Into Darkness
Page 1
INTO DARKNESS
Anton Gill
© Anton Gill 2014
Anton Gill has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2014.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IN MEMORIAM
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
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25
26
27
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29
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31
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33
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35
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39
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109
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143
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
IN MEMORIAM
Nicci Crowther (1950 - 2008)
Kunigunda Messerschmitt (1910 - 2007)
Arthur Nebe (1894 - ?1945)
Hartmut Schickert (1950 - 2008)
Anthony Vivis (1943 - 2013)
1
The staff car sped through the dull countryside on the short drive to the Wolf's Lair. Colonel von Stauffenberg braced himself. This had to go without a hitch. He dabbed sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. He mustn't appear nervous.
He was Chief of Staff to General Fromm. Fromm wasn't the strongest card in the deck, but his role - as head of the Home Army, with its bases in Prague, Paris and Vienna - was vital. Without it, they hadn't a hope of succeeding.
Fromm was with the other conspirators in Berlin. They should be able to contain him if he showed any sign of wavering.
Stauffenberg glanced at his watch. The flight from Berlin had been held up - it often happened now, there weren't enough planes and those that remained were worked too hard. Though they still had time to make the meeting, he needed enough breathing space to prime both packages.
He put his anxiety aside. His standing as a war-hero and trusted executive officer - now that his wounds had removed him from active service - placed him above suspicion - as long as he trod carefully; as they lurched from one disaster to another, paranoia was rife in the High Command. The enemy had launched their D-Day offensive a month earlier, and the American troops were fresh, well-fed, and well-armed.
As the car swept over a low hill, the young colonel saw the outer gates of the compound ahead. The muscles in his face tightened. He'd have given his eye teeth for one last cigarette…
He scanned the area as they approached. The amount of building work going on no longer surprised him - he was no stranger to the Wolf's Lair - but it flew in the face of reason. The war was lost, and they were still expanding the Führer's secret HQ in the Masurian countryside. Hitler's dreams of the divine intervention which would confirm his ultimate victory overrode any other consideration.
2
There were delays at both the outer and inner checkpoints. The SS corporals pored over his papers with needle eyes, though his face was well known to most of them. Then at last they were in the central compound.
A knot of officers awaited him. Stauffenberg climbed out of the car and exchanged salutes, shook hands.
Field-Marshal Keitel looked up as Stauffenberg entered his office. 'You're going to have to hurry…'
'I know I'm late, sir, but -'
Keitel was flustered. 'The Führer's brought the meeting forward half-an-hour. And there's been another change. They're still working on the bunker. It's not ready. We're using one of the conference huts instead.'
'That can't please the Führer.' Christ, thought Stauffenberg - a wooden hut!
'Of course not. He values his safety. But he puts the Fatherland first.'
Stauffenberg was barely listening. His mind raced. Another half-hour off his dangerously tight schedule, and a wooden hut. It wouldn't contain the blast. Without the aftershock of the explosion rebounding off the solid concrete walls of the bunker, how could he be sure of success?
He kept his voice as level as possible. 'Has my ADC arrived? He flew with me from Berlin but he had... some business to attend to at the airfield here.'
Keitel glanced at him sharply. 'How should I know? Ask my adjutant.'
The adjutant directed a sergeant to escort Stauffenberg to a cramped office, where his ADC, Werner von Haeften, was already waiting for him. Stauffenberg breathed more easily when he saw the briefcase, which the lieutenant placed carefully on a table as soon as they were alone.
He opened it and took out a freshly pressed shirt.
'More wasted time,' Stauffenberg muttered as Haeften helped him shrug it on.
'We need an excuse to be here; they have to see you've changed.'
It wasn't a bad excuse. Out of respect for the Führer, Stauffenberg needed to freshen up for the meeting; but the manoeuvre ate into the scant fifteen minutes they had left.
Haeften dug into the briefcase again and carefully removed out the fuses, and the two precious one-kilogramme packages of hexogen explosive.
They worked as calmly as they could, but nevertheless fumbled in their haste - Stauffenberg thought that he knew more about the charges than Haeften, but his crippled left hand didn't allow him to work quickly enough.
They had one bomb primed and ready, but still out in the open, when there was a knock at the door.
The orderly sergeant put his h
ead round it. 'It's time, Colonel.'
He disappeared again, noticing nothing, but leaving the door ajar. They could sense him waiting just beyond it to escort Stauffenberg to the meeting. They looked at one another. Both men were beginning to sweat. That was no good. It was a hot day, but there is always something distinctive about the smell of fear.
3
Haeften picked up the device, and slipped it into Stauffenberg's own briefcase. 'Once you've set the fuse you have ten minutes.'
'Sir?' They heard the orderly sergeant shifting anxiously from one foot to the other.
'What about this?' Haeften indicated the other package of hexogen.
'No time. Back in your briefcase. Shit!'
'Will one be enough?'
'Damn all we can do about it now. Just make sure the car's ready.'
'Anything wrong?' The orderly sergeant pushed the door wide.
'Bloody tie,' said Stauffenberg, trying to straighten the knot. 'Done now.'
'Sorry to rush you, sir, but you know what the Führer is like for punctuality.'
God had to be with them, Stauffenberg told himself, saluting Haeften and following the orderly sergeant out into the compound. How deeply he had prayed at Mass early that morning. It was in God's hands now.
As soon as he reached the crowded antechamber of the conference room he took off of his cap and belt, and, whilst fussing with some papers, he reached into his briefcase and squeezed the glass acid capsule of the fuse with a set of pliers, specially adapted for his crippled hand. The fuse made a tiny popping sound which stopped his breath for a moment, but only he heard it - the noise was drowned by the conversation of the men already there. One or two nodded a greeting.
He waited until the others had filed through into the conference room.
One final check. Then he followed them. Two guards took up their positions in the antechamber as he left it.
The meeting began just after 12.33pm.
4
The place was dominated by a huge map table with heavy oak supports, and surrounded by twenty-four senior members of Hitler's entourage. Only Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, were absent. The Führer stood in their midst, sweating slightly. He looked up as Stauffenberg entered and gave a brusque nod. 'You're late,' he said, but there was no anger in his voice.
Forcing himself to breathe evenly, Stauffenberg looked round. The walls were of plain wooden planking. Sunlight found its way through the occasional chink, picking out motes of dust, which sparkled like tiny diamonds.
He made his way towards Hitler, found his place, opened his briefcase and drew his papers from it. He was about to place it on the floor, as close to the Führer as possible, when a keen young SS officer whom Stauffenberg did not know eased it out of his battered hand. 'Let me help you, sir…'
He could see sympathy and admiration shining in the aide's face. A man of perhaps twenty-five, looking at one of the heroes of the war. He watched as the young officer reverentially set the case down by the table support, on the side away from Hitler. The support was solid wood. How much would it cushion the blast? Well, there was nothing Stauffenberg could do about it now.
'I'd consider it an honour, sir, if you could find time to let me buy you a drink when the meeting's over,' the young man whispered. 'Our families knew each other before the war.'
'I have to get back immediately.' Stauffenberg looked regretful. 'There's a plane waiting.'
'Of course, sir.'
The young man took up a position about a metre behind his chair. When the bomb went off, he would be directly in the line of the blast.
Stauffenberg shook off the thought, glanced at his watch, thought of the fuse burning through. In this heat, it might do so faster. Ten minutes was a guideline. Too cold and they wouldn't work at all, too hot, and -
'Are we ready, gentlemen?' Keitel asked.
Stauffenberg was aware of Hitler's eyes on him. Had he seen the look at the watch? Had his ultra-suspicious mind gone into overdrive? But the Führer was preoccupied. There was a new battalion of Home Guard to discuss. They were raking every man who could stand on two legs into the Wehrmacht now.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I have to make a phone call first. To Staff. I'd have done it before, but the meeting was brought forward…'
'Get on with it,' Hitler said. 'Make it quick. I want you to report every detail of this to your dear boss General Fromm and his gang of penpushers in Berlin.' The Führer paused. 'Bloody shame, what happened to you. Need more men of your calibre at the Front.'
Feeling sweat run down his back, Stauffenberg slipped away from the meeting, leaving his papers on the table and his cap and belt in the antechamber as a sign of his imminent return. He prayed that Haeften had got the car, and sighed with relief when he saw it parked nearby.
Stauffenberg quickened his pace. 'It's done,' he said quietly.
'Get in,' Haeften said. 'Quick!'
'Any trouble with the car?'
'Nick of time. There wasn't one standing by for you. Had to throw my weight around to get this one.'
'Thank God you can perform miracles sometimes, Werner!' But he thought, it's a pity we have to have a driver. Couldn't Haeften have taken that duty himself? Or would that have looked suspicious?
The two men drove off at exactly 12.42.
***
They heard the explosion as they sped through the gates of the outer compound. The driver slowed for a moment as both his passengers started in their seats. 'Don't worry, sir,' he said. 'Didn't sound like much - animals blunder into the minefield around the compound all the time. Even a small deer can set one off...'
The two officers looked at each other. Even though the hut was a large one, near the centre of the inner compound, there were very few people about at this time of day, and if enough people shared the driver's assumption, it might be a minute or two before anyone responded. In any event, Stauffenberg thought, there'd be a few moments' confusion before the truth sank in. And the main thing was that they were out of the place.
He looked through the narrow rear window as the complex vanished round a corner. Haeften opened his briefcase and extracted the unused bomb. He opened his window, and, keeping an eye on the driver, threw the second package - about the size of a small book - into the dense undergrowth. No time to destroy the evidence, or conceal it more efficiently. But that wouldn't matter if they succeeded, or even if they didn't.
Either way, the die was cast.
There was a Heinkel 111 waiting to fly them from Rastenburg to Berlin. They took off, unchallenged, at 12.50.
Stauffenberg faced three hours without contact, without knowing whether his attempt had been successful.
'Please God,' he said quietly to himself. 'Please God... '
5
This was their last chance, thought Hoffmann. The war was hurrying towards its end and the Gestapo were at their most dangerous now. This would fuel their anger. There'd be a purge. Few would escape.
It was over. He stood in the middle of the room, collecting his thoughts. As soon as the call had come in, he'd raced across Berlin to the Bendlerblock, hardly believing that it could be true. So well planned. And by the best men - the General Staff, for God's sake; and yet it had failed. The key players had been arrested before he'd arrived, so that was out of his hands. Hadn't they read their Clausewitz? 'Better rashness than inertia; better a mistake than hesitation'? The question now was, what to do?
General Fromm, a stocky man, normally used to throwing his weight about, now sat nervously at his desk, fiddling with a pencil. He said,
'What the hell do we do?'
Max Hoffmann turned away from him to the window. In the high ceiling, a fan turned, but the room remained hot and stuffy. Hoffmann wiped his face. Through a gap between the blackout blinds, he could see parts of the other two sides of the enormous grey building, which, with the wing he was in, embraced a long, rectangular courtyard.
The night would be a l
ong one.
All the windows were covered, though a few spilled yellow traces into the gloom. The lights were dim in the office where Hoffmann stood.
The whole building wasn't generating enough light to guide the bombers. Not that it mattered. They'd taken to raiding in daylight. With sod-all to oppose them, the enemy had grown confident. A few outmoded Messerschmitts and Heinkels are all we have now, Hoffmann thought. He remembered the worn-out anti-Semitic joke of Göring's – “if the Tommies and the Ammis ever manage to fly over Berlin, you can call me Meyer.” The Reichsmarschall was addicted to hunting. Berliners were calling the air-raid sirens Meyer's hunting horn, these days.
Several cars and a couple of vans were neatly parked at the far end of the courtyard. At its centre was a mountain of sand and a stack of scaffolding. God only knew what work they were doing here. General Staff Headquarters. You'd have thought it was big enough already. Especially now.
'What do you think, Commissioner?' the General insisted.
'It's a delicate situation,' Hoffmann said, not turning back. The courtyard was busier than it would usually have been at this time of night. Men, some in uniform, others in dark suits, emerged from the entrances which punctuated the building and darted across black cobblestones to dive into other doorways. Most carried briefcases, but there was also a handful of SS soldiers with guns. As Hoffmann watched, three men in raincoats hustled a fourth, who wore the uniform of the General Staff, into one of the cars, and drove off through the big gateway leading out of the complex to the city.
If you listened hard, you could hear the distant rumble of tanks.
Hoffmann turned back to the room, loosening his tie. He had to say something to the General. The man was losing his grip. Not just any general, either, which made it trickier. No-one in the High Command was in the habit of asking the opinion of a mere policeman, even one as elevated as Hoffmann. It was a question of etiquette.
It was high summer, and the weather had leant heavily on everyone all day. At dusk, a light breeze had brought relief, but that was gone, and everyone was uncomfortable in the stillness. Fromm's tunic, undone at the throat, revealed a leathery neck.
'Well?' asked General Fromm. His fingers were slippery with sweat. He put the pencil down, and lit a cigarette. Hoffmann knew that the General was thinking of his future. He'd been in the building the whole time, with the conspirators. Who could tell whether or not suspicion might fall on him? Would they see him as a prisoner or a fellow-conspirator? He needed an ally.