Nebe's role in the 20 July plot is nebulous and ambiguous. The most exhaustive and recent research on the RSHA by Michael Wildt concludes that Nebe alternated between caution, opportunism and ambition when dealing with the 20 July plotters. Much of the postwar confusion about Nebe stems from Hans Bernd Gisevius, one of the few survivors of the plot. In 1966, he published a book Wo ist Nebe? Erinnerungen an Hitlers Reichskriminaldirektor that tried to paint Nebe as a reluctant member of the SS and had a more active role in the resistance. Gisevius claimed that Nebe, his friend, returned from Belarus a shadow of himself and filled with self-loathing. The research of Wildt and others historians of the SS cast doubt on this account. Wildt has found that Nebe remained something of a true believer in National Socialist racialism and certainly was culpable for the mass murder of Jews through 1944.

The question of why Nebe threw his lot in the conspirators, even if half-hardheartedly, is ambiguous. Part of the answer is that the 20 July plotters were far from a homogenous lot. Postwar memorialization has painted them as a reaction against the crimes and immorality of the Third Reich (see the film Valkyrie for an example). There was no single overarching reason or ideology behind the conspiracy against Hitler. While moral reasons animated some plotters, others acted out of a vague right-wing reformism, whereas others were opportunists. Nebe's actions place him into the latter category. There were many Germans that recognized after Stalingrad that Germany had lost the war and it was imperative to have something in your biography that mitigated your culpability.

Sources

Gisevius, Hans Bernd, Richard Winston, and Clara Winston. Valkyrie: an insider's account of the plot to kill Hitler. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2009.

Wildt, Michael, and Tom Lampert. An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.