Much was made of the fact that the cavalry leader operated on the same level as his men, not above them like the mounted infantry officer. To be a cavalry leader was, for Stauffenberg, less a utilitarian business than a state of mind, a constellation of spiritual qualities:
More than any other arm of the service, cavalry is dependent on the quality of its leaders. Without great generals, without real cavalry leaders, cavalry is no more than an expensive impediment. The qualities of a cavalry leader are inborn and are vouchsafed only to a fortunate few ... Even those fortunate few only rise to full stature in conjunction with their arm of the service; only in their arm are they ultimately inspired to act in the true cavalry spirit—it almost seems as if only a genius in the art of war is capable of recognising the cavalry as the arm designed for major strategic tasks.2
While the qualities of the cavalry leader might be inborn, they nevertheless had to be cultivated and refined. This, Stauffenberg insisted, could only be ‘the fruit of long training, which cannot begin early enough’.3
Stauffenberg of course identified himself with his own idealised conception of the cavalry leader. In an earlier century, he undoubtedly would have become one. Certainly he displayed the traits of gallantry, charisma, panache and audacity associated with the great cavalry commanders of the past—Prince Rupert of the Rhine in the English Civil War, Friedrich von Seydlitz in the wars of Frederick the Great, J. E. B. Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest in the American War between the States—but if Stauffenberg exhibited something of their flamboyant style and flair, he exhibited nothing of their impetuous recklessness. His own real forte was to be logistics, the ability to grasp an ‘overview’ which is the hallmark of the greatest commanders, and the practical, hard-headed business of keeping an army supplied and maintained over long distances.
Whatever his own romantic attitudes towards cavalry and cavalry commanders, Stauffenberg remained in other respects lucid and pragmatic. He frequently criticised the General Staff’s mentality, arguing that they concentrated too much on tactics, not enough on logistics, on military economy and technical matters. They seemed to regard war as something conducted in a social, political and economic vacuum—like a boxing match, or like two warriors of legend meeting in single combat, oblivious to the context in which their engagement took place. Stauffenberg endeavoured to counter this blinkered vision by studying on his own, concentrating on material neglected by his instructors. To his extensive reading, he now added Keynesian economic theory and geopolitics. Influenced by Keynes, he began, for a time at least, to ascribe the catastrophes of the twentieth century—the First World War, for example, and the revolution in Russia—to economic factors. He stressed in particular the shift of Europe’s industrial centre of gravity from Britain to Germany, and the effect on British markets of Germany’s pre-1914 economic expansion. While at the General Staff College, he became particularly friendly with an American exchange officer, the future General Albert Wedemeyer, who, in 1944, would become Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese army. Stauffenberg and Wedemeyer often invited each other to meals or cocktails at their respective homes. Stauffenberg would practise his English with the American officer, and put to him probing questions about such matters as American steel production and its greater volume than Germany’s. He expressed admiration for Roosevelt and the drastic measures adopted by the American president to revive the country’s economy after the Depression. In these discussions, Wedemeyer later reported, Stauffenberg often displayed an implicit disapprobation of National Socialist policies.4 He could hardly, of course, have made any overt statements.
It was noted, however, that he began to grow more reticent, more reluctant about putting his own positions forward. Such, at any rate, was the case so far as contemporary politics were concerned. On the past, he remained loquacious, often slipping historical allusions into his conversation. During a cavalry exercise on the mountain of Hohentwiel, overlooking Lake Constance and the Rhine, he regaled his companions with a vivid description of the far-flung Hohenstauffen empire, ‘in the centre of which you are now standing’.5 His last exercise at the General Staff College again took him to his native region, where he
used the occasion to persuade the group to pay a joint visit to the Imperial cathedrals on the river. He acted as leader. At the end of the trip, he made a speech on the Rhine in which he evoked the region’s century-old history. Then, turning to a time when national states would have passed away, he forecast a new rôle for the Rhine as the main artery of Europe. Of the past he spoke not like an intellectual observer but seemed more of a co-actor, one who had been there himself and now was called upon once again to make decisions. Thus his portrayal of the past became a living example for the present.6
During this same speech, he cited the ancient antipathy between France and Germany. The Rhine, he prophesied, was a river of destiny, where a decisive battle would be fought for hegemony of the West. He also expressed his fear that the self-inflicted wounds resulting from such a conflict would leave Western Europe morally, ethically and spiritually bankrupt. Western culture, he argued, had not collapsed after the First World War only because the final climactic engagement on the Rhine had been averted. Whether such an engagement could be averted in future was an open and worrying question. And what, he asked portentously, if new developments gave the fledgling great power to the east an opportunity to take a hand in the struggle . . .?
During his stay at the General Staff College, Stauffenberg, through an old associate from Stefan George’s circle, made the acquaintance of a scholar and historian, Professor Dr Rudolf Fahrner, who was working at the time on an ambitious biography of Stauffenberg’s own ancestor, Field Marshal August von Gneisenau. It was thus inevitable that the two men would have much to say to each other. Stauffenberg was particularly stirred by Fahrner’s description of Gneisenau as an officer ready to play a significant rôle in matters of state and governmental reform: ‘His was not a spirit prepared to bow to what to others might seem the inevitable; his mind was busy thinking how, by his own exertions, a man might liberate Prussia.’7 And Stauffenberg made no secret of his desire to model himself on Gneisenau. At the same time he urged Fahrner not to depict the nineteenth-century commander as too conventional a revolutionary, nor as the instigator of nothing more than a popular rising. As always, Stauffenberg insisted on the importance of leadership to impart coherence and direction to unleashed collective energies:
Any revolt against the state and its leaders is no business of the irresponsible mass of the people and should not therefore even be discussed in too wide a circle. If the use of force against one’s own state is unavoidable, it must be confined to men conscious of their responsibilities and, even more important, capable of meeting them.8
In our own strenuously egalitarian age, such assertions must sound shamelessly and outrageously ‘elitist’, but a Wehrmacht officers’ mess in the 30s was a very different environment. In any case, Stauffenberg’s personal magnetism enabled him to get away with statements that would have been offensive coming from others. ‘His charm and ease made one forgive his forceful and uncompromising manner; and his ruthless will was made bearable by his cheerful calm, which allowed no pathos ... he always smiled as he spoke.’9 But Stauffenberg’s charisma consisted of more than just a surface effect.
What impressed observers most strongly was that he always saw a problem in its entirety and based his judgement of details on this secure foundation. People from quite different walks of life were his close friends. They were all actively involved in intellectual and artistic pursuits ...10
By this time, he had overcome the illnesses which had plagued his boyhood and youth: ‘his nerves and health, which he certainly did not spare, were enviable’.11 He would often work for as long as sixteen hours a day, impressing others by his powers of concentration. This aptitude for maintaining concentration while dealing with a multitude of things at once was to become one of Stauffenberg’s personal trademarks, so
mething on which, throughout his career, colleagues and eyewitnesses consistently and repeatedly commented. A vivid account has been provided by his fellow officer Erwin Topf during the French Campaign of 1940:
The ‘Q’ conferences which he held were unforgettable. In general they did not take place at any set time; gradually the section heads, the commanders of special detachments and the liaison officers arrived. Stauffenberg, tall, slim, lively, and a man of extraordinary personal charm, would welcome us all with genuine infectious geniality; he would make sure that everyone had something to drink, a cigar or a pipe. He would give us the latest information, ask questions and take interest in apparently trivial matters, tell the latest stories covering the whole divisional area from the reconnaissance detachment back to the field bakery, jump from one subject to another, listen to or ask questions of the latest arrivals. This would go on apparently for ages, and none of our questions had been answered, none of our dispositions made for the next day or even for the next few hours, and no orders issued. Then quite casually and conversationally would come the words, ‘Well then, I think we’ll do it this way.’ And then in all its detail out would come the ‘Q’ order, Stauffenberg with his left hand in his trouser pocket, a glass in his right hand, wandering thoughtfully about the room, stopping at one moment here, at another moment there, and then going back to the map. He did not issue a formal order as one would have expected from a General Staff officer; he was in no sense hidebound.12
Colonel Bernd von Pezold isolated the characteristics underpinning this impressive aptitude for man-management:
He was capable of seeing several moves ahead in the chess game and taking account of all the various alternatives. He was quick to grasp a situation, to sort out the important from the unimportant, and could spot the decisive factor with unerring intuition. He was capable of logical abstract thought and possessed a lively imagination, which, however, never led him to overstep the bounds of practicability ...13
With the rank of captain, Stauffenberg completed his course at the General Staff College in the summer of 1938, his abilities having become known by all senior officers of the Wehrmacht. He was requested by the Organisation Section of the General Staff, but the request was turned down on the grounds that there were already enough ‘strong characters’ in the section, and his appointment might ‘disturb the balance’ between it and others. In consequence, on 1 August 1938, he was posted as staff officer in charge of logistics to the 1st Light Division based at Wuppertal, just east of Düsseldorf. His commanding officer was Lieutenant-General Erich Hoepner, later to be one of his most active co-conspirators.
The Light Division was a hybrid formation, a compromise intended to reconcile the intrinsic conservatism of the Wehrmacht’s high command with Hitler’s insistance on the accelerated expansion of armoured units. It comprised two regiments of motorised infantry, one reconnaissance regiment, one artillery regiment and one tank battalion with supporting arms. Later, on the outbreak of war, this conglomeration would be dismantled, and the Light Division would be reconstituted as the 6th Panzer Division.
Stauffenberg’s brief was to organise logistics for the entire division. Since it had never previously had a logistics section, he had to start from the beginning and build one from whatever he could improvise with his own resources. A colleague of Stauffenberg described him at work, with
the office door wide open, puffing happily away at a black cigar, striding up and down the room, dictating the most complicated reports straight onto the typewriter. Despite frequent interruptions by visitors and telephone, he would continue his report at the precise point of interruption.14
On 23 September 1938, the Light Division received its orders for the thrust into Czechoslovakia. Four days later, it moved to its assembly area near the Czech border. The infamous Munich Conference of 29 September removed all barriers from Hitler’s path of aggression, and snatched away from the army’s high command their justification for overthrowing him. Between 1 and 10 October, German troops proceeded to occupy the Sudetenland. The situation was formalised on 20 November, with Czechoslovakia ceding to Germany 11,000 square miles of territory, with a population of 2,800,000 Sudeten Germans and 800,000 Czechs. A month before, however, on 21 October, Hitler had secretly ordered the Wehrmacht to prepare to occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia as well. This new aggression began on 15 March 1939. Although a flagrant breach of the Munich Agreement, it was accepted as a fait accompli by the Western Allies and went unchallenged.
The Light Division crossed the Czech frontier on 4 October. Its objective was to prevent Sudeten Germans from occupying the region on their own initiative, but this was simply a pretence to mask a full-scale invasion. By 9 October, the division had reached the town of Mies, where the German-speaking population welcomed each vehicle with jubilation and flowers. At Nurschan, however, just before Pilsen, the reception from the Czech population was markedly more hostile. It was unclear whether Nurschan belonged to the zone ceded to Hitler’s Reich. Pending an answer to this question, a Czech staff officer, supported by the British mediation commission, demanded that German troops leave. The Light Division’s command replied brusquely that any areas occupied by its soldiers could not be relinquished, despite the principle of self-determination according to which territory had been ceded.
The area occupied by the Light Division consisted primarily of farmland, where agricultural methods were primitive and there was little literacy, a low standard of living. Even greater poverty prevailed than in the adjacent forests and mountains. As the puny Czech army mobilised for its futile gesture of defiance, all activity in the region came to a standstill. With everything being requisitioned, there was a dearth of horses and vehicles for harvesting and ploughing. Supplies from elsewhere in Czechoslovakia had ceased altogether, and those from Germany arrived only slowly.
As commander of the Light Division’s logistics section, Stauffenberg embarked on a programme characteristic less of an invasion than of a modern United Nations aid and relief effort. At the Mies town hall, he called a meeting of divisional officers and local authorities, and forced them to co-operate with each other. There being no yeast available for bread-making, he instructed the division to buy yeast in Germany and deliver it to the local people. He placed a platoon at the disposal of an estate manager to help bring in the potato harvest and store the wheat harvest—a rather humbling experience, one suspects, for swaggering German soldiers intoxicated by dreams of martial glory. He commandeered two trucks from Germany to help breweries in the region distribute beer. For transport vital to the vicinity’s economy and population, petrol was supplied at cost price. Stauffenberg also elicited the support of district authorities in taking measures against an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. When a shortage of brown coal threatened a glass factory with a work stoppage and the loss of four hundred jobs, he dispatched the factory manager to obtain coal from Army Group Headquarters in Karlsbad; and he again made the division’s resources available for moving it.
In the meantime, butter and milk from the area, destined for Pilsen, were in danger of going bad, and inhabitants of Pilsen were unable to obtain the essentials they required. Here, too, Stauffenberg took measures to alleviate the situation. He distributed safe-conduct passes for working people, thus effectively and single-handedly opening the frontier for supplies, and he arranged, once again, for his own troops to distribute supplies to needy areas.
It was also necessary to crack down on German personnel. Sudeten Germans were desperately in need of German currency—German marks—and the Wehrmacht’s officers and men seized the opportunity to purchase goods at shamefully cheap prices. Stauffenberg was indignant at this exploitation. He obtained an order forbidding all large-scale purchases. Commodities already purchased, even by officers of superior rank to himself, had to be returned.
On 16 October, its mission in Czechoslovakia completed, the Light Division moved back into Germany, returning to its base at Wuppertal. Stauffenberg’s high spirit
s were exemplified by his antic handling of the exercise assigned to his section. This exercise—described by one commentator as ‘a witty and sarcastic burlesque for the senior officers’—was purely theoretical, involving no actual troops, only paper. It posited a hypothetical armoured force, looking neither to left nor right, driving straight ahead, with single-minded concentration, to the Urals. As logistics officer, Stauffenberg undertook to concoct the most improbable means of keeping the force supplied, culminating in a strategy based on reductio ad absurdum. When the force ran out of fuel in the Ukraine (as, of course, it was bound to do), he suggested the immediate capture of Baku, where a land pipeline was laid. His motto for the operation was: ‘The eye of their master makes the cows fat.’15 On one level, this was intended as a zany non-sequitur of the sort now associated with Monty Python, but it incorporated an implicit ambivalence of meaning which must have had more than a few officers scratching their heads in perplexity.
Stauffenberg’s exhilaration after the Czech invasion stemmed less from any triumphalist sense of conquest than from the fact that war had been averted—a war for which he, like all other professional military men, recognised Germany was not ready. The ‘peaceable’ occupation of Czechoslovakia seemed to confirm Hitler’s resourcefulness in diplomacy, his capacity to obtain what he wanted through a combination of bluff and negotiation, without having to shed blood.
Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie Page 17