was Canaris' success in shielding the plotters, particularly Oster, from suspicion. The corresponding weakness of the officer corps was its conception of loyalty to the state and its aversion to mutiny. This explains the vacillations of Halder, who could never quite bring himself to take the decisive step. Halder hated Hitler, and believed that the Nazis were leading Germany to catastrophe. He was shocked and disgusted by the behaviour of the SS in occupied Poland, but gave no support to his senior officer there, General Johannes Blaskowitz, when the latter officially protested to Hitler about the atrocities against the Poles and the Jews. In 1938 and again in 1939, he lost his nerve and could not give the order to strike against Hitler. This was even more true of Brauchitsch, who knew of the conspiracies and assured Halder that he agreed with their objectives, but would not take any action to support them. The outbreak of war served to rally the German people around the Hitler regime, and the sweeping early successes of the German Army—occupying Poland in 1939, Denmark and Norway in April 1940, and swiftly defeating France in May and June 1940, stilled virtually all opposition to the regime. The opposition to Hitler within the Army was left isolated and apparently discredited, since the much-feared war with the western powers had apparently been won by Germany within a year and at little cost. This mood continued well into 1941, although beneath the surface popular discontent at mounting economic hardship was rising. Attitudes toward the Allies The various groups of German resistance against the Nazi government had different attitudes to the Allies. The most visible resistance group of the July 20 plot considered making peace with the Western Allies while continuing the war with the Soviet Union. Some of its members were also involved in atrocities against civilians during the war. The token representative of the July 20 Group, Claus von Stauffenberg, wrote about his support towards German "colonization" of Poland a few years earlier. Many postwar German commentators blamed the Allies for having isolated the resistance with their demand of unconditional surrender, while ignoring that the resistance offered unrealistic demands towards the Allies. While English historians too have criticized the unconditional surrender, most of them agree that it had no real impact on the outcome of the war. Prior to the formulation of unconditional surrender by the Allies,