by Danny Orbach
Except for mounting some meek protests, the senior generals did nothing. On May 13, some six weeks later, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of staff of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, issued a second order, according to which the military justice system was not required to prosecute cases against soldiers involving civilians, even when the soldiers had committed crimes and violated military regulations.2 Rudolf von Gersdorff, Tresckow’s intelligence officer, immediately understood the implications: it was a license to murder, loot, and rape. Tresckow and Schlabrendorff also saw what was in store. Tresckow decided to act without delay. On a sunny day at the beginning of June, Tresckow and Gersdorff went to see Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, the army group’s commander. They were determined to prevent the two orders from being carried out. On the way there, Tresckow halted and told his good friend,
Gersdorff, if we don’t succeed in persuading the field marshal to fly immediately to Hitler and to bring about a revocation of these orders, the German people will assume a guilt that the world will not forget for centuries. Not only Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and their gang will be responsible, but you and I as well, your wife and my wife, your children and my children, the old woman who just went into the store over there, the man riding his bicycle over here, and that little boy playing with a ball. Think about what I just said.3
Bock, who was Tresckow’s uncle on his mother’s side, was a weak-willed man, unreservedly loyal to the Führer. Tresckow used the clearest possible language with him. “Fedi,” he said, “I’ve had your plane made ready. You must fly immediately to Hitler, not alone but with [Field Marshal Gerd von] Rundstedt and [Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von] Leeb [commanders of Army Groups South and North, respectively]. You must put a pistol to Hitler’s chest and demand the immediate revocation of the orders . . . If you refuse to obey him now, he will have to give in.”4
Bock interrupted. “What if he dismisses us?” he asked. “Then,” Tresckow told him, “you will at least exit the stage of history honorably.” Bock responded heatedly, “Hitler will send Himmler as my replacement.” Tresckow shot back, “We’ll know how to deal with him.”5
It was useless. Bock refused to fly himself. Instead, he sent Gersdorff to Berlin to lodge a protest with the army’s commander in chief, Field Marshal Brauchitsch. As one might expect, Gersdorff’s trip was a total failure. He was blocked by a lower-ranking general who said that Brauchitsch had already made every effort to cancel the order and that there was no more to be done. Brauchitsch was not even at headquarters at the time, so Gersdorff couldn’t meet him in person. He returned to Field Marshal Bock empty-handed. “Have it be noted, gentlemen,” the army group commander instructed, “that Field Marshal Bock protested.”6
At dawn on June 22, the order Barbarossa was issued, and the German army launched a massive artillery barrage. For the Russians, it came as a total surprise. During the invasion’s early hours, Stalin refused to believe that Hitler had really violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Many of the Red Army units on the border fell to pieces, and their soldiers, maltreated by their superiors and lacking motivation, simply fled or surrendered, abandoning weaponry that had hardly been used. Army Group North, under Field Marshal Leeb’s command, surged toward Leningrad, while Rundstedt’s Army Group South moved into Ukraine. Army Group Center, led by Bock, advanced in a pincer movement into Belorussia and besieged Minsk. During its early months, Barbarossa was a huge success. The armored divisions advanced at great speed and flattened the Russian defenses under their treads. Field Marshal Bock took Minsk and dealt the Red Army a decisive defeat near Smolensk. Rundstedt wiped out the Red Army in Ukraine and conquered Kiev.
Behind the advancing Wehrmacht lines, the Einsatzgruppen, the SS’s operational formations, slaughtered Jews and other “undesirables.” They followed a standard protocol. After surrounding a Jewish village or town, they forced all the inhabitants out of their homes. Then, they led the Jews to a forest or other isolated spot, gave them shovels, and ordered them to dig huge pits. They then murdered them all—men, women, the elderly, children—by shooting them in the back of the head or with machine-gun fire. The most notorious of these massacres took place at Ponary (Punar), then just outside Vilnius, and at Babi Yar in Ukraine. Rivka Yosselevska, a Jewish woman who survived the slaughter, lived to testify at the Eichmann trial about the Germans’ systematic murder policy:
When we arrived at the place, we saw naked, undressed people. We still thought that this was just torture. But I still wanted to see and be sure, to be certain. I turned around and looked at what was under the hill, that platform, what was in the ditch, the pit. Then it was clear to me. I saw that several lines of people who had been shot to death were lying there . . . And I want also to mention here that my girl told me when we were still in the ghetto: Mother, why did you dress me in my Sabbath clothes? They are taking us to shootings and death, after all. And when we stood by the pit she said: Why are we standing and waiting, let’s run away . . . I turned my head away and he said to me: Who should I shoot first, your daughter or you? I did not answer. I felt how my daughter was torn away from me, I felt her final scream and I heard how she was shot. Afterward he came to me. I turned my head away. He grabbed my hair to shoot me. I remained standing. I heard a shot, but I remained standing. He turned me back. He began to load his pistol again. He turned me and shot and I fell.7
More than a million and a half Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen, by army units, by Nazi police, and in some cases by Wehrmacht units. The army’s leaders were, from the start, passive and sometimes active partners in the extermination campaign. Gen. Franz Halder, who only two years previously had been prepared to take part in an anti-Nazi coup, bore the largest measure of responsibility for the army’s acceptance of these criminal orders, with Brauchitsch not far behind.8 Other important generals, such as Erich von Manstein, the brilliant strategist of the German invasion of France, competed in issuing venomous anti-Semitic orders that mandated “cruel but justified revenge against Jewry.” The most energetic of these was Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, commander of the Sixth Army and later commander in chief of Army Group South, who gave his blessing to “the severe but justified acts of revenge against these sub-humans, the Jews.”9 Wehrmacht units supplied logistical assistance to the Einsatzgruppen, surrounding villages and towns. In some cases, soldiers volunteered to take part in the massacres.10
Tresckow and his friends knew all about these crimes, and there is a stormy debate among historians about their involvement. In their capacity as staff officers, they had to initial reports on war crimes, pass on commands with atrocious content, and participate in campaigns against partisans, which were often accompanied by massacres against Jews and Russians. Credible evidence shows that Tresckow, Gersdorff, and the others opposed such crimes from the outset, but their opposition became vigorous when the massacres in their front escalated.11 From June to October, most civilian victims in the operational theater of Army Group Center were men. But in late October, the massacre became wholesale: women, children, and the elderly began to be slaughtered in large numbers as well. Tresckow, a staff officer who commanded no forces, confronted the slaughter of Jews in his jurisdiction for the first time on October 20, near the army group headquarters in Borisov (Barysaw), in Belorussia. Rudolf von Gersdorff later related,
The SS men drove to Barysaw and surrounded the ghetto . . . They gave instructions to the Lithuanian SS units to eliminate the Jews . . . They first forced the Jews to dig deep pits, and they were then divided into groups of a hundred, thrown naked into the pit, and mowed down with machine gun fire from the Lithuanian SS men. To verify who was dead and who was still alive, they forced the next group of Jews to step on the bodies and then to share the same fate. One SS man was seen lifting small children onto their feet, shooting them in the head, and throwing them into the grave. A few Luftwaffe soldiers who had come out of curiosity from a nearby airfield were overcome by a murderous fervor and shot at the Jews packed
in the graves. Blood-curdling scenes played out at the edges of the pits—desperate attempts to escape, entreaties by young Jewish women who wanted only to save themselves and their children, but to no avail. All ended up in the SS’s mass grave.12
Tresckow was furious that Jews were being murdered all along the front, and when the crimes took place on his watch, he was even more enraged. He went immediately to Field Marshal Bock and demanded he use military force to halt the slaughter. “This must not happen again,” he said, “and therefore we have to act. In Russia we are in possession of power. If we act against [the SS] now without restraint, we can make an example out of it.”13 Bock categorically refused. Later, when Tresckow pleaded with him to join the efforts to overthrow Hitler “to save the situation,” the field marshal berated his operations officer. “I shall not tolerate any attack upon the Führer,” he shouted. “I shall stand before the Führer and defend him against anyone who dares to attack him.”14 But, even if Bock had collaborated, it is hard to believe that Tresckow would have been able to eject the Einsatzgruppen from the army group’s rear, or even to curb their actions. The most he could have done was to thin out their numbers somewhat, as he apparently tried to do. He argued that it was technically difficult to deploy so many SS units, “because it is not clear whether it is possible to send them [in time].”15
Gersdorff, risking his career, set off to tour the front, where he sought to persuade young officers to oppose the massacres. Just like the commando officer Wilhelm Heinz (commander of the shock troops in the Oster conspiracy of 1938), who denounced the massacre of the Jews of Lvov in his order of the day to his troops, Gersdorff hoped to foster resistance in the lower ranks. In the official war log of the army group, he wrote, “During all the long talks I conducted with officers, I was asked about the shooting of Jews, without raising the subject myself. I received the impression that nearly all the officers opposed shooting Jews, prisoners of war, and Commissars . . . This shooting was perceived as breaching the honor of the German army, and especially that of the German officer corps.”16
But Gersdorff saw what he wanted to see. Even though not all soldiers and officers were cooperating with the murders—some even objected to their superiors or the higher echelons—brutality, on the whole, dominated the eastern front. Millions of POWs starved to death. German soldiers slaughtered Russian and Ukrainian villagers just as they did Jews, stole boots and warm clothing, and evicted many civilians from their demolished homes to die in the freezing winter. The German war against the partisans served as a cover for massacres of the local people, especially Jews. Tresckow was horrified. “Should we wonder that there are partisans,” he asked, “when the population is treated so disgracefully?”17 An anti-Nazi coup, the only way out of the impossible situation in which Tresckow and his friends found themselves, was still out of reach. That situation would not change for another year.
13
“Flash” and Liqueur Bottles:
Assassination Attempts in the East
THE GERMANS’ MOMENTUM ran out at the end of 1941. Army Group North failed to take Leningrad. The famine-stricken populace in the besieged city refused to surrender. In a controversial decision, Hitler declined to allocate all possible forces to the conquest of Moscow, instead ordering Army Group Center to transfer much of its armored force to north and south for the engagements at Leningrad and Stalingrad. When he changed his mind, it was too late. “If we do not make a resolute advance to Moscow now,” Tresckow said, “we’ll have lost the campaign.”1 He was right: Hitler’s soldiers, like Napoleon’s more than a century before, were not prepared to fight it out during a Russian winter. Heavy rains began in the autumn, and German tanks had difficulty moving on Russia’s narrow, muddy roads. When winter began, engine oil solidified, and the German troops, who were malnourished and lacked winter gear, began to freeze. “The German soldier of the winter war of 1941–1942 has undergone a transformation . . . ,” Gersdorff wrote. “He has lost his feeling of superiority.”2 Many German generals began doubting whether victory was possible.
Adolf Hitler, always adept at casting the blame on others, dismissed the commander in chief of his ground forces, Field Marshal Brauchitsch, and appointed himself to the position instead. From this point on, he intervened in nearly every military operation and decision, from the number of machine guns deployed at specific locations to the state of the trenches. On the same day, he also relieved the commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, replacing him with Günther “Hans” von Kluge.
Tresckow underwent a change that winter. As he had promised Schlabrendorff before Operation Barbarossa began, he planned to exploit the Wehrmacht’s setback and stage a coup. He wanted to save Germany from a searing defeat at the hands of Russian Bolshevism and to preserve the German army after the war. But this was not the primary reason he acted. “This war that you still believe has a chance is irrevocably lost,” Tresckow told Lt. Alexander Stahlberg, his cousin and fellow conspirator, “and we serve an arch-criminal, I repeat, an arch-criminal. According to reliable information, SS units are committing massacres beyond anything you can imagine.”3
Schlabrendorff took it upon himself to become the link between Tresckow and the conspiracy’s headquarters in Berlin. Under cover of military business, he traveled frequently to the capital, relaying messages from Kaiser, Oster, and the leaders in Berlin. His reports about Tresckow’s willingness to take action revived the conspiracy. The connection between Schlabrendorff and the members of the resistance revealed to Tresckow that the movement was in contact with a powerful ally, the chief of the General Army Office in the army high command, Gen. Friedrich Olbricht.
Olbricht, who would play a vital role in the conspiracy, was a balding, bespectacled man of average height. As the commander of the General Army Office, one of the top leadership positions in the Home Army, he took on the role of administrator of the resistance movement. He devoted himself to myriad details, technical and tiresome, but critical to running the underground movement. Coming from a middle-class family (his father was a school principal), he had grown up in the enlightened German Protestant tradition of the nineteenth century and was known as a lover of philosophy, opera, and classical music. A German patriot from his youth, he had nevertheless always avoided political extremism and abhorred German hypernationalism no less than Communism. As an officer, he maintained close ties with the common people, and with Jews, Social Democrats, and even Communists. His ideology of soldierly behavior was certainly unusual. In 1943, when confronted with the notion of absolute obedience, he told his commanding officer that for every ninety-nine orders he received, a soldier could say no to one.4
That, however, was not enough to turn him into a conspirator. Whether Olbricht, as his biographer has argued, was involved in the early coup d’état attempts or not, it is clear that by the opening months of 1941, he was still not considered a full-fledged member of the conspiracy.5 In mid-November that year, Hermann Kaiser, who worked closely with Olbricht as part of his military duties, arranged a meeting between the general and Dr. Carl Goerdeler. However, contrary to some later myths, Olbricht was “very careful” and hard to convince.6 More pressure was required. Kaiser, who believed that time was short and every hour precious, did not despair. He kept on pushing, and in December 1941 his efforts were crowned with success: Olbricht finally joined the conspiracy. It is reasonable to assume that the loss of his beloved son on the front influenced his decision.7
However, the real prize the conspirators sought was not Olbricht but his commanding officer, Gen. Friedrich Fromm. The usual bête noire of the resistance literature, Fromm was the almighty commander of the Home Army, usually described unflatteringly as short, fat, and sleek, a cunning opportunist whose habit was to “sit on the fence” and always look out for his personal interest. This description has some merit, but it is also somewhat unfair. Far from being universally hated, Fromm was respected by many as a highly competent commander and the “strong man of
the home front.”8 Still, he was certainly disliked by the resistance fighters operating within his command. This was not because he was an enthusiastic Nazi. Had he been one, then conspirators like Kaiser, Olbricht, and, later, Stauffenberg would have early on found themselves in a prison cell. It was only Fromm’s willingness to harbor the conspirators that gave them some breathing space.
In fact, it was Fromm’s reluctance to commit himself to one side or the other that infuriated the conspirators so much.9 His military role made him crucial to their plans. Not only could he have them arrested, but his central role in the military command hierarchy would be invaluable during a coup. If he cooperated, the forces of the Home Army would naturally stand under the conspirators’ command, with the junior officers obeying his every word. But Fromm refused to pick a side—and it was this ambivalence that made him so intolerable.
Throughout the lifetime of the conspiracy, Fromm seemed to delight in confusing and confounding the conspirators. In February 1941, for example, he visited Kaiser’s office and confessed that he was depressed, lonely, and unable to confide in anyone. “Maybe he has some higher calling . . . ,” wrote Kaiser with typical cynicism, “or he just felt like drinking Champagne.”10 Whether or not Fromm suddenly craved one of the high-quality beverages that Kaiser could supply, he kept playing his double game.11 Several months later, showing the “arrogance and aloofness of a [Turkish] Pasha,” he told his officers that “Germany has never been in better shape.”12 Until the very end, the conspirators found his contradictory signals unfathomable.
Nevertheless, they had to continue planning. Schlabrendorff, whose role as a broker was as important as Kaiser’s, had met Hassell in October 1941. He reported on the development of the conspiracy in the east and prepared the ground for future cooperation. At the end of 1941, Tresckow traveled to Berlin, where he first met Olbricht, as well as Beck and Goerdeler. Oster, who, according to Schlabrendorff, held in his hands “the threads of the entire plot,” served as a go-between behind the scenes but avoided meeting Tresckow in person out of caution. There was no point in putting the conspiracy at risk just when it was beginning to reawaken.13