With Tresckow based at Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front, in the summer of 1943, the leadership of the conspiracy devolved almost entirely on Claus von Stauffenberg, a young lieutenant colonel who had served in the Afrika Korps as operations officer to Field Marshal Rommel, winning the German Cross in gold. Given Hitler’s reluctance to travel, both his assassination and the planning of Valkyrie required someone on the ground in Germany and, after being seriously wounded in Tunisia, Stauffenberg had been appointed to General Olbricht’s staff and was working at the headquarters of the Reserve Army in the centre of Berlin.
Aged thirty-six and strikingly good-looking, Stauffenberg was by all accounts an exceptionally courageous individual. As Ilse von Hassell wrote, he was ‘the only one with access to Hitler who had the moral courage and the conscience to carry out the coup in order to prevent the total destruction of Germany’.6 Like Tresckow and Hassell, he too came from a Prussian noble family. While Stauffenberg had initially admired Hitler’s military acumen and had been in favour of the invasion of Poland, he was outraged by Nazi atrocities against the Jews. A devout Catholic, he was also opposed to Hitler’s suppression of Catholicism and other religions.
Stauffenberg’s planning for Valkyrie was painstaking. Working late into the night from his house in a Berlin suburb, he put in place the civil and military measures which seizure of power would entail: the arrest of party officials, along with SS and Gestapo personnel; the occupation of ministries, railway depots, communication centres, strategic installations and access roads.7 Tirelessly, he moved through the upper military and administrative echelons of the Reich, searching out prospective recruits. But the one major obstacle remained: killing Hitler.
Already, in the first six months of 1944, Stauffenberg’s assassins had made two attempts. Early in February, Hitler was scheduled to attend an exhibition of military uniforms at the Berlin Armoury – the same location as Colonel Gersdorff’s attempt a year before. Knowing that 21-year-old Lieutenant Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist was due to show the Führer round the exhibition, Stauffenberg approached him to ask if he would volunteer as a suicide bomber. Kleist requested a day to think about it and to talk it over with his father, a vehement opponent of Hitler. The answer was categorical: under no circumstances must he miss this opportunity of fulfilling so vital a duty. ‘A man who doesn’t take such a chance will never be happy again in his life,’ his father said. Kleist’s chance, however, did not come. Repeatedly, Hitler rescheduled his visit to the exhibition, and in the end it did not take place.8
The second attempt came a month later. This time, Stauffenberg recruited Eberhard von Breitenbuch, a young cavalry officer who had regular access to Hitler through his job as aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Busch.fn1 Breitenbuch was due to attend a military conference at the Berghof, Hitler’s home in the Bavarian Alps, on 11 March. Rather than use a suicide vest, Breitenbuch, who was a crack shot, chose instead to shoot Hitler with a 7.65mm Browning concealed in his pocket – an equally suicidal mission given that Hitler’s security entourage would undoubtedly shoot back. As the doors to the conference room opened, he released the safety catch on the pistol, but at the very last minute he was barred from the meeting. The SS-Sturmbannführer who had just announced Hitler’s arrival stopped him with the words: ‘Today, please, no ADCs!’ Breitenbuch then had to endure a nerve-racking hour wondering whether his exclusion meant that his mission had been discovered.9
The breakthrough Stauffenberg had long hoped for came on 1 July when he was appointed chief of staff to General Fromm, the commander-in-chief of the Reserve Army. It meant that from now on he would have regular meetings with the Führer. Stauffenberg had four children, aged between four and ten, and another one was on the way; but after countless assassination attempts had failed, he decided that, as one of the few people with access to the elusive Führer, he would have to do the job himself.
Hassell was not directly involved in the planning of the attempts on Hitler’s life for the good reason that he did not have access to the target. But he was earmarked for the post of foreign minister or state secretary at the Foreign Office in the event the coup succeeded. At the end of 1943, he and Stauffenberg had discussed the composition of the post-coup government.10 Hassell’s ‘band of brothers’, with whom he had conspired to remove Hitler since the summer of 1939, were to lead the government: General Ludwig Beck was to be the new president or head of state, and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, chancellor. The names of all those in the future cabinet were written down – a list that would become a death warrant when it was found by the Gestapo.
At six in the morning on Thursday 20 July, a staff car arrived at Stauffenberg’s house at Wannsee to take him to Rangsdorf, a military aerodrome south of Berlin. He was with his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, and his brother, Berthold, a naval lieutenant.11 Berthold was only going as far as the airfield, but Stauffenberg wanted him there to ease the nervous tension; not a word could be said in front of the driver about the mission that filled their thoughts as they sped through the outskirts of the city.
The bomb, wrapped in a shirt in Stauffenberg’s attaché case, weighed about two pounds. Of the same type used in previous assassination attempts, it had a British fuse, which was operated by breaking a glass capsule filled with acid. This then dissolved the fuse wire, releasing the firing pin.12 Stauffenberg had been at pains to ensure that the fuse was of the thinnest wire; the acid would burn through it in ten minutes. This estimate, however, was only approximate. The speed with which the acid consumed the wire would be, to some degree, affected by temperature and atmospheric pressure.
A second bomb was concealed in Haeften’s briefcase.
The conference at the Führer’s headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia was scheduled for one o’clock. Ordinarily, the flight from Berlin was of some two hours’ duration, but there was a delay and Stauffenberg and Haeften did not land at Rastenburg until ten-fifteen.
At the airstrip, a car waited to convey them to Hitler’s compound, known as the Wolfsschanze (‘Wolf’s Lair’). A gloomy, forbidding place, it was situated, deep in a forest, some 50 miles east of the old Teutonic Knights’ capital at Königsberg.13 The low-lying swampy ground was the burial site for centuries of corpses. Here in 1410, the Battle of Tannenberg had been fought, and the Teutonic Knights, then at the height of their power, had suffered a shattering defeat. Napoleon’s Grande Armée had retreated through these marshes in 1813 and, at the outbreak of the First World War, two complete Russian armies, encircled and outmanoeuvred, had been forced to surrender to Hindenburg.
For 9 miles, the road from the airport ran through dense forest. The day was hot, with the temperature in the upper eighties, and both Stauffenberg and Haeften were sweating profusely. On the way they had to stop at three successive security checkpoints controlled by the SS, and show the special passes issued to them for the visit. The first gate, some 2 miles from the centre of the headquarters, gave access to an extensive minefield and a ring of fortifications; the second led to a large compound surrounded by electrified barbed wire.14 From this gate, it was 800 yards to another checkpoint, and from there a further 200 yards or so to the entrance to the innermost compound, Security Ring A, where Hitler lived and worked. The bunkers here – cube-like, windowless blockhouses, disguised with camouflage paint – were said to have walls and ceilings 20 feet thick, and SS guards patrolled the area constantly.15
While Stauffenberg and Haeften had no trouble getting into this menacing establishment, their concern was how they would bluff their way out once the bombs exploded. The plan was to depend on speed; Haeften was not attending the conference and his task was to make sure that their staff car was ready to leave as soon as the bombs went off.
Now, however, they had a two-hour wait to endure before the conference.
At eleven-thirty, Stauffenberg went over to Field Marshal Keitel’s office. Keitel was Hitler’s chief of staff and they went through the details of Stauffenberg’s presentation. Th
e official reason for his visit was to brief Hitler on the formation of two new East Prussian divisions which he had ordered on 19 July to help block the Red Army’s advance. As Stauffenberg reported on the status of the divisions, Keitel suddenly informed him that the briefing had been brought forward by an hour and was now scheduled to take place at midday. With only fifteen minutes to spare, Stauffenberg, blaming the heat and the humidity, asked if there was somewhere he might wash and change his sodden shirt.16 A deferential officer directed him to a cloakroom.
Haeften was waiting in the corridor outside and both men went into the room to prime the bombs. Missing his right hand, and with only three fingers remaining on his left, Stauffenberg used a specially adapted set of pliers to break the glass phial and connect the fuse, while Haeften prepared the other bomb.
They had only been in there for a few minutes when they were interrupted by a sergeant major. The briefing with Hitler was about to begin and he had been sent to fetch Stauffenberg. He said he would wait while he finished what he was doing. Later, he would testify that the two men were ‘busy with a wrapped parcel’.17
The interruption was the first setback; with time running out and the sergeant major standing over them, Stauffenberg and Haeften were unable to prime both bombs, and it was only by quickly slipping the inert device into his briefcase that Haeften prevented the sergeant major from seeing anything.
With the only activated bomb now in his own briefcase, Stauffenberg followed his escort out of the room knowing that, within ten minutes, it would explode.
The second deviation from the plan came moments later. Usually, military conferences were held in the Führerbunker. But, due to the heat, the location had been switched and the conference was now taking place in an adjacent map room. Whereas the subterranean bunker was a concrete structure, the walls of which would contain and maximize the blast, the map room was a wooden structure with ten large windows, all of which were open.18 A blast here would be significantly less lethal.
As Stauffenberg approached the hut, he asked the escorting officer to place him as close to Hitler as possible. He told him that, after being wounded in North Africa, his hearing was impaired and he wanted to ‘catch everything’ the Führer said.19
The conference had already begun when Stauffenberg arrived. The officer asked the men seated next to Hitler to move up and make room for him, then Keitel introduced him as the colonel who had come to report on the new divisions. After turning to acknowledge Stauffenberg’s salute, Hitler resumed the meeting.
Taking his seat some 6 feet from the Führer, Stauffenberg placed his briefcase on the floor and nudged it under the heavy oak table with his boot. Three minutes had elapsed since he had primed the bomb and it was due to go off in seven minutes. After waiting for another minute or so, he excused himself. He had to telephone Berlin, he explained. It was urgent. But he would return as soon as the call was over.
Once outside the briefing hut, he hurried to an office across the compound where General Fellgiebel, chief of signals at Rastenburg and a fellow conspirator, was waiting. As soon as the explosion occurred, Fellgiebel was to telephone Berlin to activate Operation Valkyrie, and then cut all communications from Rastenburg. This would isolate the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ from the coup d’état unfolding in the rest of Germany.
For three minutes, Stauffenberg and Fellgiebel waited in the office. Then came the single shattering explosion and a column of thick smoke rose into the air. Seconds later, Haeften appeared with the staff car. The priority now was to escape before the compound was sealed off. As they drove away, their car passed within 50 yards of the briefing hut; looking through the trees, it appeared to be gutted and stretcher-bearers were carrying bodies out.
By now, warning klaxons were sounding. A full security alert was in progress and sentries were being reinforced. Reaching the first gate, Stauffenberg and Haeften were in luck; they knew the sentry and, following a brief conversation, he raised the barrier and waved them through. At the second gate, after a short delay while their permits were checked, they were also allowed to proceed. But at the third and last checkpoint, an officious guard refused to let them pass: no one, he announced, was permitted to enter or leave the compound. Endeavouring to pull rank, Stauffenberg snapped at him in a ‘parade ground’ tone.20 Still the guard insisted he had to stick to orders. Desperate to get away, Stauffenberg snatched the telephone and rang the aide-de-camp to Rastenburg’s commandant.
‘Colonel Count Stauffenberg speaking from outer checkpoint south,’ he said.21 ‘Captain, you’ll remember we had breakfast together this morning. Due to the explosion, the guard refuses to let me pass. I’m in a hurry. Colonel General Fromm is waiting for me at the airfield.’
Without waiting for a reply, he replaced the receiver and turned to the guard. ‘You heard, Sergeant Major, I’m allowed through.’22 But the guard insisted on receiving the order personally and there was a further delay while he telephoned the commandant’s aide. At last, on being told that Stauffenberg could pass, he raised the barrier. The car set off to the landing strip, Stauffenberg ordering the driver to hurry. As they drove through the forest, Haeften tossed the second bomb out of the window. By one-fifteen, they were airborne and on their way back to Berlin.
14.
Shock registered on all their faces. It was almost one o’clock in the morning and Fey and the forty-strong staff of the Luftnachrichten-Regiment 200 were gathered in the Grand Salon at Brazzà. Some hours before, to allay rumours of Hitler’s death, Goebbels had transmitted an emergency broadcast, announcing that the Führer had narrowly escaped an attempt on his life. Now Hitler himself was due to make an announcement. The heat of the past week radiated from the walls of the airless room and sweat dripped off the men, who stood motionless in their grey uniforms. As they waited in silence, the only sounds were of the crickets in the garden, and the whine of mosquitoes, drawn by the light through the open windows.
Promptly, at the stroke of one, Hitler began his broadcast. Speaking in a low, faltering voice, he sounded tired and breathless. Fey could feel the men tense as they craned forward, struggling to catch his words, barely audible above the noise of the crickets outside.
‘My comrades, men and women of Germany,’ Hitler began.1 ‘I don’t know how many times plans and attempts have been made to assassinate me. If I speak to you today it is, first of all, so that you should hear my voice and know that I am unhurt and well and, secondly, that you should know of a crime unparalleled in German history.
‘A very small clique of ambitious, unscrupulous, and at the same time criminal and stupid officers concocted a plot to remove me, and with me the entire staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.’
Fey studied the reactions of the airmen as Hitler described the impact of the bomb, which had exploded just 2 yards from where he had been sitting; caught in the glare from the glass chandelier that hung in the centre of the room, their faces were drawn and anxious.
Hitler’s voice was stronger now and full of hatred. Repeatedly, spitting out the words, he denounced the conspirators. They were ‘a tiny gang of traitors and destroyers’, a small group of ‘filthy, ambitious, despicable creatures’ bent on ‘sowing seeds of despair’. Listening to him raging, Fey felt a surge of elation; the plot had failed but it had so nearly killed him. ‘A feeling of triumph stole over me. Here at last was a demonstration that there was still life in the heart of this nation of apparent slaves. There were still Germans with the courage and determination to sacrifice everything for a common cause.’
Hitler had escaped with a few minor burns and bruises.2 Within hours of the bomb exploding, he greeted Mussolini at the train halt below the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ for a meeting which had been arranged long before. On the short walk from the station to the forest camp, he told Mussolini what had just happened. Wearing a black cape, his right arm in a sling, and with cotton wool protruding from his ears, he led him straight away to the wrecked conference building. The interpreter who accompanied them
described the scene: ‘The door was shattered and its broken parts were leaning against the opposite wall of the hut.3 The room itself presented a picture of destruction … tables and chairs lying in splinters all over the place. The beams from the ceiling had crashed down and the windows, complete with frames, had been blown out. The big map table was just a heap of cracked boards and broken legs.’ Guiding Mussolini around the room, Hitler demonstrated how he was leaning over the table, resting his weight on his right elbow, when the bomb exploded.4 ‘The bomb went off just in front of my feet,’ he told him. He showed him the burnt trousers and the torn tunic of the uniform he had been wearing.
Mussolini, aghast that such a thing could occur in the heart of the Führer’s own headquarters, congratulated him on his momentous escape. Yet, for Hitler, this was no mere escape. ‘When I reflect on all this, it is obvious that nothing is going to happen to me,’ he replied.5 ‘Undoubtedly it is my fate to continue on my path and bring my task to completion. It is not the first time I have escaped death miraculously … What happened here is the climax! Having escaped death in so extraordinary a way, I am now more than ever convinced that the great cause which I serve will survive its present perils and everything be brought to a good end.’
It was the message Hitler wanted to convey to the German people. At the close of his broadcast to the nation, he returned to the theme of Providence: ‘Probably only a few can imagine what fate would have befallen Germany if the plot succeeded.6 I thank Providence and my Creator, but not because He has preserved me. My life is solely devoted to worry, to working for my people. I thank Him, rather, because He has made it possible for me to continue to shoulder these worries, and to pursue my work to the best of my abilities and according to my conscience. I see in it a sign from Providence that I must, and therefore shall, continue my work.’
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