Plotting Hitler's Death

by Joachim C. Fest

  These and other tips made Stauffenberg feel even more strongly that he had to act immediately. He felt driven as well-perhaps even more-by his chagrin at the delays and at the lack of resolve over the previous weeks. His exhaustion and his raw nerves, mentioned in various accounts, undoubtedly added to his sense of urgency. One observer spoke, with poetic overtones, of the “dark shadow” that seemed to have enveloped him since June. In any case, as Stauf­fenberg now said to Kranzfelder, “There’s no choice now; we’ve crossed the Rubicon.”20

  The next day, July 19, was spent on preparations. By about noon Olbricht’s and Stauffenberg’s staffs were busy alerting Witzleben, Hoepner, Berlin city commandant Paul von Hase, Colonel Jäger, Ma­jor Ludwig von Leonrod, and the large number of other officers who had roles to play. In the early evening Stauffenberg called on Quar­termaster General Wagner in Zossen, hoping perhaps to straighten out the difference of opinion that had arisen on July 15. At the end of their discussion Wagner arranged for a special airplane to be placed at Stauffenberg’s disposal for the return flight from Rastenburg. After Stauffenberg had taken his leave Wagner informed Stieff of the preparations.

  Early on the morning of July 20 Wagner greeted Lieutenant Colonel Bernhard Klamroth by asking, “What are we going to do if the assassination really is today?”21 Rarely had the conspirators’ lack of confidence been so clearly expressed as in this naive-sounding question; it was almost as if an actual assassination was the last thing they expected. Perhaps the sense, reinforced over the years, that whatever they touched would inevitably turn to dust lent all their plans a non­committal air, which could not help but affect their determination to act. Just a few hours later this ingrained skepticism would have fatal consequences.

  First, however, the notion that nothing ever happened as a result of their efforts was about to be shattered. Wagner’s query suggests he suddenly realized that Stauffenberg had brought to the resistance an unwavering determination to carry out the plot. One might wonder, as the historian Peter Hoffmann has, why Stieff, Wagner, Meichssner, Fellgiebel, and other officers who had access to Hitler palmed the assassination attempt off on Stauffenberg, whose physical dexterity was limited and whose absence from Berlin would seriously jeopar­dize the coup following the assassination. In all likelihood, they hadn’t fully understood that they were now irrevocably implicated, and that if Stauffenberg failed their own ruin was assured as well.

  All the conspirators wrestled with their doubts that the coup would be successful. Hofacker said he felt that the chances were very small, as did Schulenburg and Berthold von Stauffenberg. Tresckow stated that the attempt would “very likely go awry,” and Beck expressed similar sentiments. Even Stauffenberg was apparently skeptical and told a young officer in early July that “it was questionable whether it would succeed.” In his next breath he revealed how far he had moved from hopes of achieving any far-reaching aims, a feeling shared and in many cases expressed by his close friends. “But even worse than failure,” Stauffenberg continued, “is to yield to shame and coercion without a struggle.”22 This was Stauffenberg’s only certainty. Every­thing else that followed would be a “leap in the dark.”23

  9. JULY 20, 1944

  Stauffenberg flew into the Rastenburg airfield shortly after 10:00 a.m. with Werner von Haeften and Helmuth Stieff, who had boarded the flight in Zossen. He immediately headed for the officers’ mess in Restricted Area II, carrying in his briefcase only the papers he needed for the reports he was expected to give. Haeften, mean­while, carried the two bombs in his briefcase and accompanied Stieff to OKH headquarters. The plans called for Haeften and Stauffenberg to meet shortly before the briefing in the Wolf’s Lair to exchange briefcases.

  At around eleven o’clock Stauffenberg was summoned by the chief of army staff, General Walther Buhle, and after a short meeting they proceeded together to a conference with General Keitel in the OKW bunker in Restricted Area I. Here Stauffenberg learned that on ac­count of a visit by Mussolini what was to have been a noon briefing with Hitler had been put back half an hour to twelve-thirty. Immedi­ately following the conference with Keitel, Stauffenberg asked the general’s aide, Major Ernst John von Freyend, to show him to a room where he could wash up and change his shirt-July 20 was a hot day.

  As Keitel and the other officers headed toward the briefing barracks, Stauffenberg met Haeften in the corridor. Together they withdrew into the lounge in Keitel’s bunker, where Stauffenberg set about installing and arming a fuse in the first bomb. He had barely begun, however, when a most unfortunately timed telephone call came from General Fellgiebel, who asked to speak with Stauffenberg on urgent business. Freyend sent Platoon Sergeant Werner Vogel back to the bunker to urge Stauffenberg to hurry.

  As Vogel entered the lounge, he saw the two officers stowing something into one of the briefcases. He informed them of the call, adding that the others were waiting for them outside. Meanwhile Freyend shouted from the entrance, “Stauffenberg, please come along!” With Vogel standing in the doorway, Stauffenberg closed the briefcase as swiftly as possible while Haeften swept up the papers that were lying around and stuffed them into the other briefcase.

  Fellgiebel’s telephone call and the intrusion of Sergeant Vogel may well have determined the course of history, for it is likely that they prevented Stauffenberg from arming the fuse on the second package of explosives. No one knows for certain why Stauffenberg did not place the second bomb in his briefcase alongside the one whose timer had already been activated, since the explosion of one would surely have set off the other as well. Some have claimed that both charges would have been too bulky and heavy to carry into the briefing room unobtrusively. This argument is hardly convincing, however, as the bombs weighed only about two pounds each, and Haeften had carried them both around in his briefcase earlier without any problems.

  Stauffenberg was certainly nervous, and Vogel’s sudden appearance in the room must have given him a fright, but the most probable explanation for his bringing only the one bomb is that he was not fully aware of how such explosives work. Believing that a single bomb would suffice, he probably did not adequately consider the cumulative effect of two bombs. It may be that the second charge was only taken along as an alternative in the event that something went wrong, especially since the two timers were set differently, one for ten min­utes and the other for thirty. What is clear, according to all experts, is that inclusion of the second charge, even without a detonator, would have magnified the power of the blast not twofold but many times, killing everyone in the room outright.1

  Together with General Buhle and Major Freyend, Stauffenberg hurried out of the OKW bunker, briefcase in hand. They crossed the three hundred and fifty yards to the wooden briefing barracks, which lay behind a high wire fence in the innermost security zone, the so-called Führer Restricted Area. After declining for the second time Freyend’s offer to carry his briefcase, Stauffenberg finally turned it over to him at the entrance to the barracks, asking at the same time to be “seated as close as possible to the Führer” so that he could “catch everything” in preparation for his report.

  In the conference room the briefing was already under way, with General Adolf Heusinger reporting on the eastern front. Keitel announced that Stauffenberg would be giving a report, and Hitler shook the colonel’s hand “wordlessly, but with his usual scrutinizing look.” Freyend placed the briefcase near Heusinger and his assistant Colo­nel Brandt, who were both standing to Hitler’s right. Despite his efforts to edge closer to Hitler, Stauffenberg could only find a place at the corner of the table; his briefcase remained on the far side of the massive table leg, where Freyend had placed it. Shortly thereafter, Stauffenberg left the room whispering something indistinctly, as if he had an important task to attend to.

  Once outside the barracks, he went back the way he had come, turning off before Keitel’s bunker and heading toward the Wehrmacht adjutant building to find out where Haeften was waiting with the car. In the signals officer’s room h
e found not only Haeften but Fellgiebel as well: as they stepped outside, Hitler was already asking for the colonel, and an irritated General Buhle set out to look for him. It was just after 12:40.

  Suddenly, as witnesses later recounted, a deafening crack shattered the midday quiet, and a bluish-yellow flame rocketed skyward. Stauffenberg gave a violent start and simply shook his head when Fellgiebel asked with feigned innocence what the noise could possibly be, Lieutenant Colonel Ludolf Gerhard Sander hurried over to the two men to reassure them that it was common for “someone to fire off a round or for one of the mines to go off.” Meanwhile, a dark plume of smoke rose and hung in the air over the wreckage of the briefing barracks. Shards of glass, wood, and fiberboard swirled about, and scorched pieces of paper and insulation rained down. The quiet that had suddenly descended was broken once again, this time by the sound of voices calling for doctors. Stauffenberg and Haeften climbed into the waiting car and ordered the driver to take them to the airfield. As they did so, a body covered by Hitler’s cloak was carried from the barracks on a stretcher, leading them to conclude that the Führer was dead.2

  When the bomb exploded, twenty-four people were in the conference room. All were hurled to the ground, some with their hair in flames. Window mullions and sashes flew through the room. Hitler had just leaned far over the table to examine a position that Heusinger was pointing out on the map when his chair was torn out from under him. His clothing, like that of all the others, was shredded; his trousers hung in ribbons down his legs. The great oak table had col­lapsed, its top blown to pieces. The first sound to be heard amid all the smoke and devastation was Keitel’s voice shouting, “Where is the Führer?” As Hitler stumbled to his feet, Keitel flew to him, taking him in his arms and crying, “My Führer, you’re alive, you’re alive!”3 At this point, Hitler’s aide Julius Schaub and his valet, Heinz Linge, appeared and led the Führer away to his nearby quarters.

  In the meantime Stauffenberg and Haeften had reached the Restricted Area I guardhouse. The lieutenant in charge, having seen and heard the explosion, had already taken the initiative of ordering the barrier lowered, but recognizing the striking figure of Stauffenberg, he allowed the car to pass after a brief pause. More difficulty was encountered at the outer guardhouse on the way to the airfield. By this time an alarm had been raised and all entry and exit forbidden. The staff sergeant on duty was not about to be intimidated by Stauffenberg’s commanding bearing, and for a moment everything seemed to hand in the balance. Thinking fast, Stauffenberg demanded to speak by telephone to the commandant of Führer headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Gustav Streve, with whom he had a lunch appointment. Fortunately, he could only reach Streve’s deputy, Captain Leonhard von Möllendorff, who did not yet know why the alarm had been issued and therefore ordered the staff sergeant to allow Stauffenberg to pass. Halfway to the airfield, Haeften tossed the second package of explosives from the open vehicle. At about 1:00 p.m. the car reached the waiting airplane, and within minutes the conspirators took off for Berlin.

  * * *

  At just about this point, news of the blast reached army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse. Fellgiebel had taken steps about an hour earlier to block all signal traffic to and from both headquarters in Rastenburg, and he now received confirmation by telephone that this had been done While the communications blackout was certainly part of the conspirators’ plan, it would also have been a plausible reaction to the hastily issued instructions from Hitler’s staff that no news of the attack be allowed to reach the public. As a result, suspicion did not immediately fall on Fellgiebel, who soon had the amplification sta­tions in Lötzen, Insterburg, and Rastenburg shut down as well. As Fellgiebel had frequently pointed out, however, it was technically impossible to cut the headquarters area off completely from the out­side world.

  As a result, Fellgiebel himself managed to put through a telephone call to the conspirators’ base of operations on Bendlerstrasse. But this call only caused more problems because the conspirators were faced with a situation that apparently none of them had foreseen and for which they had no code words: the bomb had gone off but Hitler had survived.

  For the second time that day, then, General Fellgiebel found himself in a position to change the course of history. He basically had two options open to him. He could hide from Bendlerstrasse the fact that Hitler was alive and do everything possible to maintain the communications blackout of the Wolf’s Lair, resorting to violence if necessary. However hopeless it might seem, this ploy would help heighten the general confusion and at least keep the coup attempt going. The personal risk he would run by taking this course was not particularly great, as his fate would be sealed in any case if the coup failed. On the other hand, he could tell Bendlerstrasse that Hitler had survived and try to abort the coup attempt, at least the communications compo­nent, before it had really gotten under way. After all, he understood better than anyone else the impossibility of maintaining a communi­cations blackout under these circumstances.

  In the end, however, Fellgiebel hit on a third course. He informed his signal corps chief of staff at Bendlerstrasse, General Fritz Thiele, a fellow conspirator, that the assassination had failed but gave him to understand that the coup should proceed nevertheless. He thus blew away the elaborate smoke screen shrouding the attempt to seize power and revealed it as a straightforward revolt. According to Stauffenberg’s biographer Christian Muller this was a “major psychological blunder.” By informing Bendlerstrasse of the true state of affairs, Fellgiebel left it to the weak-willed group assembled there to decide what to do, at least until Stauffenberg’s arrival.4 Shortly after 3:00 p.m., Fellgiebel’s order blocking signal traffic was rescinded by Himmler, who had been summoned to Rastenburg, and Hitler began to swing into action, inquiring how soon it would be technically possi­ble for him to address the German people directly over all radio stations in the Reich.

  Meanwhile the hunt for the would-be assassin was launched. Initial suspicions fell on the construction workers employed at Führer headquarters. But then Sergeant Arthur Adam came forward to say that he had seen Stauffenberg leave the briefing barracks before the explo­sion without his briefcase, his cap, or his belt, but little attention was paid to this information at first. Lieutenant Colonel Sander even shouted at Adam that if he really harbored “such monstrous suspi­cions about so distinguished an officer” he should go directly to the Security Service (SD).5 Instead, Adam approached Martin Bormann, who took him to see Hitler. One piece of evidence quickly led to the next, leaving little doubt among the Führer’s confederates that Stauffenberg was the culprit. They did not yet realize, however, the enormity of the conspiracy or that a coup d’ état was under way in Berlin.

  Shortly alter hearing of the attack, Himmler had ordered the head of the Reich Security Headquarters (RSHA), Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and the superintendent of police, Bernd Wehner, to fly from Berlin to Rastenburg to take over the political and technical investigation of the assassination attempt. When Wehner arrived at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport, the plane was ready for takeoff. The waiting Kaltenbrunner, who was not privy to the latest information, stunned his companion by announcing, “The Führer is dead!” Before the superintendent could regain his composure, Kaltenbrunner asked calmly whether he might like to play a few games of skat to while away the time.6

  * * *

  Somewhere in the skies between Berlin and Rastenburg the two planes must have crossed paths. It is not difficult to imagine the emotions Stauffenberg must have been feeling or the questions racing through his mind, in contrast to the icy calm of his adversary in the other plane. Having succeeded in igniting a bomb at Hitler’s feet-the event that had always been thought of as the “initial spark” that would touch off the great upheaval by which the entire Nazi regime would be overthrown-he now found himself condemned to more than two hours of anxious waiting. He could only pin his hopes on others: on Olbricht and Mertz, who alone held the levers of power; on reliable friends like Yorck, Hofacker, Schwerin, an
d Schulenburg, as well as on Jäger, Hoepner, Thiele, Hase, and many others, including the liaison officers in the military districts. He could only assume that orders would be followed unquestioningly down the chain of com­mand-perhaps even with the acquiescence of General Fromm- alter Olbricht issued the Valkyrie II code word.

  The reality that awaited him was far different. As his plane neared Berlin, the coup had not advanced at all. Fellgiebel’s indecisive and rather vague message—“something terrible has happened: the Führer is alive”—left Thiele unsettled and confused. To clear his mind he decided abruptly to go for a walk, apparently without bothering to inform Olbricht, and for nearly two hours he was nowhere to be found. Olbricht, too, had received a telephone call, probably around 2:00 p.m., from General Wagner in Zossen, and in view of the puz­zling information from Rastenburg, they agreed not to act for the time being. After all, Fellgiebel’s message might have meant that the bomb had failed to go off or that Stauffenberg had been discovered and arrested, or that he was fleeing or that he had already been shot. Just five days earlier, Olbricht had issued the Valkyrie orders prema­turely, and he knew that any repetition of that fiasco was bound to be fatal. This time, furthermore, in contrast to July 15, Fromm was pres­ent and would have to be dealt with.7