Helmut Schmidt, later chancellor of Germany, also attended the trial, as a military observer. In his memoirs, Was Ich Noch Sagen Wollte (What I Wanted to Add), he recalled Hassell’s graceful demeanour: ‘When he was addressed by Freisler, he stood up and remained standing, and when Freisler had finished reading the charges, he sat down again.13 He remained expressionless and didn’t make any gestures … After the war I wrote to his widow. I saw it as my duty to tell her what a huge impression her husband had made on me in his last hours.’
In this letter to Ilse, written in June 1946, Schmidt concluded: ‘The whole trial was an example of Freisler’s swagger, blending Goebbels’ cleverness and loquacity with the jargon of the mob.14 That this process was full of mockery; that no witnesses were called to testify; that the official defence was only called the night before; that the defendants were not allowed to finish their sentences without being interrupted; that only what suited Freisler was brought up, was so depressing that I couldn’t bring myself to return the following day.’
Of her husband, he said: ‘He followed the trial with a distant look and a rigid expression, which told of his contempt for this court, and he gave his answers in the most sparing way without even glancing at Freisler.15 I believe that the SS chiefs in the viewing room noticed who the real winner was … You will understand, dear lady, that, from this moment onwards, the conflict between the recognition of what we were heading towards and the notion of a fulfilment of our soldierly duty towards the Fatherland, for which we were raised, became unbearable in us young officers.’
Hassell’s final statement in court was: ‘If a government plunges its country and its people into the abyss of a fearful catastrophe, it has a duty to hand over the reins, forthwith.16 The government is not the same as the people. The people are permanent, the government fleeting, but nevertheless responsible.’
Hassell and the nine other conspirators were condemned to death on 8 September. The sentence was carried out at Plötzensee prison within two hours of its being handed down.
He had no time to write to his children. But to Ilse, his ‘sunshine’, he left the following lines:
My beloved Ilsechen17
Thirty years ago today, I received the French bullet which I carry about with me still.fn3 On this day, too, the People’s Court pronounced its sentence and, if it is carried out, as I imagine it will be, it brings to an end the supreme happiness that I have known thanks to you. It was certainly too precious to last. At this moment I am filled with the deepest gratitude towards God and towards you. You are at my side and you give me peace and strength. This thought mitigates the searing agony of having to leave you and the children. May God grant that your soul and mine may one day be reunited. You are alive, however, and that is the great consolation I have amidst all my anxieties for you all, including the material ones; and, as regards the future of our children, knowing that you are strong and courageous – a rock, but a dear sweet rock, for them. Remain as you are, good and kind, and do not grow embittered. God bless you and Germany …
In deepest love and gratitude, I embrace you.
Your Ulrich
Hitler’s vengeance did not end with Freisler’s verdict. He wanted the condemned men ‘hanged like animals in the slaughterhouse’ and he wanted them to die slowly.18 The widows would receive notification of their husbands’ deaths through official channels followed by a bill for the execution of 585 Reichsmarks and 74 pfennigs.19, fn4 They were forbidden to put announcements of the deaths in the papers.
The method of execution Hitler selected did not, as in conventional hangings, break the neck.20 It was a slow and painful death by strangulation. On his express orders, the hangings were filmed so that he could watch them over and over, at his leisure. According to his architect, Albert Speer, in the days after, Hitler spent entire evenings watching the footage. Speer himself was invited to a showing, but declined in revulsion. The audience, he noted, consisted primarily of civilians and junior SS personnel. ‘Not a single Wehrmacht officer attended.’21
The utter bleakness of the executions, as the ten men were brought out to die under the bright lights of the cameras, is revealed in an account by one of the prison warders:22
Imagine a room with a low ceiling and whitewashed walls.23 Below the ceiling a rail was fixed. From it hung six big hooks, like those butchers use to hang meat. In one corner stood a movie camera. Reflectors cast a dazzling, blinding light, like that in a studio. In this strange, small room were the Prosecutor General of the Reich, the hangman with his two assistants, two camera technicians, and I myself with a second prison warden. By the wall, there was a small table with a bottle of cognac and glasses for the witnesses to the execution.
The convicted men were led in. They were wearing their prison garb, and they were handcuffed. They were placed in a single row. Leering and making jokes, the hangman got busy. He was known in his circles for his ‘humour’. No statement, no clergymen, no journalists.
One after another, all ten faced their turn. All showed the same courage. It took, in all, twenty-five minutes. The hangman wore a permanent leer, and made jokes unceasingly. The camera worked uninterruptedly, for Hitler wanted to see and hear how his enemies had died. He was able to watch the proceedings that same evening in the Reich Chancellery.
PART FIVE
* * *
16.
It was seven o’clock in the morning on Saturday 9 September – the day after Ulrich’s trial. Fey was lying quietly in bed when she heard an urgent knock on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Lieutenant Kretschmann marched in. His face was pale and he seemed very disturbed. He did not say a word; he simply stood there, his eyes shifting nervously around the room. After some seconds, Fey broke the silence.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ she said impatiently. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Luckily you’re at home’ was his terse reply.
‘But why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Didn’t you listen to the radio last night or early this morning?’ he asked.
‘No, how could I? I have guests in the house,’ she replied. ‘For goodness’ sake, tell me what’s happened?’
‘Your father has been arrested and executed. He has been hanged.’
Fey tried not to show any reaction, but as she struggled to retain her composure, her entire body began to shake. Without ceremony, speaking coldly and to the point, Kretschmann told her that, as the unit’s political officer, it was his duty to report her to the authorities. At his suggestion, Colonel Dannenberg had driven into Udine earlier that morning to inform the Gestapo that Ulrich von Hassell’s daughter was living nearby. She was to be kept under constant surveillance while they waited for instructions from Berlin.
Still shaking, Fey lay there, her mind racing. ‘My thoughts flew to the children. Were they in danger too? My father … I couldn’t allow myself to even think of it. I also realized at that moment that with Major Eisermann’s departure I had lost my protection. Eisermann would certainly have done things differently; he might even have helped me to escape with the children. But Dannenberg was of a different temperament; he would never have the courage to take such a decision on his own.’
Kretschmann was unable to tell Fey how long it would take Berlin to respond; but she knew her priority must be to remove all incriminating evidence while there was still time. Immediately, she thought of Detalmo’s letters from Rome; then she remembered he had been careful to write under the pseudonyms ‘Giuseppe’ and ‘Isabella’. Her own diaries, however, were extremely problematic. There were more than seven volumes, going back to her childhood in Rome. ‘I knew that if the SS found the diaries they would prove how much I hated the Nazis.’
Fey had some friends staying for the weekend. Pulling herself together, she told Kretschmann that, in the circumstances, it would be best if she asked her guests to leave. Allowing her a few minutes to dress, he walked out of the room. Straight away, Fey retrieved the diaries from a drawer in her desk, and put them into
a bag.
Later that morning, as she said goodbye to her friends, she managed to hide the diaries in their luggage while Kretschmann’s back was turned.
In Berlin, Hitler had charged Himmler with the task of wreaking vengeance on the families of the July plotters – ‘this brood of vipers’.
It did not take long for the man in control of the terror machine to invoke Sippenhaft – the doctrine of ‘blood guilt’. A principle of ancient Germanic law, obsolete since the Middle Ages, it was specifically revived by Himmler to punish the families of the conspirators. According to this doctrine, treachery was a manifestation of diseased blood, not only in the culprit himself but in his relatives too.1 They, therefore, were also guilty of the crime committed. ‘In consequence all are to be exterminated, to the last member of the clan,’ he announced in a speech to Nazi regional leaders on 3 August.
The following weeks saw the mass arrest of the relatives of those involved in the attempt on Hitler’s life.2 This even extended to grandparents, parents-in-law, brothers, sisters and children.
By the end of August the round-ups were complete. More than 180 Sippenhäftlinge – prisoners of kin – were in custody.3
Living under her married name in Italy, Fey, however, had escaped Himmler’s net. At the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin, the officials charged with identifying relatives of the key conspirators had failed to link her to Ulrich von Hassell.
It had taken the zealous young Lieutenant Kretschmann to bring her to the Gestapo’s attention. Once alerted, their response was immediate.
Shortly after ten o’clock – just three hours after Fey learned of her father’s execution – Colonel Dannenberg, accompanied by an SS official, arrived to take her away. As she gathered her things, Roberto and Corrado clung to her, sensing something was wrong. ‘I was horrified and desperate at the thought of having to leave the children, who were looking at me silently with frightened eyes. My only consolation was the presence of Ernesta and Mila, who I knew would look after them well, and with love. I told Ernesta to sleep in my bed in the children’s room, and I told Corradino and Robertino that I would be back in a few hours.’
Outside in the courtyard, the household staff and soldiers stationed at the castle had gathered to say goodbye. A little way off, over by the farm buildings, Fey noticed the estate workers were there too. ‘As I walked towards Dannenberg’s car escorted by the SS official, I passed the terrified faces of the Bovolenta family who were hanging out of their windows watching the scene. Other contadini families watched silently from doorways. Nonino was crying, as was Mila. The German soldiers looked on, their faces grave and disbelieving. Ernesta was not there as I had asked her to stay in the house with the children so they would not see me leave.’
Colonel Dannenberg drove Fey to Udine – a fifteen-minute journey during which neither of them, nor the SS official, exchanged a word. In the centre of the city, the car turned into a side street and drew up in front of a large palazzo, appropriated by the Gestapo for use as a headquarters. Situated behind the cathedral, it was a fine eighteenth-century building, ochre in colour, with carved stone balconies. Clouds of red geraniums spilled through the pillars of the balustrades. Looking up at the facade, Fey recognized it immediately as the home of long-standing friends of Detalmo’s family; she had dined there in the early years of her marriage.
As the SS official escorted her up the steps to the entrance of the building, a woman approached her. She was the wife of one of Udine’s leading lawyers and she was asking for help for her husband, who the Gestapo had recently arrested for defending a group of Jews. Roughly, the SS official pushed her aside, telling Fey that she was forbidden to speak to anyone. Helpless, and feeling humiliated by the woman’s initial assumption that she was in league with the Germans, Fey could only gesture that she was now a prisoner too.
Inside the palazzo, the Gestapo made Fey wait while they discussed what to do. The orders from Berlin were to hold her in solitary confinement in the local gaol. But in recent weeks the SS had arrested hundreds of men and women and the single cells were full. At this point – or indeed before she was detained – SS Police Chief Ludolf von Alvensleben, whom Fey had invited to tea on numerous occasions, could have revoked the order for her arrest. A fanatical Nazi, however, he had no sympathy for the July plotters, and after a long wait, the Gestapo drove her to the prison, where they handed her over to the nuns in charge of the women’s section.
Fey described the conditions: ‘There were 150 women prisoners in a space made for forty or fifty. The nuns who supervised us belonged to the order Ancelle della Carità (Handmaids of Charity) and had run the women’s section of the prison for years. As they had only dealt with criminals until a few months earlier, they were surly and rude. The “political” prisoners were indignant at being forced to share cells with ordinary criminals: in one of the larger rooms there were about forty women who had to sleep without blankets on the wooden floors. Luckily, I was put into a cell with just two others. There was only one toilet for all 150 women, which we were only allowed to use twice a day – and all of us together. For this purpose, the cell doors were opened and we had to form a long queue, waiting our turn on the filthy, primitive bowl.’
Saint Maria di Rosa, the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, had founded the Handmaids of Charity in 1840.4 Born in Brescia, an industrial town at the foot of the Alps, she had devoted herself since her youth to the care of the sick and the needy, turning down offers of marriage to look after the workers in her father’s textile mills. She ministered to them during the cholera epidemic of 1836 and established a women’s guild and a home for deaf children on her family’s estate. ‘I can’t go to bed with a quiet conscience,’ she once said, ‘if during the day I’ve missed any chance, however slight, of preventing wrongdoing, or of helping to bring about some good.’5
One hundred years on, the Handmaids of Charity failed to observe their founder’s principles. Pastoral care was kept to a minimum. The nuns neglected to clean the cells and the prison was overrun with mice and vermin. The one meal handed out each day was a meagre bowl of soup. To spare the nuns the effort of having to provide anything more substantial, prisoners were allowed to receive food from relatives and friends and to order in from nearby restaurants. Nor did the Handmaids appear concerned for the souls of those under their care. Most of the women in the wing had been imprisoned because their neighbours had denounced them; they had little or no idea why they were there. In founding the order, Saint Maria’s aim had been to ‘prevent wrongdoing’ and to offer spiritual guidance.6 Yet the nuns made no attempt to intervene with the Gestapo on the women’s behalf, nor did they offer spiritual counselling.
‘The job the nuns did best was pray,’ Fey recalled. ‘They began in the morning and prayed incessantly, before and after the meal, while going to the toilet, during daily “recreation” in the courtyard, in the afternoon – always praying. At eight o’clock in the evening, the Handmaids went from cell to cell, opening the small windows in the doors and mechanically intoning “Sia lodato Gesù Cristo” [Praised be Jesus Christ], to which we would answer, “Sempre sia lodato” [Always be praised]. There was a small chapel where, every morning, we gathered to celebrate Mass. Everyone attended the Mass; it marked a change from the tedium of our routine as we were able to leave our cells. While the continuous and mechanical praying got on one’s nerves, the Mass itself was beautiful and it soothed the heart and lifted one’s spirits.’
To Fey’s surprise, Lieutenant Kretschmann came to visit her on her first day in the prison. He brought with him some bread and a roast chicken sent by Nonino. His manner was unctuous, his courtesy disarming. He was keen to impress upon her how much she was missed at Brazzà; straight-faced, without betraying a hint of guilt at his own culpability, he told her that his soldiers were so shocked and saddened by her arrest that they had stopped working and had all got drunk. He also told her that he and Colonel Dannenberg were doing everything they could to secure her relea
se.
Almost every day, one or the other visited. They brought food and books, and assured her that they would get her out of ‘this hell’ before too long. To begin with, she found their attention infuriating. They were responsible for her incarceration. So how could they dare to visit proffering false comfort? But as the days passed, she was convinced by their concern. The two officers appeared to be working hard on her behalf, and their efforts to secure her release seemed to be genuinely motivated by remorse. Further, no one else was allowed to visit her, and it was consoling to be able to speak to someone from the ‘outside’.
On 19 September, after Fey had been imprisoned for ten days, Kretschmann and Dannenberg succeeded in persuading the Gestapo to allow her to return to Brazzà. It was on the condition that she would be kept under close surveillance until further orders were received from Berlin.
When Fey arrived home, the airmen and servants were lined up on the drive. Corrado and Roberto were there too. As the car pulled up, they rushed forward to greet her. Straight away, Kretschmann escorted them inside, allowing Fey to spend the rest of the day alone with the boys: ‘The elation of seeing the children was indescribable. Corradino was quiet but kept hugging me and crawling into my arms. When I began to cry at the joy of being with them again, he said: “Mama is crying. Corradino wants to help Mama.” Robertino, wanting in some way to express his own happiness, rushed crazily on all fours from one corner of the room to the other. That evening, as I was saying prayers with them, Corradino said, “Mama must never go away again without telling Corradino where she is going and when she is coming back.” I promised with all my heart never to leave them again.’
It was a promise the events of the coming days would force her to break.
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