[CTRL] [1&2] Secret Germany - Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade Against Hitler

[Kris Millegan]

 -Caveat Lector-

an excerpt from:
Secret Germany - Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade Against Hitler
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh,(C) 1994
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-----


Introduction

By the spring Of 1943, the Second World War was careening towards its fourth
year of conflict. It would still have another two years to run, and some of
the bloodiest and most bitter fighting had yet to occur. Nevertheless, the
tide, in Churchill's phrase, had at last begun to turn. In three of the most
important theatres of operations, the Allies - the British Empire, the Soviet
Union and the United States - had forced the Axis on to the defensive, and
were just beginning to take the offensive themselves.

During the previous year, three decisive engagements had transformed the
course of the war, dramatically reversing the flow of its momentum. The first
of these was the Battle of Midway, in June 1942, when Japan's seemingly
inexorable sweep across the Pacific had been abruptly halted, and the loss of
four aircraft carriers left Japanese air and sea Power irreparably impaired.

On the Russian front, where Hitler's advancing forces were locked in a
titanic struggle with those of the Soviet Union, the German 6th Army's
assault on Stalingrad had ground to a halt. By the last week of November, the
army was entirely encircled by the Russian counter-offensive. On 31 January
1943, the 6th Army surrendered with its surviving 91,000 men, having already
suffered nearly 200,000 casualties. Germany had previously undergone
reverses, of course - in the Battle of Britain, for example, and at sea - but
Stalingrad was the German war machine's first major setback on land. It was a
decisive defeat and led to the series of Russian Introduction

By the spring Of 1943, the Second World War was careening towards its fourth
year of conflict. It would still have another two years to run, and some of
the bloodiest and most bitter fighting had yet to occur. Nevertheless, the
tide, in Churchill's phrase, had at last begun to turn. In three of the most
important theatres of operations, the Allies - the British Empire, the Soviet
Union and the United States - had forced the Axis on to the defensive, and
were just beginning to take the offensive themselves.

During the previous year, three decisive engagements had transformed the
course of the war, dramatically reversing the flow of its momentum. The first
of these was the Battle of Midway, in June 1942, when Japan's seemingly
inexorable sweep across the Pacific had been abruptly halted, and the loss of
four aircraft carriers left Japanese air and sea Power irreparably impaired.

On the Russian front, where Hitler's advancing forces were locked in a
titanic struggle with those of the Soviet Union, the German 6th Army's
assault on Stalingrad had ground to a halt. By the last week of November, the
army was entirely encircled by the Russian counter-offensive. On 31 January
1943, the 6th Army surrendered with its surviving 91,000 men, having already
suffered nearly 200,000 casualties. Germany had previously undergone
reverses, of course - in the Battle of Britain, for example, and at sea - but
Stalingrad was the German war machine's first major setback on land. It was a
decisive defeat and led to the series of Russian to halt Montgomery's
advancing 8th Army at Medenine. When Montgomery counter-attacked on 2o March,
10th Panzer offered particularly fierce resistance, and it was not until six
days later that the Germans were forced to abandon their positions at Mareth.
In both of these engagements, 10th Panzer's new Staff Officer (Operations)
made a dramatic impression on subordinates, colleagues and superiors alike.

In spite of all his office work, the Staff Officer (Operations) invariably
found time to keep in touch with the troops. He would frequently visit
regiments and battalions to discuss personal or official problems with
commanding officers. By informal discussion on the spot, he would deal with a
whole mass of business which would otherwise have had to be cleared up
through official channels. His conversation was not, however, limited solely
to official matters; he would range over history, geography, literature, and,
of course, politics. Though he was clearly opposed to the existing system, he
never tried to persuade or influence anybody. He did not seem to me to be in
any sense fanatical, impetuous or a go-getter trying to change everything at
once ... He had the natural charm of the Swabian, which everybody found
irresistible.[1]

One of the new Staff Officer's subordinates offers a particularly eloquent
testimony:

Although I was only a twenty-two-year-old subaltern ... 1 was extraordinarily
impressed by Stauffenberg's personality. He seemed to me the ideal of an
officer. His manner was so frank and friendly that one did not get the
impression of being a subordinate. His thoughtfulness inspired one with
confidence. On the other hand, the incision with which he spoke drew respect;
he was a man possessed of natural authority. It was 'typical of
Stauffenberg's way of going about things that he was determined to get to
know personally all officers in the division, down to company commander, as
soon as he could - which was why I was ordered to report to him. This was not
normal procedure. He was determined that there should be close contact
between the staff and the troops. [2]


On 7 April, two weeks after the German retreat from Mareth, the Allied
pincers closed - the Anglo-American forces that had landed m November linked
up with Montgomery's 8th Army advancing from the east. This determined the
fate of the Africa Korps and its Italian allies, now boxed in amid Tunisia's
rocky hills and flat barren passes. On 12 May, 250,000 German and Italian
troops surrendered, thereby paving the way for the invasion of Sicily and
then the Italian mainland - the first Allied foothold on the continent of
Europe since the evacuation at Dunkirk three years before.

With the Allies enjoying air supremacy, as well as control of the
Mediterranean, no German equivalent of Dunkirk could even have been
contemplated. But while the army itself could not be saved, it was still
possible for individual commanders, senior officers and other important
personnel to be rescued. An ill and depressed Rommel was invalided home
shortly after his withdrawal from Mareth. Claus von Stauffenberg was booked
for a flight back to Italy, whence he would be re-assigned to a new posting.
He himself had recognised that the North African campaign was irretrievably
lost. Not caring to spend the duration of the war as a prisoner, he had
requested a transfer, maintaining he could be of greater use elsewhere. No
one disagreed with him, for Stauffenberg was universally recognised as the
single most brilliant and promising young officer in the entire Wehrmacht.
There seemed little question that he was destined for high command,
eventually for a field marshal's baton. It was said that he had the capacity
'to inspire the Army and the General Staff with a new spirit and to compete
with the narrow military point of view'.[3] One of his colleagues observed:
'What surprised me was the manner in which those who surpassed him in rank
recognised his natural superiority and yielded to it.[4] In the view of one
of his commanders, he was 'the only German Staff officer of genius'.[5] Heinz
Guderian, the mastermind of German armoured warfare and architect of Panzer
formations and the 'Blitzkrieg', was soon to put Stauffenberg's name forward
as most likely candidate for Chief of the General Staff.[6]

On the day that the Anglo-American forces advancing from the west joined up
with the 8th Army, Stauffenberg was helping to organise the German retreat
towards the Tunisian coastal town of Sfax. His staff car was manoeuvring
through a lengthy file of other vehicles and demoralised soldiers on foot
when the entire column came under strafing attack from a squadron of American
P-40 fighter-bombers.[7] The road was at once transformed into an inferno of
blazing vehicles, each of which, as it burst into flames, provided another
easily discernible marker for the low-flying aircraft. As his driver threaded
a path between the gutted hulks, Stauffenberg stood upright in his staff car,
issuing orders and directing such lorries as still remained mobile. Then, he
himself became a target for one of the P-40s' So calibre machine-guns. Hands
covering his head, he hurled himself out of the car as the bullets struck
home.

He was found, half-conscious, beside his overturned, burnt out and
shell-pocked vehicle. His injuries were appalling. His left eye had been hit
by a bullet, his right seriously damaged as well. His right forearm and hand
had been virtually shot away, as had two fingers on his left. One knee was
badly wounded and his back and legs were pitted with shrapnel. In this
condition, he was rushed to the nearest field hospital, at Sfax. Here, he
received emergency treatment. The remnants of his right hand were amputated
above the wrist. The little finger and ring finger of his left hand, and what
remained of his left eye, were removed.

Three days later, as Montgomery's troops advanced on Sfax, Stauffenberg was
transferred to another hospital at Carthage - a difficult and extremely
painful journey, with the ambulance under constant attack by Allied aircraft.
>From Carthage, he was flown to Munich. He was running an alarmingly high
temperature, and most of the doctors concluded he was unlikely to live. If,
by some miracle, he did, he was unlikely to walk again. He would probably be
permanently crippled, an invalid for the rest of his life. He might also be
blind.

His head, arms and legs swathed like a mummy's in bandages, he was visited in
hospital by an array of distinguished officers, who, during the previous
years of both peace and war, had come to esteem him. They included the Chief
of the General Staff, Kurt ZeitzIer, who brought him a decoration, the Golden
Badge for the Wounded, and a personal gift of wine. 'The large number of
highranking visitors calling on the lieutenant-colonel caused astonishment at
the military hospital.[8]

Stauffenberg was also visited by his mother, by his wife, Nina, and by his
uncle, Nikolaus, Graf (Count) von Uxkull-Gyllenband, as well as by other
relatives. To Uxkull he confided that he felt his survival had not been
coincidental; his life, mutilated though it might now be, had been spared for
some specific purpose, someordained design.

'You know,' he said to Nina on one occasion, 'I have a feeling I've now got
to do something to save the Reich. As General Staff officers, we all share
the responsibility. [9]

To a friend, the son of his surgeon, he stated: 'I could never look the wives
and children of the fallen in the eye if 1 did not do something to stop this
senseless slaughter."[10]

To Uxkull and a number of others, he was even more incisively determined:
'Since the generals have so far done nothing, the colonels must now go into
action.[11]

>From childhood, Stauffenberg had cultivated self-discipline and a tenacious
application of will - a fierce concentration of inner resources,
psychological or spiritual, whereby, as he saw it, flesh could be mastered
and transcended. These resources were now to be augmented by a consuming
sense of mission. The first step for Stauffenberg was to rehabilitate himself
He set about establishing a personal supremacy over physical pain, affirming
what he regarded as his spiritual identity in defiance of the body's ordeals.
While the surgeons laboured over him, he adamantly refused all pain-killing
drugs, all soporifics, anaesthetics and sedatives. Even the official Gestapo
report speaks admiringly of the 'great will-power' with which he embarked on
his recovery.

Grievous though his injuries had been, Stauffenberg remained hospitalised in
Munich for no more than two and a half months, from 2 1 April until 3 July.
As early as the end of April, his recovery was being pronounced 'remarkable',
and he wrote to a friend, General Friedrich Olbricht, that he hoped to be
ready for duty again by August. Despite the dire prognostications to the
contrary, he recovered the use of his right eye. With the two fingers and
thumb of his left hand, he taught himself laboriously to write. In the
sleeping compartment of a train. shortly after he 'had discharged himself
from hospital, a fellow officer, pitying his condition, offered to help him
change clothes. Stauffenberg chuckled and, in a matter of moments, had
undressed and dressed himself again, employing three fingers and his teeth.
When the hospital asked him to return to have an artificial limb fitted, he
replied that he had no time for such matters. When an artificial limb was
suggested by a friend, he laughed and again dismissed the idea. He could
scarcely remember, he said, what he'd done with all ten fingers when he still
possessed them. He insisted on regarding his injuries as no more than a minor
inconvenience, training himself to function as normally as possible, even to
ride horseback - and, when later circumstances so required, to activate a
bomb.

Stauffenberg would not let himself be demobilised either. He declared his
intention not only to remain in the army, but to resume active duty and even
to get posted to. the front. Almost at once, he was besieged by senior
commanders seeking to woo him to their staff. He chose a position as Chief of
Staff in the Allgemeine Heeresamt, the General Army Office, one of the
departments of the Reserve Army based in Berlin. The Reserve Army consisted
of an troops stationed on German soil, within the precincts of the Reich
itself. The task of the General Army Office was to supply materiel, as well
as trained replacements, to the Reserve Army, which could then transfer them
to the appropriate theatre of operations. Such replacements consisted of new
recruits, wounded who had recovered, workers withdrawn from industry,
over-age and underage volunteers.

Stauffenberg's immediate superior at the General Army Office was
Colonel-General Friedrich Olbricht, with whom he had corresponded in April;
and it has been suggested that he and Olbricht had already come to a secret
understanding. In any case, there were reasons for Stauffenberg wanting to be
attached to Olbricht's department.
Through his own network of connections, he knew it to be a clandestine hotbed
of officers militantly opposed to Hitler and the National Socialist regime.
These officers had begun to act in close concert with another cadre, led by
one of the most dynamic young commanders on the Eastern Front, Major-General
Henning von Tresckow, whom Stauffenberg had known since at least the summer
of 1941. Under Tresckow's auspices, an embryonic plan had been formulated for
using the Reserve Army as the nucleus of a coup. The General Army Office was
the vital connecting link between the Reserve Army and Tresckow's circle on
the Eastern Front.

By mid-August 1943, some five weeks after discharging himself from hospital,
Stauffenberg was in Berlin. Here, he began actively conspiring with Tresckow,
then on leave; and when Tresckow returned to the Eastern Front, leadership of
the conspiracy in Germany devolved almost entirely upon Stauffenberg. The
pace of events quickened when, on 1 October, he officially assumed his post
as Chief of Staff at the General Army Office. He was now based at the
building on the Bendlerstrasse which served as headquarters for the Reserve
Army.

Energy, resourcefulness, determination, eloquence, charisma, an irresistible
magnetic charm and an infectious sense of humour - all the qualities
Stauffenberg had previously employed in his wartime tasks were now directed
towards conspiracy. From his house in a Berlin suburb, shared with his
brother Berthold, he proceeded to consolidate the requisite network of
contacts, as well as to familiarise himself with the civil and military
measures which seizure of power would entail: proclamation of a state of
emergency, arrest of Party officials along with SS and Gestapo personnel,
occupation of ministries, railway depots, communications centres, strategic
installations and access roads. It was a dauntingly arduous and complex
undertaking, yet Stauffenberg's unflagging stamina - especially in a man so
recently and terribly wounded -seemed to his colleagues almost superhuman.
Tirelessly, he moved through the upper military and administrative echelons
of the Reich, screening prospective supporters, probing, evaluating,
interrogating, arguing, recruiting - always with a ready laugh, an apparently
slapdash cavalier insoucience, a mesmerising force of character and will that
seldom failed to win people over.

'Let me be blunt,' he declared to one young officer whose services he wished
to recruit. 'With all the resources at my disposal, I'm committing high
treason.' [12]

In meeting with co-conspirators, he would often recite fragments from the
work of Stefan George, his former mentor, who had died in 1933 and is, after
Rilke, probably the greatest Germanlanguage poet of the century. In
particular, he would quote from a poem entitled 'Der Widercrist' (`The
Antichrist'), which George had published - with what now seemed uncanny
foresight - in 1907:

The high Prince of Vermin extends his domains;
No pleasure eludes him, no treasure or gain.
And down with the dregs of rebellion!

You cheer, mesmerised by demoniac sheen,
Exhaust what remains of the honey of dawn,
And only then sense the debacle.

You then stretch your tongues to the now arid trough
Mill witless as kine through a pasture aflame,
While fearfully brazens the trumpet. [13]


On 6 June 1944, history's most ambitious seaborne invasion swept half a
million British, American and Canadian soldiers ashore in Normandy. The
repercussions were soon to give Stauffenberg his long-sought opportunity.
Colonel-General Fritz Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, had been
out of favour with Hitler for some two years. Now, on 7 June, owing to a
particularly impressive report Stauffenberg had composed for him, Fromm was
summoned to the Fuhrer's headquarters above Berchtesgaden, at the Berghof in
the Bavarian Alps, and Stauffenberg accompanied him.

It is often assumed or asserted by historians that the meeting at the Berghof
was Stauffenberg's first personal contact with Hitler. A photograph published
for the first time in this book proves they had met previously - at least as
early as the summer Of 1942, at Vinnitsa, German headquarters in the Ukraine.
There Hitler, as always on encountering a new face, endeavoured to stare
Stauffenberg down. In the past, his stare had always dominated others,
forcing their eyes down or aside, but Stauffenberg remained uncowed, his eyes
locking and holding the Fuhrer's. For the first time in the experience of
those present, Hitler's own gaze is said to have given way, growing veiled,
jellied, then flicking furtively away - as if intimidated by a charisma, a
magnetism, a force of will comparable to his own. Stauffenberg is said to
have commented afterwards on this silent contest with typical
self-confidence: 'The man is a magician. He almost hypnotised me!'

Two years later, all vestiges of Hitler's hypnotic power had evaporated for
Stauffenberg. His own accounts of the meeting at Berchtesgaden reflect, above
everything else, an overwhelming revulsion. To his wife, when asked whether
Hitler's eyes had been impressive or exerted any spell, he replied
contemptuously: 'Not at all. Nothing.' They had only been 'veiled'. Goering
had been wearing make-up, and the whole atmosphere of the Fuhrer's
headquarters had been 'stale', 'paralysing', 'rotten and degenerate'. Only
Albert Speer, the Minister for Armaments, had seemed normal. All the other
members of the National Socialist hierarchy had been 'patent psychopaths'.
According to eyewitness reports:

Hitler, his right hand trembling, looking worried, suddenly cast a searching
glance at Stauffenberg across the long table; then, after quickly reassuring
himself that there was no danger, he again turned his attention to the
reporting officer.[14]

>From that day on, the Fuhrer ordered a tightening of his personal security,
and emphasised that all briefcases carried to conferences should be closely
watched.

Whatever Hitler's suspicions, the record of the dashing, onehanded and
one-eyed officer was impeccable, his brilliance could not be disputed and
endorsements from such senior commanders as Guderian could hardly be
dismissed. On 20 June, he was seconded by Olbricht from the General Army
Office to a position as Fromm's deputy: he became Chief of Staff of the
Reserve Army. Promoted to full colonel, he officially assumed his new post on
1 July. He would now have access to the Fuhrer's headquarters and to Hitler
personally.
p1-11
=====

Part One
The Bomb Plot

1

The German Resistance

History has been kind to the anti-German resistance in most of Nazi-occupied
Europe. In part, of course, this is a consequence of Allied propaganda during
the war itself. In the struggle for 'hearts and minds', much was to be gained
by stressing the roles of Free French, Free Polish, Free Czech and other
forces fighting alongside those of Britain, the Empire as it then existed,
and the United States. There were also vested interests, both during the war
and afterwards, in stressing the activities of partisan organisations in
occupied France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, Poland, Greece and, after September 1943, northern Italy
-activities ranging from smuggling Allied airmen to safety and transmitting
messages to co-ordinating air
raids, engaging in sabotage and conducting large-scale guerrilla operations.
In the English-speaking world, even the most cursory account of the war will
accord some notice to the work of the underground resistance; and there can
scarcely be a cinema-goer or television viewer who has not seen at least one
film revolving around resistance activities, from Scandinavia to the Balkans
and Greece. Nor must one forget the actions of partisans within the
former Soviet sphere of influence, and within the former Soviet Union itself

The German Resistance, or 'Widerstand, has received altogether less attention
from serious historians, and virtually no popular attention whatever. For
most people, the Third Reich looms as a single sinister monolithic entity -
the entire German population standing mesmerised, in docile thrall to
Hitler's spell. In some quarters, it may even come as a surprise that a
German resistance existed at all. Although there will generally be a vague
awareness of the abortive plot to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944, for
most non-historians, this will figure only as it was depicted at the time by
the Nazis themselves and by Allied propaganda - a single doomed
flash-in-the-pan attempt at a coup d'etat improvised, in slapdash and
amateurish fashion, by a few disgruntled high-ranking officers. Even among
the better-informed, the plot, of 20 July is seen as nothing more than an ad
hoc and bungled endeavour to remove Hitler personally, rather than a
manifestation of a coherent, longstanding, widespread and well-organised
resistance movement.

In fact, a subterranean and organised German resistance had existed since
before 1938 - before Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and the notorious
conference in Munich which, according to Neville Chamberlain, promised 'peace
in our time'. This resistance consisted of senior military officers and civil
servants, and international diplomats, jurists, intellectuals and men of
letters. Some of these were among the most august and influential names in
Germany. Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank and former Minister of
Economics, was involved, as well as Julius Leber, refugee of concentration
camps and chief spokesman for German socialism. There were Carl Gordeler,
former Mayor of Leipzig, Ulrich von Hassell, former German ambassador to
Italy, and Adam von Trott zu Solz, one-time Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and
probably the most brilliant mind in the German Foreign Office. Eminent
jurists like Counts Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Helmuth James von Moltke
cousins of the Stauffenberg family and founders of the intellectual 'Kreisau
Circle' - took part, as did Pastor Dietrich Bonhoffiler, the internationally
distinguished teacher, lecturer, scholar and theologian.

Among the military, the fist is equally impressive. It starts with
Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, beloved former Chief of the General Staff, and
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Chief of Military Intelligence, and goes on to
involve at least eight senior commanders, including two other former Chiefs
of the General Staff, two field marshals and the military governor of France,
as well as numerous junior officers.

Although the true number can never be known, one historian records at least
forty-six significant attempts on Hitler's life between 1921 and 1945.[1] In
1933 alone, there were ten which the police regarded as both genuine and
serious. Some of the projected assassination schemes were wildly flamboyant
and romantically dramatic - a battalion of German and Cossack paratroops, for
example, dropping into the airport near Berchtesgaden, storming the
headquarters and capturing the Fuhrer, who would no doubt have been shot
while trying to escape. Others were more realistic and, in other
circumstances, might well have succeeded An quite apart from plans to remove
Hitler by violent means, there were numerous other plots for deposing the
National Socialist regime and seizing power.[2] A few of these are worthy of
note.

On 11 March 1938, the 'Anschluss' of Austria occurred. German troops marched
into Vienna, and the original domains of the onceproud 600-year-old Habsburg
empire were annexed to the Greater German Reich. Hitler then turned his
designs to Czechoslovakia, a country which, unlike Austria, was not going to
submit peaceably. Under its Chief of Staff, Ludwig Beck, the German high
command was alarmed at the prospect of a major European war. Even apart from
the moral issues, and the guilt Germany would incur for such aggression, the
country was militarily unprepared for a large-scale conflict. If at first
Beck's opposition was based on simple expediency, it soon became a matter of
duty and honour:

History will indict these commanders of blood guilt if, in the light of their
professional and political knowledge, they do not obey the dictates of their
conscience. The soldier's duty to obey ends when his knowledge, his
conscience and his sense of responsibility forbid him to carry out a certain
order. [3]

Towards the end of July 193 8, Beck prepared a statement to Hitler:

The Commander-in-Chief of the Army, together with his most senior commanding
generals, regret that they cannot assume responsibility for the conduct of a
war of this nature without carrying a share of the guilt for it in face of
the people and of history. Should the Fuhrer, therefore, insist on the
prosecution of this war, they hereby resign from their posts.[4]

While most of the high command shared Beck's objections to war, few of them
possessed his integrity and preparedness to act on his principles. Lacking
the requisite unanimity of support from his subordinates, Beck resigned alone
on 18 August, to be succeeded by General Fritz Halder. Halder was no more
cordial to Hitler, whom he described as a 'criminal', a 'madmen' and a
'blood-sucker'.[5] At the same time, he worried that any attempted coup might
rend the whole of Germany and culminate in outright civil war. Despite the
risk, he proceeded to plot a coup with other highly placed individuals,
including Beck and Ernst von Weizsacker, the father of Germany's present-day
president.

Any premature movement or re-deployment of the army would, It was recognised,
attract attention and give the game away, but if Hitler actually ordered the
invasion of Czechoslovakia, the army would have to move in any case. Hitler's
own orders, it was therefore decided, would set the army into motion - not
towards an advance into Czechoslovakia, but towards an overthrow of the
regime and a seizure of power. Among the units assigned to a key role in the
projected enterprise was the 1st (Light) Division under Lieutenant-General
Erich Hoepner, who had been initiated into the clandestine plans. One of
Hoepner's most trusted subordinates, and friends, was the 3 I-year-old
Captain Claus von Stauffenberg. Among the others associated with the
undertaking were Stauffenberg's brother, Berthold, his uncle, Nikolaus von
Uxkull, and two of his cousins, Casar von Hofacker and Peter Yorck von
Wartenburg. When Stauffenberg emerged from hospital in 1943, he was no
stranger to anti-Hitler conspiracy; he had been privy to the network of
opposition within the military for five years.

The 'cover story' for the coup in 1938 - the official reason or 'excuse' for
the army's seizure of power - was to be an alleged plot by the SS to usurp
control of the country. This, it was felt, would ensure the allegiance of
military personnel of all ranks. Such, already, was the animosity felt
towards the SS by the army, and that animosity was only to intensify.

Many of the 1938 plotters wanted only to arrest Hitler and place him on
trial. This would have precluded his being transformed into a martyr, and
would also have pre-empted any accusations of a 'stab in the back'. Since
1933, one of the conspirators had secretly been collecting and collating
material for a legal indictment. But there was also talk of having the Fuhrer
offcially declared insane by a panel of doctors. And despite a number of
objections, there evolved a contingency plan for assassination, on the
grounds that 'tyrannicide had always been looked upon as a moral
commandment'. According to Hans-Bernd Gisevius, then serving in the Ministry
of the Interior:

Not every attempt at a coup d'etat can be judged by the same ethical
standards. I am speaking of a situation in domestic and foreign politics
which already was rife with murder and injustice, which was moving towards
the bloodbath of a war. At stake was much more than the peace and security of
one single country. The interests of millions of innocent people were more
imperative than the requirements of justice- requirements which the tyrant
himself had unfailingly violated.[6]

A 'raiding party' of armed officers was accordingly formed, quietly assembled
and 'held ready in certain Berlin apartments'. When the coup was launched,
this 'raiding party' was to descend on the Chancellery, ostensibly to arrest
the Fuhrer. In fact, 'more drastic measures' had been prepared: the 'raiding
party' was 'determined to provoke an incident and shoot Hitler in the
process'.[7] A new German government would then be formed and a democratic
constitutional monarchy established, the crown being conferred on one of two
grandsons of the former Kaiser Wilhelm II.

In the meantime, high-level diplomatic moves had been initiated through the
Foreign Office. Secret emissaries were dispatched to France and to Britain,
whose support was deemed to be of paramount importance. Throughout the
autumn, consultations were conducted in secret with British officials.[8]

On 15 September, Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, arrived at
Berchtesgaden to discuss the escalating Czech crisis with Hitler. So far as
the projected coup was concerned, everything was in place: Chamberlain would
remain adamant in the face of Hitler's voracious demands, Hitler would in
turn refuse to back down and, with the prospect of war looming, the
conspirators would have grounds on which to act. Instead Chamberlain gave way
to Hitler, accepting that the Sudetenland - the German speaking enclave of
Czechoslovakia - should be ceded to the Reich. The conspirators were thrown
into 'consternation' and 'confusion'. 'In their view the British statesman
had been doing homage to a gangster and thus had let them down.'[9]

For the moment there was still hope. In his statements, Chamberlain had said
more than he was authorised to say and had to return to London for
Parliamentary ratification. Under clandestine pressure from the conspirators
themselves, Britain placed her fleet - on alert - though it is hard to see
how this can have been much consolation to a landlocked Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia herself mobilised. France recalled her reservists.
International tension intensified, and it looked as if the renewed threat of
war would at last give the conspirators the sanction they required.

On 27 September, Hitler mobilised certain divisions near the Czech border. On
the 28, the 'raiding party' bent on Hitler's removal readied themselves for
their assault on the Chancellery, the doors of which, in accordance with
their plan, had been left open. But on the very next day, there occurred the
infamous Munich Conference, in which Chamberlain and the French Premier
Daladier capitulated to Hitler's demands, thereby removing the last obstacle
to his advance, unchallenged and unmolested, into Czechoslovakia. Without the
threat of war to validate their undertaking, the conspirators were stripped
of all justification for action. 'So,' the historian Peter Hoffmann observed,
'the ground was cut from under the feet of the most promising attempt to
overthrow Hitler', and, 'The Munich Conference and the abandonment of
Czechoslovakia by the Western powers administered to the anti-Hitler
opposition a blow from which it could not recover. " At the Nuremberg trials
after the war, General Halder was asked directly: 'If Chamberlain had not
come to Munich, would the plan have been executed and Hitler deposed?' He
replied that the plan would indeed have been carried out.'[11]

It is, of course, easy to second-guess history, but it is difficult to
imagine a moment of indecision and irresolution with more tragic
consequences. Had Chamberlain remained firm at Munich, it is often asserted,
Hitler would have backed down. In fact, Hitler would not have backed down,
but, by virtue of not doing so, he would almost certainly have been deposed
and very probably eliminated - and this would have been even more beneficial
to humanity and to twentieth-century history. In their policy of
'appeasement', Chamberlain and Daladier have more to answer for than is
generally believed.

Of all the plots against Hitler, that of 1938 stood probably the greatest
chance of success and came closest to effective realisation. It was also the
last occasion on which senior officers of the high command, including a
presiding Chief of the General Staff, would have the willpower, the unanimity
and the opportunity to work in such close concert. After the invasion of
Czechoslovakia, German successes in the field, and the stranglehold of the SS
and Gestapo at home, ensured a support and a docility among the populace that
made a full-scale coup increasingly difficult to contemplate. Yet even before
Stauffenberg's appearance on the scene, attempts on the Fuhrer's life
continued.

In September 1939, immediately after the outbreak of war, Colonel-General
Kurt von Hammerstein tried desperately to engineer one such assassination.
Hammerstein was a former Commander-in-Chief of the army, who, on the
inauguration of hostilities, was entrusted with one of the German armies on
the French front. He was involved in no organised conspiracy, gave no thought
to wider political repercussions; but his hatred for Hitler was more than a
decade old, pre-dating even the Nazis' rise to power. Acting virtually alone,
he tried repeatedly - and unsuccessfully- to lure Hitler to his headquarters.
'I would have rendered him harmless once and for all,' Hammerstein
subsequently said, 'and even without judicial proceedings [12] The military
historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett writes that, had Hitler only come within
Hammerstein's reach, the general 'would have dealt faithfully and adequately
with him,[13] Shortly before his death from cancer in 1943, Hammerstein
stated: 'A nation that has lost every feeling for right and wrong, good and
evil, that commits such crimes, deserves to be destroyed . . ."[14]

The following month, after the successful conclusion of the Polish campaign,
General Halder himself tried again, hoping to neutralise the Fuhrer before
shooting actually started with Britain and France. The speed and
one-sidedness of the victory in Poland had made it more difficult to muster
support than in 1938.

Nevertheless, Halder was able to draw on most of the individuals involved in
the previous year's plot. Among his new co-conspirators were the Panzer
commander Heinz Guderian and the young Henning von Tresckow (later to become
one of Stauffenberg's closest associates and colleagues). Plans were laid to
arrest and, in all likelihood, assassinate not just Hitler, but most of the
Nazi Party hierarchy as well. The Kaiser's grandson, Prince Louis-
Ferdinand, secretly declared his readiness, if called upon, to serve.[15]
Clandestine links were established with the Vatican. The 8th Infantry
Regiment of Potsdam - among whose young officers were Axel von dem Bussche
and Ewald von Kleist, two of Stauffenberg's subsequent collaborators - was
placed on alert and assigned a key
role in the undertaking.

Almost immediately, things began to go wrong. A bomb which had nothing to do
with the conspiracy was planted in a Munich beer hall on 8 November. There
followed a clampdown on the availability of explosives, making it impossible
for the conspirators to obtain the supplies they needed. Worse still, they
were unable to obtain the support of Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch,
Commander-in-Chief of the army, who had just had a row with Hitler and been
badly intimidated. Without Brauchitsch's cooperation, action was unthinkable.
Halder panicked, called off the projected coup and ordered the destruction of
all records. For the next few weeks, he carried a loaded revolver in his
pocket on every visit to the Chancellery, intending to shoot Hitler
personally, but he could never muster the resolve to perform the act. At one
point, he even talked about employing a contract killer, but it was too late
for that.

One of Halder's co-conspirators in the plots of 1938 and 1939 was Field
Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. As Commander-in-Chief in the West, Witzleben
devised elaborate plans for assassinating Hitler in Paris in 1941 The Fuhrer
was to be invited to the French capital. A parade would be organised down the
Champs Elysees, and Hitler would take the salute at the Place de la Concorde.
Here he was to be shot by two officers on Witzleben's staff; and, in case
anything went wrong, another officer was entrusted with a bomb to throw. [16]
But after his unannounced visit at the end of the French campaign, on 23 June
1940 Hitler was never again to visit Paris.

He repeatedly declined Witzleben's invitations; and in March 1942 while in
hospital for an operation, Witzleben was relieved of command and forced into
retirement.

In January 1943, Major-General Henning von Tresckow was stationed with Army
Group Centre on the Russian front. Tresckow had set about assembling more
than fifteen prominent staff officers into a cadre that would turn the entire
army group 'into an instrument for a coup'. Among the troops on whom Tresckow
counted was a highly mobile cavalry unit: two battalions of I, IOO men each,
650 of them Russian Cossacks. Once a coup was set into motion, this unit
would have quickly been flown to Berlin. According to Tresckow's original
plan, Hitler was to be invited to the army group's headquarters at Smolensk.
During a meal in the mess, some two dozen officers would simultaneously draw
their pistols and shoot him - thus making the responsibility collective and,
at the same time, ensuring that at least one bullet elude the security
entourage of SS to find its target. Unfortunately, the army group commander,
Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, had to be informed, if only to prevent his
getting into the line of fire. Kluge scotched the plan not because he
objected to assassinating Hitler, but because, by the tenets of the German
Officer Corps, 'it was not seemly to shoot a man at lunch'. [17]

On 13 March 1943, Hitler did visit Army Group Centre at Smolensk, and
Tresckow tried again. As Hitler returned to his aircraft from the army
group's headquarters, troops lining the route were to open fire with their
submachine-guns. But Hitler, seized by a sudden whim, decided to take
another, apparently more scenic, route. [18]

Tresckow had a contingency plan which depended on the help of one of his
friends from before the war, Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a former
lawyer attached to Army Group Centre as an aide-de-camp. In 1939,
Schlabrendorff had met secretly with Churchill, hoping to make the British
government aware of the strength of the German opposition to Hitler. Now,
Schlabrendorff had prepared a lethal package. He had used British explosives
- dropped for Special Operations Executive agents and captured - because
British fuses were silent, whereas German fuses made a slight hissing sound
that might give them away. The principle governing Schlabrendorff's devices
was simple. A wire held the firing pin of the detonator in place against a
spring. At the opposite end of this wire, there was positioned a small glass
phial of acid. Once the phial was broken, the acid would eat its way through
the wire. After a calculated interval, it would release the detonator's
firing pin.

Tresckow and Schlabrendorff had constructed their explosive devices
carefully, packed so as to resemble two square bottles of Cointreau. During
lunch at army group headquarters, Tresckow casually asked a member of
Hitler's entourage if he could take two bottles of liqueur to a friend at
Hitler's headquarters in Rastenburg, whence the Fuhrer's aircraft was bound.
The request appeared innocent enough and was unthinkingly granted.

Schlabrendorff took the parcel to the airstrip and waited to see which
aircraft Hitler would board. He then activated the bomb by breaking the phial
of acid and handed the parcel to an aide. The aircraft took off, accompanied
by a fighter escort. Back at army group headquarters, Tresckow and
Schlabrendorff telephoned a codeword to their co-conspirators in Berlin to
indicate that the assassination attempt was under way. According to their
calculations, the package would explode when Hitler's aircraft was more or
less over Minsk. 'With mounting tension,' Schlabrendorff subsequently wrote,
'we waited for news of the "accident" . . .'

After waiting more than two hours, we received the shattering news that
Hitler's plane had landed without incident at the airstrip at Rastenburg, in
East Prussia, and Hitler himself had safely reached Headquarters. [19]


The projected coup had to be cancelled immediately, and Tresckow and his
collaborators were in despair. In the meantime, the explosive device had
urgently to be retrieved before it was discovered. Tresckow telephoned the
aide who had carried it and nonchalantly asked if it had yet been delivered
to its intended recipient. On being told it had not, Tresckow feigned
embarrassment and said he had mistakenly sent the wrong package. He would
undertake to get it exchanged for the right one. The following day,
Schlabrendorff flew to Rastenburg with two bottles of genuine Cointreau.

As I exchanged parcels . . . I felt my blood running cold, for Hitler's aide,
serenely unaware of what he was holding, handed me the bomb with a grin,
juggling it back and forth in a way which made me fear a belated
explosion.[20]

Schlabrendorff took his deadly package to the nearby railway station, where
he caught a night train for Berlin. Locking himself into a compartment, he
proceeded to dismantle the device to see what had gone wrong. The glass phial
had broken according to plan. The acid had spilled out and eaten its way
through the wire. The firing pin had been released, but for some reason, the
detonator had not triggered the desired explosion. At the time,
Schlabrendorff guessed the detonator had perhaps been a dud, but it was
blackened, which indicated that it had indeed gone off. It now seems most
likely that, in the extreme cold over Russia in March, the explosive had
simply failed to ignite.

Eight days later Tresckow and Schlabrendorff made another desperate attempt
on Hitler's life. As part of the ceremonies of the annual 'Heroes Memorial
Day',  March 1943, Hitler was to tour an exhibition of captured arms mounted
in the Berlin Arsenal on Unter den Linden. Field Marshal Model was to direct
Hitler through the display and, to answer any queries, an officer from Army
Group Centre was detailed to accompany them.

This officer, Colonel (later General) Freiherr Christophe von Gersdorff, was
chief of Intelligence at Army Group Centre and a close colleague of Tresckow
and Schlabrendorff. On 20 March Schlabrendorff had delivered to him another
cache of British explosives, but he could only obtain ten-minute fuses.
Gersdorff was to pack his clothes with these explosives and blow up Hitler
and himself.

The dignitaries were present at I pm when the official ceremonies began, all
of which were broadcast live on German radio. Hitler made a short speech and
then moved towards the entrance to the exhibition hall. Here the Fuhrer was
greeted by Gersdorff who saluted with his right hand, while setting off the
chemical fuse with his left.

As the acid ate through the wire Gersdorff tried to keep as close to Hitler
as possible. But Hitler apparently had some presentiment of Gersdorff's plan:
he refused to stop and view any of the exhibits. He almost ran straight
through the hall and, despite the attempts of both Model and Gersdorff to
interest him in the captured material, within two minutes emerged from the
building. This threw the schedule into a confusion noted even by the BBC
which was monitoring the radio broadcast.

With only minutes left, Gersdorff rushed to a nearby toilet to disarm himself
Back at his HQ, listening to the radio broadcast with a stop-watch in his
hand, Tresckow knew that this attempt too, had failed.

Gersdorff survived the war.[21]
pp.15-26
--[notes]--
Notes and References

When not cited here, the full bibliographical details are to be found in the
Bibliography.


1 Kramarz, Stauffenberg, p loo.
2 Ibid., pp. 101-2
3 Leber, Conscience in Revolt, pp.260-l.
4 Herwarth, Against Two Evils, pp.215-16.
5 Zeller, The Flume of Freedom, p. 175.
6 Ibid., p. 274.
7 About twenty p-40 fighter-bombers from the US 33rd Fighter Group were
attacking the German retreat. Two were shot down by ground fire. See
Shores, Fighters over Tunisia, p.297; also Maurer, Airforce Combat Units of
World
War 11, pp. 86-7. The fullest account of this retreat and Stauffenberg's
injuries
is given in Hoffmann, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Bruder,
pp.294-6.
8 Zeller, op.cit., p.183.
9 Ibid.
10 Kramarz, op.cit., p.105
11 Ibid., p. 104.
12 Zeller, E., Geist der Freiheit, German edition: Munchen, 1965 p.361.
13George, Werke, p.258.
14 Zeller, op.cit., p.277.

1. The German Resistance

1 Hoffmann, Hitler's Personal Security, pp.268-9.

2 The most comprehensive account of German Resistance is Hoffmann's
magnificent The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945.

3Ibit., p.75.

4 Ibid, p.77

5 Halder said during his interrogation after the war, on 25 February 1946:

'May I make a personal remark. I am the last male member of a family which
for 300 years were soldiers. What the duty of a soldier is I know too. I know
that in the dictionary of a German soldier the term treason and plot against
the State does not exist. I was in the awful dilemma of one, the duty of a
soldier, and another, the duty which i considered higher. Innumerable of my
old comrades were in the same dilemma. I chose the solution for the duties I
deemed higher. The majority of my comrades deemed the duty to the flag higher
and essential. You may be assured that this is the worst dilemma that a
soldier may be faced with.'

See Nazi Conspiracy und Aggression, Supplement B, p. 1563

6 Gisevius, To the Bitter End, p. 312.

7 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, pp.92-3. The
members of this raiding party are given in ibid., p.561., n.101. A leading
planner of this attempted execution of Hitler was Major-General (as he was
later) Hans Oster, chief of Staff to Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr -
Military Intelligence. See ibid., p.255. Oster was also co-ordinating various
German contacts with the British Government before the outbreak of war. He
fell under strong suspicion and was dismissed from the Abwehr in April 1943.
He was arrested on 21 July 1944 and hanged for his part in the conspiracy
against Hitler on 9 April 1945.
Oster said, 'One might say that I am a traitor but in reality I am not; I
consider myself a better German than all those who run after Hider. It is my
plan and my duty to free Germany, and at the same time the world, of this
plague.' See Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler, p. 196.

8 For a detailed exploration of the resistance's attempts to interest a
wil[l]fully ignorant British Government in their cause see Meehan, The
Unnecessary Wur. See also Lamb, The Ghosts of Peace, pp.246-89, and Hoffmann,
The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945. pp.54-68, 104-21, 153-72.

9 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p.93.

10 Ibid., pp.96 and 99.

11 Nazi Conspiracy und Aggression, Supplement B, pp.1557-8. For i detailed
discussion see Meehan, op.cit., pp.l70-86.

12 Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power. p.459.

13 Ibid.

14 Extract from an interview with Colonel-General Hammerstein which was

supplied to the authors by Axel von dem Bussche, December 1992.
15 John, Twice through the lines, p.44. Beck and Hammerstein both wanted a
restoration of the monarchy. See Hoffmann, The History of the German
Resistance 1933-1945, p.l89, also p.220.
16 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945 p. 260.
17 Ibid., pp.278-9; see also Herwarth, Against Two Evils, p.249;
Schlabrendorff,
The Secret War against Hitler,, pp.230-1.
18 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p.282.
19 Schlabrendorff, op.cit., p.236.
20 Ibid., p.237.
21 Ibid., pp.238-9. See also Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance
1938-1945, pp.283-9; Zeller, The Flume of Freedom, pp.163-4.

-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris

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