Article: FDR refused overture from anti-Hitler German generals; WWII extended 2 more yrs

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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 Wehr­macht 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.”

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.

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. 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 .” 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.

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

His research shows that an overture reached the OSS that researched it and did not find it entirely convincing.

In any case German Generals didn't need either the Americans or the Russians permission for a coup. If the German generals wanted to move against Hitler they could have.

In fact that article argues against its main thesis when it shows Rundstedt wanting to end the war and yet also says that in the end he enthusiastically comes back to prosecute the 'Battle of the Bulge'. If he had sincere interest in ending the war quickly then he was uniquely situated to do so.

The facts of the article do not establish that FDR was ever presented with a credible overature from German Generals and that he refused it, although the allies had already agreed that if one was received that all of the allies would insist on an unconditional surrender.



BTW I thought the author's name was familiar.


In the 1980s the organization I worked for was involved in assisting Jewish refugees escape from Ethiopia in an operation called Operation Moses.

He found out about it and published an article which blew up the operation.

At the time it was thought that it was permanently damaged but with some very hefty payments the exodus was later continued.


Her is his admission to his role in disrupting Operation Moses;

http://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/charles_fenyvesi.htm

you'll see the author makes the same surmise: 700,000 Jewish lives could've been saved, the war could've ended 18 mos. or so earlier, etc...

The article reports that the OSS received word of an overture and had it evaluated by two sources (both outside and inside the agency) and that the OSS did not find it credible enough to pass to the Joint Chiefs.


There was also another possible explanation for the overture which was well known; to develop a wedge between the allies-




If there were to be an overture with the German Generals then it wouldn't be between FDR and the Generals it would be between all of the allies, there was already an agreement in place that no ally would respond to any German overtures without agreement from the other two.




As for putting Jews at risk when Fenyvesi broke the story about Operation Moses the initial assessment was that it would put 5,000 African Jews lives at risk. They were saved but the cost was substantial, all for a meaningless 'scoop'.

And another ironical footnote. The agency that Fenyvesi reveiled that was helping the African Jews was the same that resettled him from Hungary when his family fled in 56.



And again, you have changed the title of the article. While it is obvious that the author wants to smear FDR, the actual historical evidence he introduces in the article simply documents that an overture was received and evaluated by the OSS. There is nothing in the article that claims that FDR was ever briefed on the overture, or that it was though sufficiently credible to pass to the allies for consideration. Your title is inaccurate, disengenious and not supported by the article.



Again the fact that the article shows that the same generals that were supposedly planning a coup came back to enthusiastically lead the Battle of the Bulge shows that at best the overture was never a practical option (which was the OSS's internal evaluation) or that it was part of a plot to divide the allies.

...the article shows most of the coup generals wound up dead. some returned to the fold to finish out the war...

And the article's estimates about how many Jewish lives could've been saved stands, as well as the speculation about why this was never brought to FDR....

then how can you say he denied it?

I should've been more specific in the redaction for the headline.

More curious, your repeated statements saying, essentially, it's no big deal -- i.e., the additional lost soldiers, deaht camp casualties, destroyed Jewish communities, etc...

The Allies wanted to destroy Germany's and Japan's will to fight: hence the blanket bombing of civilians. Otherwise they expected to be fighting this same war for a third time in a decade or two.

And history generally backs this: sadly, there are few instances where anything less than unconditional defeat and a totally broken enemy has ended the matter.

Donovan and OSS did... he did not send it up the chain of command, as he should have

The allies had already agreed that any German overture would have to be agreed unanimously by all three allies.


Stalin would never had agreed.

happened in 1940 between Germany and USSR, I don't blame him

...but the proposal was never brought to him, on the assumption he would.

In other words, the interview states there were a series of missteps under FDR's administration, resulting in what may have been a critical, missed opportunity...