Paul Hartmann's secret copying of Hitler's letter to Chamberlain

Paul von Hartmann’s secret copying of Adolf Hitler’s letter to Neville Chamberlain is a clandestine act of documentary resistance: it converts a message intended for diplomacy into evidence that Hitler is bent on war. Hartmann’s copy gives the conspirators a concrete text to place before the Army, though whether that evidence can overcome the Army’s oath and move it to action remains uncertain.

The letter and its journey

Hartmann enters the German Foreign Ministry at night, passing its darkened windows before going through the main entrance. The night porter recognises him. Inside, he climbs the carpeted steps between stone sphinxes, turns into a deserted corridor, and stops in a lavatory. His reflection in the mirror seems to confirm his own unease: he looks furtive and suspicious, and doubts that he is suited to this kind of work. The scene makes the danger of the act tangible before he has even made the copy.

The document is a typed letter addressed to Chamberlain and signed with Adolf Hitler’s scrawled name. Its seven or so paragraphs present the Czechs as deliberately delaying German occupation of the Sudetenland and accuse Prague of provoking a wider conflict. The closing appeal asks Chamberlain to decide whether he should continue trying, at the last moment, to bring the Prague government to reason. Its courteous diplomatic form does not soften the substance Hartmann sees in it: the letter is belligerent and offers little hope of peace.

Hartmann later explains that he had taken the letter from the Reich Chancellery to the British Embassy in Berlin and made a copy. The text therefore moves along a perilous route between state offices and diplomatic channels, carried by a man whose work depends on remaining unnoticed. The narrative does not treat the document as self-explanatory: its importance rests both on what it says and on the risks involved in obtaining and circulating it.

Frau Winter makes the copy

Hartmann reaches Ernst von Weizsäcker’s office as Frau Winter is locking up to leave. She is surprised to find him there and tells him the State Secretary is still at the Reich Chancellery. Hartmann asks her to copy the letter quickly and shows her its signature. Her eyes widen; after glancing along the corridor, she unlocks the office and turns on the light.

The copying takes fifteen minutes. Hartmann keeps watch in the corridor while Frau Winter works at the typewriter. She does not speak until near the end, when she observes, matter-of-factly, that Hitler seems determined to have a war. Hartmann answers that the English are equally determined to avoid one. The exchange sets the document’s opposing political pressures beside the practical mechanics of its reproduction: a typewriter, a watched corridor, and a short interval in which discovery is possible. When the final page is ready, Frau Winter tells him to go.

Evidence in the resistance meeting

Later, Hartmann brings the text to a meeting of opponents of Hitler. General Ludwig Beck has described his resignation as Chief of the General Staff in protest against war with Czechoslovakia, and says opposition within the high command is strong. Hartmann presents the letter as the latest proof that Hitler wants war, explaining that he made a copy while carrying it from the Reich Chancellery to the British Embassy in Berlin. He hands the text to Colonel Hans Oster, and the document passes around the group.

Oster reads it and concludes that it contains no sign of compromise. Beck regards its meaning as equivalent to a declaration of war. Oster then proposes that the text be put before the Commander-in-Chief first thing the next morning, on the expectation that it may show Hitler is not bluffing. Hartmann agrees that the Army may keep and show the copy. The act of copying thus has a consequence beyond preserving the letter: it makes the text available to a group seeking to turn military opposition into action.

That action is constrained by the Army’s position. Beck says the Wehrmacht has sworn loyalty to the Führer, so its first move against Hitler cannot come from the Army itself. It could, however, enter the Chancellery to maintain order after a disturbance initiated by others. In this setting, the letter is not a coup plan or a guarantee of support; it is evidence the conspirators hope will help persuade the Army to intervene once others have acted.

What the copy can—and cannot—do

The letter’s force comes from the tension between diplomatic address and the evidence the conspirators draw from it. Its final appeal still asks Chamberlain to press Prague, but the resistance members read the document as confirmation that Hitler has no intention of compromise. Hartmann’s copy allows that interpretation to travel from a private act in an office corridor to a meeting where the future of the regime is being discussed.

The text does not settle the questions of whether the Army will act or whether the plot will succeed. Oster says the copy should reach the Commander-in-Chief, but the evidence available here ends with the conspirators’ decision to use it. Hartmann’s achievement is narrower and more immediate: he has reproduced a state document, placed it in the hands of the resistance, and given their argument against Hitler a specific text to carry into the next day.