Remer alerted his battalion, as instructed, and sped into the city to receive his specific orders from Hase. The General told him of Hitler’s assassination and of an attempted S.S. putsch and instructed him to seal off the ministries in the Wilhelmstrasse and the S.S. Security Main Office in the nearby Anhalt Station quarter. By 5:30 P.M. Remer, acting with dispatch, had done so and reported back to Unter den Linden for further orders.
And now another minor character nudged himself into the drama and helped Remer to become the nemesis of the conspiracy. A Lieutenant Dr. Hans Hagen, a highly excitable and self-important young man, had been posted as National Socialist guidance officer to Remer’s guard battalion. He also worked for Dr. Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry and at the moment was actually stationed at Bayreuth where he had been sent by the Minister to work on a book which Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary, wanted written—a “History of National Socialist Culture.” His presence in Berlin was quite fortuitous. He had come to deliver a memorial address in tribute to an obscure writer who had fallen at the front and he sought to take advantage of his visit by also delivering a lecture that afternoon to his battalion—though it was a hot and sultry day—on “National Socialist Guidance Questions.” He had a passion for public speaking.
On his way to Doeberitz the excitable lieutenant was sure he saw Field Marshal von Brauchitsch in a passing Army car attired in full uniform, and it immediately occurred to him that the old generals must be up to something treasonable. Brauchitsch, who had been booted out of his command long before by Hitler, was not in Berlin that day, in uniform or out, but Hagen swore he had seen him. He spoke of his suspicions to Remer, with whom he happened to be talking when the major received his orders to occupy the Wilhelmstrasse. The orders kindled his suspicions and he persuaded Remer to give him a motorcycle and sidecar, in which he promptly raced to the Propaganda Ministry to alert Goebbels.
The Minister had just received his first telephone call from Hitler, who told him of the attempt on his life and instructed him to get on the air as soon as possible and announce that it had failed. This seems to have been the first news the usually alert Propaganda Minister had of what had occurred at Rastenburg. Hagen soon brought him up to date on what was about to happen in Berlin. Goebbels was at first skeptical—he regarded Hagen as somewhat of a nuisance—and, according to one version, was on the point of throwing his visitor out when the lieutenant suggested he go to the window and see for himself. What he saw was more convincing than Hagen’s hysterical words. Army troops were taking up posts around the ministry. Goebbels, who though a stupid man was extremely quickwitted, told Hagen to send Remer to him at once. This Hagen did, and thereupon passed out of history.
Thus while the conspirators in the Bendlerstrasse were getting in touch with generals all over Europe and giving no thought to such a junior officer as Remer, indispensable as his job was, Goebbels was getting in touch with the man who, however low in rank, mattered most at this particular moment.
The contact was inevitable, for in the meantime Remer had been ordered to arrest the Propaganda Minister. Thus the major had an order to nab Goebbels and also a message from Goebbels inviting him to see him. Remer entered the Propaganda Ministry with twenty men, whom he instructed to fetch him if he did not return from the Minister’s office within a few minutes. With drawn pistols he and his adjutant then went into the office to arrest the most important Nazi official in Berlin on that day.
Among the talents which had enabled Joseph Goebbels to rise to his eminence in the Third Reich was a genius for fast talking in tight situations—and this was the tightest and most precarious of his stormy life. He reminded the young major of his oath of allegiance to the Commander in Chief. Remer retorted crisply that Hitler was dead. Goebbels said that the Fuehrer was very much alive—he had just talked with him on the telephone. He would prove it. Whereupon he picked up the phone and put in an urgent call to the Commander in Chief at Rastenburg. Once more the failure of the conspirators to seize the Berlin telephone exchange or at least cut its wires compounded disaster.* Within the matter of a minute or two Hitler was on the line. Goebbels quickly handed his telephone to Remer. Did the major recognize his voice? asked the warlord. Who in Germany could fail to recognize that husky voice, since it had been heard on the radio hundreds of times? Moreover, Remer had heard it directly a few weeks before when he received his decoration from the Fuehrer. The major, it is said, snapped to attention. Hitler commanded him to crush the uprising and obey only the commands of Goebbels, Himmler, who he said had just been named the commander of the Replacement Army and who was en route by plane to Berlin, and General Reinecke, who happened to be in the capital and had been ordered to take over the command of all troops in the city. The Fuehrer also promoted the major forthwith to colonel.
This was enough for Remer. He had received orders from on high and he proceeded with an energy which was lacking in the Bendlerstrasse to carry them out. He withdrew his battalion from the Wilhelmstrasse, occupied the Kommandantur in the Unter den Linden, sent out patrols to halt any other troops that might be marching on the city and himself set out to find where the headquarters of the conspiracy was so that he could arrest the ringleaders.
Why the rebelling generals and colonels entrusted such a key role to Remer in the first place, why they did not replace him at the last moment with an officer who was heart and soul behind the conspiracy, why at least they did not send a dependable officer along with the guard battalion to see that Remer obeyed orders—these are among the many riddles of July 20. But then, why was not Goebbels, the most important and the most dangerous Nazi official present in Berlin, arrested at once? A couple of Count von Helldorf’s policemen could have done this in two minutes, for the Propaganda Ministry was completely unguarded. But why then did the plotters not seize the Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse and not only suppress the secret police but liberate a number of their fellow conspirators, including Leber, who were incarcerated there? The Gestapo headquarters were virtually unguarded, as was the central office of the R.S.H.A., the nerve center of the S.D. and S.S., which, one would have thought, would be among the first places to be occupied. It is impossible to answer these questions.
Remer’s quick turnabout did not become known in the Bendlerstrasse headquarters for some time. Apparently very little of what was happening in Berlin became known there until too late. And it is difficult even today to find out, for the eyewitness reports are filled with bewildering contradictions. Where were the tanks, where were the troops from the outlying stations?
A brief announcement broadcast shortly after 6:30 P.M. over the Deutschlandsender, a radio station with such a powerful transmitter that it could be heard all over Europe, announcing that there had been an attempt to kill Hitler but that it had failed, came as a severe blow to the harried men in the Bendlerstrasse, but it was a warning that the detachment of troops which was supposed to have occupied the Rundfunkhaus had failed to do so. Goebbels had been able to telephone the text of the announcement to broadcasting headquarters while he was waiting for Remer. At a quarter to seven Stauffenberg sent out a signal by teleprinter to the Army commanders, saying that the radio announcement was false and that Hitler was dead. But the damage to the putschists was almost irreparable. The commanding generals in Prague and Vienna, who had already proceeded to arrest the S.S. and Nazi Party leaders, began to backtrack. Then at 8:20 P.M. Keitel managed to get out by Army teleprinter to all Army commands a message from Fuehrer headquarters announcing that Himmler had been appointed chief of the Replacement Army and that “only orders from him and myself are to be obeyed.” Keitel added, “Any orders issued by Fromm, Witzleben or Hoepner are invalid.” The Deutschlandsender’s announcement that Hitler was alive and Keitel’s crisp order that only his commands and not those of the conspirators were to be obeyed had, as we shall see, a decisive effect upon Field Marshal von Kluge, who off in France was on the point of throwing in his lot with the conspirators.*
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br /> Even the tanks, on which the rebel officers had counted so much, failed to arrive. It might have been thought that Hoepner, an outstanding panzer general, would have seen to the tanks, but he did not get around to it. The commandant of the panzer school at Krampnitz, which was to supply the tanks, Colonel Wolfgang Glaesemer, had been ordered by the conspirators to start his vehicles rolling into the city and himself to report to the Bendlerstrasse for further instructions. But the tank colonel wanted no part in any military putsch against the Nazis, and Olbricht, after pleading with him in vain, had to lock him up too in the building. Glaesemer, however, was able to whisper to his adjutant, who was not arrested, instructions to inform the headquarters of the Inspectorate of Panzer Troops in Berlin, which had jurisdiction over the tank formations, of what had happened and to see to it that only the inspectorate’s commands were obeyed.
Thus it happened that the badly needed tanks, though some of them reached the heart of the city at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, were denied the rebels. Colonel Glaesemer escaped from his confinement by a ruse, telling his guards that he had decided to accept Olbricht’s orders and would himself take command of the tanks, whereupon he slipped out of the building, The tanks were soon withdrawn from the city.
The panzer colonel was not the only officer to slip away from the haphazard and gentlemanly confinement imposed on those who would not join the conspiracy—a circumstance which contributed to the swift end of the revolt.
Field Marshal von Witzleben, when he finally arrived in full uniform and waving his baton shortly before 8 P.M. to take over his duties as the new Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht, seems to have realized at once that the putsch had failed. He stormed at Beck and Stauffenberg for having bungled the whole affair. At his trial he told the court that it was obvious to him that the attempt had misfired when he learned that not even the broadcasting headquarters had been occupied. But he himself had done nothing to help at a time when his authority as a field marshal might have rallied more of the troop commanders in Berlin and abroad. Forty-five minutes after he had entered the Bendlerstrasse building he stamped out of it—and out of the conspiracy, now that it seemed certain to fail—drove his Mercedes back to Zossen, where he had whiled away the seven hours that were decisive that day, told Quartermaster General Wagner that the revolt had failed, and drove on to his country estate thirty miles beyond, where he was arrested the next day by a fellow General named Linnertz.
The curtain now went up on the last act.
Shortly after 9 P.M. the frustrated conspirators were struck dumb at hearing the Deutschlandsender announce that the Fuehrer would broadcast to the German people later in the evening. A few minutes afterward it was learned that General von Hase, the Berlin commandant, who had started Major—now Colonel—Remer on his fateful errand, had been arrested and that the Nazi General, Reinecke, backed by the S.S., had taken over command of all troops in Berlin and was preparing to storm the Bendlerstrasse.
The S.S. had at last rallied, thanks mostly to Otto Skorzeny, the tough S.S. leader who had shown his prowess in rescuing Mussolini from captivity. Unaware that anything was up that day Skorzeny had boarded the night express for Vienna at 6 P.M., but had been hauled off the train when it stopped at the suburb of Lichterfelde, at the urging of S.S. General Schellenberg, the Number Two man in the S.D. Skorzeny found the unguarded S.D. headquarters in a most hysterical state, but being the coldblooded man he was, and a good organizer to boot, he quickly rounded up his armed bands and went to work. It was he who first persuaded the tank school formations to remain loyal to Hitler.
The energetic counteraction at Rastenburg, the quick thinking of Goebbels in winning over Remer and in utilizing the radio, the revival of the S.S. in Berlin and the unbelievable confusion and inaction of the rebels in the Bendlerstrasse caused a good many Army officers who had been on the point of throwing in their lot with the conspirators, or had even done so, to think better of it. One of these was General Otto Herfurth, chief of staff to the arrested Kortzfleisch, who at first had co-operated with the Bendlerstrasse in trying to round up the troops, and then, when he saw how things were going, changed sides, ringing up Hitler’s headquarters around 9:30 P.M. to say that he was putting down the military putsch.*
General Fromm, whose refusal to join the revolt had put it in jeopardy from the beginning and who, as a result, had been arrested, now bestirred himself. About 8 P.M., after four hours of confinement in his adjutant’s office, he had asked to be allowed to retire to his private quarters on the floor below. He had given his word of honor as an officer that he would make no attempt to escape or to establish contact with the outside. General Hoepner had consented and moreover, since Fromm had complained that he was not only hungry but thirsty, had sent him sandwiches and a bottle of wine. A little earlier three generals of Fromm’s staff had arrived, had refused to join the rebellion, and had demanded to be taken to their chief. Inexplicably, they were taken to him in his private quarters, though put under arrest. They had no sooner arrived than Fromm told them of a little-used rear exit through which they could escape. Breaking his word to Hoepner, he ordered the generals to organize help, storm the building, liberate him and put down the revolt. The generals slipped out unnoticed.
But already a group of junior officers on Olbricht’s staff, who at first had either gone along with the rebels or stuck around in the Bendlerstrasse to see how the revolt would go, had begun to sense that it was failing. They had begun to realize too, as one of them later said, that they would all be hanged as traitors if the revolt failed and they had not turned against it in time. One of them, Lieutenant Colonel Franz Herber, a former police officer and a convinced Nazi, had fetched some Tommy guns and ammunition from the arsenal of Spandau, and these were secreted on the second floor. About 10:30, these officers called upon Olbricht and demanded to know exactly what he and his friends were trying to accomplish. The General told them, and without arguing they withdrew.
Twenty minutes later they returned—six or eight of them, led by Herber and Lieutenant Colonel Bodo von der Heyde—brandishing their weapons and demanded further explanations from Olbricht. Stauffenberg looked in to see what all the noise was about and was seized. When he tried to escape, bolting out the door and down the corridor, he was shot in the arm—the only one he had. The counterrebels began shooting wildly, though apparently not hitting anyone except Stauffenberg. They then roved through the wing which had been the headquarters of the plot, rounding up the conspirators. Beck, Hoepner, Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and Mertz were herded into Fromm’s vacated office, where Fromm himself shortly appeared, brandishing a revolver.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I am now going to treat you as you treated me.” But he didn’t.
“Lay down your weapons,” he commanded, and informed his former captors that they were under arrest.
“You wouldn’t make that demand of me, your old commanding officer,” Beck said quietly, reaching for his revolver. “I will draw the consequences from this unhappy situation myself.”
“Well, keep it pointed at yourself,” Fromm warned.
The curious lack of will to act of this brilliant, civilized former General Staff Chief had finally brought his downfall at the supreme test of his life. It remained with him to the very end.
“At this moment it is the old days that I recall …” he began to say, but Fromm cut him short.
“We don’t want to hear that stuff now. I ask you to stop talking and do something.”
Beck did. He pulled the trigger, but the bullet merely scratched his head. He slumped into his chair, bleeding a little.
“Help the old gentleman,” Fromm commanded two young officers, but when they tried to take the weapon Beck objected, asking for another chance. Fromm nodded his consent.
Then he turned to the rest of the plotters. “And you gentlemen, if you have any letters to write I’ll give you a few more minutes.” Olbricht and Hoepner asked for stationery and sat down to pen brie
f notes of farewell to their wives. Stauffenberg, Mertz, Haeften and the others stood there silently. Fromm marched out of the room.
He had quickly made up his mind to eliminate these men and not only to cover up the traces—for though he had refused to engage actively in the plot, he had known of it for months, sheltering the assassins and not reporting their plans—but to curry favor with Hitler as the man who put down the revolt. In the world of the Nazi gangsters it was much too late for this, but Fromm did not realize it.
He returned in five minutes to announce that “in the name of the Fuehrer” he had called a session of a “court-martial” (there is no evidence that he had) and that it had pronounced death sentences on four officers: “Colonel of the General Staff Mertz, General Olbricht, this colonel whose name I no longer know [Stauffenberg], and this lieutenant [Haeften].”
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Page 168