The Plots Against Hitler

by Danny Orbach

  Often, family members of conspirators were also arrested. “You should look at the Germanic Sagas,” Himmler told the Nazi governors. “When they declare a family as fair game, they say, ‘This person committed treason, his blood is a traitor’s blood which has to be destroyed.’ As part of the vendetta, his family is uprooted, eliminated to the last person. The family of Count von Stauffenberg will be uprooted.”29

  The Nazis never went as far as that rhetoric implied. Wholesale extermination was reserved for Jews and other “inferior races,” not for Germans, dangerous as they might have been. Nina von Stauffenberg was arrested a few days after the failure of the coup, even though she was heavily pregnant. Later, she recalled that Claus had ordered her to denounce him so that one of them, at least, could survive to take care of the children. Therefore, she said, “I passed myself off to the Gestapo as a stupid little housewife taken up with children and nappies and dirty laundry.” Moreover, Nina hid the full truth from her children, telling them only that “Daddy made a mistake, and was therefore shot.” She was held in solitary confinement in Ravensbrück, a notorious concentration camp for women, not only because she was pregnant but also because it was thought (or so she assumed) that her influence on other prisoners might be politically dangerous. Her cell was tiny and “infested by cockroaches,” as her daughter recalled many years later, but she did not have to do forced labor.

  From the window of her cell, Nina witnessed every day the crimes of the regime her husband had fought. “By the fence in front of my window, women were punished,” she recalled, “[and] some of them wailed heartbreakingly. Once in a while, SS women came from their barracks and beat them with leather belts. I saw pitiful female slaves, barefoot, clad in thin prisoner clothes in the cold winter.” During her arrest, Nina heard that her elderly mother was held at the same camp, but the two were not allowed to communicate.30

  Nina was not the only one to be arrested. The Gestapo detained dozens of people named Stauffenberg, Mertz, Olbricht, and Goerdeler. The wives of many conspirators were kept, like Nina, in concentration camps and other detention facilities. Many children, Stauffenberg’s included, were ordered to “forget” their parents and move to National Socialist boardinghouses under new names. “They took our identity from us,” remembered Uta von Aretin, the daughter of Henning von Tresckow.31

  The wave of arrests swept through almost all groupings, military and civilian alike. They were not restricted to the conspirators of July 20, to the external circles, or to people involved with them directly or indirectly. Of the thousands who were arrested, many had nothing to do with the conspiracy. In fact, the Gestapo had been planning for a long time to arrest potential subversives, including activists in illegal parties (that is, all political parties apart from the Nazi Party), in an action known as Operation Thunderstorm, and they took advantage of the July 20 events to do so, as well as to execute hundreds.32

  The storm raged all around him, but Hans Gisevius, cunning as always, was still fooling the Gestapo. On the evening of July 20, he was sent away from the Bendlerstrasse on an assignment, and upon hearing about the failure of the assassination, he took refuge with friends. On July 23, while trying to escape the city, he bumped into an old acquaintance at the train station:

  I suddenly saw Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell. He seemed to be hurrying like someone who wants to catch a train, and yet I could tell that in reality he was in no rush; but his head was bent in such a curious fashion. It was as if he were trying to hide from some terrible danger that was pursuing him. I involuntarily felt: There goes someone who has death at his heels. I called out to him in a low voice. He was startled in fright, then we walked up and down for a while, so that I could tell him about the details of the putsch—the uprising for which he had longed all these many years. He, too, had heard about its failure only over the radio.

  As we talked, his posture changed; he stood upright again, and showed once more the same impressive bearing and inner strength I had always known him to possess. But the picture of Hassell as he walked, brooding and trying to escape from himself, will always remain with me as one of my most vivid impressions of the days after July 20 . . . His was the tragic situation of hundreds of thousands (and not only after July 20!); his was the fate of famous and unknown men, of Jews and Christians.33

  In early August 1944, soon after his meeting with Gisevius, Hassell heard a knock on his door. Sitting behind his desk, he calmly received the Gestapo, and, like so many others, he did not survive the consequences. Meanwhile, Gisevius did not intend to meet his pursuers, calmly or otherwise. Along with Theodor and Elisabeth Strünck and SS general Arthur Nebe, he gambled on leaving Berlin and hiding in the countryside. A friend gave him the address of a rural pastor who might give him shelter. The party knocked on the pastor’s door after midnight, but it seems that their luck had run out. The pastor made it clear that no one in his parish could risk sheltering famous fugitives on the run. In any case, the village was brimming with bombed-out refugees, who were very suspicious of one another. Whenever dubious strangers were spotted, every prefect and village policeman was required to report. “I implore you for the sake of my wife and children not to come here again,” the pastor told Gisevius and his friends as they were leaving. The pastor was already under watch, as he had had “more than one run-in with the Gestapo.” However, he advised the group to hurry to another, more remote hamlet. His colleague there might help them; recently, he had hidden a number of Jews.34

  The whole group traveled by deserted village roads, finally reaching the remote hamlet. The pastor took them for lunch. Yes, he was hiding Jews, he said, and naturally he could not put them at risk for the sake of wanted conspirators. Admitting an SS general, in uniform, to a house where Jews were hidden seemed unwise. The fact that Arthur Nebe, an Einsatzgruppe leader who shared direct responsibility for implementing the Holocaust, had sought refuge with Jews in their hiding place was probably one of the bitterest ironies in the history of the Third Reich.

  Finally, the four escapees decided to split up. The SS uniform of Nebe would no longer protect him from arrest. The Strüncks gave up, returned to their home, and were swiftly arrested. Nebe halfheartedly attempted suicide, failed, and was arrested as well. Himmler declared him a “traitor, who shamelessly violated his oath as an SS man,” demoted him to the rank of private, and expelled him from the organization.35 Nebe and Theodor Strünck were sentenced to death and hanged. Only Elisabeth survived, miraculously.

  Gisevius was still roaming around Germany. As creative as he was daring, he tried to hide in the most improbable place: Berlin. It seems, though, that for all his resourcefulness, what really helped him was the fact that, unlike those of the others, his personal networks went far beyond the conspiracy.36 Temporarily, he took refuge with friends while trying to contact the most useful, but also the remotest, part of his network: contacts in the American OSS.37

  Dr. Carl Goerdeler, the civilian leader of the German resistance, moved from one acquaintance to another in an attempt to escape his Gestapo pursuers. Many brave friends sheltered him, but his hope of seeking refuge in the Swedish community in Berlin ended in failure. He decided to travel to East Prussia, to see the grave of his parents for the last time. His dangerous journey was made, ironically, in a police car. Upon reaching his old hometown, Goerdeler moved around as a refugee. At the entrance to the cemetery, he sensed he was being followed, and he left without seeing the tomb. He spent a few nights in the forest, until finally, on August 8, he entered a village inn to get some breakfast.38 He was one of the most wanted criminals in Germany. The Nazi press promised one million marks to anyone contributing to his arrest.39

  While Goerdeler was waiting for his meal at the inn, a middle-aged woman recognized him. The lady immediately handed a note to some Luftwaffe officers who were dining nearby. Goerdeler recognized her, too. She was Helene Schwarzel, a worker who used to live near his home in Königsberg. Sensing the danger, he gave up breakfast and sneaked outsid
e, but it was too late. “Don’t let this man run away!” Schwarzel implored the officers. Finally, one of them took his bicycle, chased Goerdeler down the street, and turned him over to the police. Helene Schwarzel won her blood money, one million marks, from Hitler personally.40

  After Keiser, Goerdeler was the last remaining connector, the sole missing piece. In a series of lengthy confessions, he told the story of the German resistance from beginning to end, giving the authorities, for the first time, a more or less full picture of it. Although he certainly tried to incriminate only himself and people who were already implicated or dead, his confessions harmed many.41 That cannot be explained away by fatigue, and even less by fear of torture (for which we have no evidence). According to his biographer and admirer Gerhard Ritter, who was held at the same prison, Goerdeler wanted to show the Nazis, and through them the entire world, that the members of the resistance were not “a small clique” of stupid and ambitious officers but an expression of the true will of the German people. He believed that through his confessions, the truth about himself, his friends, and their real motives would be recorded in history for generations to come: “In his eyes it was not a coup d’état of officers . . . but an uprising of an entire people, represented by its crème de la crème: the most noble, righteous people from all walks of life, the parties from right and left, and both Christian denominations.”42

  As with the other trials, Goerdeler’s was run by Freisler as a one-man show. The veteran anti-Nazi, throughout his adult life used to public speaking, could not stand being silenced by the judge every time he attempted to explain his motives. More than anything, Goerdeler wanted to be heard. Yet not even his own attorney would allow that. “His [the attorney’s] defense was a disgrace,” he wrote. “He came in the evening before the trial for 45 minutes to accuse me, but did not make the slightest effort to defend me from the espionage charge brought by the prosecution . . . None of us, the defendants, were permitted to finish even three whole sentences. The judge was almost speaking alone. We could not explain our motives. It was fixed ahead that we should be portrayed as stupid criminals devoid of honor.”43

  Until the last moment, Goerdeler was thinking of the future of the German people. His anxiety for the fatherland knew no bounds: no longer could it be saved by conspiracy and revolt. In his despair, he wrote imaginary peace terms to the Western Allies, which he hoped to smuggle from prison and pass on through the Swedes. He put his hopes in people who were long dead. He even asked for a personal interview with Hitler, feeling that there might be the slightest chance that he could divert him, even a bit, from his insane course. Indeed, Goerdeler’s adherence to enlightenment ideology was extreme. His belief in the power of reason and rationality was carried to thoroughly irrational lengths. As observed by Klemens von Klemperer, “All that he had striven for in the past decades had now, at the threshold of a cruel death, come to naught. An outcast in his own country, he could no longer expect even to be heard abroad. From his utter loneliness he kept sending out into the void what were in effect appeals and incantations.”44

  Some of these desperate appeals were indeed intended for the world. “God knows,” he wrote, “that I risked everything only to save the youth, the men and the women of all countries from further misery. Oh, God, where is the answer to the riddle? The criminals win.”45 Other appeals were for his family. The ghost of his beloved son, who fell in the war, came to haunt him yet again. Now he was tormented that he had failed to spend enough time with him, and with Anneliese, his wife. “How much pain did I cause my beloved wife in 25 years!” he wrote. “Anneliese, my dear Anneliese, do you hear me? Yes, now I understand why you were jealous and angry at times. I deprived you of the daily happiness of our great and passionate love, and yet—[this love] was the power keeping me going.”46

  There was yet another problem—that perennial, bleeding “Jewish question.” Few Germans spoke up against the Holocaust, or stood up for their persecuted countrymen, as loudly and clearly as Goerdeler had. Even fewer tried to stop it by a coup d’état, as Goerdeler had, with fatal consequences for himself. Still, he felt that all his efforts had been ignored, unregistered—and that tormented him. His irrational belief in rationality and reason was even more glaring here. Yes, he felt, there was enormous hate. True, millions had been exterminated. But could people not try, at least try, to use reason and arguments to bridge the gap between both sides? In a way deemed extremely insensitive to Jews after the Holocaust, he tried to convince each side to recognize its own mistakes, called for the Jews and the Western leaders to forgo revenge, and denounced the Holocaust one last time, hoping to form the basis for future reconciliation:

  I hereby implore the statesmen and the nations to accept as atonement our death, the death of our women and children, the death of hundreds of thousands of noble Germans whose love of fatherland was abused, the destruction of our cultural assets and our towns, and to give up vengefulness and revenge . . . Jews, do not fan the flames. If someone respects you and your history, as the only nation centered around the alliance with God and his laws—I am the one. You, too, deserve an independent state, where every Jew will have citizenship. The farsighted people among you warned many years ago, that you should keep away from the internal problems of other nations. Now give a hand to reconciliation . . . you will see, that I, inside Germany, have done my best to protect you. It was painful for me, this inhumanity in which Hitler persecuted and exterminated you. These [crimes], as well as my pain over the misuse of my people, moved me to do what I have done . . . Let my people atone for the wrong it committed with the terrible wrong it has suffered. If you think and behave in such a noble way, you will be blessed with the fruits of your labor.47

  Subsequently, he reckoned one more time with the abhorrent Führer:

  This war was criminal . . . Hitler wanted it, seized by megalomania and lust for glory. His hands are red with the blood of innocent Jews, Poles, Russians and Germans who were murdered and starved. The blood of millions of soldiers from all nations is on his conscience. So God will justify us in judgment and grace for trying to rid the world of a vampire, a defiler of humanity . . . They [the Nazis] scarified the homeland to Moloch, and tried to dethrone God for their racial madness . . . The world has never seen such ruthless, inhuman atrocities. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered by [Hitler], some shot, others poisoned and strangled in gas, and yet others starved to death: husbands in front of their wives, wives in front of their husbands, children in front of their parents, and parents in the desperate gaze of their children . . . German men, young Germans, were forced to perform these orgies of horror. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, Ruthenians, Ukrainians and Slovenians were expelled from their homes, their property looted while they were murdered or left to starve. Hundreds of thousands of Russians were starved to death on Hitler’s orders . . . I myself love my homeland with all of my heart, and for that very reason I feel the entire ignominy of its shame, which was—like never before—brought upon a people by its own citizens.48

  This memorandum, like many others by Goerdeler, was smuggled from prison by a sympathetic guard. It was published only after the war.

  Goerdeler was finally condemned to death in early 1945, along with Popitz and other conspirators. For a few weeks, Himmler delayed his execution and toyed with the idea of sending him as a peace feeler to the Western Allies. Goerdeler, who wanted to save his life and perhaps even do something for the fatherland, was ready to cooperate. But he wanted to do it as a free man, and Himmler would not hear of it. In February 1945, Goerdeler was hanged. A short time earlier, the Social Democratic leaders Adolf Reichwein, Julius Leber, and Wilhelm Leuschner were hanged as well. “Tomorrow I go to the hangman,” said Leuschner to his Social Democratic and conservative friends. “Unite!” This was a fitting epitaph to a life devoted to cooperation between anti-Nazi left and right.49

  Even some of those who had turned against the conspiracy were not spared. Gen. Friedrich Fromm, the man responsible f
or the execution of Stauffenberg, Beck, and three of their colleagues, was arrested on the same night. He was tried and found guilty of cowardice. The court recognized that there were some mitigating circumstances and therefore spared Fromm from the hangman’s noose. Instead, he faced a firing squad. To the soldiers who shot him he said, “I fought for Germany, I worked for Germany. Long live Germany! Fire!”50

  In the west, the noose had tightened around Rommel and Kluge. Colonel Hofacker, Stauffenberg’s broker in Paris, was probably tortured and mentioned Rommel’s name. From Hitler’s point of view, that was enough. He decided that it was dangerous to let Germany’s most famous war hero face the People’s Court, and preferred to get rid of him quietly. In early January 1945, the field marshal was convalescing from his injuries at home when there was a knock on the door. Two generals who were close to Hitler had come to give his terms to Rommel, once his most beloved military leader. The three went together to a private room, and there the two told Rommel that the Führer knew everything about his involvement in the conspiracy. Now, he had two choices: either to end his life by poison and win a hero’s funeral and pension for his family, or to face the People’s Court with all the consequences that entailed. Rommel chose the first option.

  “I have come to say goodbye,” he told his wife Lucie-Maria.

  In a quarter of an hour I shall be dead . . . They suspect me of having taken part in the attempt to kill Hitler. It seems my name was on Goerdeler’s list to be president of the Reich . . . I have never seen Goerdeler in my life . . . They say that von Stülpnagel, General Speidel, and Colonel von Hofacker have denounced me. This is the usual trick . . . The Führer has given me the choice of taking poison or being dragged before the People’s Court. They have brought the poison. They say it will take only three seconds to act.