Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  Stauffenberg was once again summoned to a briefing on 20 July in the Führer headquarters, where he arrived during the morning.18 As a visit from Mussolini was planned for the afternoon, the briefing was brought forward and the entire schedule thereafter became rushed. As a result, Stauffenberg and his adjutant Haeften managed to set the detonator for only one of the two bombs they had brought with them and to place it in Stauffenberg’s briefcase. It remains a mystery why Stauffenberg did not put the second bomb in his briefcase, even without setting the detonator, for by failing to do so he limited the impact of the explosion.

  The briefing in the so-called situation hut had already begun when at about 12.35 Stauffenberg arrived and was announced to Hitler by Keitel. Stauffenberg placed the briefcase under the heavy oak table and after a few minutes made an excuse to leave the hut. At about 12.40 the bomb exploded, throwing the table and Hitler, who at that moment was leaning over it, into the air. He suffered bruising to his right arm and back, grazes to his left hand, and his eardrums were damaged. Of the total of twenty-four people present at the briefing four were so badly injured that they subsequently died, while all the rest were injured to varying degrees.

  Stauffenberg had observed the explosion from a safe distance and had come to the conclusion that it must have achieved its aim. He immediately set off with Haeften by car for the airport. En route Haeften threw away the second parcel of explosives, though the driver of the car noticed this. Stauffenberg’s hurried departure quickly aroused suspicion; then the discarded parcel of explosives was found. Early in the afternoon steps were taken to have him arrested. At 18.30, after Hitler had received Mussolini at the Wolf’s Lair, an official announcement was broadcast on the radio that an attempt had been made on Hitler’s life but that, apart from minor cuts and bruises, he had ‘suffered no injuries’. He had returned to work ‘without delay’.19

  Given that Hitler had survived, the attempted coup had failed before it got started. The entire plan was built on the assumption that the dictator’s death would prompt many officers who were sceptical about the regime but who nevertheless felt bound by their oath to support regime change. In addition, the conspirators in Berlin had no reliable information about the situation and so delayed setting Valkyrie in motion. As a result, Führer headquarters had several hours in which to initiate effective counter-measures.

  It was not until Stauffenberg and Haeften were back in Berlin that afternoon and confidently announced that the attempted assassination had succeeded that the Valkyrie order was issued – on the authority of the chief of staff of the Army Office, Mertz von Quirnheim, in the face of resistance from the head of the Reserve Army, General Friedrich Fromm, who was detained by the conspirators as a result.20 Although the Valkyrie measures were in fact set in motion in Berlin, in several military areas (in particular Kassel, Prague, and Vienna), and in Paris and led to units being alerted and in some cases mobilized, and although a number of radio stations and public buildings were occupied and in Vienna and in Paris some SS members were arrested, Führer headquarters quickly gained the upper hand in the decisive power struggle that now ensued.21

  In Berlin the tipping point in the attempted putsch came around 19.00, when the Propaganda Minister, Goebbels, organized a telephone call from Hitler to the commander of the guard regiment, Major Remer, which made it clear that Remer’s orders (namely that, because Hitler was dead, the army must implement security measures to prevent internal riots) were based on a deception. The guard regiment was now deployed to quash the uprising, a task that it completed by late evening.22 Now released from his captivity, General Fromm allowed Beck to shoot himself (when Beck only seriously injured himself, Fromm ordered that he be given the coup de grâce). He then had the leaders, Mertz, Olbricht, Stauffenberg, and Haeften, executed in the courtyard of the Bendler block, the headquarters of the conspiracy. Fromm was deeply implicated in the conspirators’ preparations and aimed by this means to get rid of those who knew it.23

  That evening Hitler himself gave an address that went out over all German radio stations. ‘A tiny clique of ambitious, ruthless, and at the same time criminal and stupid officers plotted to get rid of me and at the same time to destroy practically the whole leadership of the German army.’ Apart from minor injuries, he said, he was ‘completely unharmed’. He took the fact that he had survived the assassination attempt ‘as confirmation of the task providence has given me to continue pursuing my life’s aim, as I have done up to now’.24 Hitler announced the appointment of Guderian as the new chief of the general staff and during the night of 20/21 July issued a special order to the army containing a sort of declaration of confidence in the troops.25

  Hitler’s injuries subsequently turned out to be much less minor than they had at first appeared. At the beginning of August Goebbels noted he was ‘still somewhat unwell and out of sorts’, which he put down to the ‘serious physical and emotional trauma inflicted by the assassination attempt’. More than a month after the attack his ear was still bleeding and in retrospect Goebbels referred to the ‘serious physical shock’ Hitler had suffered on 20 July.26

  43

  Total War

  The attempted coup played into the hands of those who were advocating a more radical course. On 20 July Hitler had appointed Himmler as commander of the Reserve Army ‘in order finally to create order’, for this was where the conspirators’ hub had been. The same day Bormann was given the task of making ‘the necessary arrangements’ within the Party ‘to bring about commitment to total war’.1 Thus the path was cleared for the measures so forcefully demanded by Speer and Goebbels to step up the war effort in the state sector.

  At a meeting of department heads on 22 July attended by Lammers, Keitel, Bormann, Goebbels, Speer, Funk, and Sauckel, among others, a package of measures to achieve this was put together. Lammers made the now unsurprising suggestion of equipping Goebbels with special powers in the civilian sector and Himmler in the military.2 As Goebbels recorded in his diary, these decrees, which the group intended to present to Hitler the next day, created something ‘tantamount to a home front dictatorship’. At the crucial meeting in the Führer headquarters on 23 July Hitler declared himself basically in agreement. Göring, who as commander of the air force saw the proposals affecting his area of responsibility as evidence of his being ignored, sought a compromise with Hitler by suggesting that the decree Lammers had drawn up should for the time being apply only to the army. After a statistical report from Speer, Hitler spoke on the subject of total war, and, as Goebbels noted smugly, in doing so adopted to a large extent the ideas contained in his memorandum of 18 July 1944. Hitler left the meeting early, while the final version of the ‘Führer’s decree concerning total war’ was being prepared. To maintain Göring’s prestige it was stated that the Reich Marshal was to assume the task of ‘gearing public life completely to the requirements of total war’. To this end he was to propose to Hitler the appointment of a ‘Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War’ who would be responsible for ‘delivering the maximum resources for the armed forces and armaments production’.3 That meant Goebbels, although Lammers succeeded in incorporating into the final version a number of exceptions and safeguards that placed significant restrictions on the ‘Reich Plenipotentiary’s’ powers.4

  A few days later the reorganization of the armaments ministry, which had begun in June, was completed. On 1 August Speer concentrated all the urgent armaments tasks in his ministry in a new armaments staff along the lines of the Fighter Staff, taking charge of it personally with the assistance of Saur.5

  Meanwhile, the military situation was changing dramatically. At the close of their offensive against Army Group Centre, the Red Army had advanced at the end of July almost to Warsaw. On 1 August it established a bridgehead to the south of the city on the west bank of the Vistula, while further to the north it had already reached the East Prussian border.6 In the Lemberg [Lviv] area, which had been taken by the Red Army on 22 July, the front of Army Group North Ukr
aine became destabilized and was able to restore the situation only with great difficulty.7 On 26 July on the western front the Americans finally launched their offensive and by the beginning of August achieved a crucial breakthrough at Avranches. The German army in Normandy was in danger of being encircled.8

  At a conference for Reichsleiters and Gauleiters that Bormann had arranged in Posen for 3 and 4 August Speer, Himmler, and Goebbels outlined their plans for using their extended powers to achieve total war.9 After the conference the Party functionaries went to the Wolf’s Lair, where Hitler addressed them. He used the speech to present the failed 20 July plot as the result of years of betrayal and perfidy. These were now over; ‘these traitors’, this ‘powerful clique’ had, he said, ‘been continuously sabotaging the efforts and struggles of the nation, not just since 1941 but since the National Socialist seizure of power’. Hitler interpreted the events of 20 July as a ‘stroke of fate and a personal liberation’, for at last it had been possible ‘to expose this elusive internal resistance and remove the criminal clique’. ‘In the end’ it would be ‘clear that what at the moment seems a very painful event was perhaps the greatest blessing for the entire future of Germany’. It was, he continued, the precondition for the single-minded ‘mobilization of all the resources of our nation’. ‘Precisely as a result of 20 July’ he had ‘acquired a confidence I have never experienced before. We shall therefore ultimately be victorious in this war.’10

  On 22 July Hitler gave Goebbels the task of ‘launching a great wave of rallies throughout Germany’11 which, according to the guidelines issued, ‘should be a spontaneous expression of the nation’s determination’12 that the conspirators be dealt with mercilessly. It is hardly surprising that official reports during the days following emphasized the population’s general disapproval of the attempted coup.13 In addition, Hitler told Goebbels of his determination ‘to exterminate root and branch the entire generals’ clique opposing us and so demolish the dividing wall that it has artificially erected between the army on the one hand and the Party and nation on the other’.14

  Hitler had made up his mind to have all those involved in the conspiracy condemned in show trials.15 In order to remove them from the jurisdiction of the military courts, where they actually belonged, and place them under the People’s Court, Hitler summoned a special army court of which General Keitel, General von Runstedt, Colonel General Guderian, and four other generals were members.16 The court met four times in August and September and proposed to Hitler that a total of fifty-five officers, including those who had been shot or had killed themselves on 20 July, should be expelled from the army and a further twenty-nine be dismissed. Hitler made an exception only in the case of Rommel. After extensive investigations Hitler issued an order for him to commit suicide. In order to avoid connecting the popular field-marshal publicly with the conspiracy he was given a state funeral with full honours.17

  Leaving nothing to chance, Hitler and Goebbels spelled out in detail in advance what was to happen at the first trial, conducted on 7 and 8 August before the People’s Court, involving eight key members of the conspiracy. Hitler insisted that the accused were to have no opportunity to explain their motives; it was to be clearly demonstrated that the conspirators were members of a ‘small clique’ and ‘under no circumstances’ should there be a witch-hunt against the officer class itself, against the generals, against the army, or against the nobility’, although Hitler would, as he said, ‘deal later’ with the aristocracy, this ‘cancerous growth on the German nation’.18

  As presided over by the arrogant and enraged Freisler, the first trial turned into a travesty of justice and ended as expected with eight death sentences.19 The execution was filmed and very probably shown to Hitler.20 His need for personal revenge is at any rate attested in the case of Helldorff, the former chief of the Berlin police, who was condemned to death in a further trial in mid-August; Hitler ordered that before his execution Helldorff be obliged to witness the hanging of three fellow prisoners.21 Trials of further members of the conspiracy, in total more than 150 people, were still being heard by the People’s Court in April 1945; over a hundred death sentences were pronounced and carried out.22 In addition, after the assassination attempt thousands of actual or presumed opponents of the regime were taken into custody as part of ‘Operation Thunderstorm’, many of whom remained in custody until the end of the war. A good few of them were murdered without trial.

  Figure 15. In the wake of 20 July 1944 the regime took people into custody across Germany. The French-language translator Irmgard Reinemann and Anita Weber were held from 4 to 18 November in the cellar of the notorious EL-DE House, the headquarters of the Cologne Gestapo. ‘Chin up, even if it’s hard’, noted Weber. In January 1945 Reinemann was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for listening to foreign radio broadcasts, spreading ‘enemy propaganda,’ and for failing to report a planned act of high treason.

  Source: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

  On 15 August American and French troops landed on the south coast of France.23 The same day Hitler replaced Field-Marshal von Kluge as commander-in-chief of Army Group West with Field-Marshal Model. Hitler suspected that Kluge, who in any case was under suspicion of having cooperated with the conspirators, was conducting negotiations for surrender with the Allies on his own initiative. Kluge wrote a letter to Hitler justifying in detail his military decisions of the previous weeks and drawing the conclusion that the position of the army in the West and the military situation in the Reich as a whole was hopeless. Adopting a distinctly respectful tone and acknowledging Hitler’s ‘genius’ Kluge asked him now to show his greatness by ‘putting an end, should it be necessary, to the hopeless struggle’. The next day Kluge committed suicide.24

  The new commander-in-chief, Model, was similarly powerless to stop the Allies from encircling much of the German 7th Army at Falaise in Normandy on 21 August and then destroying it.25 On 25 August Paris was liberated; the city’s commandant, General von Choltitz, did not heed Hitler’s order to defend it like a fortress and not to let it fall into the enemy’s hands until it ‘lay in ruins’.26

  The German army now withdrew rapidly from France, Belgium, and Luxembourg and by mid-September was holding a line that in the north ran along the Meuse and in the south included Alsace and other French territories; in Belgium and Luxembourg the Allies were already at the German border.27 In late August and early September Hitler was compelled to issue directives for defensive positions on the western border of Germany to be extended, which included the order to prepare the West Wall, built in 1938/39, for defensive action. Field fortifications were to be constructed on the German border by mobilizing a ‘national task force’ led by the Gauleiters.28 On 7 September he appointed von Rundstedt to be the new commander-in-chief in the West and gave him command over the ‘German western fortifications’.29

  At the same time, the German position in south-east Europe began to collapse like a house of cards. Early warning of this development was given by the Turkish National Assembly’s decision on 2 August to break off diplomatic relations with Germany.30 The successful Soviet offensive in eastern Romania beginning on 20 August led to rapid political change in the country. On 23 August King Michael of Romania removed Antonescu from power and announced he intended to conclude a cease-fire with the Allies.31 In view of the immediate threat posed to Romania by the Red Army, on 5 August Antonescu, while at the Wolf’s Lair, had asked for more help from Germany. Regretfully, Hitler had been obliged to decline.32 Now that a German combat group was attempting to occupy Bucharest and the German air force was bombing the city, on 25 August Romania declared war on Germany.33 On 5 September the Soviet Union declared war on Germany’s ally, Bulgaria, which had never actually played an active role in the war. Bulgaria put up no resistance to the invading Soviet troops and declared war on Germany with effect from 8 September.34 Romania’s and Bulgaria’s termination of their alliance with Germany and the ensuing collapse of the German front in the
Balkans also required German troops (about 300,000 men in all) to beat a swift retreat from Greece. The German troops began to withdraw in September, pursued in October by British forces, who began to occupy the country.35

  In September Hitler also lost his ally Finland. After initial Finnish–Soviet talks between February and April 1944 on ending the war, which the Germans were aware of but which came to nothing, the Finnish government decided at the beginning of September to accept the Soviet precondition for a cease-fire and call on its former ally, Germany, to withdraw its troops from the country. In the months following, 200,000 German troops retreated to Lapland.36

  As General Plenipotentiary for Total War, Goebbels had set a target of transferring 1.2 million men from the civilian sector to the front. He intended to fill the resulting gaps in the armaments industry and in vital services with people who had hitherto not been employed at all or were being used in occupations not important to the war effort. The whole of civilian life was to be fundamentally overhauled through widespread shut downs, restrictions, and rationalization to facilitate this transfer of labour. The net result of these efforts, insofar as they can be reconstructed, clearly lagged far behind the targets set, even though Goebbels was constantly announcing successes to Hitler in a positive avalanche of Führer bulletins. In fact, however, the labour that was made available in this way could not simply be put to use immediately in armaments production, while the removal of skilled and experienced armaments workers for military service left gaps in production that were hard to fill. This situation gave rise to conflict between Goebbels and Speer, with Hitler being called on several times to arbitrate, even though he could not resolve the fundamental contradiction between ‘more soldiers’ and ‘more arms’.37 In addition, it became clear that the Wehrmacht was completely incapable of absorbing and training larger numbers of recruits within a short time.38