When Plans Fail: Small Group Behavior and Decision-Making in the Conspiracy of 1808 in Germany

In the summer of 1808, Baron Karl vom Stein, the famous Prussian reform minister, moved tentatively to involve his state in a conspiracy to raise an insurrection to drive the French out of then-occupied Germany. Stein's role in the plot was subsequently betrayed inadvertently to Napoleon. French authorities, along with Stein's domestic enemies, brought about the reformer's downfall. Stein's conspirational involvement was thus, in the final analysis, fatal to his ministry. It is argued that the movement gradually captured him and its other creators by developing its own necessity--which they came to be unable to deny. The conspiratorial organizations, first created as instruments of contingent policy, actually became the generators of action, as leaders and followers were gathered up by the plot's own inner momentum. The conspiratorial history, based on archival and other primary source materials, is analyzed with reference to analogues from the other behavioral sciences. Some of the methodological problems suggested by this sort of work are considered in a short epilogue.