricht
• State Secretary to the Minister of War: Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg
• Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces: Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben
• Commander in Chief of the Army: Colonel General Erich Hoepner
• Minister of the Interior: Julius Leber (SPD)
• Minister of Economics: Dr. Paul Lejeune-Jung (lawyer and economist)
• Minister of Finance: Ewald Loeser (DNVP)
• Minister of Justice: Joseph Wirmer (Zentrum)
• Minister of Education: Eugen Bolz (Zentrum)
• Minister of Agriculture: Andreas Hermes (Zentrum)
• Minister of Reconstruction: Bernhard Letterhaus (Christian Trade Union leader)
• Minister of Information: Theodor Haubach (SPD).

The position of Minister of Foreign Affairs would have gone to either Ulrich von Hassell (former ambassador to Italy) or Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg (former ambassador to the Soviet Union) depending upon whether the Western powers or the Soviet Union signed an armistice with the new German government first. In the radio address Goerdeler planned to deliver once the putsch had triumphed included the statement "The persecution of the Jews, which has been carried out in the most inhuman, deeply shaming and quite irreparable ways, is to cease".

On 16 July 1944 Goerdeler saw his wife and children for the last time in Leipzig, and then departed for Berlin to prepare for the putsch planned for later that month. In the days preceding the putsch attempt of 20 July 1944, Goerdeler stayed at the home of General Beck in the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde. Unlike Beck, Goerdeler was very confident of the success of the planned putsch, and in a most optimistic mood. On 17 July 1944, a warrant for Goerdeler's arrest was issued, causing him to go into hiding. Goerdeler spent the day of the putsch hiding out at the estate of his friend, Baron Palombrini, in an anxious and agitated state, listening obsessively to the radio for news of success. Following the failure of 20 July putsch, the Gestapo searched the room in which Goerdeler had been hiding at in the Anhalter Bahnhof hotel, in which they discovered a vast collection of documents relating to the putsch such as the text of Goerdeler's planned radio address to the German people as Chancellor. Much to Goerdeler's deep disappointment, it was Army troops led by Major Otto Ernst Remer rather than the SS who crushed the putsch of July 20, marking the final time Goerdeler's hopes in the Army were to be dashed.

Goerdeler managed to escape from Berlin, but he was apprehended on 12 August 1944 after being denounced by an innkeeper named Lisbeth Schwaerzel in Marienwerder (modern Kwidzyn, Poland) while visiting the grave of his parents. After his arrest, eight members of Goerdeler's family were sent to the concentration camps under the Sippenhaft law. His brother Fritz was also sentenced to death and executed on 1 March 1945. Under Gestapo interrogation, Goerdeler claimed that the Holocaust was the major reason for his seeking to overthrow the Nazi regime. On 9 September, after a trial at the People's Court, he was sentenced to death. Goerdeler was not physically tortured by the Gestapo, and freely co-operated with the Gestapo in naming names, which made him the object of a considerable hatred from the other prisoners, who saw him as a spineless rat. Goerdeler's friend, the historian Gerhard Ritter who shared the same prison with him reported that Goerdeler was never tortured, but was instead subjected to "the overheating of cells, painfully tight shackling especially at night, bright light shining on one's face while one tried to sleep, completely insufficient food". One prisoner recalled that Goerdeler was often "groaning aloud from hunger". Goerdeler's hope in confessing all was to overload the Gestapo with information, and thereby buy time to save his life and the others imprisoned; in the process, he caused hundreds involved in the plot to be arrested. During his time in prison, Goerdeler was asked by the SS to assist with writing the constitution of a future SS-ruled Germany. Goerdeler agreed, and often met with Otto Ohlendorf and Dr. Mäding of the SD to provide his advice. Whether Goerdeler was sincere in wishing to help the SS or just tying to buy time to save his life remains unclear. When confronted with the loneliness of his imprisonment and the utter defeat of his cause, Goerdeler, who had always been a highly devout Lutheran, became increasingly preoccupied with spiritual matters. Goerdeler was overwhelmed with despair over what he considered to be the triumph of evil and the destruction of all that he loved. Goerdeler's friend, the historian Gerhard Ritter saw Goerdeler in prison in January 1945 and reported:

I was...astonished at his undiminished intellectual power, but at the same time I was shocked by his outward appearance. It was a man grown old who stood before me, shackled hand and foot, in the same light summer clothes as had on when captured, shabby and collarless, face thin and drawn, strangely different. But it was his eyes that shocked me the most. They were once bright grey eyes and had flashed beneath the heavy eyebrows; that had always been the most impressive thing about him. Now there was no light in them; they were like the eyes of a blind man, yet like nothing I had seen before. His intellectual power was as it had always been; his spiritual strength was not. His natural cheerfulness had gone; his look seemed turned inward. What I beheld was a man with the weariness of death in his soul

While Goerdeler was on death row, he wrote a letter which called the Holocaust the very worst of Nazi crimes. But at the same time, Goerdeler remained anti-Semitic. In his "Thoughts of a Man condemned to Death" written towards the end of 1944 in prison, Goerdeler wrote:

We should not attempt to minimize what has been happening, but we should also emphasize the great guilt of the Jews, who had invaded our public life in ways that lacked customary restraint

He was finally executed by hanging on 2 February 1945 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. While awaiting his death sentence, Goerdeler wrote a farewell letter, which ended with "I ask the world to accept our martyrdom as penance for the German people."