The Faithful Spy: Chapter 5

He needed another option besides donning the German uniform or being shot for sedition.

He needed another option besides donning the German uniform or being shot for sedition.

Dietrich was living inside a paradox. The more the horrors he saw inside Germany began to mount, the more he became convinced that the responsible action was the elimination of Hitler. But he served a gospel of peace. It seemed to him that both action and inaction produced a guilty responsibility.

The year before, 1938, the British had merely warned him like a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. “No more. Any more invading of countries and we're coming over there!" Hitler was certain the threats from England were paper tigers, nothing more than talk.

Hitler's personal army, the SS, was committing such merciless acts of torture and terror that even seasoned army generals were reporting the crimes to their superiors with tears in their eyes.

But in this horrible new world of Hitler's design, all people not of Aryan descent were deemed a disgrace to the new Third Reich.

They were a liability and even called subhuman.

When Dietrich heard of these atrocities from Hans and Klaus, he knew that Germany had crossed a horrible line.

Hitler now ruled with the very powers of hell. Mercy and justice were dethroned, and in their place the Führer enshrined brutality, revenge, and terror.

The events in Poland were not a fluke but an indication of the kind of savagery found at the heart of the Nazi ideology.

The days turned into weeks, and the passion behind the plan began to falter. Some generals began to suggest again that Hitler would undo himself on his own, and all they had to do was wait it out.

But the Nazi army did not tarry as the generals did.

Hitler's army marched on, and the great Nazi maw continued to swallow entire countries in a single bite.

Starting on May 10, 1940, Hitler's army swept through Holland in only five days. Hitler's 1937 battle plan was right on schedule. Then his Wehrmacht routed Belgium.

Indeed, Hitler had sent several divisions north into the Netherlands, but as a “feint,” a false attack. Using this, Hitler drew the French into a clever trap.

The German army had devised a brilliant new way to use tanks. They called it the blitzkrieg, or "lightning-war."

He orchestrated an oddly petty moment of stagecraft for the signing of France's surrender agreement. He had the small railway car where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 transported to Paris for the special humiliation of the French dignitaries. Hitler wanted the site of their victory over Germany in World War I to be the very place of their defeat in World War II.

Many German people worshiped Hitler like a god. They heralded him as the new Napoleon: He was undefeated on the battlefield and destined by God to lead Germany into a new world order!

If they killed Hitler now, the people would surely revolt. He would become a martyr.

They had all assumed that Hitler would ruin Germany with foolhardy military bravado.

The only outcome from such a blowhard leading Germany into war, they surmised, would be a crushing military defeat.

The only outcome from such a blowhard leading Germany into war, they surmised, would be a crushing military defeat.

He would appear to be a loyal agent, working to gain secrets abroad for the Third Reich, in the guise of a mere pastor.

Once Hitler and his inner circle were dead, the new government would need the Allies to help fight off the remnants of the Nazis—otherwise an ensuing internal power struggle would cripple Germany's recovery.

Hitler blamed the new phenomenon of failures on his generals’ rampant attitude of “defeatism.”

Japan was a German ally, and when Hitler heard of the attack, he foolishly declared war on America as well. This led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare war on both Japan and Germany. As he had with Russia, Hitler had needlessly added another formidable foe to Germany's enemy list.

Operating as a double agent, he traveled outside of Germany, talking to churches and ambassadors, covertly trying to gather foreign support for the assassination attempt.

Of course, the gambit was that they were going to do the exact opposite, and would never return to Germany.

He wrote passionate letters to his friends in the Swiss church for help. One of Dietrich's letters finally broke the impasse.

The Gestapo, who hated the Abwehr, noticed the large transfer of money and began an investigation. Everyone involved in Operation 7 was suddenly under deep suspicion for some kind of embezzlement.

The spies took careful steps to make sure their treachery wasn't discovered, hoping the trail would grow cold.

He was to carefully document the Nazi atrocities. They dubbed it the "Chronicles of Shame” but later called it the Zossen Files to cloak its true purpose.

The plan was a simple concept: plant a bomb on Hitler’s plane with a delayed fuse to explode while it was in the air. The event would look like an accident and help defuse the political fallout that would come with brazen public assassination.

Hans von Dohnányi was in need of discreet transit to get the bomb to the train from Berlin to the Russian front.

We must prove to the world and to future generations that the men of the German resistance movement dared to take the decisive step and to hazard their lives upon it....

If the bomb was discovered, everyone inside the spy agency would be implicated.

The story of what happened to that bomb is more harrowing than the plot itself.

Dietrich and his friends were despondent. They worried they might never get such a chance again.

As the brave general prattled on about the newly developed Soviet tanks, particularly the T-34...the time was ticking away.

Suddenly, without warning, Hitler left the tour early and quickly exited out a side door with his entourage!