Hans Oster

Hans Oster was a German army officer who joined the Abwehr and became one of the most determined organisers of resistance within the German military establishment. By the late 1930s he had concluded that Hitler’s rule threatened Germany as well as its neighbours and used his position in military intelligence to build contacts among officers, diplomats and civilian opponents.

Oster played a central role in the September 1938 conspiracy, which envisaged action against Hitler if the Sudeten crisis led to war. He continued resistance activity during the Second World War, was arrested in 1943 and was later implicated in the wider opposition network. He was executed with Wilhelm Canaris and others at Flossenbürg on 9 April 1945.

Michael Ridpath’s Traitor’s Gate places Hans Oster inside the military and intelligence opposition to Hitler during the Sudeten crisis of 1938. As figures around the Abwehr consider a coup if Hitler launches a European war, Oster represents the conspirators trying to turn private resistance into organised action while British diplomacy at Munich steadily removes the circumstances on which their plan depends.