1. Office and barracks of Hitler’s bodyguard
2. RSD command centre
3. Emergency generator
4. Bunker
5. Office of Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s press secretary
6. Conference room, site 20 July 1944 assassination attempt
7. RSD command post
8. Guest bunker and air-raid shelter
9. RSD command post
10. Secretariat under Philipp Bouhler
11. Headquarters of Johann Rattenhuber, SS chief of Hitler’s
security department, and Post Office
12. Radio and telex buildings
13. Vehicle garages
14. Railway siding for Hitler’s Train
15. Cinema
16. Generator buildings
17. Quarters of Morell, Bodenschatz, Hewel, Voß, Wolff and
Fegelein
18. Stores
19. Residence of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s personal secretary
20. Bormann’s personal air-raid shelter for himself and
staff
21. Office of Hitler’s adjutant and the Wehrmacht’s
personnel office
22. Military and staff mess II
23. Quarters of General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations of
OKW
24. Firefighting pond
25. Office of the Foreign Ministry
26. Quarters of Fritz Todt, then after his death Albert
Speer
27. RSD command post
28. Air-raid shelter with Flak and MG units on the roof
29. Hitler’s bunker and air-raid shelter
30. New tearoom
31. Residence of General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel,
supreme commander of OKW
32. Old Teahouse
33. Residence of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring
34. Göring’s personal air-raid shelter for himself and
staff, with Flak and MG on the roof
35. Offices of the High Command of the Air Force
36. Offices of the High command of the Navy
37. Bunker with Flak
38. Ketrzyn railway line
Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm was still an unknown
quantity. He would not join the Resistance, but he did not oppose or betray it
either. He does not emerge with great credit from this story; like so many of
his colleagues, he was a man who wanted to run with the hare and hunt with the
hounds. His appointment of Stauffenberg as his Chief of Staff was a purely
military matter. He had had his eye on the young officer for some time, and at
his request Stauffenberg had written a report on the possible conduct of the
Reserve Army in Total War which had so impressed Fromm that he had passed it on
to Hitler, who remarked, `Finally, a General Staff Officer with imagination and
integrity!’ In many ways, Stauffenberg was Hitler’s ideal. Though not obviously
`Nordic’, he was handsome, young, and, above all, had been badly (and in
Hitler’s eyes, romantically) wounded for the good of the cause. It is difficult
to say whether the appointment to Fromm finalised Stauffenberg’s decision to
attempt the assassination of the Führer, or whether he went after the posting
as a means to that end. In any case, the effect was the same.
Stauffenberg’s first meeting with Hitler was at the Berghof
on 7 June – the day after D-Day. He travelled there from Bamberg where he had
been spending a week’s leave with his family prior to taking up his appointment
with Fromm. At the meeting were Himmler, Göring and Speer: it is a pity the
bomb could not have been planted then and there. He noted that, contrary to
rumours, it was perfectly possible to get close to Hitler. It would not have
been a problem to draw one’s pistol and shoot the Führer. The argument against
such action was the strong rumour that Hitler wore body armour. Hitler, who
habitually retired late and rose late, had not been told of the Normandy
landings until he had woken, but the military situation was in any case quite
hopeless. Supplies were all but used up, and factories were either bombed out
or operating only partially. The German divisions were spread too thinly across
all fronts and many were unfit for full combat. It is a testament to an insane
courage that their forces held out against the enemy for so long. The paratroop
regiments and the Waffen-SS divisions showed particular resilience.
Stauffenberg returned to Berlin after another brief stay at
Bamberg, taking with him Forester’s Hornblower novel The Happy Return to read
on the train. A few days later, he was persuading his cousin Yorck von Wartenburg
of the Kreisau Circle to enter into active Resistance. By mid-June, Goerdeler
was drawing up another of his potential Cabinet lists, and Wilhelm Leuschner
was defining the hierarchy of a new trade union movement. Hopes, at least, were
high. But on 16 June there was an unhappy meeting of the civilian Resistance at
the Hotel Esplanade in Berlin. Leber, who had turned down Stauffenberg’s
proposal that he be Chancellor in place of Goerdeler, and who was now in line
for Interior Minister, attacked Goerdeler for his unrealistic foreign policy
ideas – which still embraced a demand for Germany to retain her 1914 frontiers.
Leber thought that East Prussia, the Sudetenland and Elsass-Lohringen
(Alsace-Lorraine) would have to go. His homeland was Alsace, and there was no
question of his patriotism, but he was still shouted down by the others.
Shortly afterwards, the Resistance was to suffer another
cruel blow. Julius Leber and his close associate, Adolf Reichwein, had entered
into negotiations with a view to Resistance and postwar co-operation with a
Communist group led by three veteran freedom fighters, Bernhard Bästlein, Franz
Jakob and Anton Saefkow. Leber knew the first two personally, having spent five
years in the concentration camps with them before the outbreak of war. A series
of exploratory meetings followed, but the Gestapo already had the group under
observation, and Bastlein had been arrested on 30 May. Now the net closed, and
early in July the Security Service raided a meeting at which the others were seized.
Stauffenberg was appalled when he heard the news, and promised Leber’s wife
Annedore that they would get her husband out of prison, whatever else happened.
One should remember that during these preparations, Berlin
was being subjected to merciless air raids day and night. The battering had the
effect of stiffening the resolve of the fanatical Nazis, who were in any case
fighting to protect their own backs now. That such a man as Roland Freisler
could continue to conduct trials in the name of a `law’ that had no value and
had even lost the backing of power is evidence of this, and invites interesting
psychological reflection. The members of the Resistance themselves knew that
they had at the very most a 50 per cent chance of success, but the profound sense
of Tresckow’s advice to fight for it whatever the cost went home to all of
them. As late as the end of June, Adam von Trott zu Solz embarked on yet
another journey to Sweden, in the faint hope of renewing contact with the
British. In fact there was no hope at all.
Organisation was always a great problem for the Resistance. The arrangement of meetings was a matter of difficulty, since neither the telephone nor the post could be used. Fixed meetings often had to be aborted because of air raids and the resulting disruption of transport in Berlin. Often the conspirators used the Grünewald – the vast park in the west of the city – to meet, as houses were not always considered secure. Plans, too, had to be changed continually to keep up with the progress of the war. Schulenburg commented drily, `We’d have got further if Stauffenberg had made up his mind sooner.’
At the end of June, Kurt Zeitzler, the Chief of Staff, had a
nervous breakdown. He was replaced by Heinz Guderian. By now, Stauffenberg had
taken up residence in his office near Fromm’s in the Bendlerblock on
Bendlerstrasse, the massive building – the size of a small estate – which
housed Armed Forces administration. Fromm was astonished at the number of
unfamiliar officers he saw coming and going, but he did not ask what they were
doing, contenting himself with passing the remark to Count Helldorf, still
chief of the Berlin police, that `it’d be best if Hitler committed suicide’.
Like many officers, he would doubtless have considered himself released from
the Oath of Loyalty by Hitler’s death, which he hoped for, without wishing to
work for it actively.
Early in July Trott returned empty-handed from Stockholm,
but with news of the efforts of the National Committee for Free Germany. Stauffenberg
was chary of this. `I don’t think much of proclamations made from behind barbed
wire,’ he remarked.
Meanwhile, complicated arrangements were in train to obtain
the correct English explosives and fuses for the attempt on Hitler. Once again,
Stieff was in the forefront of this dangerous undertaking. At the same time,
arrangements were being made for the takeover of power. For a time Rommel, a
very popular general at home who had also earned the respect of the Allies, was
considered for the position of head of state. Rommel, however, was never more
than on the fringes of the conspiracy. Although he was sympathetic, he was put
out of action when his heavy unmanoeuvrable open-topped Horch staff car was
strafed by British fighters on 17 July and he was seriously wounded. After the
20 July attempt, however, the ever-suspicious Hitler obliged this best of his
generals to commit suicide in order to spare his family the concentration camps
and himself disgrace. The Führer then gave him a state funeral, but everyone
knew what had really happened.
The position of post-Nazi President, therefore, reverted to
Beck. Goerdeler would be Chancellor. Erwin von Witzleben would take over the
Army and Erich Hoepner the Reserve Army. Wherever possible conspirators would
be placed in the various Army districts around Germany and in the occupied
territories, but otherwise commands from Berlin would have to have the
authority of Fromm’s signature initially to implement `Valkyrie’. If Fromm
would not agree at the eleventh hour, Hoepner would have to announce that he
had taken over and issue the orders, hoping that the regional commanders would
still obey. SS divisions and units would have to be neutralised and then
subsumed within the Army. In co-ordination with `Valkyrie’, Helldorf, Nebe and
Gisevius (who travelled to Berlin from Zurich for the coup) would use the
regular police to take over the Security Service and seize its files. They
would also arrest all Nazi leaders then in Berlin, such as Josef Goebbels and
Robert Ley. There were plans to take over all radio stations, for a broadcast
to the nation would have to be made immediately after the coup to establish the
bona fides of the conspirators. Also, telecommunications at the Wolf’s Lair
would have to be neutralised for as long as possible. This daunting task was
entrusted to the Army head of Signals, General Erich Fellgiebel.
The Resistance had not yet given up all hope of making peace
with the West first in order at least to stall Stalin in the East, and they
were especially well prepared in France. The weak Günther von Kluge had taken
over general command in the West on 2 July, and he might still be swayed. The
military commander was General Karl-Heinrich von Stulpnagel, a veteran of the
Resistance, and he was backed up by other convinced conspirators like
Lieutenant-General Hans Speidel. A reminiscence of Philipp Freiherr von
Boeselager is an indication of the almost surreal circumstances of the time.
Shortly before the 20 July attempt, Tresckow sent Philipp’s brother Georg (of
the old `Boeselager Brigade’) to Paris with a message for Kluge. But Georg
needed an excuse for the journey. Fortunately a good one presented itself: the
Boeselagers owned a racehorse, Lord Wagram, due to run at Longchamps.
Accompanying it provided the perfect cover; but, as Philipp remarks, it is
astonishing that such things were still possible in mid-1944!
The whole plan was rickety and riddled with risk, but it
offered the only possibility, and time was running out fast for a coup of any
sort to be effected.
Stauffenberg attended a further meeting at Berchtesgaden on
6 July, and another on the 11th. On this second occasion, when he travelled
with his adjutant and confidant Captain Friedrich Karl Klausing, he was
prepared to make the attempt, the explosives packed in a briefcase, and
equipped with a pair of pliers to set the fuse whose handles had been specially
adapted so that he could manipulate them with his remaining crippled hand.
However, Himmler was not present at the meeting and so, after a telephone call
to Olbricht, Stauffenberg decided to abort the attempt. As no plans seem to
have been laid to set `Valkyrie’ in motion on this occasion one wonders if he
did indeed intend to make the attempt. It may have been a full dress rehearsal.
Stauffenberg must have been aware that he would have several opportunities in
the next few days to attend meetings with Hitler. Nevertheless, to take such a
risk without intending action seems hard to believe.
On 15 July, Stauffenberg accompanied Fromm to another
meeting with the Führer, this time at the Wolf’s Lair near Rastenburg. They had
received the summons at midday on the 14th, so there was just time to activate
`Valkyrie’. This was to be it. Everyone was on edge. Berthold Stauffenberg
commented, `Worst of all is to know that we’ll fail; and yet we must go ahead,
for the sake of our country and our children.’ In the West, the SS division
generals Sepp Dietrich and Hausser put themselves fully under Rommel’s orders.
Very few people indeed seemed to have any faith in Hitler’s new wonder weapons,
the Vbomb rockets.
The Wolf’s Lair was a complex of compounds and buildings,
admission to which involved various degrees of security check. At that time it
was in a state of rebuilding. At least Stauffenberg had the opportunity to take
this in, for there was no chance to use the bomb. Once again a last-minute
change of plan by Hitler saved him. Fortunately, although Valkyrie’s initial
stages had been set in motion in anticipation of Stauffenberg’s action, the
conspirators managed to pass these off as an exercise.
Stauffenberg was deeply depressed by this setback, and those
who saw him at that time recall his state of nervous exhaustion. On the 16th,
he telephoned his wife in Bamberg to ask her to postpone a family visit she
intended to make with the children to Lautlingen. She objected that she had
already bought the railway tickets, and he did not press her. It was their last
conversation. The same day, Rommel transmitted a message to Hitler via Kluge
that the maximum time the West Front could continue to hold out was twenty-one
days. That evening there was a meeting of `the young counts’, as Goerdeler
called them, at the Stauffenberg brothers’ flat in Wannsee. Mertz von
Quirnheim, Claus’s successor as Chief of Staff to Olbricht, was there, together
with Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Peter Yorck von
Wartenburg, Cäsar von Hofacker, the contact man with the Army in France, Georg
Hansen, who had taken over from Canaris at the Abwehr, and Schwerin von
Schwanenfeld. They decided that the only way to save Germany now would be to
kill Hitler at the very first opportunity and immediately thereafter enter
peace negotiations with the USSR and the Western Allies simultaneously. They
had no idea that Germany had already been divided up and parcelled out. Events
had long since overtaken them and they did not know.
