That day in Potsdam he was trying to shake the cobwebs from everyone’s understanding, and it happened again. By saying that Hitler had won, he was trying hard—in retrospect, too hard—to get his listeners to wake up and change course. So now, when he spoke of how National Socialism had won, some in his audience thought he was giving his assent to this victory. They seriously thought he had said, in effect, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” In the next few years, after he began work for the Abwehr—ostensibly as an agent of the German government, but of course as a member of the Resistance—many
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