The Women Who Flew for Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries
Page 30
Peter Riedel had been serving as air attaché in Stockholm at the time of the July plot. ‘The Swedish papers were full of the German generals’ attempt on Hitler’s life,’ he recorded, and ‘I was not the only person who could see where things were going.’92 Soon Peter was concerned not only about the regime’s ideological standpoint, but also its ability to make well-informed decisions. It was increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to report unpleasant truths through the embassy or Foreign Office, he noted, while ‘any good news was inflated out of proportion’.93
In September Peter received a large, anonymous envelope. Propaganda and ‘disinformation’ were often sent over from the Soviet Legation in Stockholm, only to be thrown away, but this was different. Inside Peter found a leaflet with ‘horrifying photographs’ of Majdanek extermination camp, on the outskirts of Lublin in Nazi-occupied Poland.94 Although initially established as a labour camp for POWs in 1941, Majdanek was later used for the industrial-scale killing of Polish Jews, as well as Russian troops and other prisoners. It became the first such camp captured by the Allies, just two days after the July bomb plot. The speed at which the Red Army advanced meant that much of the camp’s documentation survived. Seven gas chambers had been put into operation in Majdanek in September 1942, and were never hidden from view. A year later, massacres by firing squad were also introduced under Aktion Erntefest (Operation Harvest Festival). At the height of the massacres, 18,400 Polish Jews were killed on a single day. The male and female inmates forced to bury, and later exhume and cremate the bodies, were later executed in turn. The killings continued until March 1944. The lowest estimate of the total number of men, women and children killed at the camp is almost 80,000, but a shed containing 800,000 pairs of shoes was later found, along with heaps of ash waiting to be used as crop fertilizer.
After capturing Majdanek, the Russians convened a Polish–Soviet commission to investigate and document the crimes against humanity committed there. This inquiry produced the leaflet sent to German embassies, as well as to the Allied press. Peter had heard rumours of atrocities in the east for two years, but had convinced himself that the one detailed eyewitness account of a mass shooting he had heard was an isolated mistake by fanatics, rather than evidence of official policy. ‘If only the Führer knew, he would put it right,’ was the common view among the people Peter knew.95 Yet this leaflet contained evidence that atrocities were supported at the highest level, not just at the front, but in organized death camps. On the last page, the date of Himmler’s visit to Majdanek was recorded. ‘I knew now with awful certainty that the stories I had heard, the rumours of mass shootings, were far less terrible than the reality,’ Peter wrote in despair.
Peter dared not discuss the leaflet at the embassy. As the story broke in the Western press, he wrote to an American general, to defend the honour of the ‘misled, patient, hard-working and suffering German masses’ who had been failed by their ‘whole leading class’.96 ‘No decent German approves of these Gestapo crimes,’ he wrote. ‘Would it be fair to let the whole nation suffer as punishment for the crimes of some fanatics?’97 His letter did not provide any new information on Nazi war crimes, and nor did it concern itself with the murdered victims of Majdanek. Furthermore, it was never sent. A few weeks later, on one of his monthly visits to Berlin, Peter smuggled in the Majdanek leaflet between the bottles and gifts in his diplomatic bag. He still had no idea what to do with it when, a few days later, he headed to the Air Ministry to meet Hanna for lunch. The once luxurious Berlin Aero Club had suffered considerable bomb damage. ‘Pools of water stood about in the entrance hall,’ Peter noticed, and ‘water was dripping constantly inside as well as out’.98 Hanna was waiting for him in the small room reserved for officers, ‘the one bright spot in an atmosphere of deep gloom’.99 Friends for more than a decade, the pair quickly started to catch up on news. ‘Like everyone else, she was depressed,’ Peter saw, but her spirits seemed to lift as they talked.100
Hanna’s crash had not diminished her appetite for danger, nor had her tour of Russia dampened her belief in final victory. She was just back from a visit to the Wolf’s Lair, she told Peter, accompanying Robert Ritter von Greim to a meeting with Hitler. Hitler had awarded Greim ‘Swords and Diamonds’ to go with his ‘Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves’ in August. Above his sparkling honours, Greim was looking more soft and grey than ever, but his ambition was unsated. Bitterly critical of Göring, he was keen to take over command of the Luftwaffe.* While he and Hitler were ensconced, Hanna had been delighted to bump into Otto Skorzeny, also getting some fresh air between the barbed wire and guard posts. That night she proudly introduced the two men she so admired. The younger Skorzeny was ‘astonished by the energy and enterprise of which the General still showed himself capable’, and was soon engaged ‘in a serious and animated discussion’ about the future of the Luftwaffe.101 Hanna was in her element.
The next day, a bent and sickly Hitler appointed Greim as deputy commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, with a brief ‘to take control of all military air operations in such a manner that [Hitler] would not have to remove Göring altogether’.102 Humiliating as this was for Göring, it also left Greim impotent. Although disappointed that her favourite general had not secured the top position, Hanna was still delighted by his promotion. Skorzeny was more cynical. ‘In view of the hopeless military situation I assume that Greim had declined to work anywhere near Göring,’ he wrote.103 Greim indeed requested a return to his old position.
That Hanna was incredibly well connected was no surprise to Peter, but he was disturbed to discover that she now counted Himmler among her circle. The chief of the SS and Gestapo was ‘a kind, good-natured man’, she told Peter, ‘very correct in matters of etiquette and to her quite compassionate and charming’.104 Peter was shocked into silence. Until then, he had always been able to talk freely with Hanna, whose honesty and frankness he much admired, so, despite some trepidation, a few hours later he called on her again, this time at her apartment. Throwing the Majdanek leaflet down on Hanna’s table in what she called ‘a state of considerable agitation’, Peter told her, ‘There’s your friend Himmler for you! See what he’s been doing? Read that!’105 As Hanna turned the pages she began to shake with rage. ‘Do you mean to say you believe this rubbish?’ she shouted. ‘It is obviously enemy propaganda, not to be taken seriously.’106 Hanna felt ‘boundless fury’ that Peter could give the account any credit at all, but her immediate dismissal of the leaflet made Peter’s temper erupt in turn.107 Where did the 800,000 pairs of shoes come from? he demanded furiously. Why should America’s Time magazine, and the other Western press who had carried the story, toe a communist line? When their rage had finally exhausted itself, Peter looked steadily at Hanna. ‘Prove that it’s not true,’ he urged her. ‘Show it to Himmler, see what he has to say!’108 Hanna agreed. Himmler was such ‘an honourable and kindly man’, she felt, there could be no danger.109
At their last meeting, Himmler had told Hanna that she might raise anything with him. Now, when she produced the Majdanek leaflet, he flicked through it without comment or any change of expression. ‘What do you say to this, Reichsführer?’ she prompted him.110 In October 1943 Himmler had given a speech to Party leaders at Posen, in which he spoke frankly about ‘the extermination of the Jewish people’. He had visited several camps since, reportedly handing out promotions after witnessing the use of the gas chambers at Sobibór. Avoiding Hanna’s question, he now quietly asked her whether she believed it. She did not, she told him with impatient sincerity. Despite the growing rumours circulating after the introduction of forced camp labour, with the smell from crematoriums, and the lack of any letters back from deported Jews, Hanna had convinced herself that the leaflet was atrocity propaganda. Had she had any doubts, it would have been suicidal to confront the head of the SS with evidence of his crimes. Himmler, however, made no attempt to refute the veracity of the leaflet; he was more interested in judging Hanna. Unable or unwilling to
consider this, Hanna ploughed on, urging him to counter the claims publicly. She seized on his agreement regarding counter-propaganda as if it were the comprehensive denial she was all too keen to hear. Then the meeting was over. She had been deeply shocked by the leaflet, Hanna later told Peter, but she had agreed to shed light on it, and their fears had been ‘relieved’ by her meeting with Himmler.111
In the first edition of her memoirs, Hanna wrote that it was only after the war that she knew the truth about Nazi concentration camps. In later editions, this statement was removed. The truth was clearly complicated. Perhaps she simply could not believe these unimaginable, unprecedented horrors. Perhaps the truth was too hard to process, demanding, as it would, the re-evaluation of her entire world view and her own moral worth, something she apparently had no desire to pursue. Yet Hanna had been disturbed enough by the Majdanek leaflet to ensure responsibility for dismissing it did not end with her. Himmler had not only reassured her; in some ways he had relieved her of her burden of knowledge. There is no question, though, that Hanna saw evidence of the atrocities at Majdanek. She chose both to disregard this, and to continue her active support for the regime.* Later that month she told an aviation friend that she did not agree with many things happening in Nazi Germany, but she was happy that she could raise issues that others would be executed for mentioning. That was ‘her way to help’, she said.112 Her language not only implied moral righteousness, but also glossed over any reference to the appalling crimes she had seen reported.
A few days after Hanna’s meeting with Himmler, the Majdanek reports were denied in a leading German newspaper, and across the Swedish press. Hanna was further reassured. Peter, however, returned to Stockholm with an impending sense of personal crisis. In mid-November he received two telegrams within an hour, summoning him to Berlin. Instead of returning, he asked contacts in the Swedish air force to arrange asylum. With his diplomatic immunity and passport both cancelled, he was officially stateless when he heard that German military intelligence, the infamous Abwehr, had abducted his wife from Switzerland and were holding her hostage for his return. Keeping his nerve, Peter checked with the Swiss Embassy, which was able to confirm that Helen was still safe in Davos. With the German Embassy making moves to extradite him for a court martial, Peter quickly dropped off the radar. Now he offered his services to the Allies. He hoped to give radio broadcasts telling the truth about SS war crimes to the civilians of Germany, but was told this would be ‘of little use at this stage’.113 He spent the rest of the war hiding in the Swedish countryside.*
As the goods train carrying the Sippenhaft prisoners approached Stutthof, just outside Danzig, Fey put her eye to a crack between the planks forming their carriage. They were passing ‘an enormous net of barbed wire lit by huge searchlights’, along which ‘the outlines of watchtowers cut menacingly into the sky’.114 She, Alexander and the others were lucky; their potential value as hostages meant they were transferred to a special ‘VIP shed’. Here conditions were immeasurably better than in the rest of the camp, with several small rooms, a common bathroom and open toilets. Every day they were fed from an ‘enormous barrel of thin soup’, with a few vegetables and a chunk of black or grey bread. On Sundays they even got some meat.
The Sippenhaft prisoners’ only work at Stutthof was chopping wood in a small yard, laundry, darning and cooking. ‘Professors are obviously not good at certain practical things,’ Fey wrote after Alexander nearly chopped off his toes with an axe.115 While recovering, he showed Fey some of his poems. She was desperately in need of comfort, and confessed that ‘even in his weakened state, Alexander was becoming more and more of a magnet for my wounded emotions’.116 During daylight hours the group were allowed to move around their yard, but at night the building was floodlit and the guards had orders to shoot. Escape was in any case impossible. They often heard patrol dogs, ‘half-starved bloodhounds’ as the elderly Clemens Stauffenberg called them, barking as a prisoner was being hunted down.117 ‘Pursued by these animals,’ Fey continued, they ‘would invariably be captured. A desperate, anguished scream would sometimes pierce the air as the dogs fell upon their victim.’118
Within weeks dysentery had broken out, soon followed by typhoid. Himmler had given orders that none of the Sippenhaft prisoners were to be allowed to die, ‘at least not yet’, so they were treated with drugs, and anyone with scarlet fever was put in isolation.119 When two female Russian prisoners were detailed to nurse them, Mika spoke with them in their own language. ‘Details of the grim life beyond the confines of our barrack emerged, and it made our lot seem like paradise in comparison,’ Fey wrote. ‘The women described how many of their companions had been tortured, then killed in the gas chambers and cremated in big ovens.’120 No one doubted them. ‘Day and night we saw the smoke from the crematory furnaces and smelled their sickish odour,’ Clemens wrote.121 Although privileged prisoners, their position seemed hopeless. ‘Day and night,’ Clemens added quietly, ‘we waited for our own deaths.’122
Hitler left the Wolf’s Lair for the last time in late November 1944. Arriving in the capital after dark, he ‘had no chance to see Berlin’s wounds as they really were’, his secretary, Traudl Junge, recalled. ‘The dipped headlights of the cars merely touched mounds of rubble to right and left of the road.’123 His entourage knew he had deliberately avoided seeing the worst. ‘The numerical superiority of the American Air Force,’ Göring reported to him a week later, can ‘no longer be overcome even by the supreme courage of our airmen’.124 ‘Hitler seemed to know that already,’ Skorzeny commented, ‘as he hardly took the trouble to listen.’125 The RAF and USAAF were now treating German airspace almost as their own, with bombers going for pinpoint targets such as oil refineries, airfields, aircraft works and supply facilities. A couple of months earlier, when Hitler had awarded Skorzeny the German Cross in Gold, he had talked excitedly about the country’s 2000 rocket fighters, and the imminent bombing of New York by V-1 buzz bombs. Now Himmler mentioned just 250 rocket fighters, but Hitler took no notice, having ‘apparently written off the Luftwaffe’.126
As the sixth Christmas of the war approached, the Sippenhaft prisoners began to hear artillery fire from the advancing front. Among others, Mika and Fey were both seriously ill with typhoid. Apart from the doctor among them, the only other prisoner to visit the sickroom was Alexander, bringing wood for the stove morning and afternoon. When he feared he might lose Fey, he wrote her a poem, which ended:
Console me as we wander, pathless, starless,
I cannot reach or touch you,
But through the wall I hear your laboured breaths,
So near, so near, through twelve sad nights of Christmas.127
Even with the stove working, ‘the constant, bitter cold of that winter . . . was beyond belief’, Fey later recalled.128 Added to the prisoners’ chill and hunger, their anxiety about typhoid, dysentery and scarlet fever, and their future in the hands of the SS, was now the fear of being bombed or overrun by the Red Army. Desperate to keep up morale, they folded scraps of paper into nativity figures and other decorations, and made a few stars from tin-foil to decorate a scrawny tree. On Christmas Eve, those who could stand sang traditional Christmas carols.
For the children still being held at Bad Sachsa, Christmas would hold a wonderful surprise. Melitta had met Opitz thirteen times since late September. Her petitions on behalf of Alexander had been ‘found satisfactory’, and Himmler had let her know he was ‘well disposed’ towards the case.129 She was finally to be allowed to visit the children. The first few youngsters had been released in October, sent to grandparents or distant aunts, in part to stem rumours about the disappearance of ‘pure German’ children. By late December there were only fourteen children left, all Stauffenbergs and their cousins, brought together in one house. They had still had no news from the outside world, and did not know whether their parents were alive.
After the obligatory appearance at her research institute’s Christmas party, Melitta set out for B
ad Sachsa by train on 22 December. Also travelling that day was Lieutenant Hans Wilhelm Hagen, who had just been discharged from military hospital where he had been receiving treatment for head injuries. Sitting in a carriage with more board than glass in its windows, and still wearing a bandage enveloping one eye, Lieutenant Hagen spent much of his journey in gloom. Only after some time was he surprised to notice ‘a lady opposite me – in a military compartment, of all places’.130 Hagen thought she must be lost, but as she removed her fur coat he noticed the Iron Cross, and below it the diamond pilot’s badge, pinned to her jacket. ‘Madam! May I introduce myself?’ he asked Melitta, before adding gallantly, ‘There is no need to say who you are, because there is only one lady in the world with these decorations.’131 In fact there were two such ladies, but Melitta did not have half Hanna’s celebrity. An awkward moment followed.
Perhaps it was Melitta’s natural reserve and tact that prevented her from correcting the wounded lieutenant’s mistake, especially after he praised her as ‘the most famous and the bravest pilot’ for her work with the V-1s.132 But Melitta also had another reason not to disabuse Hagen. As her own diary entry, ‘conversation with Lt. Hagen, Guards Battalion, 20 July’ shows, Melitta knew exactly who it was she was talking with.133 Hagen’s Guards Battalion was the emergency force placed on standby with the enactment of Operation Valkyrie. In order to clarify the situation, Hagen had been tasked with contacting the battalion’s patron, Joseph Goebbels. It was from Goebbels that he learned of the failed assassination attempt. He swiftly arranged for his commander to speak with Hitler by telephone. It was during this call that Hitler’s command to ‘squash this putsch by all means’ was given.134 Hagen’s quick initiative was one of the key reasons the plot had failed. Over the next few hours Melitta quietly endured a conversation with the man whose actions had ruined all hope of overthrowing the regime, and led to the execution, detention and abduction of so many of her family, including her husband, and the children she was en route to visit. That she never revealed her true identity is borne out by Hagen’s own memoirs, published after the war, in which he cheerfully recounted his encounter with ‘Hanna’ ‘during the journey on my last Christmas leave of this war’.135