Plotting Hitler's Death

8. THE ELEVENTH HOUR

On July 1 Stauffenberg was promoted to the rank of colonel and simultaneously assumed his new duties as chief of staff to the commander of the reserve army. General Fromm had always been a vigilant, cautious, opportunistic man, whose suspicions that Stauf­fenberg and Olbricht were plotting a coup had long since hardened into certainty. It seems all the more curious, therefore, that he went to such lengths to have Stauffenberg appointed to his staff. Fromm may simply have wanted to use Stauffenberg, who had written a re­port that drew extremely laudatory reviews from Hitler, to escape the disfavor into which he had himself fallen. “Finally a general staff officer with imagination and intelligence!” Hitler is said to have re­marked.¹ It is also possible that Wehrmacht adjutant General Rudolf Schmundt recommended the brilliant young officer-who had been widely noticed and even considered as a possible successor to General Adolf Heusinger, the chief of operations-in the hope of reviving Fromm, who had “grown tired.” In any case, when Stauffenberg first met with his new boss and intimated that he was indeed considering a coup, Fromm merely thanked him for his frankness and let the mat­ter drop. Stauffenberg’s successor on Olbricht’s staff was Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, whom Stauffenberg had known since their days together at the War Academy.²

Of crucial importance to Stauffenberg and to Olbricht, who now had to do without Stauffenberg’s services, was the fact that the new position gave Stauffenberg the access to Hitler that the conspirators had long sought. No longer would they need to arrange presentations of new uniforms or other difficult events. On June 7, the day after the Allied invasion of Normandy, Stauffenberg had already accompanied Fromm to a discussion at the Berghof, Hitler’s Obersalzberg head­quarters. Stauffenberg recalled that Hitler seemed “in a daze,” push­ing situation maps back and forth with a trembling hand and casting repeated glances at him.³ Now, barely one week after his new ap­pointment, Stauffenberg found himself back at the Berghof once again.

It is not clear whether he intended to assassinate Hitler then, but he did take a bomb with him and the other conspirators were warned in advance. It had always been assumed in resistance circles that Göring and Himmler would also have to be killed in any attack on Hitler. As things turned out, they were not present at this meeting, which may explain why Stauffenberg did not set off the bomb. It may also be, however, that he was still counting on Helmuth Stieff, whom he went to see when he learned that Stieff would preside at the following day’s long-postponed presentation of new uniforms at Schloss Klessheim-an occasion identical to the ones at which Bussche and Kleist had planned to blow themselves up with Hitler half a year earlier. But when Stauffenberg informed Stieff that he had brought “all the stuff along,” Stieff declined the mission.

This response reinforced Stauffenberg’s resolve to carry out the assassination himself. Upon learning of his new appointment in June, he had begun accustoming himself to the idea-over the objections of Beck-and had informed Yorck and Haeften of his intention. No one had ever proposed that Stauffenberg himself be the one to kill Hitler, both because of his severe war wounds and because the plans for a coup made his presence in Berlin indispensable. In view of what he termed “our desperate situation,” however, he decided that there was no other way. In early July he began to make the necessary preparations (arranging, above all, for an airplane to fly him back to Berlin) and to think through the changes that would have to be made to the plan to accommodate his dual role as assassin and leader of the upris­ing in the capital.

It is revealing that Stauffenberg’s decision to take so much upon himself raised no practical objections from the other conspirators, though it considerably increased the hazards of their undertaking. Only the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch advanced serious reserva­tions following a meeting held at his house. Stauffenberg, who had stayed behind, told him about what was planned, at least in part. Sauerbruch’s qualms at first focused on Stauffenberg’s still seriously weakened physical condition but ultimately broadened to include many other concerns as well.⁴

Stauffenberg’s fellow conspirators, by contrast, were troubled once again mostly by deep philosophical concerns. In lengthy discussions running from early spring until June, Stauffenberg finally managed to assuage the theological and ethical objections that Yorck and other members of the Kreisau Circle had to killing Hitler. He made espe­cially great strides in this regard when he was able to confront the “hairsplitting scholars of the loyalty oath” with evidence of orders from Kaltenbrunner prescribing “’special treatment’ for 40,000 or 42,000 Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz.”⁵ Nevertheless, Hans-Bernd von Haeften wrestled to the very end with his anxieties about assassination, tied in knots as he was by professional codes of honor, ethical maxims, and, most important, religious strictures. When, early in the year, his brother Werner returned from a meeting with Stauffenberg and announced that he had agreed in principle to be the assassin the conspirators needed, Haeften asked: “Are you absolutely sure this is your duty before God and our forefathers?” But then, as the daily toll of the dead and injured mounted, he was tormented by the thought that he had dissuaded his brother and saved Hitler.⁶

Hans-Bernd von Haeften thus became entangled in a hopeless web of philosophical and religious reflection. His confusion can be seen in the solution he ultimately embraced: that Hitler ought to have been killed before Stalingrad, “if at all,” but that now that everything “was going downhill and luck was deserting him,” there could be “no bless­ing in tyrannicide.” Similarly, Moltke opposed murdering Hitler for a long lime, then came to favor it, and finally, when he knew that the end of his life was near, expressed great joy that he had only “thought” about it. Men like Beck, Steltzer, and Yorck were also deeply religious. Their involvement in the resistance was based to a large extent on their spiritual convictions. Of course they wanted to save their country and mankind and to put an end to the unspeakable practice of mass murder, but they were equally or perhaps even more concerned with saving their own souls.

Stauffenberg, on the other hand, considered the oath of loyalty to have been invalidated countless times. His religious and ethical be­liefs led him to the conclusion that it was his duty to eliminate Hitler and the murderous regime by any means possible. His friends recalled that in the days and weeks preceding the assassination attempt he liked to recite Stefan George’s poem “The Antichrist,” which speaks in broad, phantasmagoric images about the chaotic confusion of senses and reason that ushers in and accompanies the Antichrist’s ascension. Although Stauffenberg was a great admirer of George, he always had an eye for simpler, rougher truths, and he led the debate within the resistance back to the political realm where it really be­longed. Germans found themselves in a position, he argued, where they must inevitably commit some crime-either of commission or of omission. A few days before July 20 he added: “It’s time now for something to be done. He who has the courage to act must know that he will probably go down in German history as a traitor. But if he fails to act, he will be a traitor before his own conscience.”⁷

Speed was of the essence, although no longer just for military reasons. The so-called western solution, which called for the withdrawal of all German forces from France so as to strengthen the defense against the Soviets in the East, raised unrealistic hopes for Germany’s strate­gic situation. Goerdeler, for one, volunteered to go to France, possi­bly accompanied by Beck, and use his talents of persuasion to convince the German commanders there to offer Eisenhower a truce and open the front, allowing the Western Allies to pour into the heart of Germany. Goerdeler envisioned an unconditional surrender to the Western Allies as not only saving the country from the advance of the Red Army but, more important, forestalling what he later called the “ill-starred assassination attempt.” This, as it turned out, would be the last political proposal of Goerdeler’s life.⁸ Stauffenberg, too, had pondered the plan and, though tempted, discarded it as impracti­cable. Beck also distanced himself from any such endeavor. Hopes for a negotiated peace therefore faded to a faint glimmer, which was completely obliterated when Otto John, a lawyer who worked for Lufthansa, reported from Madrid on July 11 that the British ambassa­dor had reiterated that hostilities would end only with simultaneous and unconditional surrender on all fronts. There was no avoiding total military disaster.

A far greater impetus to immediate action was the conspirators’ concern about being discovered. Their ever-widening circle could not escape detection by the Gestapo forever. Furthermore, Leuschner, Kaiser, and Max Habermann, the president of the German Office Workers’ Association, had been busy building an “invisible network” of opposition cells throughout Germany to provide broader support for the coup, which was being staged largely “from above.” As soon as the new government was installed, these cells were to whip up the public support and cooperation that would be essential to its success. But these preparations also increased the number of people who were initiated into the conspiracy.

On lop of this, in June news of the death sentences pronounced for Nikolaus von Halem, Mumm von Schwarzenstein, Otto Kiep, and other members of the Solf Circle had filtered down. At the same time the Gestapo arrested Colonel Wilhelm Staehle, a close contact of Goerdeler’s. In early July Leber and Reichwein were arrested. No one could be sure how much police interrogators managed to pry out of them, but everyone knew, as a number of diarists noted, that the air in Berlin was thick with furtive confidences and hushed but unambiguous understandings. The nervous strain of all the months of wait­ing began to take its toll. Military Intelligence captain Ludwig Gehre, for instance, panicked and threatened “to blow that whole nest on Bendlerstrasse sky-high” if he fell into the hands of the Gestapo. Stauffenberg was under enormous pressure to move quickly, but it was above all the arrest of Leber that motivated him to take action. “I’ll get him out. I’ll get him out,” Stauffenberg assured those around him on numerous occasions, and he also wrote Frau Leber saying, “We know where our duty lies.”⁹

On July 11 Stauffenberg was once again at Führer headquarters on the Obersalzberg and once again he was carrying a bomb. He had summoned Goerdeler to Berlin to wait at the ready and had also informed others, including Witzleben, General Hoepner, Yorck, Count Helldorf, and a number of young officers in the Ninth Pots­dam Reserve Battalion. Nevertheless, this day had the feel of a test run because many preparations that would have been necessary for the coup that was to follow the assassination were left undone. Fur­thermore, Himmler failed to show up yet again.

Stauffenberg’s patience was wearing thin. Just before the conference was to begin, he asked Stieff, “My God, shouldn’t we do it?” But Stieff pointed out Himmler’s absence, thereby imposing, perhaps unwittingly, another difficult condition on an assassination attempt that he himself was still not prepared to carry out. In the end Stauffenberg abandoned his plan and decided not to detonate the bomb he had taken along. When the news reached Berlin, Goerdeler commented, “half laughing and half crying, ‘They’ll never do it!’ ”¹⁰

Three days later, Stauffenberg was ordered to report for another meeting, on July 15, this time at the Wolf’s Lair, where Hitler had returned even though-or perhaps because-Russian forces were now only about sixty miles from the East Prussian border. Stauf­fenberg used the intervening time to review some of the technical and personnel details that would be crucial to the success of the coup. An agreement had been reached with General Erich Fellgiebel, the chief army signal officer, to interrupt signal traffic to and from Hitler’s headquarters at a given moment. But Fellgiebel had pointed out on several occasions that little could be done in advance because although there was a central communications center, the army, the air force, the SS, and the Foreign Office each had their own signal lines. In addition, care would have to be taken not to cut off signals to and from the troops at the front. Thus, Fellgiebel maintained, Führer headquarters could only be isolated for a limited period; everything depended, he said, on doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. Meanwhile, however, improvements were to be made in com­munications with the liaison officers in the military districts, whose cooperation would be so essential to Operation Valkyrie; the preparedness of the army units in the Berlin area to take fast action had to be ensured; and numerous other aspects of mobilization, which were largely in Olbricht’s hands, needed to be clarified. The final problem facing Stauffenberg was how to handle the pliers for igniting the bomb, which had to be specially constructed for him because of his mutilated hand.

The statements to be made to the public were also checked again. A number of versions are still extant, all of them rough drafts or working copies that contain repetitions and contradictions. Apparently the conspirators never managed to produce a text acceptable to everyone. One proclamation came from Goerdeler, who evidently drafted it in concert with Tresckow and the lawyer Josef Wirmer. Leber and Reichwein produced another, and Beck a third, which was specifically addressed to the troops. Stauffenberg also drafted a proc­lamation, which was discussed and amended on a number of occasions within his circle of friends. The original text did not survive the war, but his close friend Rudolf Fahrner wrote a short summary from memory in August 1945.

According to Fahrner, Stauffenberg’s statement began by informing the German people “without further explanation that…Adolf Hitler was dead. Then came a few sentences condemning the party leaders,” whose behavior had created “the need and duty to inter­vene.” The head of the transitional government (whose name Fahrner never learned) provided “assurances that he and those who had placed themselves at his disposal wanted nothing for themselves. The nation would be summoned as soon as possible to freely deter­mine the future constitution of the state, which would be new and innovative. The head of the transitional government,” Fahrner wrote, “swore on behalf of himself and his colleagues to act in strict and complete accordance with the law and neither to do nor to tolerate anything that contravened divine or human justice. In return he de­manded unconditional obedience for the duration of his government. It was then proclaimed that crimes and unlawful acts committed un­der party rule would have to be thoroughly atoned for, but no one would be persecuted for his political convictions. This was followed by an announcement that the transitional government would do ev­erything in its power to reach a truce with the enemy as soon as possible” and that this could not be achieved “without great loss and sacrifice.”¹¹

On the evening of his return from the July 11 meeting at Berchtesgaden, Stauffenberg had met with his cousin Cäsar von Hofacker, who was on Stülpnagel’s staff in Paris, to orchestrate plans for the coup. Hofacker informed him that Field Marshals Hans von Kluge, who had recently been named commander in chief in the West, and Erwin Rommel, the chief of Army Group B, had both said that Allied superiority, especially in the air, was so great that the front could be held for only two or three more weeks at best. The troops were “withering” under the incessant onslaught. Stülpnagel was most will­ing to assume an active part in the coup, while Kluge remained as coy as ever and Rommel basically kept his distance. Rommel had endured a tense confrontation with Hitler one month earlier at the Wolf Gorge II headquarters near Margival, north of Soissons, incurring Hitler’s wrath by calling attention to the Allies’ vast material advantage and advising that the war be ended. But Rommel was not prepared to resort to violence. A few days later he drafted an “ultimatum” tele­gram to the Führer, in which he begged him to draw “the political consequences” of the imminent collapse of the western front; but he was still unwilling to go any further. It remains an open question whether Rommel would ever have joined the opposition. The growing chasm between him and the conspirators in Berlin is apparent in the fact that he allowed his chief of general staff, Hans Speidel, to persuade him to remove the word political from his telegram before sending it, so as not to “annoy” the Fuhrer unnecessarily.¹²

When Stauffenberg flew to Rastenburg in the early morning of July 15, along with Fromm and Captain Friedrich Karl Klausing, the coup was more thoroughly planned and the circle of supporters wider than four days earlier. Stauffenberg and Olbricht’s determination to take the plunge that day is clearly evident in Olbricht’s decision to issue the Valkyrie alert to the guard battalion and the army schools around Berlin at around eleven o’clock, or two hours before the earliest pos­sible assassination attempt. In so doing, he risked squandering the only opportunity he would have to act on his own authority. Moreover, Stauffenberg had apparently abandoned his insistence that the attack be carried out only if Himmler was present.

Immediately on arriving at Rastenburg, however, Stauffenberg encountered Fellgiebel and Stieff, both of whom were adamant that the attack be canceled because of Himmler’s absence. They also told Stauffenberg that Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner had been most definite the previous evening that the assassination ought only to be carried out “if the Reichsführer-SS is present.” Both Olbricht’s decision to issue the Valkyrie alert and Stauffenberg’s evident exas­peration with his own hesitation on July 11 seem to indicate, though, that this time Stauffenberg was determined to overcome any such objections.

But “it all came to nothing again today,” Stauffenberg was forced to admit to Klausing after the briefing as they headed for dinner in Keitel’s special train. According to one version of events, Stieff prevented the attack by removing the briefcase with the bomb while Stauffenberg was out of the conference room making a telephone call to army headquarters in Berlin. According to another version, Stauf­fenberg himself wavered, worrying that Stieff, Wagner, and Fellgiebel’s vehement insistence that the attack not be carried out amounted to an abrogation of their agreement to participate. All that Stauffenberg ever said on the subject was that, to his surprise, “a meeting was called at which he himself had to give a report, and thus he never had an opportunity to carry out the assassination,” his brother Berthold recalled.¹³

The real reasons the attack of July 15 was called off can no longer be determined with any certainty. Whatever they were, though, this failure highlighted the resistance’s most serious deficiency. There is no doubting the moral integrity of the conspirators, their hatred of the Nazi regime, and their horror at the atrocities committed in Ger­many’s name. But the distance between outrage and action is great. In his telephone call to Berlin, where Witzleben, Hoepner, Olbricht, Mertz von Quirnheim, Hansen, Haeften, and many others were gath­ered, Stauffenberg, faced with the opposition of Stieff, Wagner, and Fellgiebel to an attack that would not also kill Himmler, apparently intended to ensure that his fellow conspirators were still with him and to win a consensus for proceeding despite Himmler’s absence. Alter a half hour of dithering, which wasted precious time and demonstrated to the impatient Stauffenberg how much his fellow conspirators rel­ished endless discussion and debate, the answer came back that the majority of those assembled wanted to postpone the attempt. None of them, apart from Mertz von Quirnheim, seems to have appreciated the traumatic effect their response had on Stauffenberg. That evening Mertz spoke to his wife about the “deeply depressing feeling… of finding yourself all alone at a moment when great courage and determination are required to succeed.” Of the abortive efforts to bring the bomb to Hitler one conspirator noted that for the third time in just a few days “Stauffenberg has gone down that terrible road in vain.”¹⁴

According to one account, the news that the attack had been postponed once again eased the tension at army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse and gave rise “to an almost euphoric mood.” This report may not be reliable, however, particularly with regard to General Olbricht. He knew only too well what consequences might attend his unauthorized issuance of the Valkyrie orders in Fromm’s absence.¹⁵ Olbricht departed at once to cancel the untimely alert. He drove to the affected units in Potsdam and Glienicke, and, concealing his in­volvement, expressed his “particular appreciation” to General Otto Hitzfeld, the commander of the Döberitz infantry school, who was partially initiated into the conspiracy. He also made note of the fact that the new commander of the Krampnitz panzer school, Colonel Wolfgang Glaesemer, probably could not be won over to the cause, and rescinded the alert.

The next evening Stauffenberg met for the last time with his clos­est friends. Gathered together at the house on Tristanstrasse in the Wannsee district of Berlin where he lived with his brother Berthold were Ulrich Schwerin von Schwanenfeld, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Cäsar von Hofacker, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, and Georg Hansen. Once again they discussed ways of proceeding: the “western solution,” outlined above, and the “Berlin solution,” according to which the central signals system would be seized for twenty-four hours and Hitler’s headquarters outmaneuvered by a number of irreversible withdrawals of German forces. Both these ideas were rejected, as was the idea discussed occasionally of ending the war by means of a direct agreement between the commanders in chief of the various national armies, speaking as “one soldier to another” and cir­cumventing governments entirely.

All these solutions ran aground on the hard fact that no progress could be made in any of these directions-either with the Allies or with the German commanders-so long as Hitler was alive. The Al­lies had absolutely no intention of negotiating with him and the com­manders little stomach for openly opposing him. The only option left, the conspirators on Tristanstrasse concluded, was indeed assassina­tion. There is some indication that Stauffenberg was eager to hold this lengthy discussion, which stretched well into the night, in order to allay once and for all both his own qualms about doing “the dirty deed” and those of so many others. It was now clearly too late for the conspirators to turn the assassination of Hitler to advantage and negotiate better political terms with the Allies. All that remained was the possibility of reducing the number of war victims and sparing Germany some measure of humiliation by purging itself of the Nazis. In a subsequent conversation with Beck, Stauffenberg reviewed what had gone wrong on July 15 and pledged that “the next time he would act, come what may.

As always happened when things were heading toward a climax, more bad news arrived-of precisely the kind that had repeatedly sapped the conspirators’ resolve in the past. First, while returning from the front Field Marshal Rommel was severely injured when his car was strafed by an airplane. To be sure, he had never really figured in the plans for a coup, but when he had been asked the previous day how he would react if Hitler rejected his “ultimatum,” he had coolly re­plied that he would “throw open the western front,” thereby fueling the opposition’s lingering hope of unilaterally putting a stop to the fighting on that front.¹⁷ Furthermore, Rommel was extremely popular with the general public, and though he was certainly not an enemy of the regime, the insurgents hoped that he might join them if the cir­cumstances were right. Rommel’s participation would have helped prevent the creation of another stab-in-the-back legend, a concern that had so preoccupied the conspirators.

In the midst of all the other bad news, however, the loss of Rommel was scarcely noticed. Much more disturbing to the conspirators was a tip from Arthur Nebe that Goerdeler had been named by Wilhelm Staehle and was about to be arrested. Stauffenberg responded to the information by asking Goerdeler “to disappear as quickly as possible and not endanger the entire conspiracy by running around Berlin making telephone calls.” Goerdeler, already bitter at having been pushed about for months and feeling increasingly squeezed to the periphery of the conspiracy, took this as another attempt to belittle him, especially since Stauffenberg did not mention that he had been summoned to report to Hitler’s headquarters on July 20, just two days hence. Nevertheless, Stauffenberg did ask Goerdeler to re­main ready for a coup, and Goerdeler let it be known that his hiding place over the next few days would the estate of his friend Baron Kraft von Palombini in Rahnisdorf.¹⁸

Possibly even more disconcerting was a warning delivered to Stauffenberg on July 18 by Lieutenant Commander Alfred Kranzfelder: a rumor was circulating in Berlin, Kranzfelder reported, that “Führer headquarters would be blown sky-high that very week.” It seems that a young Hungarian nobleman had picked up this piece of information at the Potsdam home of the widow of General von Bredow, one of those murdered in the Rohm putsch. Later it turned out that the source was none other than one of the Bredow daughters, who was on friendly terms with Werner von Haeften, and it was reasonable to conclude that the information had thus far been confined to the Bredow household and had not actually spread to Berlin. But Schulenburg also informed the conspirators that day that “two men had been inquiring about him in his neighborhood” and that he did not think they were harmless visitors.¹⁹

These and other tips made Stauffenberg feel even more strongly that he had to act immediately. He felt driven as well-perhaps even more-by his chagrin at the delays and at the lack of resolve over the previous weeks. His exhaustion and his raw nerves, mentioned in various accounts, undoubtedly added to his sense of urgency. One observer spoke, with poetic overtones, of the “dark shadow” that seemed to have enveloped him since June. In any case, as Stauf­fenberg now said to Kranzfelder, “There’s no choice now; we’ve crossed the Rubicon.”²⁰

The next day, July 19, was spent on preparations. By about noon Olbricht’s and Stauffenberg’s staffs were busy alerting Witzleben, Hoepner, Berlin city commandant Paul von Hase, Colonel Jäger, Ma­jor Ludwig von Leonrod, and the large number of other officers who had roles to play. In the early evening Stauffenberg called on Quar­termaster General Wagner in Zossen, hoping perhaps to straighten out the difference of opinion that had arisen on July 15. At the end of their discussion Wagner arranged for a special airplane to be placed at Stauffenberg’s disposal for the return flight from Rastenburg. After Stauffenberg had taken his leave Wagner informed Stieff of the preparations.

Early on the morning of July 20 Wagner greeted Lieutenant Colonel Bernhard Klamroth by asking, “What are we going to do if the assassination really is today?”²¹ Rarely had the conspirators’ lack of confidence been so clearly expressed as in this naive-sounding question; it was almost as if an actual assassination was the last thing they expected. Perhaps the sense, reinforced over the years, that whatever they touched would inevitably turn to dust lent all their plans a non­committal air, which could not help but affect their determination to act. Just a few hours later this ingrained skepticism would have fatal consequences.

First, however, the notion that nothing ever happened as a result of their efforts was about to be shattered. Wagner’s query suggests he suddenly realized that Stauffenberg had brought to the resistance an unwavering determination to carry out the plot. One might wonder, as the historian Peter Hoffmann has, why Stieff, Wagner, Meichssner, Fellgiebel, and other officers who had access to Hitler palmed the assassination attempt off on Stauffenberg, whose physical dexterity was limited and whose absence from Berlin would seriously jeopar­dize the coup following the assassination. In all likelihood, they hadn’t fully understood that they were now irrevocably implicated, and that if Stauffenberg failed their own ruin was assured as well.

All the conspirators wrestled with their doubts that the coup would be successful. Hofacker said he felt that the chances were very small, as did Schulenburg and Berthold von Stauffenberg. Tresckow stated that the attempt would “very likely go awry,” and Beck expressed similar sentiments. Even Stauffenberg was apparently skeptical and told a young officer in early July that “it was questionable whether it would succeed.” In his next breath he revealed how far he had moved from hopes of achieving any far-reaching aims, a feeling shared and in many cases expressed by his close friends. “But even worse than failure,” Stauffenberg continued, “is to yield to shame and coercion without a struggle.”²² This was Stauffenberg’s only certainty. Every­thing else that followed would be a “leap in the dark.”²³