The Valkyrie Option

by Markus Reichardt

  Beria, never comfortable in his master’s presence when he could not discern the direction of the will, was gone in a hurry. It was a long ride from the dictator’s datcha to the Lyubyanka.

  The ride to the Lyubyanka passed in quiet for Beria. There was a simple order for additional information gathering but the MVD chief was worried. It was unusual for Stalin not to give some form of direction. Beria had sensed some from the opening comment but he knew what others had often found out to their disadvantage that Stalin was happy to let anyone talk himself into a position where he would be seen as having deviated in his/her analysis. There was little he could do right now other than pass the urgency and fear down the line. Beria sensed but did not know that Stalin’s first thought at hearing of the coup had been of an life-long fear he nursed, a fear that would see the western European powers ally themselves against Russia. No matter how well the war against Germany was going, Stalin could not believe that the quarrel between Germany and England was anything but a deviation. Lenin had taught that ultimately class interests would override national interests, and so one day the capitalists of the world would rediscover their need to set aside their differences and gang up on the only socialist nation on the planet. Hitler, might have been that aberration; would his removal allow for a peace between Germany and England.

  The lights were still on in most offices as Beria’s car sped through the hastily opened portal gates of the MVD headquarters. Many of his analysts, Beria knew would be in the extensive library on one of the upper floors where there was generally some respite from the muffled shrieks and screams of the tortured that would echo up the dimly-lit stairwells from the cellars of the interior prison where those incapable of analytical thought carried out the depravity that was required to uphold the Bolshevik totalitarianism. In his sound-proofed office none of the sounds of torture murder and mutilation reached the small Georgian as he called his heads of department to issue short barking instructions. It was nearly 3 am when he headed to his apartment and as his limousine sped him towards a comfortable bed, MVD cleaning crews began heading into the cellars to wash the blood and body parts from Lyubyanka’s stone walls, swab gore off oak floors and carry away the bodies of those who had not survived the torture that was required to maintain the workers’ paradise.

  The following day Stalin was up unusually early to summon the American Ambassador W Averell Harriman who got exactly 7 minutes with Stalin in which the dictator posed the question of American policy towards a militaristic Germany free from Hitler in three different ways. Lacking any guidance from the State Department as to what Washington might make of the changes in Berlin, Harriman man could only nod and slip back into tried and tested rhetoric. He reaffirmed three times to Stalin that the policy of unconditional surrender applied to Germany. Only once did he add that he had not been updated formally by his superiors due to the time difference between Moscow and Washington. In reality he had received no instructions other than the usual ‘keep your ears open and let us know’. Stalin did not catch the detail but homed in on the term of unconditional surrender. He had never understood Roosevelt’s need for this policy which derived the Anglo-Americans of flexibility but that was not his problem. He had never been bound by it. When the American was gone, he simply grinned at the stone-faced Molotov; ‘so nothing has changed as far as Roosevelt is concerned. At least not yet.’

  The Soviet foreign minister had true to form not said a word or moved a facial muscle during the meeting. Only now did he speak ‘We must not discount the possibility Comrade General Secretary, that he has not yet received appropriate instructions. The Americans are a few hours behind us when it comes to daylight. Their leaders are decadent and unlikely to work during the night.” It was one of the few times Stalin conceded, ‘Yes you are right. So we will wait and see.’

  Midnight, July 20th, 1944

  Prinz Albrecht Strasse SD-HQ

  Berlin

  Schellenberg paced his office like a caged animal, his emotions thrown into complete disarray. Hitler – the Führer – was dead. If he were not, that old codger Beck would not have gained access to the Deutschlandsender, or at the very least the Wolfschanze would have issued a counter order. If the Führer was injured and could not go on radio himself that would have been problematic but there would have been some word. His phone calls all pointed to one conclusion – Adolf Hitler was dead. Not only that, but the Führer’s paladins were squabbling. Neither Keitel, that fat swine Bormann, nor Göring who was theoretically still the successor had issued any statement. Instead they were holed up at the Wolfschanze doubtlessly fighting among themselves, disoriented by the loss of the central leadership figure. That left his boss, Himmler. Now this was interesting, Himmler was unavailable, someone indicated that he had flown out of Rastenburg at around 6pm and the closest Schellenberg had come to locating him was a cryptic remark from Kaltenbrunner that he and Himmler would return to Berlin later that night.

  Schellenberg hated uncertainty –as an ex-policeman and certainly as a spy chief by nature – he needed to know if the SS was planning anything like a counter move. His instincts suggested not because there had been nothing from the various Waffen-SS units, no news of sudden redeployment. That left only the KZ guards – a third rate rabble in military terms but nonetheless a force of some size, if properly led. They would carry many of the lesser centres by sheer posturing if push came to shove. Without knowledge of the forces opposing them – it was anyone’s guess whether they were a factor.

  Their mention by Beck in his radio address had however gotten Schellenberg very worried. Beck had made it clear that the entire SS apparatus was regarded as part of the old order that would need to be swept away, there had been mention of punishing those whose action had blemished Germany’s honour – and Schellenberg had not liked what he heard. The news of Hitler’s death had brought relief, a sense of release from the constraints under which he had laboured. If the new order would be hostile to the SS and to him then there were new considerations. Dammit! he needed for information. And he needed to get hold of his dithering chief and his murderous, Austrian, alcoholic deputy.

  He stopped in his tracks – Himmler a fool, yes he had just called him that. Silently but that sentiment ran deep. For over a year he had tried to get Himmler to accept the need for a negotiated settlement, under controlled conditions and from a position of relative strength. Not in this mess. Would he surrender his fate to this fool. Himmler’s second in command, the Austrian Kaltenbrunner he feared because of his natural brutality but Himmler was different. He had heard of the Reichsführer’s near fainting when confronted with the reality of his extermination process in Russia. Himmler had nearly thrown up when blood had splattered onto the ground near him when a line of over a hundred Jews had been machine-gunned as a demonstration in his honour. Out of uniform the dreaded Reichsführer was nothing but a soulless administrator and a former chicken farmer. No his mind was made up; without the Führer the Reichsführer SS would be paralysed. It was time he took matters into his own hand. Grabbing his black leader coat he headed out, what he had in mind was not something done over the phone.

  July 21, 7:15 am, Blay,

  Normandy, Monty's HQ[31]

  Brigadier Williams, Montgomery's Chief of Intelligence, locked the transcripts of the secret Ultra intercepts into their designated steel box and pocketed the key. As always he felt a sense of unreality. The Ultra intercepts were Britain's ultimate secret weapon, its secret peephole into the Germans' innermost sanctum. He had been reading them for nearly two years now and still it seemed like something resembling snippets from a bad spy novel. And today the news was especially interesting. He left the truck and headed to the morning brief with his commander.

  He found Montgomery slowly pacing around his command vehicle, a sense of expectation on his face. Prime Minister Churchill's arrival was imminent.

  Williams straightened to attention: "Something has happened in Germany, it looks like the real thing. The generals
are involved and seem to have been successful in their attempt to seize and hold power. There are a few places that they do not yet control but they are few. In this theatre the new lot is in complete control. ' He looked at his boss, saving the best for last. 'It seems Rommel was in on it.' That got Monty's attention, a full raised eyebrow.' Williams smiled. everyone had been hoping that the rumours about a possible coup would turn out to be true. Allen Dulles the American spy chief in Switzerland had been dropping hints about approaches from the German resistance like live hand grenades, unaware that his masters in Washington sat on the information. The British Foreign Office and MI6 were aware of a flurry of recent approaches by Germans claiming to be anti-Hitler. But they still laboured under the restrictions about contacts to the German opposition put in place by the PM himself in 1940 in the wake of the Venlo incident when two key SIS officers had been abducted by German intelligence chief Schellenberg after he had posed as an anti-Hitler German. Now the new situation seemed full of opportunities.

  Monty was clearly intrigued but cautious. As always he disliked making decisions or even responding without having considered the matter. 'Well, the Prime Minister is coming in about five minutes, so let’s do this: You will tell him about the enemy in front of us and then I will tell him how I am going to defeat them; … and then we will turn to him and I shall say: 'But we understand something's going on in the great wide world beyond, and perhaps you know about it...?' Williams thought that an uncontroversial strategy.

  Winston Churchill had spent the night on board the cruiser Enterprise swanning about the Normandy bridgehead in his quest to catch a sense of the battle. While Stauffenberg had been flying back to Berlin, the Prime Minister had been inspecting a half-built V-1 rocket launch site on the Cherbourg peninsula. He was therefore out of touch with latest development save what came through by secret cipher telegram. Monty's contrived scenario therefore worked perfectly. Buoyed by his glimpses of the real battlefield Churchill, though tired, was in high spirits and this transmitted itself to Monty who spent nearly half an hour covering his strategic plan in considerable detail. So when Monty finally got around to the issue of the events in Berlin, Churchill turned to the lone naval aide who trailed him. Sitting on the only stool there was in the caravan, he drew a long gold key chain from his waistcoat and like a magician opened the two red boxes the aide had dutifully lugged around that morning.

  Williams could barely contain his amazement as Churchill handed one box to him and the other to Montgomery. This was the most secret stuff that came in. Within a minute the two officers were sitting on the floor of the caravan sifting through the ciphers like schoolboys. Williams was appalled. Churchill was getting enemy radio intercepts directly, and he had not bothered to check whether either of them was cleared to see this. Intelligence without any context - a wonderful secret weapon turned into a dreadful double-edged sword; especially with a man as spontaneous and emotional as the Prime Minister. But that feeling lasted barely a minute. Reading the intercepts was just too much. This was what every intelligence officer lived for.

  'This one's from HQ in Paris to the new guys in Berlin. It seems they didn't have too much problem locking up all the SS and Police officers.' Monty chuckled. He reached for another scrap of paper. 'Their Army Group North in Russia came on board quickly. Typically German though; listen to this. Receipt of Order acknowledged all SS officers within reach of Army Group HQ area secured. Awaiting further instructions.'

  'Williams smiled' Few Wehrmacht officers would pass up a chance to get back at the SS'. He read out another, ' This one's from General von Witzleben and he signs as C-in-C of the Wehrmacht.’

  That got the Prime Minister's interest 'So the old Marshall was involved, was he?' Very interesting. He represents the old guard. Who else do we know was in on it?'

  Williams stared at the Prime Minister. Not only was Churchill getting Ultra intercepts out of context, he was also being rather erratic about reading them. They could truly end up in a situation where a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. Over the next twenty minutes they established that two Field Marshalls, von Witzleben and Beck, were the leaders or at least the figureheads of a putsch started by the military in Berlin. Most Army Commands had checked in as supporters of the new government. Some commanders in Scandinavia and notably Army Groups South and A holding the southern sector of the eastern Front had made rather curious enquiries concerning the legality of the new government. Nowhere could they find any reference to any resistance on the part of the Party or the SS, however temporary.

  That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Williams thought to himself as he placed the last intercepts back into their red boxes. That was the problem with raw intelligence from only one source, no matter how good. Churchill, ever the spontaneous man had already formed an initial view. 'This is clearly the old guard of the Wehrmacht. These are the guys who will have opposed Hitler on matters of tactics and strategy and are now trying to extricate themselves from the results of this. I wouldn't be surprised if they seem fit to carry on the war. With no opposition from the SS, and no threat of a civil war, they will find it easy to use the mechanisms of Hitler’s state to stay in power. We may see them co-opt some civilians along the way but I'd be very surprised if this would result in any immediate real change that will affect the situation you two gentlemen are facing.' Williams desperately hoped that this was not how Her Majesty’s Government made policy every day.

  Twenty minutes later Monty, eager to keep his boss happy, dispatched Churchill with a bottle of whisky to 'inspect' Air Vice-Marshall Broadhurst's captured German Storch reconnaissance plane. Two weeks earlier Eisenhower had enjoyed a ride over German lines and had come back full of 'instant insight' into the German's way of war. The Prime Minister, a self-styled specialist in virtually anything that took his fancy was bound to feel the same.

  With Churchill having pronounced on the 'significance' of the putsch, Monty turned his mind to issuing his next directive - M 512 on the strategy that would follow Operation GOODWOOD. Even though the offensive had once again failed to achieve the desired breakthrough and in particular had shown up an unsatisfactory performance of the tank corps, he remained confident that overall Allied strategy as he had laid it out was still intact. Despite terrible losses the British had finally gotten into the southern outskirts of the devastated Caen and on the map British Second Army looked in a strong position to take quick advantage of any situation that could suddenly develop either from any collapse resulting from the putsch or from the planned American offensive, Operation Cobra.

  Cobra, the planned American breakout from Normandy had been delayed again and again due to shocking weather and wrangles between Allied ground and air force commanders. Monty knew that GOODWOOD had taken British manpower reserves to its limits but had also tied down the best of the Wehrmacht’s troops on the eastern side of the beachhead. Now it would be up to the Americans to effect the break-out that would bring victory. Little did he know that there was a substantial faction in Allied command back in London who did not share this view of the situation.

  Mid-morning July 21st

  Hitler’s Headquarters 'Wolfsschanze'

  Rastenburg, Eastern Prussia.

  By mid-morning von Treskow’s cavalry brigade had detrained in Rastenburg and sealed off the Wolfschanze physically. Armed with an instruction to simply isolate the place until the danger of counter-revolution had passed the 600 men had established a pattern of roving patrols around the perimeter. Their task had inadvertently been made considerably easier by one of their patrol leaders who, when confronted by the guards of the outer perimeter, had stated that they were here to assist the investigators in preventing the escape of any assassin. No confrontation ensued, while a special team quietly cut the remaining telephone lines. Bormann and Göring had removed Fellgiebel from command of the Signals Office, but only after the death of their leader. By then it was too late. Bormann was not willing to allow Göring to publicly proclaim himself Hitler’s s
uccessor on the Wolfschanze’s radio transmitter. At the same time he knew that few in the Reich knew his voice and that he lacked the ability to muster the forces of counter-revolution. Even if the party bosses would follow him, they had no forces, limited legal standing without the might of the Fuehrer. There was stalemate; Hitler’s divide and rule principle, so central to the logic of the Third Reich now began to seal its doom.

  July 21st: 12:00

  RSHA, Prinz Albrechtstrasse Berlin

  It was a small room in which the SS leaders cowered around a table. Kaltenbrunner, Ohlendorff, Schellenberg, even Gestapo Mueller had shown up. Each eagerly awaiting Himmler’s arrival; each shaken to the core. The light meal on the table placed there by a secretary had hardly been touched, Schellenberg could smell alcohol on Kaltenbrunner’s and Mueller’s breath. Not in itself unusual except that due to Himmler’s disapproval they usually restrained themselves until later in the day. They were scared. They had spent a good part of the night trying to find out what had happened and who the new leadership was, whether there was a chance of squashing the revolt, whether they were wanted men. No move had been made against them but that meant nothing. Ohlendorff’s puffy face said it all, the axe could fall any moment. Surely they would have bolted had it not been for Himmler’s strange instruction that they all assemble for their weekly lunch meeting, a meeting whose original purpose went back to the SS hierarchies need for informal information-sharing. This had never been a decision-making meeting but here the information necessary for the SS apparatus to function without tripping over one another’s had been exchanged, the politics among its leadership worked out. Perhaps Himmler wanted them all together to muster their resources and organize the restoration of the Party, perhaps they would all be arrested. At that moment fear stalked the room. But an order to attend was an order to attend. Disobedience would have aroused suspicion.