The Plots Against Hitler

by Danny Orbach

  At the same time, Field Marshal Witzleben, then in Paris, was reconsidering the possibility of a coup. Oster assured Schlabrendorff, the tireless broker, that Witzleben was prepared to move his forces as soon as Tresckow had liquidated Hitler. Hans Crome later related to his Soviet interrogators that armored forces in Paris were in fact prepared to carry out the coup. Hassell suggested that Witzleben commence action independently in the west, but the latter refused. The field marshal maintained that an anti-Nazi revolt could not be accomplished on one front alone. To make an isolated move in the west would be a futile fantasy. In fact, Witzleben was extremely pessimistic about the chances of bringing down the regime. In private conversations, he warned against separate and uncoordinated initiatives by the various resistance cells. He placed what hopes he had on a coup centered in Berlin, in the style of the 1938 plot.14

  The preliminary planning took an entire year. Tresckow continued to live a double life. He did his duty as an officer serving the regime, while planning to overthrow it at the same time. A few more officers in his army group joined the conspiracy. In the summer of 1941, Tresckow conducted a long nighttime exchange “on the riverbank, in the starlight,” with Maj. Carl-Hans von Hardenberg, adjutant to Field Marshal Kluge. Tresckow complained bitterly about the cowardice of the generals, who could not summon enough courage to speak out against Hitler’s war crimes and military folly. The time had come, he told Hardenberg, to rebel: “One has to resort to active revolutionary means. To take this path, we have to throw away everything we learned from our forefathers about the honor of the Prussian-German soldier, as well as our property, families, our personal honor and the honor of our class.”15 Tresckow’s argument convinced Hardenberg, and he joined the conspiracy.

  Tresckow’s close associate Capt. Alexander Stahlberg was sent to Army Group South, where he became adjutant to the force commander, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, whom Tresckow also hoped to enlist. But Manstein refused to even consider the matter. When Stahlberg sought to inform him, in Tresckow’s name, about the murder of one hundred thousand Jews, Manstein fiercely denied the reports. “Such a number of people,” he countered, “could have filled the Olympic stadium in Berlin. It is difficult to murder [so many people].” Stahlberg needed to bring tangible evidence if he expected Manstein to report these “findings” to the higher echelons. Besides, asked the field marshal, exposing his true sentiments, “is it really so negative that Jewry, so dangerous for Germany, is being decimated?”16

  Tresckow did better with his immediate superior, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, whose nickname was “Clever [kluger] Hans.” In December 1941, Kluge replaced Bock as commander of Army Group Center. He was cynical, cautious, and apprehensive in the extreme. He had refused to cooperate with the conspirators of 1938 and sent Gisevius back to Berlin empty-handed. But Tresckow was not Gisevius. He had the charisma to bring Kluge slowly around to the resistance, largely by frightening him with grim reports of the ever-worsening military situation. Tresckow had long since realized that there was no point in talking about Nazi crimes committed in the rear to anyone outside his immediate circle. Such moral arguments would not have persuaded Kluge to join the conspirators. Only his personal ties to Tresckow and their discussions about the war could have any effect on him.17

  Schlabrendorff later compared Kluge to a watch that had to be wound every day. It took months of persuading, but Kluge finally recognized that the conspirators were right. He told Tresckow that he was prepared to support a military coup, but only after the resistance had eliminated Hitler. Yet he categorically refused to cooperate in the planning or execution of an assassination attempt. Tresckow and Schlabrendorff understood that they had to take matters into their own hands.

  Very little is known about the military activity of the conspirators during 1942, but one surviving fragment from Kaiser’s diary indicates that March, at least, was busy with preparations. The energetic broker hurried from city to city, met the various leaders, and coordinated their activity. The fragment, dated March 3, 1942, documents a frantic, almost breathless schedule of meetings and discussions, under the ever-threatening shadow of the Gestapo:

  O [Olbricht] is on vacation. If there are specific questions—speak with Beck.

  An urgent conversation between O [Olbricht] to G [Gisevius] through O [Oster].

  There is an agreement with W [Witzleben]. Articles 1 and 2 above suggest that it is required to first take the initiative in order to make it easier for W.

  Messer [Goerdeler] in a private trip to Paris.

  According to M [Goerdeler] there is no more time to lose.

  Arrest.

  O [Olbricht] Telegraph. Trial.18

  The military situation worsened at the end of 1942. The German Sixth Army, under the command of Gen. Friedrich Paulus, failed to take the southern city of Stalingrad, and during the course of the autumn it became surrounded by the Red Army. Hitler, stubborn and rash, refused to permit Paulus to retreat from the city, instead demanding that he fight to the last bullet. In doing so, he doomed three hundred thousand Germans and their allies to death or imprisonment.

  At this point, Tresckow began planning the coup itself. Schlabrendorff met with Olbricht in Berlin, and the latter asked for two months to organize his forces. Capt. Ludwig Gehre, an officer seconded from the Abwehr for this purpose, served as Oster’s eyes in headquarters and stayed in contact with Tresckow and the eastern clique. It seems that as far as the assassination itself was concerned, Oster was reluctant to rely on the communication network of Kaiser and Schlabrendorff; he preferred to personally monitor the preparations. Tresckow was assigned the part of sparking the flame: eliminating Hitler. Afterward, Olbricht was supposed to mobilize the Home Army. Gehre was assigned the critical task of leading the Abwehr commando squads, the shock troops of the revolt.19 Witzleben, who was fired by Hitler in 1942 because of ill health, agreed to lead the Wehrmacht after the coup, “but only if Beck agrees.”20

  Tresckow exploited for his purposes a strange event that took place at the end of October 1942. The occasion was Field Marshal Kluge’s sixtieth birthday. Count Philipp von Boeselager, Kluge’s personal assistant, listened in on a telephone call between the field marshal and Hitler. “Herr Field Marshal,” Hitler said, “I have heard that you wish to build a barn at Böhne [Kluge’s wife’s estate]. As a sign of gratitude for your services to the German people, I am giving you a gift of 250,000 Reichsmarks in ration cards for construction materials. Goodbye.” The Führer ended the conversation, leaving Kluge confounded. “Boeselager,” he called to his attaché, “you heard what the Führer said at the end of the conversation. What do you think of it, that is, the gift?” Philipp Boeselager, a young officer, patriot, and anti-Nazi, had been one of Tresckow’s close associates for some time but knew nothing of his plans. “Sir,” he replied, “to the best of my memory I have never heard of a Prussian field marshal or general accepting money when a war is in progress . . . In your position I would donate the money to the Red Cross.” Boeselager later related that “I quickly went to Tresckow . . . and told him about the conversation between Kluge and Hitler . . . ‘The field marshal should not be dependent on the Führer,’ he said. ‘We need him for the war against Hitler.’” Tresckow displayed his cards. “From that moment on,” wrote Boeselager, “I was a member of Tresckow’s resistance group.”21

  At this point, the break that the conspirators had been waiting for came. Kluge’s avarice overcame him. He accepted the gift from Hitler and used it to renovate his manor house. In the days that followed, he could not look Tresckow in the eye. Tresckow seized the opportunity. He told his commanding officer that he (Kluge) had acted shamefully. He could redeem his reputation in the history books only by resolving to join the resistance.22 Kluge finally agreed.

  During the summer and autumn of 1942, Tresckow and Schlabrendorff had trouble deciding how best to assassinate Hitler. Tresckow first thought of shooting him himself, but he knew that Hitler wore a bulletproof vest whe
n visiting the fronts and that his fearsome bodyguards were the quickest draws in Germany. A single bullet, fired under great pressure, was likely to miss and to risk uncovering the entire conspiracy.23 A second option was massive gunfire. For several months, Tresckow had been in touch with Count Georg von Boeselager, brother of Philipp and commander of a cavalry battalion at the front. At Tresckow’s initiative and with Kluge’s sanction, Boeselager put together an elite cavalry force that was meant to open fire on Hitler, or alternatively to arrest him, as soon as he arrived at Army Group Center.24

  The Sixth Army, surrounded at Stalingrad, surrendered in January 1943. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were killed or taken prisoner, and the army’s commander, Field Marshal Paulus, was brought to Moscow, where he commenced anti-Hitler broadcasts. The fall of the Sixth Army shocked all Germany. Impassioned speeches by Göring and Goebbels did not help, nor did the declaration of the Wehrmacht high command that “they died so that Germany could continue to live.”25 The German people, who had until then believed in the invincibility of the Wehrmacht, tasted bitter defeat. From here on in, the Red Army would push the Germans back on all fronts.

  A few months beforehand, in summer 1942, Tresckow had decided to bring Gersdorff, his intelligence officer, into the plan to assassinate Hitler. First, he had tested his subordinate’s loyalty. “Please, don’t ask me why,” he said, “but I need some particularly effective explosives.” The sharp-witted Gersdorff understood very well what he was being asked for. He visited the chief of the sabotage unit and asked him for a thorough report on his work. The chief, according to Gersdorff, “was very pleased with my sudden interest and presented me with a program for a visit to his entire unit . . . There I saw a huge amount of explosive material, fuses, and other devices needed by sappers.”

  Gersdorff quickly realized that German bombs could not kill Hitler, because they operated on loudly ticking timers and emitted a sharp whistle ten seconds before exploding. He thus took an interest in quieter British bombs: “I was shown a large number of British bombs, which had been parachuted by the British for underground French and Dutch fighters in the occupied territories . . . I asked him to place before me a selection of [explosive] devices, so that I could show the field marshal the newest ones.”

  The chief agreed, of course, but demanded, as military procedure required, that Gersdorff sign a receipt. The intelligence officer was concerned that if he signed and the plan failed, it would be easy to discover who had ordered the bomb. Yet he took the risk and signed. “I wondered,” he wrote in his memoirs, “whether I was signing my own death warrant.”26 Gersdorff returned to Colonel Tresckow with a container full of bombs. Tresckow took him to an isolated area near the army group headquarters. The two walked down a secluded path. “Tresckow spoke with me with utter frankness about the need to eliminate Hitler and release mankind from this horrible criminal. He said that after much thought he decided to kill the Führer with a bomb, the method that seemed to have the best chance. This was a condition for the success of the entire plan for a military coup. We had to be sure that Hitler would die and not just be wounded.”27

  From January through February 1943, Tresckow stayed in Berlin and led intensive discussions with Olbricht, Beck, Goerdeler, and Kaiser. He reported that the eastern front was on the verge of collapse. Maybe it could still be saved through rapid action, provided that the conspirators took over the government and negotiated for a separate peace with the Western Allies. As if the atmosphere was not tense enough, the members of the inner circle began to squabble with each other. “There is nothing but contempt,” wrote Kaiser in his diary. Olbricht went back on his promises and insisted that he couldn’t do anything without Fromm’s consent: “Goerdeler spoke on January 19 with Olbricht, Gisevius and Beck. Olbricht is unable to move without Fromm. Even Beck turned pale. Goerdeler: ‘I lost all the esteem I ever had for Olbricht.’”

  Kaiser noted, cynically, that Olbricht and Fromm shared a kind of symbiotic incompetence: “One is ready to act only when commanded, but the other is ready to command only when others act first.”28

  Just like the others, Tresckow stood aghast at the sight of Olbricht’s excessive caution, and implored Kaiser “to do everything possible to reinforce his resolution.”29 And indeed, after the defeat in Stalingrad, Beck, Tresckow, and Goerdeler were desperate for action and seriously doubted Olbricht’s resolution to move forward. “Not to lose even one day,” said Goerdeler, “to move as soon as possible. We cannot expect the field marshals to take the initiative. They are waiting for orders, just like O [Olbricht] here.” Meanwhile, Kaiser heard from his sources that Hitler was aware of the conspiracy. Military policemen might knock on his door at any moment.30

  The conspirators overcame their remaining doubts. “Is it not horrifying,” Tresckow asked Gersdorff, “that two German General Staff officers are discussing the best way of eliminating their supreme commander? Yet we have to do it because this is the last opportunity to save Germany from the abyss. The world must be freed from the greatest villain in history. We will eradicate him as if he were a mad dog endangering humanity.” To another officer he said simply, “No matter how you look at it and talk about it, our catastrophe is the doing of a single man. He must perish. We have no choice.”31

  With some effort, Tresckow managed to persuade Beck, the commander of the resistance movement, that assassinating Hitler was a precondition for the success of the coup. Beck, frustrated by the opportunism of the generals and enraged by the regime’s crimes, gave his consent. The assassination was set for March 13, when Hitler was scheduled to visit Army Group Center. Tresckow’s first plan, spraying the Führer with gunfire from the cavalry during a meal or a military consultation, was quickly rejected. Tresckow had to tell Field Marshal Kluge about the plan, to ensure that he would not be hit during the barrage. Kluge refused to hear of it. It was not honorable, he insisted, to kill a man while he was dining. And in any case, he continued, “there is no point, as Himmler will not be there.”32 Tresckow would have to kill Hitler in some other, more discreet way. To their annoyance, the conspirators discovered that Kluge restrained them with one hand, only to spur them on with the other. On March 3, he sent a message to Olbricht, urging him to “speed up” because of the situation at the front.33

  The only option remaining was a bomb. In the winter of 1943, Gersdorff and Tresckow went out to the snowy fields of Smolensk, near the army group’s headquarters, to see whether a bomb would explode at low temperatures. Gersdorff had managed to obtain some British plastic explosives. The two set off dozens of controlled explosions and found that the material worked only between zero and forty degrees centigrade. They were apprehensive at first that the temperature would drop below freezing at the critical moment, which would wreck their carefully laid plans, but they devised a number of technical fixes to overcome the problem. The British bomb was based on an acid-activated fuse: setting the bomb broke a glass capsule; acid then leaked out and ate through a spring wire, driving a firing pin onto a detonator cap, and the bomb exploded. The conspirators tried out bombs in a number of abandoned buildings near the front, all of which were demolished completely.

  Schlabrendorff shaped the deadly plastic into two rolls and wrapped them sumptuously, so that they looked like two bottles of Cointreau liqueur. March 13 finally arrived. Hitler landed at Army Group Center headquarters, accompanied by a large number of SS guards, his driver, his cook, and his personal physician. At first, Tresckow planned to plant the bomb in the Führer’s car, but he saw that the SS kept the vehicle under constant surveillance, and he had to find another solution. In the meantime, Kluge hosted the Führer at a lunch to which all the senior staff officers were invited. Schlabrendorff had a chance to see his quarry up close:

  Hitler was served a special meal, every part of which had been prepared by his personal cook. It was tasted before his eyes by his physician, Professor Morell. The entire procedure was reminiscent of an Oriental despot of a bygone age. Watching
Hitler eat was a most revolting spectacle. His left hand was placed firmly on his thigh, with his right hand he shoveled his food, which consisted of various vegetables, into his mouth. He did this without lifting his right arm, which he kept flat on the table throughout the entire meal. Instead he brought his mouth down to the food.34

  During the lunch, Tresckow approached Lt. Col. Heinz Brandt, one of Hitler’s staff officers, and asked him whether he could take two bottles of liqueur to Col. Helmuth Stieff, one of his friends in the high command. Stieff was an anti-Nazi officer who had turned against the regime in the wake of the slaughter of Poland’s Jews, but he knew nothing about the conspiracy. Brandt agreed. Schlabrendorff went to the telephone and gave Captain Gehre, his contact in Berlin, the code word “flash.” The countdown had begun. Schlabrendorff later wrote,

  I waited until Hitler had dismissed the officers of the Army Group Center and was about to board his plane. Looking at Tresckow, I read in his eyes the order to go ahead. With the help of a key, I pressed down hard on the fuse, thus triggering the bomb, and handed the parcel to Colonel Brandt who boarded the plane shortly after Hitler. A few minutes later both Hitler’s plane and that carrying the other members of his party, escorted by a number of fighter planes, started back to East Prussia. Fate now had to take its course. Tresckow and I returned to our quarters, from where I again called Gehre in Berlin, and gave him the second code word, indicating that Operation Flash was actually underway.35