p The disastrous 1944 defeats affected the situation inside Germany. The vast majority of Germans realised that the war had been lost, though the hitlerites tried to shore up the rear with reprisals and wholesale arrests and killings.

p The Communist Party of Germany, led by a Central Committee based outside the country, conducted extensive work among the people despite the terrible losses. The main accent was on elucidating and disseminating the Manifesto of the Free Germany Committee founded on July 1-13, 1943 by German anti-fascists in the town of Krasnqgorsk 171 near Moscow, with the well-known poet, Erich Weinert, elected its chairman.

p A militant anti-fascist front of Communists, Social- Democrats and unaffiliated workers, farmers, intellectuals and servicemen evolved in Germany on the basis of the Manifesto. A confidential nazi journal circulated among top officials to brief them on home affairs, gave the following figures to illustrate the growth of the anti-fascist movement in Germany:

p Active participants in underground anti-fascist activities detected and arrested in 1944 totalled 42,580 in January, 45,044 in February, 46,302 in March, 52,939 in April, 56,830 in May and 66,991 in June.  [171•1 

p Underground Communist groups were highly active, headed by courageous and dedicated fighters—metalworker Robert Uhrig, Albert Hossler, a veteran of the Spanish war, Anton Saefkow, former Communist Reichstag deputies Georg Schumann and Theodor Neubauer, Herbert Baum, a student, and many others. How active the groups were is illustrated by the fact that one of them, the Rote Kapelle, was found by the Gestapo to have had important contacts in the Aviation Ministry, High Command, Naval Headquarters, the ministries of economics, propaganda and foreign affairs, many educational establishments, research institutes and other organisations.  [171•2 

p Describing wartime Communist and anti-fascist activities, Wilhelm Pieck wrote: "During the darkest time of the nazi reign, too, the German Communists carried on.... The exploits of the German Communists added to the struggle of the anti-fascist and resistance fighters of many countries and saved the honour of the German working class and, ’at the same time, laid the first stones in the foundation for the friendly co-operation of the new, democratic Germany with other nations."  [171•3 

p Despite ferocious nazi reprisals, the Hitler dictatorship had become shaky. This the German imperialists realised clearly. The person of the Fuehrer, who had served monopoly capital assiduously for eleven years, became undesirable.

p A section of the German monopolists decided that they would profit from Hitler’s overthrow and thus salvage the 172 fascist dictatorship. They plotted to kill the ringleader in the hope of saving the gang. Their aim: to set up a government less odious than that of the nazis and better able to bamboozle the masses to avert a revolutionary eruption. The new government would seek British and US protection in the event of such an eruption, while redoubling resistance to the Soviet offensive.

p Since the future of German imperialism troubled certain forces in other countries, as well as its leading lights at home, the anti-Hitler conspirators who hoped to replace the dictator with some less discredited person encountered support among the rulers of the United States and Britain. A far-flung plot built up gradually. Its purpose, as the journal Einheit, the organ of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, wrote shortly after the war, was nothing short of perfidious: "The conspiracy was motivated by the wish to salvage the militarist imperialist system, not by the wish to overthrow the fascist dictatorship and replace it with a democratic regime, and not by the wish to abandon the piratic war policy in favour of a policy of peace."  [172•1 

p The main organisers of Hitler’s overthrow were the generals Ludwig von Beck and Erwin von Witzleben, the fascist government official Karl Goerdeler, and members of old-time Junker families, Helmuth Moltke and Fritz Schulenburg. They contacted the US and British governments through Allen Dulles, head of US intelligence in Europe, soliciting appropriate support. Briefing Washington on his negotiations with the conspirators, Dulles wrote:

p "...The men who plan the proposed overthrow are of a somewhat conservative makeup, though they would work with any available leftist elements other than Communists. The principal motive for their action is the ardent desire to prevent Central Europe from coming ideologically and factually under the control of Russia."  [172•2 

p In his next coded message he pointed out that "the essence of the plan was that the anti-nazi generals would open the way for American and British troops to occupy Germany while the Russians were held on the Eastern front".  [172•3 

p Not all members of the conspiracy shared these motives of its organisers. Some were patriots sincerely moved by 173 the interest of the German people; they displayed a high degree of personal courage. This applies to Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, the most determined and courageous of the plotters, Oberleutnant Werner von Haeften, Colonel Merz Quirnheim, and the Social-Democrats Julius Leber and Adolf Reichwein, the latter two obtaining Stauffenberg’s approval to contact the leaders of underground communist groups of Anton Saefkow and Franz Jacob.

p Stauffenberg undertook to execute Hitler.’When fighting in Tunisia he had lost his right arm, three fingers on his left hand, and one eye. Yet according to the plan the threads of the conspiracy ran to Stauffenberg’s one and only, almost fingerless, hand. On July 20, 1944, he brought a large briefcase containing a bomb into General Headquarters of Germany’s Armed Forces in Rastenburg, known as Wolfschanze, and put it under the table on the floor near Hitler’s legs. Then, on the excuse of an urgent telephone call, he left the conference-room. General Heusinger, Chief of Operations, who had meanwhile begun the situation report, had time enough to say: "The Russians are moving with strong power west of the Duna toward Norden. Their forward point is already southeast of Dunabufg. If now finally the army group is not withdrawn from Peipussee, then a catastrophe will...".  [173•1  At this instant the bomb exploded. There were some dead and wounded, but Hitler escaped with a few bruises, and lost no time in venting his fury.

p The conspiracy collapsed for reasons more profound and serious than the failure of the assassination attempt. To begin with, the conspirators had no ties with the people, while the main organisers were even hostile to the masses. This alone was enough to presage failure. Furthermore, the plan of shoring up the fascist regime by replacing the dictator was hard to execute against the setting of the powerful Red Army offensive. The attempt on Hitler’s life was made at a time when the Fuehrer’s headquarters was still in Eastern Prussia. Soon, it had to be urgently relocated. After several attempts to site it elsewhere, it was installed in the Imperial Chancellory in Berlin, equipped with dependable air raid shelters. The location of the German Government and General Headquarters was made a state secret.

p After the attempt on Hitler’s life the terror in Germany deepened. Not only the conspirators, but many anti-fascists were executed. The Gestapo also struck at the nucleus of the Free Germany anti-fascist movement and at underground groups throughout the country. Saefkow, Bastlein, Jacob, Neubauer, Schumann, Leuschner, Leber and Reichwein were killed.

p Ernst Thaelmann, leader of the Communist Party of Germany, who withstood indescribable torture unbent during the more than eleven years in nazi prisons and who, even in prison, was a model of fearlessness, his hardy spirit and political insight serving as an example for Communists and anti-fascists, his personality exercising tremendous appeal, was on August 14, 1944, ordered by Hitler to be killed. His assassination took place in Buchenwald concentration camp during the night of August 17-18. Anticipating this, Thaelmann wrote a final message, calling for unyielding resistance to fascism in .the name of human freedom. He concluded his message with the following lines from Goethe’s Faust:

Tes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.  [174•1