by Danny Orbach
The list continued to grow. At a certain stage, Dohnanyi also added Christof and Friederike, Arnold’s children from his previous marriage. And Canaris asked Dohnanyi to open the list once more, for the sake of the Jewish doctor Ilse Rennefeld.
Rennefeld’s route to Operation U-7 was long and winding. As a young physician, she emigrated from Germany in the 1930s and settled in the Netherlands. But the German invasion cut her plans short. She had to wear the yellow star and, according to the occupation government’s regulations, could not practice her profession or take part in professional or cultural activities. When her name appeared on the deportation list, she turned to a German friend, who promised to help. The friend called on the physician who had treated Canaris’s sick daughter, and mediated between her and Otto, Ilse Rennefeld’s blind Aryan husband. The German physician, who agreed to help the Jewish family, spoke with Erica Canaris, and she brought the matter to her husband.
In mid-June 1942, Otto Rennefeld visited Canaris to personally ask for help. The Abwehr chief greeted him with warmth (which he rarely expressed in his professional or even personal life). “Admiral Canaris, with whom I spoke only twice for about fifteen minutes,” related Rennefeld after the war, “was a good man and a martyr. I understood it immediately when he started speaking with me with kindness and understanding, and showed himself ready to help me.”27 Rennefeld did not know that at the same time Dohnanyi was already working on the planning of U-7. Otto and Ilse Rennefeld were added to the list, which finally included fourteen men, women, and children. Accepting new people was never easy, as Canaris had to negotiate with the Gestapo for each and every refugee. Still, he could not refuse a person in distress whenever one came calling.
The organizers faced much bigger difficulties than they had for Operation Aquilar, and not only because of the ban on Jewish emigration. (As has been mentioned, the Abwehr was not allowed to employ Jewish agents without the explicit approval of the Reich main security office.) Eichmann and his superior, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, were very suspicious of Canaris and tended to be unresponsive. For long, tiring months, Canaris and Dohnanyi held negotiations with Eichmann, who was engaged in a pitched battle against their intentions “to employ Jewish agents in Switzerland.”28 For a while, it seemed that Operation U-7 had reached a dead end.
A breakthrough finally came from unexpected quarters. In January 1942, Hitler ordered Canaris to organize a large-scale sabotage operation in the United States. To do that, the Abwehr chief had to smuggle agents in a submarine to the East Coast and entrust them to local German spies. The mission was to hit strategic industrial facilities, especially those related to the aluminum industry. Canaris and Erwin Lahousen, a coconspirator and the chief of his sabotage section, chose ten to twenty agents, all of them loyal Nazis. Surprisingly, a short while before the operation, the American consulate in Bern received an accurate report on its details, allegedly based on an interception of a conversation between a submarine commanding officer and his family. In June 1942, the agents arrived in the United States and were arrested immediately by the FBI. Most ended their lives in the electric chair.
As expected, Hitler summoned Canaris and Lahousen to severely reprimand them. They had to choose their men more carefully, he said, so as not to have a traitor among them. Canaris, cunning as always, said that all the agents had been loyal National Socialists chosen from the ranks of the party. Hitler fell into the trap. He lamented the fate of the loyal patriots, now subject to the death penalty. It cannot be right, he said, that good Nazis should fall victim to amateurish intelligence work. “If that’s the quality of your work,” the Führer yelled, “employ Jews or criminals!” Canaris saluted and left the office. Later, when he and Lahousen were in the airplane, the Abwehr chief was beaming. “Did you hear, Langer?”—he used Lahousen’s nickname—“employ Jews or criminals.”29 Unwittingly, Hitler had authorized Operation U-7.
After another round of fruitless negotiations with Eichmann and Müller, the green light was finally given in a summit meeting between Canaris and Himmler. Through his persuasive arguments, experience, and ingenuity, Canaris was able to convince the SS chief of the dire need to send Jewish agents to Switzerland. Afterward, he promised, they would be transferred to the United States and South America. The operation was urgent, because the espionage network in North America had disintegrated after the latest debacle. Himmler had to agree.
No less complicated were the negotiations with the Swiss authorities. Dr. Heinrich Rothmund, the commander of the Swiss Foreigners’ Police, enforced a restrictive immigration policy, especially as far as Jewish refugees were concerned. Gisevius led the talks with Rothmund and his immigration officers, who demanded a large sum for each refugee. Gisevius had to agree, and he also promised that the Abwehr would finance the refugees until their departure from Switzerland. Hans Oster was responsible for the financial side of the operation, and he gave the refugees one million goldmarks in dollars and Swiss francs.30
By September 1942, Dohnanyi, Oster, and Gisevius had finally secured immigration permits for all fourteen refugees. Operation U-7 was moving toward its last, crucial stage. In mid-September, the whole group met Dohnanyi one last time and thanked him for his efforts on their behalf. There is no need to thank me, Dohnanyi replied. “I am only doing my duty, my duty toward Germany.” He instructed the refugees to turn to Gisevius with any problem they might face during their stay in Switzerland. At the same time, Admiral Canaris asked for a private meeting with Fritz Arnold, the leader of the group, to say farewell.
The first to travel was Charlotte Friedenthal, who already held a Swiss immigration permit. For the sake of security, Dohnanyi instructed her to wear the yellow star until her arrival on Swiss soil. Gisevius greeted her at the train station, to guide and orient her through the new environment. On September 29, 1942, it was the turn of the main group to depart. Yet Dorothee Fliess refused to leave her friends, fellow slave laborers at the ammunition factory. Years later, she admitted that Arnold had to make a real effort to take her away. Five months after she left, Gestapo agents sent all Jewish workers in the factory to the east.31
On the evening of September 29, Julius, Hildegard, and Dorothee Fliess; Fritz, Ursula, Friederike, and Christof Arnold; Annemarie, Irmgard, and Gabriele Conzen; and, finally, Otto and Ilse Rennefeld embarked on a Basel-bound train. Under Canaris’s orders, an Abwehr agent traveled with them to ensure their safe passage at the border. At noon on September 30, the train finally stopped at Basel’s main station. Encouraged by the Swiss officials, the Jewish refugees removed the yellow star from their clothes. Irmingard, the adult daughter of Fritz Arnold, joined them on December 15, and with that, U-7 came to an end. Fourteen people had been saved from death by the efforts of Hans Oster, the provider of funds; Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, who gave protection and support; and, above all, Dr. Hans von Dohnanyi, the initiator and organizer of the entire operation.
Satisfied with the result of U-7, Oster, Canaris, and Dohnanyi were determined to organize similar operations. They even considered reviving Operation Aquilar to smuggle more Jewish refugees into Spain. Dohnanyi kept in touch with Arnold and asked him to test the ground for the reception of more refugees in Switzerland. Then, catastrophe struck.
In autumn 1942, Nazi authorities discovered the illegal monetary transfer that underlay the operation. Suspicions arose that high officials were embezzling Abwehr funds. Agents of the German resistance were warned by their sources in the police. They, in turn, warned Oster that Canaris’s personal emissary, Wilhelm Schmidhuber, was being followed by the Gestapo in Italy. Josef Müller, the representative of the Abwehr and the resistance in the Vatican, met Schmidhuber, offered him money, and ordered him to leave immediately for Portugal. Schmidhuber hesitated. When he decided to depart, it was too late. Italian policemen arrested him in the Tyrol and handed him over to the Gestapo.32
Schmidhuber was interrogated, and soon he revealed details about resistance activities within the Abwehr. The SS intel
ligence service, for years a rival of the Abwehr, was quick to seize the chance, and it formed an alliance with Nazi elements inside the Abwehr legal department. Even on Oster’s home turf, where the resistance network was supposed to be strongest, it was still small and isolated. Though Oster and Dohnanyi enjoyed strong support from the Abwehr chief, they were still hated by many, if not most, of the officers, who were loyal Nazis. While the investigation went on, the Gestapo officials were reminded of old letters of complaint against Dohnanyi, sent by a lawyer in the legal department.
The first stone fell in Rome. The Gestapo caught Josef Müller, Canaris’s emissary to the Vatican, and placed him under house arrest. On April 3, 1943, the investigating magistrate, Manfred Roeder, ordered the Abwehr headquarters to be searched for incriminating evidence. Dohnanyi tried to resist arrest and called Oster for help. The latter came in, accompanied by Canaris. In a moment of reckless panic, he grabbed a piece of paper and hid it beneath his jacket. That was a fatal mistake. The officials, who were so far oblivious to Oster’s role, forced him to hand back the document, on which names of conspirators were written. Manfred Roeder ordered him taken away, along with Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer. The last two were arrested, and Oster was confined to his home. Keitel had him expelled from the Abwehr.33
The arrest of Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi led to the rapid disintegration of the resistance movement at the Abwehr. Many incriminating documents were discovered, including lists of conspirators. The real nature of Operation U-7 had been exposed.34 Oster’s confidants were arrested or fired one by one, and Himmler practically placed the Abwehr under his own control. The Jewish agents employed by Canaris were demoted, and many of them were sent to Auschwitz. Even the parents of the U-7 survivors, who had enjoyed Abwehr protection thus far, were promptly deported to extermination camps in Poland. The chief of the sabotage section, Gen. Erwin Lahousen, was fired as well. Canaris stayed, for now, but lost all power. For all practical purposes, he was a puppet.
A final blow came several months later. On September 10, a Gestapo agent infiltrated a tea party of an anti-Nazi social circle, leading to the arrest of several conspirators, including Helmuth James von Moltke.35 Two anti-Nazi Abwehr agents, a married couple, were connected with one of the arrested women. Anxious for their own safety, they made contact with the British secret service and escaped to Cairo. Himmler was furious. This time, Canaris could not escape responsibility, and he was promptly discharged by Hitler. The Abwehr, excepting some departments, was dissolved and integrated into the SS.36
In Russia, Colonel Tresckow understood the full implications of events and hurried to Berlin, ostensibly to “convalesce” but in fact to replace Oster as the main connector and hub of the network. He would be transferred back to the front a short while later. After a few months, though, a fresh young officer was recruited. Transferred to Berlin, he was ready to take charge from Tresckow and to dramatically transform the resistance. More than anyone else, he would become associated with German opposition to Hitler in the popular imagination. His name was Claus von Stauffenberg.
15
Count Stauffenberg:
The Charismatic Turn
AROUND SPRING 1943, a severely injured young German officer was visited in his hospital room. He received a very unusual offer: “Would you agree, by chance, to lead a military conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi regime?” He had just lost an eye, an arm, and two fingers. The new job could lead to the loss of his head. It took the young officer, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, several days to reply. The answer was yes.
What led this man, with a brilliant career ahead of him, to accept such a dangerous proposition? Why was he chosen over others? How could a newcomer take control of a dense network, brimming with rivalries and jealousies, and become its de facto leader, admired by many almost as a demigod? To understand how this young man, physically ravaged by the war, became such an extraordinary leader, we must first examine his background, military career, and intellectual development.
First, a word of caution. Stauffenberg left very few writings. Almost everything we know about his early life comes from testimonies of friends, acquaintances, and former class- and army mates, most of them given during the postwar era. By then, Stauffenberg had become the quintessential hero of the German resistance. As with those of other resistance fighters, testimonies, including those this chapter is based on, tend to be glowing, even hagiographic, and, most of all, tend to project the future resistance fighter onto his earlier incarnations—child, teenager, and young officer—as if all his life were a preparation for the plot of July 20, 1944.
Of course, most witnesses were not lying, only overemphasizing Stauffenberg’s extraordinary qualities while passing over or trivializing less flattering aspects. It is indeed the case that some of the qualities that Stauffenberg developed early on, such as his charisma and romantic bent, marked his style of leadership in the resistance. However, he might have steered his life on a different course if it weren’t for a unique combination of circumstances, some related to other people’s decisions, some sheer coincidence. The account of Stauffenberg’s life in this chapter, shaped as it is by ex post facto testimonies, must be read with this warning in mind.
Claus von Stauffenberg was born in November 1907 at Jettingen, a small village in Swabia, in southwestern Germany. His family was well established in the ranks of the southern German aristocracy. Claus’s father, Count Alfred, was for years a close vassal of the king of Württemberg, and the family had a long tradition of service to the royal house. In his childhood, Claus moved between his family’s country estate, situated amid the breathtaking scenery of the Swabian Alps, and the royal castle in Stuttgart. Count Alfred was a die-hard German conservative, monarchist, and devout Catholic, but his wife belonged to the Lutheran Church. According to the custom in those days, the children were educated according to the father’s denomination and were therefore baptized as Roman Catholics. Nevertheless, their mother, Countess Caroline, was the most significant figure in their early life. Count Alfred’s duties required him to be absent for long periods of time, and Claus and his older brothers, the twins Alexander and Berthold, usually stayed with their mother. They often traveled for vacation to the North Sea or the Alps, visited other aristocrats, and even attended tea parties with the royal family itself.
Caroline educated her children toward Christian piety, on the one hand, and to the love of poetry, art, and music, on the other. Berthold, later one of Claus’s closest collaborators in the struggle against Hitler, was particularly sharp intellectually, with blue, penetrating eyes. Claus and Berthold were also gifted cello and piano players, respectively, and admirers of German romantic poetry. Claus, especially, was preoccupied with dreams of personal and national grandeur. As a teenager, he despised the cynical, materialistic worldview of many adults around him, and he firmly believed that money should be abolished. Only then would all men be brothers, regardless of faith or social class. Money, after all, was the source of all evil. Wasn’t that proved by the destructive power of the ring in the German epic myth The Nibelungenlied?1
As a child, Claus often expressed his wish to be a hero. Yet he was weak in physical terms. His schoolmates remembered him as a pale, sickly boy who was frequently sent home on long sick leaves. He made incredible efforts to improve his physical fitness, never giving up on his heroic dreams. For a while, he considered becoming a professional cello player, but he ditched the idea after understanding that he would never be a virtuoso. The essence of human life is not in the immortal soul, he told a friend who was about to be ordained into the priesthood, but in achievements in this world. Even as a child, he said that he wanted not to go to heaven after death but to stay “here” forever, amid the Swabian Alps.2 Architecture was another early love. After giving up his dream of a professional music career, Claus considered for a while becoming an architect, as he wrote in one of his childhood poems:
I often feel I must draw plans
Of high vast pala
ces3
His personal charisma was apparent from at least the age of seventeen. As one of his schoolmates related, somewhat hagiographically, “His glowing eyes clearly expressed his cheerfulness . . . and generosity. Their color was dark blue . . . His hair was shining black . . . always cut short. His development from youth to adulthood . . . was rapid. He was tall and flexible, with a slender, powerful body . . . The three brothers were blessed with the very rare advantage of a good heart. With Claus, it was expressed in everything he did, and every word he said.”4
Claus’s best friend was his older brother Berthold. Both of them were intelligent, with a spiritual bent toward German romanticism, even mysticism.
The Great War, which broke out in August 1914, changed the life of the Stauffenberg family, though not dramatically at first. The boys were too young to be drafted and were still in school, but their mood, like everyone else’s, shifted violently between hope and fear, for every letter from the front might herald the death of a loved one. The Great War changed Europe utterly. Millions of soldiers—entire generations of Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Germans—lived for years in trenches, mud, maggots, and blood all around them. A large contingent did not make it home. The nightmare seemed unending.
One morning, Claus came to his mother in tears. His older brothers had told him that in ten years’ time they would be allowed to join the war, but not he. His mother soothed him by saying that she would be “heroic” and let all her boys go. Like most Germans, the brothers Stauffenberg were shocked when their country parleyed for armistice on October 3, 1918. The writing on the wall was clear: the Reich was losing the war. “My Germany cannot perish,” Claus said with tears. “If she goes down now, she will rise again strong and great. After all, there is still a God.”5