Hindsight can discern only too clearly how tragically myopic such a view was, but at the time there seemed abundant evidence to support it. In 1935, for example, Hitler had ordered the Wehrmacht into the Rhineland, officially a demilitarised zone. The operation was undertaken by a diminutive probing force, a mere three battalions; and at the slightest indication of French resistance, they were under orders to withdraw at once. According to documents produced at the Nuremberg trials, each German soldier had only been issued with three rounds of ammunition.16 Yet the bluff had worked. The French, who could easily have thwarted the German incursion, shrank from the prospect of confrontation and did nothing.
The audacious gamble in the Rhineland had been followed, on the night of 11 March 1938, by the annexation—the Anschluss—of Austria. Here again, German aspirations had been fulfilled, German morale and self-respect had been tremendously boosted and war had been averted. Shortly after the Anschluss, Stauffenberg had stated to a friend his conviction that Hitler would not do anything to risk a full-scale conflict. The friend (being in the national defence section of the General Staff and therefore privy to more information) intimated otherwise. Stauffenberg remained adamant, pointing out that everything so far had been managed without recourse to arms. He had no doubts whatever of Hitler’s determination not to incur bloodshed:
a man who was always emphasising that, as a corporal in the First World War, he knew only too well the horrors of war, could not, with his eyes open, head for a war which would in all probability have to be waged against the entire world.17
Events in Czechoslovakia seemed only to reinforce this belief. They had, it was true, entailed some precarious brinksmanship, but that appeared only to prove that Hitler had accurately taken the measure of British and French leadership, and knew precisely how much he could get away with.
All the same, Stauffenberg was now beginning to have misgivings and forebodings. He worried that the effortless success of the Czech occupation might go to Hitler’s head and lead, on the next occasion, to a serious miscalculation. His general uneasiness was soon to be reinforced by events within Germany. On 9 November 1938, shortly after the Light Division had returned to German soil, there occurred the notorious Kristallnacht. Two days before, in Paris, a young Jewish refugee, bent on avenging his father’s deportation to Poland, had shot an official of the German Embassy. In retaliation, Goebbels arranged for a series of ‘spontaneous demonstrations’. Jewish property was to be destroyed. As many Jews as possible were to be arrested on whatever grounds could be contrived. The police were instructed not to interfere with any displays of ‘healthy’ anti-Semitic sentiment.
Altogether, some 7,500 Jewish shops were looted, 195 synagogues were partially or completely vandalised, and 20,000 Jews were arrested. The murder of Jews went unpunished. Retribution was visited only on those who raped Jewish women, since this violated the racial laws. The insurance money of the Jewish community was confiscated, and the community was fined a billion marks as a penalty for having provoked the disturbance. As Dr Hans Bernd Gisevius, one of the later conspirators, wrote:
The conclusions that were forced upon every thinking German were grim and depressing indeed. Not a single general had had the impulse to bring out his troops and see to the clearing of the streets. The army leaders had played deaf and blind. The meaning of this is clear. Everyone had long since given up hope that the cabinet would ever do anything. From whom could decent Germans now expect protection if these horrible excesses were followed by others? ... the cowed middle class stared at the Nazi monster like a rabbit at a snake. A general psychosis had been created, under which the populace was reduced to absolute submission.18
Stauffenberg was mortified by Kristallnacht. The outrage marked a decisive turning point in his attitude towards the National Socialist régime. To his military colleagues, he commented only on the purely pragmatic repercussions: the damage done to Germany’s honour and reputation in the eyes of the world. His primary objections, however, were personal and moral. His own brother, Alexander, was now married to a woman of Jewish ancestry, Melitta Schiller. Jewish members of George’s circle, some of them among his closest friends, were now under threat. The government and the Führer to whom he had taken his oath of allegiance were suddenly beginning to appear ugly in the extreme.
While based at Wuppertal during the early months of 1939, Stauffenberg would often invite a circle of junior officers to his quarters where he would organise, conduct or preside over discussions and lectures intended to widen his colleagues’ intellectual horizons, In January 1939, the guest speaker at one of these sessions was Dr Rudolf Fahrner, the scholar and historian he had met while at the General Staff College. Fahrner was still at work on his definitive biography of Gneisenau, and this was to be the subject matter of his lecture. Stauffenberg gave a brief introduction which, albeit obliquely, alluded critically to current events in Germany. Fahrner then spoke for two hours. When the presentation had concluded, Stauffenberg, with a laugh, said pointedly of his illustrious Napoleonic ancestor: ‘There, you see. Now we have learned how he did things.’19 What he meant by the way Gneisenau ‘did things’ will become apparent in due course.
Following the lecture, Stauffenberg and Fahrner went outside and walked for a time together in the nearby forest. Fahrner expressed profound anxiety about the situation prevailing in Germany, and particularly about Kristallnacht and the intensifying virulence of Nazi anti-Semitism. He probed Stauffenberg for some information on the Wehrmacht’s attitude towards such developments. According to Fahrner, Stauffenberg spoke freely about the plans for overthrowing Hitler which had been thwarted by the Munich Agreement. He then spoke of possible alternative plans and enumerated which generals would be prepared to support a coup. He cited Beck as the man around whom resistance would have to coalesce, the key figure to oppose National Socialism from within the Wehrmacht, even though Beck had recently been replaced as Chief of the General Staff. About a number of other senior commanders, he expressed an embittered pessimism, fostered in part, no doubt, by their passivity on Kristallnacht: ‘you cannot expect people who have broken their spine once or twice to stand up straight when a new decision has to be made’.20 As for Hitler, Stauffenberg’s previous optimism had now utterly vanished. It was clear, he said, that ‘the fool is bent on war’ and was ‘prepared to squander the flower of [Germany’s] manhood twice in the same generation’.21
By the autumn of 1939, of course, all speculation would be swept aside by events, and the Wehrmacht, like the German nation as a whole, would be too flushed with martial success to contemplate any change of course. The spirit of the times is expressed convincingly by Thomas Mann’s narrator in Doctor Faustus:
War, then, and if needs must, war against everybody, to convince everybody and to win ... that was what fate had willed ... We were bursting with the consciousness that this was Germany’s century, that history was holding her hand out over us; that after Spain, France, England, it was our turn to put our stamp on the world and be its leader; that the twentieth century was ours ... 22
On 4 September 1939, Hitler’s military machine smashed its way almost effortlessly into Poland. Equipped now with 250 Czech-built Skoda tanks, the Light Division was part of Colonel-General Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South, striking from Silesia. Rundstedt’s forces formed one arm of a giant pincer movement, the other being composed of Army Group North, under Colonel-General Fedor von Bock, moving down the Polish corridor. The Light Division quickly captured Wielun, just across the German-Polish border, then raced east towards the Vistula, parallel to the retreating Poles. At Radom, south of Warsaw, it turned northwards to link up with other German units and encircle seven divisions. In a report of 10 September, Stauffenberg compared the German pincer movement to that of Tannenberg in 1914, when Hindenburg and Ludendorff triumphantly encircled an entire Russian army.
At the same time an ominous shadow hung over the German success. By a crossroads near Wielun, news had first reached di
visional headquarters of the Anglo-French declaration of war. Albeit reluctantly, Hitler’s bluff had this time been called, and the prospect of full-scale conflict had become reality. The morale of the troops plummeted. Stauffenberg grimly prophesied a struggle of attrition exceeding even that of 1914-18: ‘My friends, if we’re to win the war, it will depend on our capacity to hold out; for a certainty this war will see out ten years.’23
The capture of Wielun provoked the first of many squabbles Stauffenberg was to have with the military hierarchy, and especially with the mentality seeping into the army from the SS. Two women were arrested by a sergeant-major. They had allegedly been signalling with electric torches from the ground floor of a house, directing the aim of Polish artillery on German positions in the town. It was immediately obvious to Stauffenberg that the two women were simple-minded and could not have been doing anything of the sort. Having hidden in the house, they were merely crawling about with their torches, terrified by the barrage. These facts would have become sufficiently clear in any properly conducted enquiry, but the officer in charge only glanced at the women and in an offhand manner instructed the sergeant-major to ‘get rid of them’. It is probable that he meant no more than for the women to be taken or chased away, but the sergeant-major interpreted the instruction as a licence to shoot them. Outraged, Stauffenberg began proceedings to have the officer court-martialled, even though he was an old friend.24 Sloppy slapdash orders and the wanton shooting of civilians might be accepted procedure in the SS, whose infamous Einsatzkommandos—‘rapid reaction’ death squads—had already begun to operate.25 Authorised to murder indiscriminately anywhere behind the front lines, they were already provoking revulsion among regular soldiers, but insofar as he could do anything about it, Stauffenberg was not going to countenance such behaviour in the officer corps of the Wehrmacht. The matter was too important in his eyes to make allowances even for personal friendship.
The Polish campaign involved the Wehrmacht’s first serious large-scale venture with mechanised formations, and it revealed complications, never made apparent in exercises. Due to inadequate preparation and an excessive reliance on improvisation, operations were beset by an extremely poor supply situation. Had Poland managed to hold out longer, or had she been reinforced, it is questionable how long the German Blitzkrieg could have been sustained. There were other, unforeseen difficulties as well, problems never properly considered by the military planners, such as feeding vast numbers of prisoners or providing the civilian population with sustenance.
For Stauffenberg these matters were a severe test of his organising abilities and aptitude for logistics, and extended his activities far beyond those officially dictated by his rank and position. At the end of the campaign he issued a questionnaire to all ranks, from privates up to the divisional commander, which covered everything from facilities for treating the wounded to possible improvements needed in weapons and equipment. After studying the results of his survey, Stauffenberg synthesised them into a comprehensive report.
After completing his own work, he would always make a point of offering himself to the divisional commander for other jobs. In part, this served an educational purpose for him, enabling him to extend his own spheres of expertise and gain familiarity with a broad spectrum of responsibilities and tasks. He was grooming himself for senior command. At the same time, more as a byproduct at first than anything else, he began to find others increasingly dependent on him, prone to confide in him and seek out his advice. He began to assume the rôle that he would perform more and more often during the course of his career—that of ‘father confessor’ to men far senior in rank and age. And by establishing so close a rapport with his divisional commander, he became probably the best-informed officer in the entire division. Anyone having business with the commander, anyone seeking his ear or desiring a favour, had first to deal with Stauffenberg.
In all this Stauffenberg was not simply pursuing his own personal ambition. Immediately after the Polish campaign, he met his uncle, Graf Nikolas von Üxküll, and one of Üxküll’s friends, Fritz von der Schulenburg, deputy president of Upper and Lower Silesia. Üxküll described the ever more alarming situation in Germany. Stauffenberg, he insisted, must do something—must act or, at very least, set about attaining a position from which action would become possible. At the moment, of course, no such action was feasible. With the best will in the world, Stauffenberg pointed out, a mere divisional logistics officer could not very well initiate anything of consequence. Nevertheless, he was left shaken and thoughtful by his uncle’s appeal, feeling ‘impotence, perhaps also vexation at the thought that this apparently mighty and victorious army was incapable of ensuring that the state maintained reasonable standards of decency’.26
No doubt much of the energy he displayed reflected Üxküll’s injunction to attain a position enabling him to act. He now began to question whether traditional concepts of loyalty to a state, or a government can be valid unless subordinated to some higher ideal; and whether duty towards the nation and allegiance to the state were not only different, but also, in the existing context, incompatible.
In February 1940, the important post of Operations Officer for the division became vacant. That Stauffenberg would be appointed to fill it seemed a foregone conclusion. Somewhat mysteriously, and to everyone’s angry surprise, he was bypassed and the position conferred on another captain, Helmut Staedke. For the first few days, Staedke found himself ostracised, confronted by a united front of surly hostility. Despite his own disappointment, Stauffenberg came to Staedke’s aid, smoothing things over for him. He displayed a similar generosity towards other colleagues. He spent many evenings helping one young subaltern prepare for the military district examinations. At Christmas, 1939, he relinquished his leave to enable a fellow officer to spend the holidays at home.
On 18 October 1939, a week after withdrawing to Germany from Poland, the Light Division had been reconstituted as the 6th Panzer Division. By the following spring, it was poised for the decisive German thrust into France. Together with the 19th Panzer Division under the famous Heinz Guderian, it comprised the 41st Panzer Corps. This corps, along with other units which included one SS division, was part of a detached Panzer army commanded by General Erwin von Kleist, operating under the overall authority of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.
At four o’clock in the morning of 10 April 1940, the Blitzkrieg began, with German paratroops seizing bridges and airfields in Holland and Belgium. For some five weeks, the bulk of the fighting was concentrated in the extreme west, on Dutch and Belgian territory. Then, on 10 May, the Panzer army struck in a direction entirely different from the other German advances. Its tanks and motorised infantry drove south-west, through the Ardennes, which French military planners had deemed impenetrable to armoured formations. The French were caught off guard, and on 13 May, Guderian’s division, closely followed by 6th Panzer, broke through their defences at Sédan, the site of Germany’s greatest victory in the Franco-Prussian War exactly seventy years before. In a mere seven days, the German armour had swept two hundred miles westwards to the French coast, then swung north to link up with German units advancing through Belgium. Boulogne fell on 25 May, Calais a day later. British lines of communication were cut, and the whole of the British Expeditionary Force was threatened with encirclement. On the evening of 26 May, the evacuation from Dunkirk began and continued until 5 June. Some 338,000 British soldiers were rescued, along with 120,000 French, but more than a million Allied troops were taken prisoner. France was left with only 65 depleted and demoralised divisions to face 140 German. The campaign lasted another fortnight. On 11 June, the French government declared Paris an open city and fled to Bordeaux. On 14 June, German troops goosestepped triumphantly down the boulevards of the French capital. On 17 June, France capitulated and the articles of surrender were formally signed five days later at Compiègne, where the Treaty of Versailles had been signed twenty-two years earlier. Stauffenberg appears to have been less exhilarated t
han sobered, even saddened and shaken, by the magnitude and completeness of the French collapse. In a letter from field headquarters on 19 June, he wrote to his wife: ‘The French débâcle is frightful. They have been totally defeated and their army annihilated, a blow from which this people is unlikely easily to recover.’27 Two days later he wrote again, in an even more sombre and meditative mood. France, he mused, had succumbed to a false sense of security after her victory in 1918. A similar fate might easily befall any nation which became too complacent about its accomplishments.
A week from today is the anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles. What a change in so short a time: while rejoicing over our triumph, we should cast our minds back over the three decades through which we have lived and realise how little finality has been reached; abrupt change or indeed a complete reversal of the situation is more probable than even a few years of stability. We must teach our children that salvation from collapse and decay lies only in permanent struggle and a permanent quest for renewal; the greater our past achievements, the more essential renewal becomes. We must teach them, too, that stagnation, immobility and death are synonymous. Only then shall we have fulfilled the main part of our task of national education.28
In the middle of the French campaign, Stauffenberg himself had experienced a dramatic change of fortune. On 27 May—a day after his division had captured Calais and the British evacuation at Dunkirk had begun—he learned he was to be transferred from 6th Panzer to the General Staff. This was a significant advancement, and an indication that his merits had been recognised in high quarters, but at first it struck Stauffenberg as ‘dismal news’. He had developed a taste for combat against a worthy adversary, yet he, as well as everyone else, was quick to recognise that with the General Staff he was truly in his element. It was with the General Staff that he was to spend the next two and a half years. In this milieu, at the very centre of the chain of command, he was to prove himself. During that time his attitude was to harden and his determination crystallise—Adolf Hitler had to be overthrown.
Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie Page 18