July 20th Plot Delayed/Never Happens

[Marius Mazzini]

What is Claus von Stauffenberg and others involved in the July 20th plot had decided to delay overthrowing Hitler until a more opportune moment? Assuming that the Gestapo does not simply uncover the plot with the mass executions and purges like OTL minus the coup attempt, there are two possibilities:

[1] The coup is delayed by some months and occurs in say the fall or even winter of 1944 when the Reich's strategic situation is even more obviously desperate with Allied armies on the German frontier. Could this result in wider support for the coup, even among Wehrmacht generals who were reluctant to join a rebellion against Hitler? In the most extreme case, I wonder if certain more pragmatic Nazis like Goring could be persuaded to participate provided if Hitler was simply arrested rather than killed, though I think ultimately the plotters would just prefer Hitler dead for safety's sake. Would this increase the chances of success for the plot?

[2] The coup is delayed indefinitely and ultimately never comes to fruitation before Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. Possibly, something is attempted in the last weeks of the war when defeat is imminent anyways to defy last stand orders and otherwise minimize the looming defeat. At any rate, this leaves most of the figures associated with July 20th such as von Stauffenberg, von Moltke, Goerdeler etc. alive. What effect would their survival have in the postwar era?

 

[Salvador79]

What is Claus von Stauffenberg and others involved in the July 20th plot had decided to delay overthrowing Hitler until a more opportune moment? Assuming that the Gestapo does not simply uncover the plot with the mass executions and purges like OTL minus the coup attempt, there are two possibilities:

[1] The coup is delayed by some months and occurs in say the fall or even winter of 1944 when the Reich's strategic situation is even more obviously desperate with Allied armies on the German frontier. Could this result in wider support for the coup, even among Wehrmacht generals who were reluctant to join a rebellion against Hitler? In the most extreme case, I wonder if certain more pragmatic Nazis like Goring could be persuaded to participate provided if Hitler was simply arrested rather than killed, though I think ultimately the plotters would just prefer Hitler dead for safety's sake. Would this increase the chances of success for the plot?

While I don't get where people take the impression from that Göring was a loose cannon or pragmatic or any kind of Notzi (he was not), other than that, defeat was rather evident to military leaders in July 1944 already. You might still be right that the progressive erosion of authority could have provided a coup in the winter with better chances. But you could also turn it around - and ask: why would the conspirers take the risk and take Hitler's place when it's already clear that Germany will have to surrender unconditionally, and that they will be the ones who have to sign it? Why would they want to offer themselves to a future neo-Nazi myth of Dolchstoß 2.0? In July 1944, rather deludedly, Stauffenberg et al. believed that they could save something for Germany, that they could negotiate, stave off total defeat, achieve some white peace. In the winter, this hope is gone. Why bother, when you can just wait for the whole horrible edifice to come tumbling down upon its builders (not upon you!) and prepare for the post-war order?

[2] The coup is delayed indefinitely and ultimately never comes to fruitation before Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. Possibly, something is attempted in the last weeks of the war when defeat is imminent anyways to defy last stand orders and otherwise minimize the looming defeat. At any rate, this leaves most of the figures associated with July 20th such as von Stauffenberg, von Moltke, Goerdeler etc. alive. What effect would their survival have in the postwar era?

Well, they were conservatives.
It would mean that Christian Democracy's mopping up of everything to the left of the SPD (except for a liberal core) does not go uncontested.
A conservative bloc in the emerging FRG (in the GDR it would be irrelevant) to the right of the CDU (probably not in Bavaria where the CSU still occupies the whole centre-right) could mean the CDU does not move quite as thoroughly to the right as it did IOTL and develops a more economically pro-labour identity. Would jumble up the FRG's party political landscape as we know it. Chances are, though, that we still see the same kind of coalition governments at first: Adenauer leaning on a pro-Western coalition from 1949 onwards, only this time with a stronger independent conservative coalition partner on board, and his own party standing more on the left flank of the coalition.
That is, if the electoral system is the same as IOTL. If Union and SPD agree in the constitutional convention on a first-past-the-post system in order to stave off liberal, conservative, communist, neo-Nazi etc. smaller parties, then the conservatives would drown. But since they had the opportunity IOTL and did not use it, I think this isn't overly probable.

 

[Marius Mazzini]

Well, they were conservatives.
It would mean that Christian Democracy's mopping up of everything to the left of the SPD (except for a liberal core) does not go uncontested.
A conservative bloc in the emerging FRG (in the GDR it would be irrelevant) to the right of the CDU (probably not in Bavaria where the CSU still occupies the whole centre-right) could mean the CDU does not move quite as thoroughly to the right as it did IOTL and develops a more economically pro-labour identity. Would jumble up the FRG's party political landscape as we know it. Chances are, though, that we still see the same kind of coalition governments at first: Adenauer leaning on a pro-Western coalition from 1949 onwards, only this time with a stronger independent conservative coalition partner on board, and his own party standing more on the left flank of the coalition.
That is, if the electoral system is the same as IOTL. If Union and SPD agree in the constitutional convention on a first-past-the-post system in order to stave off liberal, conservative, communist, neo-Nazi etc. smaller parties, then the conservatives would drown. But since they had the opportunity IOTL and did not use it, I think this isn't overly probable.

I think your ideas regarding Federal Republic politics makes sense. I should add that a stronger conservative German party (Deutsche Partei like OTL or perhaps a different name?) probably erodes not just Union but also FDP support which had the backing of some Protestant conservatives and even ex-Nazis, probably making it far more of a social/left-liberal party akin to the British Liberal Democrats compared to OTL. I suspect the DP equivalent would mainly be strong among Protestants, making them prominent in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony but weak in Bundeslander further south. For the same reason, Goerdeler, von Moltke, and other Protestants would be in that party (though not all-Bonhoeffer I suspect would be in the CDU) but von Stauffenberg would probably the CSU considering he was a Catholic Bavarian and probably be on the right-wing end of the party. Perhaps he can even be a long-time CSU leader much as Franz-Josef Strauss was OTL if he has any deep interest in a political career.

 

[Salvador79]

I think your ideas regarding Federal Republic politics makes sense. I should add that a stronger conservative German party (Deutsche Partei like OTL or perhaps a different name?) probably erodes not just Union but also FDP support which had the backing of some Protestant conservatives and even ex-Nazis, probably making it far more of a social/left-liberal party akin to the British Liberal Democrats compared to OTL. I suspect the DP equivalent would mainly be strong among Protestants, making them prominent in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony but weak in Bundeslander further south. For the same reason, Goerdeler, von Moltke, and other Protestants would be in that party (though not all-Bonhoeffer I suspect would be in the CDU) but von Stauffenberg would probably the CSU considering he was a Catholic Bavarian and probably be on the right-wing end of the party. Perhaps he can even be a long-time CSU leader much as Franz-Josef Strauss was OTL if he has any deep interest in a political career.

While I see your point, at least at first I don't think this would happen. Germany always had a national liberal and a progressive /left liberal party. The FDP was a synthesis of both. Historically, national liberals were always the stronger brother. The horrors of Nazi nationalism did a lot to discredit nationalism in post-war Germany, but still, any liberal Party will be born of these two parents...the earliest moment in which the FDP could turn very decidedly left-liberal is by the mid-1960s, I'd say.