23. Ritter, Goerdeler, 408.
9. July 20, 1944
1. The most thorough studies of the assassination attempt are Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd. ed. (Munich, 1979), 496ff. and 813ff, and Christian Müller, Oberst i.G. Stauffenberg: Eine Biographie (Dusseldorf, 1970), 477ff, 484-85, and 613ff. See also Archiv Peter, ed., Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung: Die Kaltenbrunner-Berichte über das Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944 (Stuttgart, 1961), 85-86. The widespread belief that the assassination attempt failed because the briefing was suddenly shifted to a “barracks” is unfounded. In actual fact, the “noon briefings” had been held for quite some time in what was known as the “Speer barracks’ while the “evening briefing” was always held in the bunker. It is true that if the explosion had occurred in the bunker, with its cement walls, everyone present would have been killed because of the much greater concentrating effect.
2. Peter Hoffmann, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Brüder (Stuttgart, 1992), 425-26.
3. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, 1981), 389.
4. See Müller, Stauffenberg, 487, for an enlightening description of the situation in which Fellgiebel found himself.
5. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 504.
6. Bernd Wehner, on Hava K. Beller’s television program “The Restless Conscience,” London, 1992.
7. Views differ considerably as to when and through whom Olbricht learned about the failure of the assassination attempt. Peter Hoffmann thinks that Thiele informed Olbricht shortly after the news from Fellgiebel arrived (Stauffenberg, 427, and Widerstand, 464-65). Helena P. Page, on the other hand, believes that Olbricht was not informed by Thiele until 3:15 p.m. (General Friedrich Olbricht: Ein Mann des 20 Juli [Bonn and Berlin, 1992], 276ff). According to her, Olbricht, accompanied by General Hoepner, went home at 1:00 p.m. as usual for lunch in order not to arouse suspicion. He returned to Bendlerstrasse shortly after 2:00 but still did not know what had happened in Rastenburg. There are some indications that General Wagner, who informed the conspirators in Paris around 2:00 p.m., also contacted Bendlerstrasse (see Eberhard Zeller, Geist der Freiheit: Der zwanzigste Juli [Munich, 1963], 435-36).
8. Müller, Stauffenberg, 490. Whether the decision to issue the Valkyrie orders was made before or after Haeften’s telephone call is still a matter of controversy; see Müller, 606.
9. According to Schulenburg; see Spiegelbild, 97.
10. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 516.
11. Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichishof Nurnberg, 14. November 1945-1. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg, 1949), vol. 33, 404.
12. Hans Bernd Gisevius, Bis zum bittern Ende (Zurich, 1954), 631.
13. Speer, Inside, 383.
14. Kunrat von Hammerstein, Spähtrupp (Stuttgart, 1963), 280, and Hoffmann, Widerstand, 592.
15. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 608 and 507.
16. Müller, Stauffenberg, 498. Muller accurately characterizes Hoepner’s behavior as “frightful,” given the crucial role he was supposed to play in the coup. For the apathetic way in which Hoepner gave out information over the telephone at a very early point, see Schulenburg’s statements in Spiegelbild, 97.
17. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 601; Gisevius, Ende, 634-35.
18. Spiegelbild, 22 and 336.
19. For accounts of the events in general, see Hoffmann, Widerstand, 619ff., and Müller, Stauffenberg, 505-06.
20. Gisevius, Ende, 649. My presentation ol events from Fromm’s reemergence to the proclamation of the court-martial decision largely follows the account Erich Hoepner provided to the People’s Court; see Prozess, vol. 33 (PS-3881), 417ff. and 505ff.
21. There has been controversy from the outset as to what Stauffenberg shouted into the salvo. Some witnesses understood him to say, “Long live sacred Germany,” while others heard only “Holy Germany” and still others “Long live Germany.” An informative overview, with the relevant sources, can be found in Hoffmann, Widerstand, 862-63.
22. Spiegelbild, 76.
23. Hans Speidel, Aus unserer Zeit: Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1977), 191.
24. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 586-87.
25. Walter Bargatzky, Hotel Majestic: Ein Deutscher im besetzten Frankreich (Freiburg, 1987), 127ff.
26. Count Dankwart von Arnim, Als Brandenburg noch die Mark hiess: Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1991), 208. The address Hitler delivered on the night of July 20-21, 1944, is reprinted in Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932-1945, vol. 2 (Würzburg, 1963), 2127.
27. Zeller, Freiheit, 415ff.
28. Günther Blumentritt, in B. H. Lidell Hart, Jetzt dürfen sie reden: Hitlers Generale berichten (Stuttgart and Hamburg, 1950), 527.
29. Ernst Jünger, Strahlungen (Tübingen, 1949), 540 (entry of July 21, 1944).
30. Bargatzky, Majestic, 139. For Kluge’s denunciation, see Wilhelm von Schramm, Der 20. Juli in Paris (Bad Wörishofen, 1953), 222.
31. Margret Boveri, Fur und gegen die Nation, vol. 2 of Der Verrat im XX. Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 1956), 51. For the accusation of “amateurism,” with its unmistakable undertones of animosity toward Stauffenberg and the “count group,” see Gisevius, Ende, 647.
32. Speer, Inside, 388.
33. Dietrich Ehlers, Technik und Moral einer Verschwörung: Der 20. Juli 1944 (Frankfurt and Bonn, 1964), 107.
34. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler (Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1959), 128-29.
35. Zeller, Freiheit, 416.
36. Gert Buchheit, Hitler der Feldherr: Die Zerstörung einer Legende (Rastatt, J958), 439.
37. Chester Wilmot, Der Kampf um Europa (Frankfurt, 1954), 780-81.
38. Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, Soldat im Untergang: Lebensbilder (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1979), 151-52.
10. Persecution and Judgment
1. Eberhard Zeller, Grist der Freiheit: Der zwanzigste Juli (Munich, 1963), 435. See also Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 632.
2. W. Scheidt, Gespräche mit Hitler, qtd. in Zeller, Freiheit, 538. See also Hitlers Lagebesprechungen: Die Protokollfragmente seiner militärischen Konferenzen, 1942-1945 ed. Helmut Heiber (Stuttgart, 1962), 588.
3. Zeller, Freiheit, 451.
4. Bodo Scheurig, Henning von Tresckow: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1980), 209-10. For Klausing, see Dietrich Ehlers, Technik und Moral einer Verschwörung: Der 20. Juli 1944 (Frankfurt and Bonn, 1964), 31-32. For Trott, see Marie Wassiltschikow, Die Berliner Tagebücher der “Missie” Wassiltschikow, 1940-1945 (Berlin, 1987), 243-44.
5. Ger van Roon, Neuordnung und Widerstand: Der Kreisauer Kreis innerhalb der deutschen Widerstandsbewegung (Munich, 1967), 139, and Hoffmann, Wider-stand, 457.
6. Georg Kiessel, qtd. in Hoffmann, Widerstand, 628.
7. Werner Fiedler, a journalist for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, memorized Schulenberg’s words-as recorded by the newspaper’s court reporter-and passed them along to his family; see Elisabeth Ruge, ed., Charlotte Gräfin von der Schulenburg zur Erinnerung, privately printed, n.d., 38. For Hitler’s prohibition on reporting, see Count Detlef von Schwerin, Dann sind’s die besten Köpfe, die man henkt: Die junge Generation im deutschen Widerstand (Munich, 1991), 425, and Zeller, Freiheit, 465.
8. Freya von Moltke, Michael Balfour, and Julian Frisby, Helmuth James von Moltke, 1907-1945: Anwalt der Zukunft (Stuttgart, 1975), 298. See also Archiv Peter, ed., Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung: Die Kaltenbrunner-Berichte über das Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944 (Stuttgart, 1961), 188-89. In the cleanup following a bombing raid, an envelope was found in Goerdeler’s destroyed hotel, the Hospiz on Askanischer Platz. It had been placed in a safe before the raid and never retrieved. Various documents were found in it, including Goerdeler’s inaugural address.
9. Wassiltschikow, Tagebücher, 267, and Schwerin, Köpfe, 44-45.
10. Ehlers, Technik, 113.
11. Zeller, Freiheit, 461-62.
12. See Walter Wagner’s portrait of Freisler in “Der Volksgerichtshof im nationalsozialistischen Staat,” Die Justiz und der Nationalsozialismus, Institut fur Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1974), esp. 832ff. See also Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante portas… Es spricht der erste Chef der Gestapo (Stuttgart, 1950), 295, and Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya, 1939-1945, ed. and trans. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (New York, 1990), 399.
13. Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichishof Nürnberg, 14. November 1945-1. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg, 1949), vol. 33, PS-3881, 299ff. Freisler’s concluding words are on 529. The text is one of the few surviving records of the trials before the People’s Court. Unlike the text of the introductory comments, it is not a word-for-word transcript since, as a few sequences in some films of the trial show, Freisler’s cursing in particular is omitted. In all likelihood, the defendants’’ statements of what they believed were also omitted. Detlef von Schwerin points out that according to the transcript Witzleben responded, “I approved of that,” when asked whether he assented to the new regime’s arresting Nazi functionaries and liberating political prisoners. In actual fact, as can be seen in other documentation, Witzleben replied in much more definite tones: “But of course I approved of that” (Köpfe, 422-23).
14. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 647-48 (for Wirmer and Haeften); Hans Rothfels, Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler: Eine Würdigung, exp. ed. (Tübingen, 1969), 108 (for Kleist-Schmenzin); Schwerin, Köpfe, 426 (for Schwerin); Peter Hoffmann, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Brüder (Stuttgart, 1992), 445, and Zeller, Freiheit, 296 (for Hofacker); Hoffmann, Widerstand, 648 (for Fellgiebel and for other comments of the accused).
15. Harald Poelchau, Die letzten Stunden: Erinnerungen eines Gefängnispfarrers (Cologne, 1987), 101.
16. See Gerhard Ritter, Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Stuttgart, 1984), 9 and 423, and Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, 1981), 395. For an extensive discussion of different versions of the executions and of the reactions in Führer headquarters, see Hoffmann, Widerstand, 871ff.
17. Qtd. in Ursachen und Folgen: Vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart. Eine Urkunden und Dokumentensammlung zur Zeitgeschichte, ed. Hebert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler, vol. 21 (Berlin, 1970), 505-06.
18. Lothar Meissner, “Handstreich im Pustertal: Ein Zeitdokument,” rpt. in Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, June 5, 1964, 12-13.
19. Ritter, Goerdeler, 416.
20. Ritter, Goerdeler, 432 and 440.
21. Ritter, Goerdeler, 422.
22. For a lengthy discussion of the delays, see Ritter, Goerdeler, 426ff. Photocopies of the judgments against Goerdeler and others were made available to the author in documents numbered I L 316/44, O J 17/44 gRs.
23. Ritter, Goerdeler, 441,
24. Spiegelbild, 430.
25. For informative details of the discovery of the documents in Zossen, see Heinz Höhne, Canaris: Patriot im Zwielicht (Munich, 1976), 552ff.
26. Zeller, Freiheit, 472.
27. Gert Buchheit, Der deutsche Geheimdienst (Munich, 1966), 445.
28. Höhne, Canaris, 566; see also Count Romedio Galeazzo von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschwörer: General Oster und die Militäropposition (Berlin, 1982), 271.
29. Höhne, Canaris, 569; Josef Müller, Bis zur letzten Konsequenz (Munich, 1975), 252. According to Fabian von Schlabrendorff, the crematorium in Flossenbürg was not working at that time, and the daily toll of executed prisoners had to be burned on specially constructed pyres (Offiziere gegen Hitler [Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1959], 155).
30. Zeller, Freiheit, 468-69.
31. Zeller, Freiheit,463. See also Freya von Moltke el al., Moltke, 303ff., where extended passages from both letters are printed. For a complete version, see Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters, 398ff.
32. Schlabrendorff, Offiziere, 153-54. The doctor who was summoned was Rolf Schleicher. His brother Rüdiger worked at the Institute for the Law of the Sky on Leipziger Platz, which he turned into a meeting place for the opposition. Rüdiger was related by marriage to Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In reaction to the death sentence Freisler had handed down, Rolf Schleicher refused to issue a death certificate for him.
33. Momm told the Gestapo that he said not “swine” but “sow,” which he alleged was a proper hunting term and not at all derogatory. Despite this flimsy explanation, he received only relatively mild punishment and a demotion. He later regained his former rank. See Hoffmann, Widerstand, 838, n. 170.
34. Freya von Moltke et al., Moltke, 300.
35. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 652ff. See also 20. Juli 1944, ed. Erich Zimmerman and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, special ed. of Das Parlament, 3rd ed. (Bonn, 1960), 212-13.
36. Ernst Jünger, Strahlungen (Tübingen, 1949), 496 (entry of March 3, 1944).
37. Heinz Boberach, “Chancen eines Umsturzes im Spiegel der Berichte des Sicherheitssdienstes,” in Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jürgen Schmädecke and Peter Steinbach, (Munich, 1968), 820.
38. On August 2, 1944, Churchill told the House of Commons that the “highest personalities in the German Reich are murdering one another, or trying to, while the avenging Armies of the Allies close upon the doomed and ever-narrowing circle of their power.” The events in Germany were, he continued, a manifestation of “internal disease.” For Herrnstadt, see Christian Muller, Oberst i.G. Stauffenberg: Eine Biographie (Dusseldorf, 1970), 417-18.
39. The ban was broken when Hans Rothfels, who had emigrated to the United States, published The German Opposition to Hitler there in 1948. One year later it was published in Germany.
40. Baron Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, Soldat im Untergang: Lebensbilder (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1979), 203-04.
41. Ritter, Goerdeler, 441ff.
11. The Wages of Failure
1. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler (Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1959), 13.
2. Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 453-54.
3. Peter Hoffmann, “Motive,” Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jürgen Schmädecke and Peter Steinbach (Munich, 1986), 1089.
4. Dorothee von Meding, Mit don Mut des Herzens Die Frauen des 20. Juli (Berlin, 1992), 244.
5. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher, 1938-1944: Aufzeichnungen vom anderen Deutschland, ed. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertingen, rev. and exp. ed. (Berlin, 1988), 211 (entry of Oct. 8, 1940).
6. Meding, Mut, 11.
7. Freya von Moltke, Michael Balfour, and Julian Frisby, Helmuth James von Moltke, 1907-1945: Anwalt der Zukunft (Stuttgart, 1975), 315.
8. Eberhard Zeller, Geist der Freiheit- Der zwanzigste Juli (Munich, 1963), 36.
9. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 524.
10. Dietrich Ehlers, Technik und Moral einer Verschwörung: Der 20. Juli 1944 (Frankfurt and Bonn, 1964), 123.
11. Erich Kordt, Nicht aus den Akten… Die Wilhelmstrasse in Frieden und Krieg: Erlebnisse, Begegnungen, und Eindrücke, 1928-1945 (Munich, 1949), 370.
12. Peter Bor, Gespräche mit Halder (Wiesbaden, 1950), 79.
13. Hassell was speaking of Walther von Brauchitsch (Hassell-Tagebücher, 54 [entry of Sept. 29, 1938]).
14. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 43. Despite the humiliation he suffered, Fritsch learned virtually nothing, as can be seen in a letter he wrote on December 11, 1938, ten months after his dismissal. He says that after the First World War he realized that Germany would have to fight “three victorious battles” in order to become powerful again: one against the working class-as Hitler, he added, had already largely done-one against the Catholic Church, and one against the Jews. “We are still in the midst of these struggles,” he continued. “And the s
truggle against the Jews is the hardest.” See Nicholas Reynolds, “Der Fritsch-Brief vom 11. Dezember 1938,” Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte (1980), 358ff.
15. Adolf Heusinger, Befehl im Widerstreit (Tübingen and Stuttgart, 1950), 367. For Reichenau and Hammerstein, see Hildegard von Kotze, ed. Heeresadjutant bei Hitler, 1938-1943: Aufzeichnungen des Majors Engel (Stuttgart, 1974), 107 (entry of May 23, 1941).
16. Helmut Krausnick, “Stationen des nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystems,” Stationen der deutschen Geschichte, 1919-1943, ed. Burghard Freudenfeld (Stuttgart, 1962), 135-36. See also Archiv Peter, ed., Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung: Die Kaltenbrunner-Berichte über das Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944 (Stuttgart, 1961), 281ff.
17. Ehlers, Technik, 120.
18. Christian Müller, Oberst i.G. Stauffenberg: Eine Biographie (Dusseldorf, 1970), 462.
19. Bor, Gespräche, 125; see also Hoffmann, Widerstand, 185.
20. Ehlers, Technik, 66.
21. Count Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, Soldat im Untergang: Lebensbilder (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1979), 176-77. For Erich Marcks, see Hans Rothfels, Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler: Eine Würdigung, exp. ed. (Tübingen, 1969), 92.
22. Hans Mommsen, “Der Widerstand gegen Hitler und die deutsche Gesellschaft,” Schmädecke and Steinbach, Widerstand, 14. See Mommsen for suggested further reading as well.
23. Rothfels, Opposition, 165.
24. Hermann Graml, “Die deutsche Militäropposition vom Sommer 1940 bis /um Frühjahr 1943,” Die Vollmacht des Gewissens (Berlin and Frankfurt), vol. 2, 509-10.
25. Schlabrendorff, Offiziere, 65. For Moltke’s letter, see Richard Lamb, The Ghosts of Peace, 1935-1945 (London, 1987), 262.
26. Probably the first to do so was Gerhard Ritter, in Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Stuttgart, 1984), 13.
27. Marion Yorck von Wartenburg, Die Stärke der Stille: Erzählungen eines Lebens aus dem deutschen Widerstand (Cologne, 1984), 70.
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