On 22 July 1944, two days after Stauffenberg’s bomb exploded at Rastenburg, an article appeared on page 4 of The Times of London. In the small hours of that morning, the article reported, shortly after German radio stations had closed down for the night, a broadcast was picked up on Frankfurt’s wavelength. Emanating mysteriously out of the war-torn darkness, the voice of an unknown and unidentified German officer issued a defiant proclamation:
Achtung, comrades. Achtung, soldiers. Achtung, listeners in Germany. Stand by for an announcement of the utmost importance.
My comrades, the death of Klaus [sic] von Stauffenberg sounds the clarion call to action, the call to battle with all means at our disposal, the call to us German officers to go on fighting until Hitler has been destroyed. Today Hitler has been forced to admit that sections of the German Officer Corps—those who are decent and honest—have taken their stand against him. He can no longer deny today that the German officers have gone over to organise resistance against him.
If he tries to paralyse this fight of resistance, and attempts to speak of ‘a small clique of traitors and destroyers’, let him know this much for certain—there is more than one Stauffenberg, there are more than a hundred, these Stauffenbergs are here in their thousands.
My comrades, the German officers with us are officers who have kept their uniforms clean and for whom honour and duty have remained fixed principles. These are our men. I call today on those officers who have not yet established contact with us, wherever they are stationed, at the front or in the reserves, no longer to obey the orders of Hitler and his henchmen.
Whose was that lost voice? For all one knows, it may simply have been a ploy of Anglo-American or Russian propaganda, though one would like to believe it genuine. In any case, and despite the voice’s assertion, there were not, unfortunately, enough Stauffenbergs left in 1944 to make the decisive difference. But as the spectre of Nazism emerges to haunt Europe today, let us hope that this time there will indeed be enough Stauffenbergs to exorcise it.
Notes and References
When not cited here, the full bibliographical details are to be found in the Bibliography.
Introduction
1 Kramarz, Stauffenberg, p. 100.
2 Ibid., pp. 101-2.
3 Leber, Conscience in Revolt, pp. 260-1.
4 Herwarth, Against Two Evils, pp. 215-16.
5 Zeller, The Flame of Freedom, p. 175.
6 Ibid., p. 274.
7 About twenty P-40 fighter-bombers from the US 33rd Fighter Group were attacking the German retreat. Two were shot down by ground fire. See Shores, Fighters over Tunisia, p. 297; also Maurer, Airforce Combat Units of World War II, pp. 86-7. The fullest account of this retreat and Stauffenberg’s injuries is given in Hoffmann, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Brüder, pp. 294-6.
8 Zeller, op.cit., p. 183.
9 Ibid.
10 Kramarz, op.cit., p. 105.
11 Ibid., p. 104.
12 Zeller, E., Geist der Freiheit, German edition: München, 1965, p. 361.
13 George, Werke, p. 258.
14 Zeller, op.cit., p. 277.
1 The German Resistance
1 Hoffmann, Hitler’s Personal Security, pp. 268-9.
2 The most comprehensive account of German Resistance is Hoffmann’s magnificent The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945.
3 Ibid., p. 75.
4 Ibid., p. 77.
5 Halder said during his interrogation after the war, on 25 February 1946:
‘May I make a personal remark. I am the last male member of a family which for 300 years were soldiers. What the duty of a soldier is I know too. I know that in the dictionary of a German soldier the term treason and plot against the State does not exist. I was in the awful dilemma of one, the duty of a soldier, and another, the duty which I considered higher. Innumerable of my old comrades were in the same dilemma. I chose the solution for the duties I deemed higher. The majority of my comrades deemed the duty to the flag higher and essential. You may be assured that this is the worst dilemma that a soldier may be faced with.’
See Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement B, p. 1563.
6 Gisevius, To the Bitter End, p. 312.
7 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, pp. 92-3. The members of this raiding party are given in ibid., p. 561, n.101. A leading planner of this attempted execution of Hitler was Major-General (as he was later) Hans Oster, Chief of Staff to Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr—Military Intelligence. See ibid., p. 255. Oster was also co-ordinating various German contacts with the British Government before the outbreak of war. He fell under strong suspicion and was dismissed from the Abwehr in April 1943. He was arrested on 21 July 1944 and hanged for his part in the conspiracy against Hitler on 9 April 1945.
Oster said, ‘One might say that I am a traitor but in reality I am not; I consider myself a better German than all those who run after Hitler. It is my plan and my duty to free Germany, and at the same time the world, of this plague.’ See Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler, p. 196.
8 For a detailed exploration of the resistance’s attempts to interest a wilfully ignorant British Government in their cause see Meehan, The Unnecessary War. See also Lamb, The Ghosts of Peace, pp. 246-89, and Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1943, pp. 54-68, 104-21, 153-72.
9 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 93.
10 Ibid., pp. 96 and 99.
11 Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement B, pp. 1557-8. For a detailed discussion see Meehan, op.cit., pp. 170-86.
12 Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power, p. 459.
13 Ibid.
14 Extract from an interview with Colonel-General Hammerstein which was supplied to the authors by Axel von dem Bussche, December 1992.
15 John, Twice Through the Lines, p. 44. Beck and Hammerstein both wanted a restoration of the monarchy. See Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 189, also p. 220.
16 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 260.
17 Ibid., pp. 278-9; see also Herwarth, Against Two Evils, p. 249; Schlabrendorff, The Secret War against Hitler, pp. 230-1.
18 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 282.
19 Schlabrendorff, op.cit., p. 236.
20 Ibid., p. 237.
21 Ibid., pp. 238-9. See also Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, pp. 283-9; Zeller, The Flame of Freedom, pp. 163-4.
2 Operation Valkyrie
1 Balfour, Withstanding Hitler, p. 109. Professor Balfour adds: ‘People whose motivating influences are patriotism and Christianity are not nowadays likely to wade through rivers of blood in the hope of reforming society.’
2 Ibid., p. 109.
3 Kramarz, Stauffenberg, p. 132.
4 Ibid., p. 25; Hoffmann, ‘Claus von Stauffenberg und Stefan George: Der Weg zur Tat’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft , Bd. 12, 1968, p. 540.
5 Kramarz, op.cit., p. 126.
6 Now Margarethe, Gräfin von Hardenberg. See Meding, Mit dem Mut des Herzens, p. 103.
7 Hoffmann, in Large, Contending with Hitler, p. 127.
8 Hoffmann, Hitler’s Personal Security, pp. 63, 74-5.
9 Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, p. 661.
10 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, pp. 323-8.
11 Ibid., pp. 328-9.
12 Ibid., p. 374.
13 Zeller, The Flame of Freedom, p. 292.
14 Hoffmann, in Large, op.cit., p. 126.
15 Ibid., p. 127.
16 Zimmermann and Jacobsen, Germans against Hitler, p. 156.
17 Zeller, op.cit., p. 232.
18 Schlabrendorff, The Secret War against Hitler, p. 277.
19 Kramarz, op.cit., p. 110.
20 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 374.
21 Zeller, op.cit., p. 191.
22 George, The Works of Ste
fan George, trans. Marx and Morwitz, p. 398.
23 Galante, Hitler Lives—And the Generals Die, p. 6.
24 Zeller, op.cit., p. 292.
25 Ibid., p. 432, n. 31.
26 Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung, p. 117.
3 In the Wolfs Lair
1 Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung, p. 399.
2 Zeller, The Flame of Freedom, p. 304.
3 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 409.
4 Ibid., p. 419 for the first sentence, which was crossed out—perhaps to protect the signals staff who would have been hard-pressed to explain why they dispatched it in the original form. The remainder of the message is in Zimmermann and Jacobsen, Germans against Hitler, pp. 131-2. For a discussion regarding the alterations see Hoffmann, ibid., p. 681, n. 39.
5 Hoffmann, ibid., p. 422.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 422.
8 Interview with Dr Otto John, Berlin, 8 October 1992.
9 Schlabrendorff, The Secret War against Hitler, p. 287.
10 Zeller, op.cit., pp. 307-8.
11 Schlabrendorff, op.cit., p. 288.
12 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 424.
13 Gisevius, To the Bitter End, p. 544.
14 Ibid., p. 545.
15 Hoffmann, German Resistance to Hitler, p. 128.
16 John, Twice through the Lines, p. 151.
17 The Times, 21 July 1944, p. 4.
18 Interview with Ludwig von Hammerstein, Bonn, 7 December 1992, and further clarification 8 March 1993. Hammerstein said that the shooting was between Captain Klausing and Lt-Colonel Herber who was in the office of Olbricht’s secretary. Herber also shot and wounded Stauffenberg.
Hammerstein served in the 9th Infantry Regiment of Potsdam. His father had been the Commander-in-Chief of the German army until 1933 and had known and despised Hitler since the late 1920s. The Hammerstein family lived in a private apartment in the Army Headquarters in the Bendlerstrasse.
On 20 July Hammerstein and other young officers were given duties in Stauffenberg’s section at the Army Headquarters. Hammerstein had not made any preparations in case the coup should fail. However, a fellow officer told him to remember the Swedish diplomats, saying that they could perhaps get him out.
Late in the evening, when it was known that Hitler had survived and when the dispute broke out between Stauffenberg and other Staff officers that led to a brief exchange of gunfire, Hammerstein saw that it was over. As a soldier he knew that, if the battle was lost, it was better to flee rather than to give up. He knew the huge and complicated Headquarters building well because he had lived there as a child, and so was able to escape and go to his home. He told his mother that it was finished and that he had to go underground. Unfortunately he left his pistol and his maps in the Bendlerstrasse.
In the neighbourhood lived an elderly couple and their daughter whose officer husband had died in Russia. Hammerstein knew that they opposed Nazism and had, at considerable risk to their lives, given refuge to fugitive Jews. He went to them and asked if they would hide him. They agreed and so he stayed, together with a Jewish woman who was already in the house.
Hammerstein remained there until April 1945. He recalled that during this time he was visited by a man who had been living for two years in the underground and had become very organised. He arrived with a box containing all the requisite tools to make a forged photo pass, food coupons and other vital documents. By this stage of the war, there were many people living underground in Berlin.
Hammerstein was present when the city fell to the Russians: as they entered, all the residents simply stood in their doorways quietly watching the army advance up the street. The Russian soldiers approached the civilians in a very friendly manner and took all their watches: in return they gave cigarettes and cigars.
At one time, when Hammerstein was arrested, he was taken to the local Russian commander. Hammerstein explained that he was an officer who had taken part in the 20 July plot. The Russian officer clearly knew about this and proceeded to mark it in Russian on Hammerstein’s driving licence—the only document he had. From this time on, he had no trouble passing through any of the checkpoints.
19 Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945, p. 507.
20 Ibid.
21 Wolf, ‘Political and Moral Motives behind the Resistance’, The German Resistance to Hitler, p. 195.
22 Zimmerman and Jacobsen, op.cit., p. 297.
23 The Times, 24 October 1992, p. 10.
24 For extracts from Himmler’s speech at Posen on 3 August 1944, where this doctrine of Sippenhaft is explained, see Zimmermann and Jacobsen, op.cit., p. 195.
The doctrine of Sippenhaft was applied to all the families. We spoke to Gottliebe von Lehndorff during 17-18 September 1992. Her husband, Lt Heinrich von Lehndorff, owned a huge estate, Steinort, in East Prussia which had been in his family for 600 years. He had a substantial country house, one wing of which had been taken over by Ribbentrop and his SS guards as their field headquarters. The estate contained the OKH headquarters, Mauerwald, and was close to the OKW headquarters at the Wolfsschanze.
Lehndorff was serving with Tresckow in the Central Army Group on the eastern front and had been part of the conspiracy ever since he had seen an SS man kill a baby by beating it against a wall. This took place at the beginning of the invasion of Russia, 1941. On his next leave home he told his wife about the shocking murder he had witnessed and said that he was fully involved in opposition to Hitler. He asked if she was with him in this. The duty assigned to him by the conspirators was to find more members, to talk to people and draw them in.
Stauffenberg twice visited Lehndorff at his estate: in order to speak freely the two of them would drive about the estate in a horse-drawn coach, reasoning that the noise would make eavesdropping impossible.
Lehndorff’s task in the coup was to act as OKH liaison officer Königsberg—to make sure that the orders from Berlin Army headquarters were carried out and to report back on events.
On 20 July he had gone to Königsberg but, after the failure of the coup, had returned home. He was very depressed and talked of killing himself. The next day, at 9 a.m., two open Mercedes cars arrived bearing eight SS men. They asked for him at the door. Lehndorff, hearing this, jumped out of a first-floor window and ran away, bare-footed, into the forests on his estate, running through water when the SS started tracking him with German shepherd dogs.
Two days later Gottliebe von Lehndorff received a telephone call from him saying where he was and that she should come and collect him in a car. Suddenly black cars, bristling with guns and SS, swept up: they had been tapping her phone. They drove off and captured her husband, taking him to prison in Königsberg. He decided not to escape for fear of what might happen to his wife and children. They had three daughters, and Gottliebe von Lehndorff was pregnant with her fourth.
Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie Page 34