Editing Gerd von Rundstedt (section)

===Plot to kill Hitler===
Rundstedt had resisted all attempts to recruit him to the various conspiracies against Hitler that had been operating inside the German Army since 1938. Although he had not denounced or reported any of the officers who had approached him, he had shown no sympathy with their appeals. By June 1944 the conspirators had given up on him (and indeed on all the senior field commanders), so he was not approached by the group around Tresckow and Stauffenberg who hatched the unsuccessful [[20 July plot|plot to kill Hitler]] with a bomb at the [[Wolf's Lair]] ({{lang|de|Wolfsschanze}}), his headquarters in [[East Prussia]], and had no inkling of what was planned.{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|p=201}}{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|p=201}} When he heard of the attempt on 20 July, his reaction was very hostile. A year later, in June 1945, he told the investigating commission preparing for the Nuremberg Trials: "I would never have thought of such a thing, that would have been base, bare-faced treachery."{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|p=201}}{{efn|Unfortunately the text of Rundstedt's testimony before the Commission, as opposed to his testimony before the International Military Tribunal itself, is not available online.}} Since he had every reason to try to put himself in a sympathetic light at Nuremberg, this certainly reflects his view in June 1944. He also argued, however, that the attempt to kill Hitler was pointless, because the German Army and people would not have followed the conspirators. "The Army and also the people still believed in Hitler at that time, and such an overthrow would have been quite unsuccessful." He reiterated his traditional sense of his duty as a soldier: had he supported the plot, he said, "I would have emerged and been considered for all time the greatest traitor to my Fatherland."{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|p=201}}

Officers like Rundstedt who argued that a [[Coup d'état|coup]] against Hitler would not have won support in the Army or among the German people were, in the view of most historians, correct. [[Joachim Fest]], writing of Tresckow, said: "Even officers who were absolutely determined to stage a coup were troubled by the fact that everything they were contemplating would inevitably be seen by their troops as dereliction of duty, as irresponsible arrogance, and, worst, as capable of triggering a civil war."<ref>{{harvnb|Fest|1996|p=332}}</ref> On the attitude of the people, Fest wrote: "Most industrial workers remained loyal to the regime, even as the war ground on."<ref>{{harvnb|Fest|1996|p=335}}</ref>

Rundstedt was thus above suspicion of involvement in the 20 July plot, but he could not escape entanglement in its bloody aftermath. A large number of senior officers were directly or indirectly implicated, headed by Field Marshals Kluge, Rommel (very peripherally) and Witzleben, and Generals Falkenhausen, [[Erich Fellgiebel]], [[Friedrich Fromm]], [[Paul von Hase]], [[Gustav Heistermann von Ziehlberg]], [[Otto Herfurth]], [[Erich Hoepner]], [[Fritz Lindemann]], [[Friedrich von Rabenau]], [[Hans Speidel]], [[Helmuth Stieff]], Stülpnagel, [[Fritz Thiele]], [[Georg Thomas]] and [[Eduard Wagner]], as well as Admiral [[Wilhelm Canaris]]. Many of these would have been known personally to Rundstedt. Witzleben was an old colleague, and Stülpnagel had been his subordinate in Ukraine and his colleague in France.{{efn|Some believed Rundstedt to be a "very old friend" of Witzleben.{{Sfn|"Purge of German Army", ''The Argus''|1944}} But according to Messenger, "Outside his family he had no close friends as such."{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|p=309}}}} These considerations do not seem to have influenced his conduct at all.

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J30702, Trauerfeier für Erwin Rommel, Ulm.jpg|thumb|Rundstedt delivering the eulogy for Erwin Rommel, October 1944]]

Hitler was determined not only to punish those involved in the plot, but to break the power, status, and cohesion of the Prussian officer corps once and for all. Since traditionally German officers could not be tried by civilian courts, he decided that the Army must expel all those accused of involvement. They could then be tried before the [[People's Court (Germany)|People's Court]] ({{lang|de|Volksgerichtshof}}), a special court established in 1934 to try political crimes and presided over by the fanatical Nazi [[Roland Freisler]]. Hitler therefore ordered the convening of a "[[Court of Military Honour|Court of Honour]]" ({{lang|de|Ehrenhof}}) to carry out the expulsions, and appointed Rundstedt to head it. The other senior members were Generals Keitel and Guderian,{{Sfnm|1a1=Messenger|1y=2011|1p=200|2a1=Wheeler-Bennett|2y=1967|p=677}}{{efn|Messenger and Wheeler-Bennett both suggest that the Court of Honour was Guderian's idea, agreed on as part of a deal with [[Martin Bormann]] to limit the scope of the purge which Hitler wanted to carry out in the officer corps.}} [[Walther Schroth]], and [[Karl-Wilhelm Specht]]. This court considered only evidence placed before it by the Gestapo. No defence counsel was permitted, and none of the accused was allowed to appear. On this basis, several officers were expelled from the Army, while others were exonerated. Among those the court declined to expel were Halder (who had no involvement in the plot), and [[Hans Speidel]], Rommel's chief of Staff (who was deeply implicated).{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|p=201}} Those expelled appeared in batches before the People's Court, where after perfunctory trials [[List of members of the 20 July plot|most of them were executed]] by hanging. Rundstedt and Heinz Guderian have been singled out as the two who most contributed to Rommel's expulsion from the army, especially as both had good reason to dislike him; however, Rommel and Rundstedt had always had a grudging respect for one another, and Rundstedt later served as Hitler's representative at Rommel's [[state funeral]]<ref>{{harvnb|Fest|1996|pp=297–301}}</ref> in [[Ulm]].

No incident in Rundstedt's career has damaged his posthumous reputation as much as his involvement in this process. [[John Wheeler-Bennett]] wrote in 1967: "To such a nadir of supine degradation had come the child of [[Gerhard von Scharnhorst|Scharnhorst]] and [[August Neidhardt von Gneisenau|Gneisenau]] and [[Helmuth von Moltke the Elder|Moltke]]." He called the Court "the final farce of casuistry" and accused the officer corps of washing its hands, [[Pontius Pilate|Pilate]]-like, of their comrades. Rundstedt's biographer writes: "This was something for which some Germans, while they were prepared to forgive him everything else, could and cannot excuse him."<ref>{{harvnb|Messenger|2011|p=314}}</ref> Speidel, despite the fact that he was spared, was bitterly critical of Rundstedt after the war, when he became a senior officer in the new [[Bundeswehr|West German Army]]. [[Günther Blumentritt|Blumentritt]], always loyal to his old {{lang|de|Chef}}, complained in 1953: "He has had to endure vindictiveness and jealousy even up to and after the hour of his death."<ref>{{harvnb|Messenger|2011|p=308}}</ref>