With the Allies enjoying air supremacy, as well as control of the Mediterranean, no German equivalent of Dunkirk could even have been contemplated. But while the army itself could not be saved, it was still possible for individual commanders, senior officers and other important personnel to be rescued. An ill and depressed Rommel was invalided home shortly after his withdrawal from Mareth. Claus von Stauffenberg was booked for a flight back to Italy, whence he would be re-assigned to a new posting. He himself had recognised that the North African campaign was irretrievably lost. Not caring to spend the duration of the war as a prisoner, he had requested a transfer, maintaining he could be of greater use elsewhere. No one disagreed with him, for Stauffenberg was universally recognised as the single most brilliant and promising young officer in the entire Wehrmacht. There seemed little question that he was destined for high command, eventually for a field marshal’s baton. It was said that he had the capacity ‘to inspire the Army and the General Staff with a new spirit and to compete with the narrow military point of view’.3 One of his colleagues observed: ‘What surprised me was the manner in which those who surpassed him in rank recognised his natural superiority and yielded to it.’4 In the view of one of his commanders, he was ‘the only German Staff officer of genius’.5 Heinz Guderian, the mastermind of German armoured warfare and architect of Panzer formations and the ‘Blitzkrieg’, was soon to put Stauffenberg’s name forward as most likely candidate for Chief of the General Staff.6
On the day that the Anglo-American forces advancing from the west joined up with the 8th Army, Stauffenberg was helping to organise the German retreat towards the Tunisian coastal town of Sfax. His staff car was manoeuvring through a lengthy file of other vehicles and demoralised soldiers on foot when the entire column came under strafing attack from a squadron of American P-40 fighter- bombers.7 The road was at once transformed into an inferno of blazing vehicles, each of which, as it burst into flames, provided another easily discernible marker for the low-flying aircraft. As his driver threaded a path between the gutted hulks, Stauffenberg stood upright in his staff car, issuing orders and directing such lorries as still remained mobile. Then, he himself became a target for one of the P-40s’ .50 calibre machine-guns. Hands covering his head, he hurled himself out of the car as the bullets struck home.
He was found, half-conscious, beside his overturned, burnt out and shell-pocked vehicle. His injuries were appalling. His left eye had been hit by a bullet, his right seriously damaged as well. His right forearm and hand had been virtually shot away, as had two fingers on his left. One knee was badly wounded and his back and legs were pitted with shrapnel. In this condition, he was rushed to the nearest field hospital, at Sfax. Here, he received emergency treatment. The remnants of his right hand were amputated above the wrist. The little finger and ring finger of his left hand, and what remained of his left eye, were removed.
Three days later, as Montgomery’s troops advanced on Sfax, Stauffenberg was transferred to another hospital at Carthage—a difficult and extremely painful journey, with the ambulance under constant attack by Allied aircraft. From Carthage, he was flown to Munich. He was running an alarmingly high temperature, and most of the doctors concluded he was unlikely to live. If, by some miracle, he did, he was unlikely to walk again. He would probably be permanently crippled, an invalid for the rest of his life. He might also be blind.
His head, arms and legs swathed like a mummy’s in bandages, he was visited in hospital by an array of distinguished officers, who, during the previous years of both peace and war, had come to esteem him. They included the Chief of the General Staff, Kurt Zeitzler, who brought him a decoration, the Golden Badge for the Wounded, and a personal gift of wine. ‘The large number of high-ranking visitors calling on the lieutenant-colonel caused astonishment at the military hospital.’8
Stauffenberg was also visited by his mother, by his wife, Nina, and by his uncle, Nikolaus, Graf (Count) von Üxküll-Gyllenband, as well as by other relatives. To Üxküll he confided that he felt his survival had not been coincidental; his life, mutilated though it might now be, had been spared for some specific purpose, some ordained design.
‘You know,’ he said to Nina on one occasion, ‘I have a feeling I’ve now got to do something to save the Reich. As General Staff officers, we all share the responsibility.’9
To a friend, the son of his surgeon, he stated: ‘I could never look the wives and children of the fallen in the eye if I did not do something to stop this senseless slaughter.’10
To Üxküll and a number of others, he was even more incisively determined: ‘Since the generals have so far done nothing, the colonels must now go into action.’11
From childhood, Stauffenberg had cultivated self-discipline and a tenacious application of will—a fierce concentration of inner resources, psychological or spiritual, whereby, as he saw it, flesh could be mastered and transcended. These resources were now to be augmented by a consuming sense of mission. The first step for Stauffenberg was to rehabilitate himself. He set about establishing a personal supremacy over physical pain, affirming what he regarded as his spiritual identity in defiance of the body’s ordeals. While the surgeons laboured over him, he adamantly refused all pain-killing drugs, all soporifics, anaesthetics and sedatives. Even the official Gestapo report speaks admiringly of the ‘great will-power’ with which he embarked on his recovery.
Grievous though his injuries had been, Stauffenberg remained hospitalised in Munich for no more than two and a half months, from 21 April until 3 July. As early as the end of April, his recovery was being pronounced ‘remarkable’, and he wrote to a friend, General Friedrich Olbricht, that he hoped to be ready for duty again by August. Despite the dire prognostications to the contrary, he recovered the use of his right eye. With the two fingers and thumb of his left hand, he taught himself laboriously to write. In the sleeping compartment of a train, shortly after he had discharged himself from hospital, a fellow officer, pitying his condition, offered to help him change clothes. Stauffenberg chuckled and, in a matter of moments, had undressed and dressed himself again, employing three fingers and his teeth. When the hospital asked him to return to have an artificial limb fitted, he replied that he had no time for such matters. When an artificial limb was suggested by a friend, he laughed and again dismissed the idea. He could scarcely remember, he said, what he’d done with all ten fingers when he still possessed them. He insisted on regarding his injuries as no more than a minor inconvenience, training himself to function as normally as possible, even to ride horseback—and, when later circumstances so required, to activate a bomb.
Stauffenberg would not let himself be demobilised either. He declared his intention not only to remain in the army, but to resume active duty and even to get posted to the front. Almost at once, he was besieged by senior commanders seeking to woo him to their staff. He chose a position as Chief of Staff in the Allgemeine Heeresamt, the General Army Office, one of the departments of the Reserve Army based in Berlin. The Reserve Army consisted of all troops stationed on German soil, within the precincts of the Reich itself. The task of the General Army Office was to supply materiel, as well as trained replacements, to the Reserve Army, which could then transfer them to the appropriate theatre of operations. Such replacements consisted of new recruits, wounded who had recovered, workers withdrawn from industry, over-age and under-age volunteers.
Stauffenberg’s immediate superior at the General Army Office was Colonel-General Friedrich Olbricht, with whom he had corresponded in April; and it has been suggested that he and Olbricht had already come to a secret understanding. In any case, there were reasons for Stauffenberg wanting to be attached to Olbricht’s department. Through his own network of connections, he knew it to be a clandestine hotbed of officers militantly opposed to Hitler and the National Socialist régime. These officers had begun to act in close concert with another cadre, led by one of the most dynamic young commanders on the Eastern Front, Major-General Henning von Tresckow, whom Stauf
fenberg had known since at least the summer of 1941. Under Tresckow’s auspices, an embryonic plan had been formulated for using the Reserve Army as the nucleus of a coup. The General Army Office was the vital connecting link between the Reserve Army and Tresckow’s circle on the Eastern Front.
By mid-August 1943, some five weeks after discharging himself from hospital, Stauffenberg was in Berlin. Here, he began actively conspiring with Tresckow, then on leave; and when Tresckow returned to the Eastern Front, leadership of the conspiracy in Germany devolved almost entirely upon Stauffenberg. The pace of events quickened when, on 1 October, he officially assumed his post as Chief of Staff at the General Army Office. He was now based at the building on the Bendlerstrasse which served as headquarters for the Reserve Army.
Energy, resourcefulness, determination, eloquence, charisma, an irresistible magnetic charm and an infectious sense of humour—all the qualities Stauffenberg had previously employed in his wartime tasks were now directed towards conspiracy. From his house in a Berlin suburb, shared with his brother Berthold, he proceeded to consolidate the requisite network of contacts, as well as to familiarise himself with the civil and military measures which seizure of power would entail: proclamation of a state of emergency, arrest of Party officials along with SS and Gestapo personnel, occupation of ministries, railway depots, communications centres, strategic installations and access roads. It was a dauntingly arduous and complex undertaking, yet Stauffenberg’s unflagging stamina—especially in a man so recently and terribly wounded—seemed to his colleagues almost superhuman. Tirelessly, he moved through the upper military and administrative echelons of the Reich, screening prospective supporters, probing, evaluating, interrogating, arguing, recruiting—always with a ready laugh, an apparently slapdash cavalier insouciance, a mesmerising force of character and will that seldom failed to win people over.
‘Let me be blunt,’ he declared to one young officer whose services he wished to recruit. ‘With all the resources at my disposal, I’m committing high treason.’12
In meeting with co-conspirators, he would often recite fragments from the work of Stefan George, his former mentor, who had died in 1933 and is, after Rilke, probably the greatest German-language poet of the century. In particular, he would quote from a poem entitled ‘Der Widercrist’ (‘The Antichrist’), which George had published—with what now seemed uncanny foresight—in 1907:
The high Prince of Vermin extends his domains;
No pleasure eludes him, no treasure or gain.
And down with the dregs of rebellion!
You cheer, mesmerised by demoniac sheen,
Exhaust what remains of the honey of dawn,
And only then sense the débâcle.
You then stretch your tongues to the now arid
trough,
Mill witless as kine through a pasture aflame,
While fearfully brazens the trumpet.13
On 6 June 1944, history’s most ambitious sea-borne invasion swept half a million British, American and Canadian soldiers ashore in Normandy. The repercussions were soon to give Stauffenberg his long-sought opportunity. Colonel-General Fritz Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, had been out of favour with Hitler for some two years. Now, on 7 June, owing to a particularly impressive report Stauffenberg had composed for him, Fromm was summoned to the Führer’s headquarters above Berchtesgaden, at the Berghof in the Bavarian Alps, and Stauffenberg accompanied him.
It is often assumed or asserted by historians that the meeting at the Berghof was Stauffenberg’s first personal contact with Hitler. A photograph published for the first time in this book proves they had met previously—at least as early as the summer of 1942, at Vinnitsa, German headquarters in the Ukraine. There Hitler, as always on encountering a new face, endeavoured to stare Stauffenberg down. In the past, his stare had always dominated others, forcing their eyes down or aside, but Stauffenberg remained uncowed, his eyes locking and holding the Führer’s. For the first time in the experience of those present, Hitler’s own gaze is said to have given way, growing veiled, jellied, then flicking furtively away—as if intimidated by a charisma, a magnetism, a force of will comparable to his own. Stauffenberg is said to have commented afterwards on this silent contest with typical self-confidence: ‘The man is a magician. He almost hypnotised me!’
Two years later, all vestiges of Hitler’s hypnotic power had evaporated for Stauffenberg. His own accounts of the meeting at Berchtesgaden reflect, above everything else, an overwhelming revulsion. To his wife, when asked whether Hitler’s eyes had been impressive or exerted any spell, he replied contemptuously: ‘Not at all. Nothing.’ They had only been ‘veiled’. Goering had been wearing makeup, and the whole atmosphere of the Führer’s headquarters had been ‘stale’, ‘paralysing’, ‘rotten and degenerate’. Only Albert Speer, the Minister for Armaments, had seemed normal. All the other members of the National Socialist hierarchy had been ‘patent psychopaths’. According to eyewitness reports:
Hitler, his right hand trembling, looking worried, suddenly cast a searching glance at Stauffenberg across the long table; then, after quickly reassuring himself that there was no danger, he again turned his attention to the reporting officer.14
From that day on, the Führer ordered a tightening of his personal security, and emphasised that all briefcases carried to conferences should be closely watched.
Whatever Hitler’s suspicions, the record of the dashing, one-handed and one-eyed officer was impeccable, his brilliance could not be disputed and endorsements from such senior commanders as Guderian could hardly be dismissed. On 20 June, he was seconded by Olbricht from the General Army Office to a position as Fromm’s deputy: he became Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army. Promoted to full colonel, he officially assumed his new post on 1 July.
Part One
THE BOMB PLOT
1
The German Resistance
History has been kind to the anti-German resistance in most of Nazi-occupied Europe. In part, of course, this is a consequence of Allied propaganda during the war itself. In the struggle for ‘hearts and minds’, much was to be gained by stressing the rôles of Free French, Free Polish, Free Czech and other forces fighting alongside those of Britain, the Empire as it then existed, and the United States. There were also vested interests, both during the war and afterwards, in stressing the activities of partisan organisations in occupied France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Greece and, after September 1943, northern Italy—activities ranging from smuggling Allied airmen to safety and transmitting messages to co-ordinating air raids, engaging in sabotage and conducting large-scale guerrilla operations. In the English-speaking world, even the most cursory account of the war will accord some notice to the work of the underground resistance; and there can scarcely be a cinema-goer or television viewer who has not seen at least one film revolving around resistance activities, from Scandinavia to the Balkans and Greece. Nor must one forget the actions of partisans within the former Soviet sphere of influence, and within the former Soviet Union itself.
The German Resistance, or ‘Widerstand’, has received altogether less attention from serious historians, and virtually no popular attention whatever. For most people, the Third Reich looms as a single sinister monolithic entity—the entire German population standing mesmerised, in docile thrall to Hitler’s spell. In some quarters, it may even come as a surprise that a German resistance existed at all. Although there will generally be a vague awareness of the abortive plot to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944, for most non-historians, this will figure only as it was depicted at the time by the Nazis themselves and by Allied propaganda—a single doomed flash-in-the-pan attempt at a coup d’état improvised, in slapdash and amateurish fashion, by a few disgruntled high-ranking officers. Even among the better-informed, the plot of 20 July is seen as nothing more than an ad hoc and bungled endeavour to remove Hitler personally, rather than a manifestation of a coherent, longstanding, wi
despread and well-organised resistance movement.
In fact, a subterranean and organised German resistance had existed since before 1938—before Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and the notorious conference in Munich which, according to Neville Chamberlain, promised ‘peace in our time’. This resistance consisted of senior military officers and civil servants, and international diplomats, jurists, intellectuals and men of letters. Some of these were among the most august and influential names in Germany. Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank and former Minister of Economics, was involved, as well as Julius Leber, refugee of concentration camps and chief spokesman for German socialism. There were Carl Gördeler, former Mayor of Leipzig, Ulrich von Hassell, former German ambassador to Italy, and Adam von Trott zu Solz, one-time Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and probably the most brilliant mind in the German Foreign Office. Eminent jurists like Counts Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Helmuth James von Moltke—cousins of the Stauffenberg family and founders of the intellectual ‘Kreisau Circle’—took part, as did Pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer, the internationally distinguished teacher, lecturer, scholar and theologian.
Among the military, the list is equally impressive. It starts with Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, beloved former Chief of the General Staff, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Chief of Military Intelligence, and goes on to involve at least eight senior commanders, including two other former Chiefs of the General Staff, two field marshals and the military governor of France, as well as numerous junior officers.
Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie Page 2