Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler 1933-45

9. JULY 20, 1944

Stauffenberg flew into the Rastenburg airfield shortly after 10:00 a.m. with Werner von Haeften and Helmuth Stieff, who had boarded the flight in Zossen. He immediately headed for the officers’ mess in Restricted Area II, carrying in his briefcase only the papers he needed for the reports he was expected to give. Haeften, mean­while, carried the two bombs in his briefcase and accompanied Stieff to OKH headquarters. The plans called for Haeften and Stauffenberg to meet shortly before the briefing in the Wolf’s Lair to exchange briefcases.

At around eleven o’clock Stauffenberg was summoned by the chief of army staff, General Walther Buhle, and after a short meeting they proceeded together to a conference with General Keitel in the OKW bunker in Restricted Area I. Here Stauffenberg learned that on ac­count of a visit by Mussolini what was to have been a noon briefing with Hitler had been put back half an hour to twelve-thirty. Immedi­ately following the conference with Keitel, Stauffenberg asked the general’s aide, Major Ernst John von Freyend, to show him to a room where he could wash up and change his shirt-July 20 was a hot day.

As Keitel and the other officers headed toward the briefing barracks, Stauffenberg met Haeften in the corridor. Together they withdrew into the lounge in Keitel’s bunker, where Stauffenberg set about installing and arming a fuse in the first bomb. He had barely begun, however, when a most unfortunately timed telephone call came from General Fellgiebel, who asked to speak with Stauffenberg on urgent business. Freyend sent Platoon Sergeant Werner Vogel back to the bunker to urge Stauffenberg to hurry.

As Vogel entered the lounge, he saw the two officers stowing something into one of the briefcases. He informed them of the call, adding that the others were waiting for them outside. Meanwhile Freyend shouted from the entrance, “Stauffenberg, please come along!” With Vogel standing in the doorway, Stauffenberg closed the briefcase as swiftly as possible while Haeften swept up the papers that were lying around and stuffed them into the other briefcase.

Fellgiebel’s telephone call and the intrusion of Sergeant Vogel may well have determined the course of history, for it is likely that they prevented Stauffenberg from arming the fuse on the second package of explosives. No one knows for certain why Stauffenberg did not place the second bomb in his briefcase alongside the one whose timer had already been activated, since the explosion of one would surely have set off the other as well. Some have claimed that both charges would have been too bulky and heavy to carry into the briefing room unobtrusively. This argument is hardly convincing, however, as the bombs weighed only about two pounds each, and Haeften had carried them both around in his briefcase earlier without any problems.

Stauffenberg was certainly nervous, and Vogel’s sudden appearance in the room must have given him a fright, but the most probable explanation for his bringing only the one bomb is that he was not fully aware of how such explosives work. Believing that a single bomb would suffice, he probably did not adequately consider the cumulative effect of two bombs. It may be that the second charge was only taken along as an alternative in the event that something went wrong, especially since the two timers were set differently, one for ten min­utes and the other for thirty. What is clear, according to all experts, is that inclusion of the second charge, even without a detonator, would have magnified the power of the blast not twofold but many times, killing everyone in the room outright.¹

Together with General Buhle and Major Freyend, Stauffenberg hurried out of the OKW bunker, briefcase in hand. They crossed the three hundred and fifty yards to the wooden briefing barracks, which lay behind a high wire fence in the innermost security zone, the so-called Führer Restricted Area. After declining for the second time Freyend’s offer to carry his briefcase, Stauffenberg finally turned it over to him at the entrance to the barracks, asking at the same time to be “seated as close as possible to the Führer” so that he could “catch everything” in preparation for his report.

In the conference room the briefing was already under way, with General Adolf Heusinger reporting on the eastern front. Keitel announced that Stauffenberg would be giving a report, and Hitler shook the colonel’s hand “wordlessly, but with his usual scrutinizing look.” Freyend placed the briefcase near Heusinger and his assistant Colo­nel Brandt, who were both standing to Hitler’s right. Despite his efforts to edge closer to Hitler, Stauffenberg could only find a place at the corner of the table; his briefcase remained on the far side of the massive table leg, where Freyend had placed it. Shortly thereafter, Stauffenberg left the room whispering something indistinctly, as if he had an important task to attend to.

Once outside the barracks, he went back the way he had come, turning off before Keitel’s bunker and heading toward the Wehrmacht adjutant building to find out where Haeften was waiting with the car. In the signals officer’s room he found not only Haeften but Fellgiebel as well: as they stepped outside, Hitler was already asking for the colonel, and an irritated General Buhle set out to look for him. It was just after 12:40.

Suddenly, as witnesses later recounted, a deafening crack shattered the midday quiet, and a bluish-yellow flame rocketed skyward. Stauffenberg gave a violent start and simply shook his head when Fellgiebel asked with feigned innocence what the noise could possibly be, Lieutenant Colonel Ludolf Gerhard Sander hurried over to the two men to reassure them that it was common for “someone to fire off a round or for one of the mines to go off.” Meanwhile, a dark plume of smoke rose and hung in the air over the wreckage of the briefing barracks. Shards of glass, wood, and fiberboard swirled about, and scorched pieces of paper and insulation rained down. The quiet that had suddenly descended was broken once again, this time by the sound of voices calling for doctors. Stauffenberg and Haeften climbed into the waiting car and ordered the driver to take them to the airfield. As they did so, a body covered by Hitler’s cloak was carried from the barracks on a stretcher, leading them to conclude that the Führer was dead.²

When the bomb exploded, twenty-four people were in the conference room. All were hurled to the ground, some with their hair in flames. Window mullions and sashes flew through the room. Hitler had just leaned far over the table to examine a position that Heusinger was pointing out on the map when his chair was torn out from under him. His clothing, like that of all the others, was shredded; his trousers hung in ribbons down his legs. The great oak table had col­lapsed, its top blown to pieces. The first sound to be heard amid all the smoke and devastation was Keitel’s voice shouting, “Where is the Führer?” As Hitler stumbled to his feet, Keitel flew to him, taking him in his arms and crying, “My Führer, you’re alive, you’re alive!”³ At this point, Hitler’s aide Julius Schaub and his valet, Heinz Linge, appeared and led the Führer away to his nearby quarters.

In the meantime Stauffenberg and Haeften had reached the Restricted Area I guardhouse. The lieutenant in charge, having seen and heard the explosion, had already taken the initiative of ordering the barrier lowered, but recognizing the striking figure of Stauffenberg, he allowed the car to pass after a brief pause. More difficulty was encountered at the outer guardhouse on the way to the airfield. By this time an alarm had been raised and all entry and exit forbidden. The staff sergeant on duty was not about to be intimidated by Stauffenberg’s commanding bearing, and for a moment everything seemed to hand in the balance. Thinking fast, Stauffenberg demanded to speak by telephone to the commandant of Führer headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Gustav Streve, with whom he had a lunch appointment. Fortunately, he could only reach Streve’s deputy, Captain Leonhard von Möllendorff, who did not yet know why the alarm had been issued and therefore ordered the staff sergeant to allow Stauffenberg to pass. Halfway to the airfield, Haeften tossed the second package of explosives from the open vehicle. At about 1:00 p.m. the car reached the waiting airplane, and within minutes the conspirators took off for Berlin.

At just about this point, news of the blast reached army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse. Fellgiebel had taken steps about an hour earlier to block all signal traffic to and from both headquarters in Rastenburg, and he now received confirmation by telephone that this had been done While the communications blackout was certainly part of the conspirators’ plan, it would also have been a plausible reaction to the hastily issued instructions from Hitler’s staff that no news of the attack be allowed to reach the public. As a result, suspicion did not immediately fall on Fellgiebel, who soon had the amplification sta­tions in Lötzen, Insterburg, and Rastenburg shut down as well. As Fellgiebel had frequently pointed out, however, it was technically impossible to cut the headquarters area off completely from the out­side world.

As a result, Fellgiebel himself managed to put through a telephone call to the conspirators’ base of operations on Bendlerstrasse. But this call only caused more problems because the conspirators were faced with a situation that apparently none of them had foreseen and for which they had no code words: the bomb had gone off but Hitler had survived.

For the second time that day, then, General Fellgiebel found himself in a position to change the course of history. He basically had two options open to him. He could hide from Bendlerstrasse the fact that Hitler was alive and do everything possible to maintain the communications blackout of the Wolf’s Lair, resorting to violence if necessary. However hopeless it might seem, this ploy would help heighten the general confusion and at least keep the coup attempt going. The personal risk he would run by taking this course was not particularly great, as his fate would be sealed in any case if the coup failed. On the other hand, he could tell Bendlerstrasse that Hitler had survived and try to abort the coup attempt, at least the communications compo­nent, before it had really gotten under way. After all, he understood better than anyone else the impossibility of maintaining a communi­cations blackout under these circumstances.

In the end, however, Fellgiebel hit on a third course. He informed his signal corps chief of staff at Bendlerstrasse, General Fritz Thiele, a fellow conspirator, that the assassination had failed but gave him to understand that the coup should proceed nevertheless. He thus blew away the elaborate smoke screen shrouding the attempt to seize power and revealed it as a straightforward revolt. According to Stauffenberg’s biographer Christian Muller this was a “major psychological blunder.” By informing Bendlerstrasse of the true state of affairs, Fellgiebel left it to the weak-willed group assembled there to decide what to do, at least until Stauffenberg’s arrival.⁴ Shortly after 3:00 p.m., Fellgiebel’s order blocking signal traffic was rescinded by Himmler, who had been summoned to Rastenburg, and Hitler began to swing into action, inquiring how soon it would be technically possi­ble for him to address the German people directly over all radio stations in the Reich.

Meanwhile the hunt for the would-be assassin was launched. Initial suspicions fell on the construction workers employed at Führer headquarters. But then Sergeant Arthur Adam came forward to say that he had seen Stauffenberg leave the briefing barracks before the explo­sion without his briefcase, his cap, or his belt, but little attention was paid to this information at first. Lieutenant Colonel Sander even shouted at Adam that if he really harbored “such monstrous suspi­cions about so distinguished an officer” he should go directly to the Security Service (SD).⁵ Instead, Adam approached Martin Bormann, who took him to see Hitler. One piece of evidence quickly led to the next, leaving little doubt among the Führer’s confederates that Stauffenberg was the culprit. They did not yet realize, however, the enormity of the conspiracy or that a coup d’ état was under way in Berlin.

Shortly alter hearing of the attack, Himmler had ordered the head of the Reich Security Headquarters (RSHA), Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and the superintendent of police, Bernd Wehner, to fly from Berlin to Rastenburg to take over the political and technical investigation of the assassination attempt. When Wehner arrived at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport, the plane was ready for takeoff. The waiting Kaltenbrunner, who was not privy to the latest information, stunned his companion by announcing, “The Führer is dead!” Before the superintendent could regain his composure, Kaltenbrunner asked calmly whether he might like to play a few games of skat to while away the time.⁶

Somewhere in the skies between Berlin and Rastenburg the two planes must have crossed paths. It is not difficult to imagine the emotions Stauffenberg must have been feeling or the questions racing through his mind, in contrast to the icy calm of his adversary in the other plane. Having succeeded in igniting a bomb at Hitler’s feet-the event that had always been thought of as the “initial spark” that would touch off the great upheaval by which the entire Nazi regime would be overthrown-he now found himself condemned to more than two hours of anxious waiting. He could only pin his hopes on others: on Olbricht and Mertz, who alone held the levers of power; on reliable friends like Yorck, Hofacker, Schwerin, and Schulenburg, as well as on Jäger, Hoepner, Thiele, Hase, and many others, including the liaison officers in the military districts. He could only assume that orders would be followed unquestioningly down the chain of com­mand-perhaps even with the acquiescence of General Fromm- alter Olbricht issued the Valkyrie II code word.

The reality that awaited him was far different. As his plane neared Berlin, the coup had not advanced at all. Fellgiebel’s indecisive and rather vague message—“something terrible has happened: the Führer is alive”—left Thiele unsettled and confused. To clear his mind he decided abruptly to go for a walk, apparently without bothering to inform Olbricht, and for nearly two hours he was nowhere to be found. Olbricht, too, had received a telephone call, probably around 2:00 p.m., from General Wagner in Zossen, and in view of the puz­zling information from Rastenburg, they agreed not to act for the time being. After all, Fellgiebel’s message might have meant that the bomb had failed to go off or that Stauffenberg had been discovered and arrested, or that he was fleeing or that he had already been shot. Just five days earlier, Olbricht had issued the Valkyrie orders prema­turely, and he knew that any repetition of that fiasco was bound to be fatal. This time, furthermore, in contrast to July 15, Fromm was pres­ent and would have to be dealt with.⁷

As a result, precious hours slipped away. Thiele returned around 3:15 p.m. and, after another conversation with Rastenburg, reported that there had been an “explosion in the conference room” at Hitler’s headquarters, which had left “a large number of officers severely wounded.” He thought that his source at Rastenburg may have “im­plied between the lines” that the Fuhrer was “seriously injured or even dead.” This was what prompted Olbricht and Mertz to decide finally to take the decisive step of issuing the Valkyrie orders, on their own initiative if necessary.⁸ Shortly thereafter, Haeften telephoned from the airport to announce that he and Stauffenberg had just landed, the attack had been successful, and Hitler was dead. When Hoepner suggested that the conspirators at Bendlerstrasse should wait for Stauffenberg to arrive, Olbricht retorted indignantly that there was no more time to lose. He got the deployment orders out of the safe for Fromm to sign. Meanwhile, Mertz called the senior of­ficers of the Army Office together and informed them that Hitler had been assassinated. Beck would take over as head of state, he contin­ued, while Field Marshal Witzleben would assume all executive func­tions of the commander in chief of the Wehrmacht. Major Harnack was ordered to issue Valkyrie II to all military districts; to the city commandant, General Paul von Hase; and to the army schools in and around Berlin. It was shortly before 4:00 p.m.

Everything now depended on Fromm. But when Olbricht approached him to report that the Hitler had been assassinated, and asked him to give the orders to implement Operation Valkyrie, Fromm hesitated at the very mention of the word. He had received an official reprimand from Keitel for the alert issued on July 15 and was worried lest he fall back out of favor with Hitler, having just returned to his good graces. He therefore telephoned Keitel to ask whether the rumors in Berlin about the death of the Führer were true. The OKW chief replied that an assassination attempt had been made but that Hitler had escaped with only minor injuries. Where exactly, he wanted to know, was Fromm’s chief of staff, Colonel Stauffenberg? Fromm answered that the colonel had not yet returned, and he hung up. He decided simply to do nothing.

It is not clear whether Olbricht had already sent the orders for Valkyrie II out over the lines before he went to see Fromm. At this point he presumably still thought that Hitler was dead, and he had good reason to expect that Fromm could be won over. When he returned to his office to announce, “Fromm won’t sign,” he discovered that Mertz had plunged feverishly ahead, carrying the plans a step further. Although “Olbricht had once again grown hesitant,” he was “stampeded” into continuing.⁹ Captain Karl Klausing already had his orders to secure army headquarters; four young officers, Georg von Oppen, Ewald Heinrich von Kleist, Hans Fritzsche, and Ludwig von Hammerstein, had been summoned from the Esplanade Hotel to serve as adjutants; and Major Egbert Hayessen had already set off for the city commandant’s offices. Olbricht now leapt in, helping to orga­nize matters and speed them along. He contacted the other com­manders who were privy to the coup and called General Wagner in Zossen and Field Marshal Kluge in La Roche-Guyon, while Klausing was asked to send off the teleprinter message that began: “The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of party leaders has attempted to exploit the situation by attacking our embattled soldiers from the rear in order to seize power for themselves!” Klausing fin­ished typing and handed the message to the signal traffic chief, Lieutenant Georg Röhrig, but Röhrig immediately noticed that it did not contain the usual secrecy and priority codes. He chased after Klausing, reaching him at the end of the hall, and inquired whether the message should not have the highest secrecy rating. Without much thought, Klausing replied with a nervous “Yes, yes,” a decision that would have enormous unforeseen consequences. For only four typists were available at Bendlerstrasse who were cleared to send secret teleprinter messages, and it took them close to three hours to trans­mit the text. Without the secrecy requirements, the messages could have been sent out at much greater speed over more than twenty teleprinter machines.

The first message had barely begun to be transmitted when Klausing reappeared in the traffic office with another. It consisted of a number of instructions that hinted at the true nature of Valkyrie. The new communiqué ordered not only that all important buildings and facilities be secured but also that all gauleiters, government ministers, prefects of police, senior SS and police officials, and heads of propaganda offices be arrested and that the concentration camps be seized without delay. Following an injunction to refrain from acts of revenge came the sentence that unmasked the real intentions of the conspirators: “The population must be made aware that we intend to desist from the arbitrary methods of the previous rulers.”¹⁰

Since this message bore Fromm’s name, the conscientious Olbricht felt obliged once again to go and seek the consent of the chief of the reserve army. Hitler was truly dead, he assured Fromm, informing him that therefore “we have issued the code word to launch internal disturbances.” Fromm jumped to his feet. “What do you mean ‘we’?” he bellowed indignantly. “Who gave the order?” he shouted, insisting that he was still the commander. Olbricht said that Mertz was respon­sible, and Fromm ordered that the colonel be brought to him immediately. When Mertz confirmed what he had done, Fromm replied, “Mertz, you are under arrest!”

On the way back to his office, Olbricht peered out through a window overlooking the courtyard and saw Stauffenberg’s car pull up. It was 4:30 p.m., almost four hours after the explosion in the Wolf’s Lair. Stauffenberg gave Olbricht a short, hurried report on the assas­sination, and the two men decided to return together to see Fromm. Stauffenberg insisted once again that Hitler was dead: he had witnessed the explosion himself and had seen Hitler being carried out on a stretcher. Fromm remarked that “someone in the Führer’s entou­rage must have been involved,” to which Stauffenberg coolly re­sponded, “I did it.”

Fromm was flabbergasted, or at least seemed to be. With mounting rage, he told Stauffenberg that Keitel had just assured him the Führer was alive, to which Stauffenberg replied that the field marshal was, as always, lying through his teeth. Unconvinced, Fromm asked Stauffenberg whether he had a pistol and, if so, whether he knew what to do with it at a moment like this. Stauffenberg said he did not have a pistol and in any case would do nothing of the sort, adding that the attack on Hitler was not the final goal but merely the first strike in a general insurrection. Unimpressed by this news, Fromm turned to Mertz von Quirnheim and ordered him to get a pistol. Mertz replied astutely that since Fromm had taken him into custody he could not carry out orders.

With mounting anger, Fromm now declared that Olbricht and Stauffenberg were under arrest as well. But as if he had been waiting for these words to be uttered, Olbricht turned the tables on the gen­eral by informing him that he was mistaken about the balance of power: it was up to them, not him, to make arrests. Fromm leapt up and rushed at Olbricht with clenched fists but Haeften, Kleist, and several officers from the map room next door separated the two and held Fromm off with a pistol. Resigned, Fromm announced, “Under the circumstances, I consider myself out of commission.” He offered no further resistance and, having requested and received a bottle of cognac, prepared himself to be led away to the office of his aide, Captain Heinz-Ludwig Bartram.

In the meantime, Beck, Schwerin, Helldorf, Hoepner, Gisevius, and the chief administrative officer for the Potsdam district, Gottfried von Bismarck, had assembled in Olbricht’s office, and Olbricht now told Hoepner that he was to assume Fromm’s duties immediately. Ever the pedant, even in the midst of a coup, Hoepner demanded to have his appointment in writing. The formalities were being com­pleted when Hoepner ran into Fromm in the hallway as he was being taken to his aide’s office. Bowing slightly, Hoepner said that he regretted having to lake over Fromm s office. The deposed general replied, “I’m sorry, Hoepner, but I can’t go along with this. In my opinion, the Führer is not dead and you are making a mistake.”¹¹

Ii had by now became clear to those at the Wolf’s Lair that the assassination attempt signaled the start of a general uprising. They could hardly fail to notice since, due to a switching error, telegram dispatches from army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse were arriving at Führer headquarters as well. By about 4:00 p.m. Hitler had named Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler the new commander in chief of the reserve army. Soon thereafter, Keitel instructed the military districts not to obey the orders they were receiving from Bendlerstrasse. Hitler’s counterattack was gathering momentum. As a result of Klausing’s error in giving the orders the top-secret rating, some military districts even received counterinstructions from Führer headquarters before the original orders from Bendlerstrasse arrived, sowing great confusion at first. In Breslau, the military district commanders de­cided against a coup before they even knew it was under way. In Hamburg, party and SS officials went to the office of the district commander, General Wilhelm Wetzel, to drink sherry and vermouth, raise toasts, and swear that they were not about to shoot one another.

In all the bewilderment over conflicting reports, Beck declared I that he did not “care what was being said, he did not even care what was true; for him, Hitler was dead,” and he urged his fellow conspirators to adopt the same attitude lest they spread confusion in their own ranks, he had begun dictating an address for broadcast in which, anticipating a counterbroadcast, he argued that it “does not matter whether Hitler is dead or alive. A Führer who engenders such conflicts among his closest associates that it comes to an assassination attempt is morally dead.”¹² The only chance that the conspirators still seemed to have was that the fictions they had invented would be widely believed. The key question was whether this makeshift justifi­cation would have enough force to insure that orders passed down the chain of command would be strictly obeyed. Anything less and the coup would not succeed.

That the course of events still depended on the courage and determination of a handful of officers could be seen on a number of occasions during that chaotic day. Among the outposts that received early warnings was that of the Berlin city commandant, General Paul von Hase. As Operation Valkyrie was launched, he called the head of the army ordnance school, Brigadier General Walter Bruns; the head of the army explosives school, Colonel Helmuth Schwierz; and the com­mander of the guard battalion, Major Otto Ernst Remer, to his head­quarters at 1 Unter den Linden, where he gave them their orders. By 6:00 p.m. the Ministry of Propaganda had been cordoned off, two sentries had been posted in front of Goebbels’s house, and Goebbels himself, having seen what was taking place on the street, had disap­peared into a back room to get a few cyanide capsules.¹³ Half an hour later the government quarter had also been surrounded by the guard battalion. Only the units from the ordnance school in the Berlin sub­urb of Treptow, which were supposed to occupy the city palace, were delayed, because their trucks did not arrive on schedule to transport them.

Elsewhere, too, things were going according to plan. Units of the elite Grossdeutschland reserve brigade stationed in Cottbus, near Berlin, occupied the radio stations and transmitters in Herzberg and Königs Wusterhausen and seized control of the local Nazi Party of­fices and SS barracks without encountering resistance. When news of Hitler’s assassination reached Krampnitz, the senior officer at the post, Colonel Harald Momm, shouted, “Orderly! A bottle of cham­pagne! The swine is dead!” Although there were some delays there, the Valkyrie units were finally mobilized. Those in Döberitz, too, were ready to go, and Major Friedrich Jakob had orders to seize the main broadcasting center on Masurenallee in Berlin, block all trans­missions, and then rendezvous with a signal officer who would be dispatched by headquarters. Bendlerstrasse issued a list of targets to be seized, ranging from SS and party offices down to various minis­tries and finally the city administration; the explosives school contrib­uted by forming thirty task forces of ten men each to help. Helldorf alerted the security police to be ready for a wave of arrests.

But from this point on, things began to go awry. Helldorf received no further instructions. Major Jakob succeeded in occupying the broadcasting center on Masurenallee, but the signal officer failed to appear because General Thiele had vanished. In his absence, Jakob relied for technical information on the station manager, who assured him that broadcasting had stopped when, in fact, it was continuing. Back on Bendlerstrasse, Beck urgently awaited news that the station had been occupied. The units that seized the Nauen and Tegel trans­mitters on the outskirts of Berlin had experiences similar to that at Masurenallee. At 5:42 p.m., and in quick succession thereafter, a series of communiqués was broadcast from Führer headquarters an­nouncing the attack and the serious injuries suffered by Schmundt, Brandt, and the stenographer, Berger, but also reporting that Hitler himself had escaped injury and “resumed his work” immediately.

At the conspiracy’s headquarters on Bendlerstrasse, signs of uncertainty were beginning to appear. When SS Oberführer Humbert Pifrader arrived, on Himmler’s orders, at 5:00 p.m., demanding to see Stauffenberg, he was arrested with no fuss. But when the commander of the Berlin military district, General Kortzfleisch, appeared shortly thereafter and was similarly arrested after flatly refusing to join the coup, he was belligerent, roaring at Hammerstein, who was standing guard over him, that he wanted to know to whom exactly he had sworn his oath of loyalty. Kortzfleisch eventually calmed down and complained that he just wasn’t prepared to participate in a coup; he had always considered himself nothing but a soldier and was now “interested only in one thing: going home and pulling weeds in my garden.” The conspirators replaced him with General Karl von Thüngen, but even the new man hesitated, feeling that the situation was still far too murky. He lingered for a long time at Bendlerstrasse talking things over before finally proceeding reluctantly to his com­mand post on Hohenzollerndamm, where the chief of staff, General Otto Herfurth, ruminated over the onerous decisions that had fallen to him. Herfurth repeatedly requested more information and delayed the implementation of the orders he was receiving. Finally he sank down onto his field cot and declared himself ill.¹⁴

Although the inner circle of conspirators still held firm, Major Remer, who commanded a guard battalion in Berlin, had figured out by this time that he was risking his neck. Urged on by a suspicious propaganda officer, but in defiance of explicit orders from his superior officer, General Hase, he decided to seek the advice of Goebbels. Remer arrived al Goebbels’s apartment at about 7:00 p.m. to find Major Martin Korff of the explosives school attempting to arrest Goebbels. The minister was clever enough to recognize that Remer felt torn between his oath of allegiance and his orders, and he quickly telephoned Führer headquarters in Rastenburg.

Hitler himself came on the line and asked Remer if he recognized his voice. When Remer said he did, the Führer conferred on him plenary powers to put down the uprising. Remer scarcely had time to think. Overwhelmed by the discovery that Hitler was still alive and by the magnitude of his new responsibilities, he immediately removed the cordon that had been set up around the government quarter and gradually took command of the units and task forces already in the city center and those arriving there. When Colonel Jäger came to take Goebbels away, the sentries on duty already had orders to protect the minister. The uprising had begun to collapse.

Those conspirators who had insisted that killing Hitler was the crucial prerequisite for a coup were proved right, though now it was too late. The decisive importance of the Führer was most powerfully evinced by Remer’s actions but could also be seen in the reactions of Fromm, Thüngen, Herfurth, and others and in the endless, para­lyzing debates that took place in many barracks after the initial radio broadcasts reported Hitler as alive. The fact that Olbricht and Stauffenberg were issuing orders that exceeded their authority-a fact cer­tainly noted with suspicion by some officers-did not itself jeopardize the coup, because the Wehrmacht command structure was confusing to begin with and, in any case, all power was finally centralized in the hands of Adolf Hitler. It did, however, mean the chain of command would not function automatically.

But by this time it was not just the chain of command that was coming apart. Already that afternoon Fellgiebel had despondently refused to speak with Olbricht, informing him in a message that “there’s no reason for all that anymore.” Perhaps Fellgiebel realized what a horrendous error he had made in reporting that the assassina­tion had failed. He saw that the only chance the conspirators had ever really possessed was to forge ahead single-mindedly and to play the one card they had held from the outset In any case, on hearing that Thiele had disappeared (it later turned out that he had gone to see Walter Schellenberg at Reich Security Headquarters), Fellgiebel re­marked that Thiele was “making a big mistake if he thinks he can intricate himself like this.”¹⁵ Stieff, too, tried to defect. Meanwhile Hoepner sat in his office and stared darkly and irresolutely ahead, responding lamely to requests for information. If Hitler really was alive, he told Beck, then “everything that we’re doing is senseless.” It would all come down, he added, “to a test of strength.” To which Beck replied acidly, “That’s for sure.”¹⁶ But where was Witzleben, his fellow conspirators wondered, and where, for that matter, was Gen­eral Lindemann, who was supposed to read the conspirators’ grand proclamation over the radio?

Only a few of the plotters refused to give up: Mertz, Olbricht, Heck, Schulenburg, Haeften, Schwerin, Yorck, and Gerstenmaier, who had by now arrived at army headquarters. And then, of course, there was Stauffenberg, hurrying back and forth through crowded offices and hallways from one incessantly ringing telephone to the next, convincing skeptical callers, issuing orders, coaxing, pressuring, reassuring. Even Gisevius, who had always disliked him, was forced to admit that Stauffenberg was the only person “on top of the situation.” Gisevius overheard Stauffenberg tell callers that Hitler was dead. The operation is in full swing, he insisted, the panzers are on their way… Fromm is not available… Of course Keitel is lying… Orders must be obeyed… Everything depends on holding firm… The officers’ time has come.

Away from the maelstrom sat Beck, asking time and again when news would arrive that the broadcasting center had been occupied. Since Lindemann had the only copy of the proclamation, Beck began working on a new version. Then he spoke with Kluge in France, but Clever Hans, true to form, refused to commit himself. Beck also made contact with the chief of staff of the army group that had been nearly cut off by the advancing Red Army in Courland and issued an order to withdraw the troops; he took the time to write a small note to this effect at the top of the proclamation “for future historians.” The order was to be the only one he would issue in his new position.

At about 8:00 p.m. Witzleben appeared at Bendlerstrasse. Everyone realized that the moment of decision had come. Witzleben had just paid General Wagner a visit and knew that the assassination attempt had failed. His cap in one hand and his marshal’s baton in the other, he strode into the cluster of waiting conspirators. Stauffenberg rushed up to deliver a status report but Witzleben brushed him aside, barking, “What a mess!” and proceeded with Beck into Fromm’s office. Beck attempted to calm the furious Witzleben and to give him some idea of the difficulties that had arisen; the field marshal was not, however, in a forgiving mood. Stauffenberg and Schwerin were sum­moned, and one witness was able to discern through the glass of the sliding door that an angry debate had broken out, with Witzleben periodically banging his fist on the table.

There was no disputing that, for whatever reason, neither the government quarter nor the radio stations had been brought under the conspirators’ control; nor were there even any battle-ready units standing by. Apparently Witzleben made no attempt to seize the ini­tiative and save the situation. He had come, it seemed, solely in order to take command of the Wehrmacht from the conspirators. Stauf­fenberg and Schwerin stood by “like marble pillars.” After three-quarters of an hour, a red-faced Witzleben burst from the room, stalked through the throng of officers waiting outside, descended the stairs, and drove off. And, as if these events were of no relevance to him, he returned to Zossen and coldly announced to General Wagner, “We’re going home.”¹⁷

Only Stauffenberg still appeared unwilling to admit that the coup was doomed. After Witzleben’s departure he hurried back to his telephones, shouting out encouragement with a fervor born of desperation. Even he must have sensed, however, the growing coolness and distance on all sides. At about this point, Fromm discovered that a side door to Bartram’s office had been left unguarded, and he suc­ceeded with his aide’s help in contacting the branch heads of the reserve army and ordering countermeasures. Increasingly convinced that the coup was doomed, some of the branch heads went to see Olbricht and demanded to know what was happening. Told that the Führer was dead, one of them, General Karl-Wilhelm Specht, replied that the radio was reporting just the opposite. He had sworn an oath of loyally to Hitler, Specht said, and could not act on the basis of mere rumors of the Führer’s death. All the other heads supported Specht’s decision. Two hours earlier Olbricht would simply have placed them all under arrest, as he had Fromm and Kortzfleisch. Now, though, they were quietly allowed to depart.

Outside headquarters, other officers who had gone along with the conspirators were beginning to switch sides as well. At 9:00 p.m. Kleist returned from the city commandant’s headquarters and re­ported that the guard battalion had defected. General Hase had been to see Goebbels and, after a short discussion, accepted his invitation to dinner. This tête-à-tête with the minister had soon been inter­rupted, however, by the arrival of the Gestapo, who carted Hase away. Fromm, still under guard at Bendlerstrasse, asked Hoepner if he could be moved to his private apartment, one floor above where he was being held. He would do nothing, he promised, to hurt the cause of the conspirators. Hoepner agreed, perhaps simply as a courtesy to an old army comrade but more likely because he had long since abandoned hope and was trying to curry favor with someone who might intercede on his behalf.

Everywhere there were signs that the Nazis were regaining the upper hand. When Gisevius called on Helldorf and Nebe and learned that Himmler was flying back to Berlin, he, like them, became con­vinced that the coup had failed. At army headquarters, Colonel Glaesemer, the commander of the armored unit from Krampnitz that had taken up position in the Tiergarten in the early evening-who had been placed under arrest by Olbricht for refusing to carry out orders once the tide began to turn-now simply stood up and walked out. Similarly, Mertz attempted to arrest Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Schlee of the guard battalion, who, under orders from Remer, was trying to withdraw the sentries from in front of army headquarters. But Schlee escaped easily and soon returned at the head of a detach­ment to begin countermeasures. Having surrounded army headquar­ters, Schlee stationed guards with machine guns at every entrance and locked away in the porter’s room all those who attempted to oppose him. Even the valiant Mertz gave up, telling Schulenburg that the “cause is lost.”¹⁸

Earlier Olbricht had called a meeting of those officers on his staff who had not been informed about the conspiracy: Franz Herber, Karl Pridun, Bolko von der Heyde, Fritz Harnack, and Herbert Fliessbach. Although they had all come to realize during the course of the afternoon that they were being swept up in a coup, they had contin­ued to carry out their orders correctly, if unenthusiastically. Perhaps it was a mistake for Olbricht not to have taken them into his confi­dence earlier. In any case, they now displayed the kind of resentment felt by those who have been ignored, a class of people that has more than once been the undoing of tottering regimes. Moreover, these officers were understandably reluctant to be invited onto a sinking ship. When Olbricht withheld information that they demanded to know, evaded their questions, and then ordered them to take over the defense of the building and stand guard, they decided to confer with one another in Heyde’s office. Meanwhile, some distance away, in Mertz’s office, Gerstenmaier was suggesting that the conspirators should ready their weapons. But Yorck objected, saying that if it came down to a direct confrontation, Goring could simply bomb army headquarters to oblivion.

While the officers in Heyde’s office were discussing why they were defending army headquarters and against whom, the weapons Olbricht had promised arrived. Taking pistols, submachine guns, and grenades in hand, they decided to go see Olbricht once again and get some answers. They set off down the hall with a great clatter, sweep­ing the officers they found along the way into Olbricht’s office. Herber demanded, “Herr General, are you for or against the Führer?” When Olbricht failed to reply, Herber insisted on seeing Fromm. Olbricht referred him instead to Hoepner.

At this moment Stauffenberg entered the room. Pridun and some other members of the group attempted to grab him, but he managed to pull free and escape through the adjoining suite of rooms to Mertz’s office. As he tried to reenter the hall, shots suddenly rang out. No one could later say who fired first. Stauffenberg had managed to load his revolver by using the three fingers of his remaining hand and clamping the stump of his other arm against his hip. He got off a shot at Pridun, but then he himself was hit in the upper left arm and dodged back into the office, leaving a trail of blood.

The shooting slopped as abruptly as it had started. While Olbricht, Herber, and the others set off to find Hoepner, Stauffenberg remained behind and asked one of the secretaries to contact Paris. He still clung to the dim hope that Stülpnagel, Hofacker, and possibly Kluge had finally made their move and that even now the troops were rolling in from the west. All day he had worn his black eye patch, but now he took it off, as if in a gesture of capitulation. The connection with Paris was never established.

In the meantime, Herber and his group were joined by others at Bendlerstrasse who had been waiting to see how events would unfold and who now emerged from hiding places all over army headquarters and headed for Hoepner’s office. Everyone passing through the corri­dors was confronted at gunpoint with the question “Are you for or against the Führer?” It was shortly after 11:00 p.m. Fully aware of the authority with which he had suddenly been invested, Herber loudly demanded of Hoepner, “What game are you trying to play?” and insisted on speaking with Fromm himself. Hoepner replied that the general was in his private apartment. And while one member of the group set out to get Fromm, the others began to disarm all the con­spirators they could find in the offices and hallways.

Within minutes General Fromm appeared, strutting at the head of a retinue of armed supporters. For a moment he halted in the office doorway, obviously savoring the scene before him. Olbricht was standing at the map table with Stauffenberg beside him, Beck sat in the foreground at a small table, and Mertz, Haeften, and Hoepner stood off to the side. Taking a few steps into the office, Fromm remarked, “So, gentlemen, now it’s my turn to do to you what you did lo me this afternoon.”¹⁹

In fact, however, Fromm proceeded much more decisively. Wasting no time, he placed the six main conspirators under arrest and demanded, pistol in hand, that they relinquish their weapons. Beck asked to keep his pistol “for private purposes,” to which Fromm replied gruffly, “Go ahead, but be quick about it!” Wishing to make a final statement, Beck raised his revolver to his temple and began, “I think now of earlier times-” But Fromm cut him off impatiently. “I told you, just do it!” he shouted. Beck paused for a moment and then, in front of several onlookers, squeezed the trigger. The bullet merely grazed his head. Fromm ordered two officers to take Beck’s revolver away, but Beck resisted clumsily, firing and wounding himself once again and collapsing in a heap-still alive.

Leaving the former chief of general staff dying on the floor, Fromm turned to the other conspirators: “If you wish to make a statement or write something, you can have a moment to do so.” Stauffenberg, Mertz, and Haeften remained silent, though Hoepner tried to assure Fromm that he had had nothing to do with the entire affair. Fromm remained unmoved. Only when Olbricht asked to be allowed to write a few lines did Fromm show some sign of compas­sion. “Come to the round table,” he said, “where you always used to sit across from me.”²⁰

But time was pressing. A unit of the guard battalion, it was reported, had arrived in the courtyard. Fromm must also have known that Himmler was on the way and that every one of the arrested officers, with the exception of Hoepner, was in a position to testify against him and had to be silenced. He therefore urged them again to hurry and finally declared, “In the name of the Führer, I have con­vened a court-martial that has pronounced the following sentence: General Staff Colonel Mertz, General Olbricht, the colonel whose name I will not speak, and First Lieutenant Haeften are condemned to death.”

Stauffenberg spoke out, claiming in a few clipped sentences sole responsibility for everything and stating that the others had acted purely as soldiers and his subordinates. Fromm said nothing in reply, merely standing aside so that the prisoners could be taken out. Glanc­ing down again at Beck, who was still in his death throes, Fromm ordered an officer standing nearby to put him out of his misery. The officer refused, protesting that he was incapable of such an act, and passed the order along to a staff sergeant. The sergeant dragged Beck into an adjoining room and shot him. It was just after midnight.

In the courtyard outside, several military vehicles pulled up, their headlights glaring. Along all the sides of the square, groups of curious onlookers gathered. In the middle stood an execution squad consist­ing of Lieutenant Werner Schady and ten noncommissioned officers. As the prisoners emerged from the staircase, they were positioned in front of a small pile of sand. Olbricht was the first to be shot. Next it was Stauffenberg’s turn, but just as the squad fired, Haeften, in a defiant gesture, threw himself into the hail of bullets. When the squad again took aim at Stauffenberg, he shouted, “Long live sacred Cermany.”²¹ Before the sound of his voice died away, shots re­sounded. The last to die was Mertz.

Fromm immediately dispatched news of the executions by teleprinter: “Attempted putsch by disloyal generals violently suppressed. All leaders shot.”²² Then he descended to the courtyard, passed the crumpled bodies without a glance, mounted one of the vehicles, and delivered a rousing speech celebrating the Führer, his miraculous deliverance, and the works of Providence. He ended with three “Sieg Heils,” joined enthusiastically by the soldiers and onlookers.

Meanwhile Beck’s bloody body was being dragged down the stairs. It was thrown with the others into one of the trucks and carted to the nearby cemetery of St. Matthew’s Church in the Tiergarten. The custodian was instructed to inter the bodies secretly that very night, but the next morning Himmler ordered that they be exhumed and burned, and the ashes scattered “in the fields.”

The other conspirators at Bendlerstrasse-Schulenburg, Schwerin, Yorck, Berthold Stauffenberg, Robert Bernardis, Gerstenmaier, and others-were locked up in the old offices of Stauffenberg and Mertz. For a while it seemed as if another round of executions was immi­nent. Then, half an hour after midnight, Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, who had been summoned to Berlin by Walter Schellenberg, arrived with an SS unit. Kaltenbrunner also appeared, as did Remer, who forbade all further executions. Skorzeny approached the prisoners and without a word tore off their medals and decorations and tossed them into a steel helmet on the floor behind him. Then the radio was switched on and the silent, heavily guarded prisoners were forced to listen to the speech that Hitler was delivering over all stations.

Satisfied with himself and convinced at the end of a long and confusing day that he had once again managed “to come down on the right side,” Fromm went off to see Goebbels. He wanted to be the first to report in person that the conspiracy had been crushed and the ringleaders executed. Then, perhaps, he would even deliver the news to Hitler himself. Instead, upon his arrival at Goebbels’s office, he was immediately arrested.

The collapse in Berlin was not the end of the coup. Particularly in Prague and Vienna the commanders of the military districts had carried out the instructions from Bendlerstrasse with considerable alacrity, arresting most SS and Security Service (SD) officials and occupying the main public buildings. Now they expressed their re­grets to their captives, explaining that it was all a great mistake. The jailers and their erstwhile prisoners raised a few glasses together, and everyone departed.

In Paris the day’s events were much more dramatic. Around 2:00 p.m. Quartermaster General Eberhard Finckh, who had been privy to the secret plot, was alerted by telephone from Zossen that Hitler had been assassinated. About three hours later Stauffenberg himself came on the line to inform his cousin Cäsar von Hofacker that Hitler was dead and the uprising had begun. General Stülpnagel called a meet­ing of his officers, issued the prearranged orders, and distributed maps to the city commandant’s staff showing the residences of the two most senior SS and SD officials, Carl-Albrecht Oberg and Helmut Knochen, as well as the location of their units. The arrests were planned for 11:00 p.m. so as to cause as little commotion as possible.

While the preparations went ahead, Kluge contacted Stülpnagel and invited him to his headquarters in La Roche-Guyon. In view of the hopelessly superior firepower of the Allies, Kluge had come to share Rommel’s view that Germany could not hold out much longer. He therefore resumed wavering between halfhearted support for a coup and timid opposition. His hopes had initially been raised by the news from Bendlerstrasse but soon grew shaky with the denials from the Wolf’s Lair. After hesitating for a while between the conflicting reports from the two camps, he finally got in touch with Stieff, who confirmed that Hitler was alive and well.

When Stülpnagel and Hofacker arrived in La Roche-Guyon, Kluge, who was by then fully apprised of the situation, showed little patience for their passionate appeals and denied any knowledge of a conspiracy, commenting coolly, “Well, gentlemen, just a botched as­sassination attempt.” Stülpnagel and Hofacker argued that the appar­ent failure of the attempt only increased their own responsibility. The uprising could still succeed if the three of them refused to obey Hitler and unilaterally brought the war in the West to an end. But Kluge would not be swayed. Acting as if they had not just been discussing an issue of the highest importance, their last chance to avoid horrific devastation, Kluge invited his guests to a gracious candle-lit dinner, at which he droned on incessantly about his war experiences. His table companions stared glumly into space.

To end this intolerable scene, Stülpnagel finally asked Kluge to step out onto the terrace and told him about the arrests they had planned. Kluge was horrified, summoned his chief of general staff, General Günther Blumentritt, and ordered the immediate cancellation of the measures. He then dismissed Stülpnagel from his position and calmly returned to dinner. The atmosphere now, according to one witness, was “eerie-as if in a morgue.”²³ Once again Stülpnagel and Hofacker begged the field marshal to reconsider but all he would say was, “If only that swine were dead!” As they parted, he gave Stülpnagel a piece of well-intentioned advice: “Put on civilian clothes and disappear somewhere.”²⁴

As Stülpnagel took his leave of Kluge, without a parting handshake, at around 11:00 p.m., the task forces in Paris were just setting out from the Bois de Boulogne. Quickly and without encountering resistance, they arrested some twelve hundred members of the SS and SD in their quarters near the Arc de Triomphe. They also took into cus­tody both SS Obergruppenführer Oberg and Security Service chief Knochen, who had first to be located in a nightclub and then sum­moned to return to his headquarters on avenue Foch. Meanwhile, in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire, a detachment under the city commandant, Hans von Boineburg, was piling up sandbags for the expected executions. Lawyers on his staff had already drafted indict­ments accusing Himmler’s subordinates of deporting Jews, blowing up synagogues in Paris, and confiscating “enemy property” in contra­vention of all legal principles.²⁵

Shortly after midnight Stülpnagel returned to his headquarters in the Hôtel Majestic. Defying Kluge’s orders, he did not immediately release the arrested officials and troops. Instead he went to the Hôtel Raphael next door, which served as the officers’ mess. The rooms were packed, and in the great din there was much clinking of glasses. Officers and their civilian co-workers-people who were privy to what was going on and people who had had no idea-were all cele­brating the arrests and the apparently imminent end of the war. Sud­denly a voice from the radio room rose above the general clamor, announcing that the Führer was about to speak.

The room fell silent. Stülpnagel entered, took a few steps forward toward the radio, and then remained there, still as a statue, as Hitler began to speak. The Führer raged about “a very small clique of ambi­tious, wicked, and stupidly criminal officers,” thanked Providence for his survival, and condemned the “coterie of criminal elements which is now being mercilessly rooted out.” One officer noted that Stülpnagel was under “tremendous tension” but “showed no sign of emotion as he stood there, his hands crossed behind his back, twisting his gloves.” When Hitler finished, Stülpnagel turned on his heels and strode from the room without a word.²⁶

Outside he was informed that the commander in chief of Naval Group West, Admiral Theodor Krancke, was threatening to march on Paris with more than a thousand men to free the interned SS and SD troops. In addition, the Luftwaffe commander in Paris, General Friedrich-Karl Hanesse, had put his forces on alert. Then Stülpnagel’s chief of staff, Colonel Hans-Ottfried von Linstow, reported that Stauffenberg had called earlier in the evening to say that all was lost and that his killers were already prowling the hall outside his office. But still Stülpnagel did not give up. Even when notified that Kluge had put through his dismissal as military commander and that General Blumentritt was on his way to relieve him, he carefully considered his next move and even discussed with Hofacker and Finckh the possibility of forcing Kluge’s hand by taking the decisive and irreversible step of executing the SS commanders. In the end, though, Stülpnagel abandoned all hope and gave the order to release the prisoners. “Providence,” he said, “has decided against us.”²⁷

With the release of the SS commanders, a very delicate and dangerous situation arose. It was handled with aplomb, however, by the reliable Hans von Boineburg. A small, bald man with a hoarse voice and a monocle, Boineburg proved that night that he was far more than the mere caricature of a German soldier whose persona he liked to affect, albeit somewhat ironically. He set out resolutely for the rue de Castiglione, where Oberg and Knochen were being held prisoner in a suite at the Hôtel Continental. In his charmingly blunt manner he announced that they were now free to go and delivered to the outraged Oberg an invitation from Stülpnagel to return to the Hôtel Raphael. Boineburg managed to mollify the SS commander to such an extent that he eventually agreed to come. Knochen, however, went back to his quarters.

A bizarre scene then unfolded in the Salon Bleu of the Hôtel Raphael, as the conspirators and the executioners sat down together. Just minutes before, they had been deadly enemies, some planning the murder of the person next to them, others feeling stunned and vengeful, and all brimming with suspicion. In the halting conversation that ensued, each player was keenly aware that any misstep could easily spell the death of Stülpnagel, Boineburg, Hofacker, Linstow, and the other members of Stülpnagel’s staff on the one side or Am­bassador Otto Abetz and SS Obergruppenführer Oberg on the other, not to mention Knochen, Krancke, and Blumentritt, who joined the group somewhat later.

Stülpnagel had ordered a round of champagne in an effort to create a relaxed, friendly atmosphere despite the heavy shadow cast by recent events. Abetz arrived first, in an angry mood, but he had grown much more conciliatory by the time Oberg appeared soon afterward. Still uncertain as to how to proceed, Oberg immediately declared that “investigations” would have to be conducted. But Abetz intervened, managing to persuade the still-furious SS commander to shake hands with his adversary. Abetz assured Oberg that Stülpnagel had been given contradictory orders, and gradually he led the conversation toward the conclusion that, in view of the approaching Allied forces and the mounting threat from the French underground, Germans had no choice but to stand together, shoulder to shoulder.

Oberg, who of course suspected that Stülpnagel had known exactly what he was doing, was hardly deceived by the game that was being played. “So, Herr General,” Oberg said in response to Stülpnagel’s greeting, “you seem to have bet on the wrong horse.” Oberg also realized, however, that his own carelessness and imprudence would make him an object of scorn within the SS. He was therefore by no means immune to the attempts of the army commanders to paper over the entire affair. Thus, as the evening wore on, he grew more approachable, the conversation picked up, and an atmosphere of friendly camaraderie began to develop. Champagne flowed in great quantity, and by the time Blumentritt and his two aides arrived, those gathered, though still somewhat distrustful, seemed in remarkably good spirits-as if at “a party that was in full swing.”²⁸

On his way to the Raphael, the ever-resourceful Blumentritt had hinted that a certain “arrangement” might be arrived at-a sugges­tion that was eagerly seized on by Knochen. Now Knochen reintroduced it, cautiously testing the waters by tentatively describing his notion, then retreating, then stating it a little more clearly, and then backing off behind a fog of words. Eventually he and Oberg decided to step outside for a moment. Back in the Salon Bleu, Blumentritt finally came out with the proposal, which everyone present seemed to find convincing except Admiral Krancke, who suddenly erupted in a tirade about “Stülpnagel, treason, and perfidy.” For a moment the whole fabric of half-truths seemed about to fall apart, but then opin­ion rallied around Blumentritt’s story of “mistakes” and “false alarms.” Considerably relieved, the partygoers returned to their champagne, drinking toasts to one another and celebrating into the early hours of the morning. The author Ernst Jünger, who was on Stülpnagel’s staff, wrote of this day, “The big snake [Hitler] was in the bag, but then we let it out again.”²⁹

Stülpnagel presumably only participated in the game in an attempt to protect his staff, which had always gone along with Hofacker’s and his wishes. (In fact, a relatively large number of his officers did sur­vive the ensuing purge.) For himself, Stülpnagel realized, there was no hope-even though he did not yet know that he had already been betrayed to Keitel by Kluge, who brushed Blumentritt’s astonishment aside with the comment, “Things will now take their course.” Early in the morning orders arrived from Keitel: Stülpnagel was to return to Berlin at once. He look leave of his colleagues and set out by car. Near Verdun, where he had fought in the First World War, Stülpnagel had his driver drop him off and proceed ahead a little. With Mort-Homme Hill rising before him, he climbed down the em­bankment of the Meuse canal. The report of a pistol split the air. Stülpnagel’s two traveling companions hurried back and dragged his body out of the swirling waters. He was still alive, having succeeded only in blinding himself. Nursed back to health under constant guard, Stülpnagel was arraigned before the People’s Court on August 30. He refused to name any accomplices, and when Roland Freisler, the judge, asked specifically about Rommel and Kluge he answered tersely, “I will not discuss the field marshals!” Later that day the executioner led the blind man to the gallows.³⁰

Many factors led to the failure of the July 20 plot. Among those most frequently mentioned is the “amateurism” of the leading conspira­tors, insufficient planning, blind trust in the chain of command, and poor coordination among the participants, which led to the bedlam that broke out at army headquarters. As Admiral Canaris observed, not without a certain cynicism, to an acquaintance he met on the street two days later, “That, my dear fellow, was not the way to go about it.”³¹

In any event, many important aspects of the plan did indeed go awry, from the failure to establish the loyalty and presence of the Döberitz and Krampnitz commanders to the defection of the task forces, which caused Colonel Jäger so much grief, to the absurd de­ception practiced on Major Jakob after he seized the broadcasting center on Masurenallee. Numerous other oversights and blunders- and simple human frailty-played a role as well, which is all the more surprising because the coup was planned and carried out by experi­enced officers of the general staff. The uprising lacked drive, but perhaps even more fatal was the fact that the staff officers who planned it did not have proven commanders at their disposal-resolute, careful officers experienced at overseeing troops and accustomed to bearing complete responsibility. Goebbels was amazed, for instance, to discover on the evening of July 20 that although the government quarter had been surrounded and two sentries posted in front of his apartment his telephone line had not been cut.³²

Nevertheless, it was not these obvious weaknesses that ultimately caused the uprising to fail. Strictly speaking, success or failure hinged on just two things: the assassination of Hitler and the interruption of all communications from the Wolf’s Lair. When the first of these conditions was not fulfilled, the second could not be maintained for long. One can hardly fault General Fellgiebel, who, astonished to see Hitler walk by him right after the explosion, made the fateful decision to call Berlin and pass along the news.

But however damaging the “logistical” failure, it does not capture the essence of the problem. Far more decisive on July 20, as on so many other days, were deeply ingrained attitudes and behaviors that inhibited any kind of revolt. Although criticism of Hitler and his re­gime was widespread within the army, not a single officer who had not been privy in advance to the plans for the uprising decided to join the rebels on the spur of the moment. The radio broadcasts in the early evening proclaimed not only that Hitler had survived but, even more important, that “legal” authority remained in his hands. There­after, most officers almost instinctively dismissed the rebels as insur­gents or traitors.

The enormous respect accorded “legality” greatly impeded the conspirators, stifling any questions as to why they were acting as they were. It was precisely in order to circumvent the army officers’ pro­found aversion to mutiny and broken oaths that the conspirators had planned to dress the coup up as a “legal” takeover. With the failure to assassinate Hitler, however, their reliance on legality was turned against them. This shift was clear in the initial reluctance and then the quite open defiance of the department heads on Bendlerstrasse, as well as in the passionate arguments that broke out in the Döberitz mess and prompted Colonel Wolfgang Müller to report that evening, “The troops cannot possibly be persuaded to fight against Hitler. They refuse to obey me against him.” Even among units that were deployed according to plan, a reference to “personal orders from the Führer” worked “like magic,” so that the troops turned around and headed smartly back to barracks.³³ Thiele and Thüngen reacted the same way and, most critical of all, so did Kluge. After his telephone conversation with Stieff, he was totally impervious to all appeals or attempts at persuasion, despite his previous close affiliation with the rebels.

It is here that the weakness of the Valkyrie plan-its reliance on orders being followed unquestioningly down the chain of command- clearly emerges. Even if the attack on Hitler had been successful, many generals with troops at their command would still have had to decide to obey the new government. A few examples suggest that this decision was far less certain than the conspirators imagined: on re­ceiving instructions from army headquarters in Berlin, the com­manders of military districts in Hamburg, Dresden, and Danzig immediately contacted their regional party commanders or local Ge­stapo officials for clarification. They may have been exceptions, but they illustrate the extent to which innumerable individual decisions would have had to go the right way in order for the rebels to pose a serious challenge to the logistical might of the established legal au­thorities. In his complex combination of contempt for the regime and submissiveness to it, indecision and legalism, Field Marshal Kluge illustrates better perhaps than any of his fellow officers the problem that would likely have doomed the coup even if the attack on Hitler had succeeded.

As always in human history, only a small minority of men were willing to raise moral principle not only above the traditions with which they grew up but above life itself. When Henning von Tresckow discovered in the early hours of July 21 that the attack on Hitler had failed, he said to Schlabrendorff “in a totally calm, col­lected way” that he would now take his own life because he feared what would happen when he was pressured to reveal the names of his accomplices. The next morning, as he took his final leave of his friend and prepared to drive out past the German lines into no-man’s-land in order to end his life, he added another reason for his actions: “The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in a few hours’ time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify in good conscience what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if just ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope that for our sake God will not destroy Germany. None of us can bewail his own death; those who consented to join our circle put on the robe of Nessus. A human being’s moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.”³⁴

A far more typical example of human behavior, however, was the expedient set of actions taken by Kluge-though in his case it was writ particularly large. Late in the evening of July 20, shortly after dismissing Stülpnagel and Hofacker with a resounding “No!” he sent a telegram to Hitler expressing his devotion: “The attempt of villain­ous murderers to kill you, my Führer, has been foiled by the fortu­itous hand of fate.”³⁵ Kluge knew full well that he still could not escape Hitler’s longstanding suspicions of him. Five days later, when the great Allied offensive in the West began with General Patton’s armored breakthrough in the area around St. Lô and Kluge could not be reached all day because he was directing the German troops from right behind the front, Hitler immediately suspected him of attempt­ing to negotiate a surrender. In any case, the Führer believed that kluge “knew about the assassination attempt,” as he remarked to Guderian. The reprimands and interference of a suspicious Führer soon culminated in Kluge’s being told where he should station him­self in battle. They continued with specific orders as to when to attack and where to hold the line-even though no troops were available for the maneuvers that were demanded. The ultimate humiliation came on August 17, after the fall of Falaise, when Field Marshal Walter Model suddenly appeared at Kluge’s headquarters and announced that he was the new commander in chief in the West. The letter from Hitler confirming Kluge’s dismissal ended with the ominous words “Field Marshal Kluge shall keep this office advised of where in Ger­many he intends to go.”³⁶

The “master of tactical improvisation,” as Kluge liked to be known, was forced into something he had always avoided: an irrevocable decision. He also had an opportunity to soften, at least for posterity, the memory of his indecisiveness, his pathetic “Children, I’m yours!” outburst, his constant evasion of and faithlessness toward Beck, Tresckow, Rommel, and Stülpnagel. Once again, however, he failed to take a stand, even though he had already resolved to put an end to fear and anxiety. He remained his guarded self in a farewell letter to Hitler and, while he did call for peace, he also wrote of the Führer’s “grandeur” and “genius” and concluded by writing, “I take leave of you, my Führer-to whom I have always stood closer than you per­haps realize-in the firm conviction that I did my duty to the absolute best of my ability.”³⁷ Kluge then set out on the road back to Germany. Near the place where Stülpnagel had tried to end his life, Kluge ordered his car to stop and swallowed poison.

As it happened, only days before, Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff had visited Kluge, like a ghost from the past, and attempted to persuade him to negotiate with the Allies, withdraw his troops to Germany’s prewar borders and, with the help of a few reliable units, try to overthrow the Nazi regime. “If that should fail, Gersdorff,” the commander retorted, “Field Marshal Kluge will go down as the big­gest swine in world history.” Gersdorff continued to press, arguing that “every great man in world history” has faced a decision that would cause him to be remembered either as a criminal or as “a savior in times of dire need.” Kluge simply laid his hand on the colonel’s shoulder and remarked, “Gersdorff, Field Marshal Kluge is no great man.”³⁸