WI Rundstedt switched sides?

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From Reform Judaism Magazine:

http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1484

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=154119
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Whose idea was this plot?

According to the same OSS document [“Dogwood Project, Istanbul Mission” report], signed by Arch F. Coleman, the plot appears to be headed by Rundstedt. On the list of the German conspirators the first name is Rundstedt, indicating that Rundstedt was the leader. (The list is not alphabetical, and it does not follow rank.) Most importantly, in the hierarchical structure of the German military, which OSS respected, the first person mentioned in a group was the leader.


Rundstedt’s leadership also makes sense from a military perspective. The oldest and most respected member of the High Command, he was the one general that other officers and the troops were most likely to obey in the event that he issued an order to confront the Waffen-SS.


What was Moltke’s next move?

He left for Berlin, promised to return, and in the meantime maintained contact with Wilbrandt. In mid-December 1943 he flew back to Istanbul, again in the hope of meeting with and encouraging Ambassador Kirk to back the High Command offer. But Kirk still did not want to get involved, so Moltke met instead with the U.S. military attaché in Ankara, Major General Richard Tindall. A standard-issue U.S. army officer, Tindall was put off by the German aristocrat’s highfalutin intellectual stance and Moltke’s reluctance to hand over intelligence information to him. Instead, Moltke penned a letter—which he asked Tindall to forward to Kirk—calling for joint military action by the Western Allies and the Wehr*macht units commanded by anti-Nazi generals to make use of “effective military power on a very considerable scale” that “will undoubtedly prove overwhelming once our assistance is added.” [National Archives and Records Administration Record Group 226, Entry 190, Microfilm 1462, Roll 52]


Did OSS-Istanbul notify Washington of these developments?

Yes. Relying on Professor Wilbrandt’s assessment, the second in command at OSS-Istanbul, Arch F. Coleman, vouched for Moltke’s anti-Nazi bona fides, and between August and December 1943 sent a series of memoranda promoting the conspirators’ plan to OSS headquarters in Washington. Alfred Schwarz, co-director of the OSS North European Operation, and Lanning Macfarland, OSS-Istanbul station chief, did the same, pointing out that the anti-Nazi group went as far as favoring “an understanding with the Allies even on the basis of unconditional surrender,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most stringent demand to end the war. [NARA RG 226, Entry 211, Box 20]


How did OSS-Washington respond?

John Waller told me that Coleman sent memoranda to OSS-Washington director William Donovan in July 1943, but Donovan was reluctant to pass them on to the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to President Roosevelt, even though Donovan had direct access to both.


Why?

According to Waller, Donovan’s subordinates persuaded him that FDR would object to any contacts with German officials for fear of angering America’s Soviet ally. Any hint of such an arrangement was bound to enrage Stalin and play into his fears of an Anglo-American scheme to enlist Germany in an anti-Bolshevik crusade. [The Unseen War in Europe by John Waller, Random House, 1996, and personal interviews] Moreover, Donovan himself was well aware of FDR’s hatred of Germans, whom he saw as congenitally aggressive and imperialistic. Widely quoted among the OSS and U.S. diplomats at the time was a remark Roosevelt was said to have uttered: “An anti-Nazi German is only a shade better than a Nazi German.”


What, then, did Donovan do?

He referred the question of the credibility of Moltke’s offer to two German affairs experts, one within and one outside the OSS. The outside consultant, Professor Karl Brandt of Stanford University, welcomed the German High Command offer, warning the OSS that more than half a million American boys would die battling Germany on the French coast “before the fortress will fall by military assault only” and praising Moltke and his co-conspirators as “the most respectable revolutionary group inside Germany, lodged in vital strategic positions” capable of assuring Anglo-American occupation and keeping the Russians out of Central Europe in a “practicable and politically permissible [way].” Dismissing the possibility of a “slick ruse” by the High Command, Brandt gave “full credence” to the “sincerity” of the conspirators’ efforts, and proposed that the U.S. military establish a formal liaison group with the conspirators. [NARA RG 226, Entry 190, Microfilm 1462, Roll 52, February 28, 1944]


The second consultant, William Langer, head of the OSS Research and Analysis Branch and a history professor at Harvard in civilian life, took the opposite position. He disputed the existence of a “fairly large, well-organized, and influential” opposition group in Germany that was “in a position to have its orders carried out.” In Langer’s opinion, “nothing can be done in Germany until the Nazi regime collapses, and no such collapse is probable in the immediate future unless the armies are defeated decisively.” Langer did allow that certain elements “must be thinking of surrender to the Anglo-Americans to avoid being overrun by Bolshevik armies,” but he characterized as “hackneyed” the German idea of enlisting Anglo-American help against the Bolsheviks. He further warned that considering the German generals’ plan without Russian “knowledge and agreement” would be a “grave mistake” and contended that the Russians were “prepared to play ball but equally prepared and determined to execute a volte-face if the British and the Americans do not play fair.” His recommendation, issued on March 15, 1944, was to “keep the wires open” and find out more about Moltke’s group in the High Command, but “lay all military plans as though this group [does] not exist.” [NARA RG 226, Entry 110, Box 47]


Whose opinion did headquarters embrace?

Langer’s. On April 3, 1944, almost nine months after Moltke first contacted the OSS in Istanbul, the OSS Planning Group in Washington formally rejected the offer and decided not to transmit it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on a technicality: it required no military action. OSS-Istanbul was instructed to explore the possibilities raised by the proposition and to make use of any of Moltke’s connections who might be helpful to the invasion of the continent “without any regard whatsoever for any further consideration such as the future of Europe or the future of Germany.” Then came two stern final warnings: “But consider the possibility that the group is a possible instrument of double agents and have no regard whatsoever for the German individuals involved.” [NARA RG 226, Entry 110, Box 47]


Nine months was a long period of indecision.

Yes. And by that time all the men on Moltke’s list were involved in or at least had some advance knowledge of the July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler in the operation code-named Walkyrie. Moltke himself was already in prison for having organized a circle of anti-Nazi clergy, intellectuals, labor leaders, and government officials, and for drafting a blueprint for a democratic, post-Nazi German state. The Gestapo arrested him on January 19, 1944. He, along with dozens of others, were tried and found guilty of plotting against the Nazi state. He was executed on January 23, 1945.
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What if this was, instead, accepted with an early landing in France instead of pressing further north on the Italian mainland in autumn 1943? Would German forces in Italy oppose the Italian surrender in September? Would Rundstedt be able to mop up SS and Luftwaffe forces in the invading allied army's path?

What would happen on the eastern front. Is it possible that the Germans could have been forced into unconditional surrender once they had accepted a conditional surrender to the western allies?
 
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