The Plots Against Hitler

by Danny Orbach

  Charlotte, the wife of Fritz von der Schulenburg, recalled how Stauffenberg lectured her enthusiastically on the sweeping victory at the front.28 Hitler won admiration as man and leader alike. To his bookseller, Stauffenberg said that whatever he had opined about the Führer before was no longer relevant. Now, Hitler was fighting for Germany’s survival. He stimulated creative thinking, and one must help him win the war. “This man’s father was not a petty bourgeois,” he concluded admiringly. “This man’s father is war.”29 From Poland, he wrote his wife letters burning with patriotism and clear racist, imperialist overtones: “The inhabitants are an unbelievable rabble, very many Jews and very much mixed population. A people which surely is only comfortable under the knout. The thousands of prisoners-of-war will be good for our agriculture. In Germany they will surely be useful, industrious, willing and frugal.”30

  This letter reiterates accepted Nazi clichés. Was Stauffenberg yet another loyal German officer? In some sense, he was. His near intoxication with military triumph went hand in hand with dehumanization of the enemy. Still, Stauffenberg never went past a certain point. He was, for example, very much opposed to the atrocities committed during the Polish campaign, even if he believed them to be SS excesses rather than formal, organized policy. When one of his friends, an officer, shot to death two Polish women out of suspicion that they had made a signal to Polish artillery, Stauffenberg used all of his influence to remove the officer from the army. After witnessing atrocities, Stauffenberg told some friends that in principle he was not against removing the regime but that it could not be done then, when Hitler was at the peak of his success.31

  In November 1939, Stauffenberg was promoted again, formally admitted to the General Staff, and appointed quartermaster of an armored division. An official report commended his “great organizational talent.” The division commander glowingly praised him in front of the troops and raised the hope that he “would never leave us.” As long as Stauffenberg was with the commander, the latter “never had to worry about supplies,” because “under Stauffenberg they worked superbly.”32 One of the officers, who knew him from staff meetings, described him as follows:

  Stauffenberg, tall, slender, agile and with extraordinary charm, greeted us in truly beaming kindness. He took care that everyone had something to drink, a cigar or tobacco for his pipe, updated us, asked questions . . . and so time went by, without any of our problems being solved . . . Until suddenly, in an unofficial, unassuming manner he began to speak: “Well, I believe that what we should do is as follows . . .” His left hand in his pocket and the right holding a glass of wine, he passed thoughtfully across the room, stopped here and there, took maps and gave perfectly detailed orders for [the organization of] supplies.33

  In 1940, Stauffenberg was transferred to the General Staff, and from there he observed the final victory over France. “There is no greater pleasure,” he said, “than winning a war along with friends.” Stauffenberg’s biographer Peter Hoffmann notes that his patriotic zeal was out of place in the cool atmosphere that prevailed in the corridors of the General Staff. When one officer predicted that Germany would ultimately lose the war, Stauffenberg reprimanded him for his defeatism. He wanted to work hard, to advance his career, and even to conduct some reforms in the General Staff. “The entire existing organization would have to be examined,” he wrote Nina.34

  Yet irritating doubts came back to haunt him at an unexpected time: the final occupation of France. Stauffenberg, as we have seen, was thrilled to settle old scores from the Great War, but right after the capitulation of France, he sat with other officers, some of them future conspirators, and thought aloud. A victory, he said, must be capitalized on politically. If Hitler used the victory to achieve final peace, then all would be well. If not, he must be forced to do otherwise, and if that was not possible, he must be removed.35 However, that fleeting thought by no means marked Stauffenberg as a future conspirator. He even blamed Hitler for giving up the invasion of England, which he saw as promising.36 Had he known of the conspiracy of Voss and Schwerin to take Hitler down with a squad of sharpshooters, he would probably have disapproved.

  In June 1941, when Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, Stauffenberg was already known and esteemed in the General Staff. As part of his duties, he traveled to different fronts; met officers, including generals and field marshals; and was generally appreciated by most. Even after the invasion had started, he continued to serve his homeland with great dedication and zeal, eager to fight against the “Bolshevik enemy.”

  Only later in 1941 did his mind gradually turn. Stauffenberg was well aware of the activity of the Einsatzgruppen, the murder squads that slaughtered entire Russian Jewish communities. He felt unhappy about their activities but couldn’t draw conclusions for practical action from his feelings.

  Count Helmuth James von Moltke, who believed that such a young, talented officer would be a blessing for the resistance, checked, through a middleman, whether Stauffenberg was ready to join the conspiracy. Stauffenberg, then a major, declined the request. He was well aware that the Nazi regime must go, he said, but no such measure could be taken during a war against Bolshevism. Soon enough, he predicted, the officers and soldiers would come home from the front. Then, he said, “we will purge the brown plague [i.e., the Nazis].”37 Indeed, during the first months of the war, Stauffenberg looked hopefully on the advance of the three army groups—north to Leningrad, centrally to Moscow, and south to Ukraine—and believed that Russia could be defeated. However, he emphasized, such a thing must be done with—not against—the local population.

  The official position of the Wehrmacht, let alone the Nazi government, was very different. Russians and Ukrainians, who had initially welcomed the Germans as liberators come to throw off the Soviet yoke, quickly realized their error. Hitler, Himmler, and their ilk saw the locals as Untermenschen, slaves whose purpose in life was serving the Germans. This was the policy of large parts of the army as well. National Socialist field marshal Walther von Reichenau, for example, issued an order that fires started by withdrawing Soviet troops should not be put out. The destruction, in his mind, was an inseparable part of the fight against Bolshevism.38 The SS Einsatzgruppen, police battalions, and army units destroyed entire villages, massacred inhabitants on the pretext that they were partisans, and sent many more off to slave labor in Germany. Orders issued by Keitel practically allowed soldiers to commit atrocities at their discretion, without fear of punishment.39

  Stauffenberg was angry and disappointed at the policy of his army and government in the east. For him, the local villagers, Russians and Ukrainians, were not enemies but potential allies in the fight against Bolshevism. He warned, again and again, that the war couldn’t be won without such cooperation.40 He tried to establish local anti-Bolshevik units to fight Russia along with the Wehrmacht. He really hoped that such units might form the basis for a future Russian-German partnership. Indeed, the official statistics indicate that in the first months, before Soviet soldiers understood that POW camps were more or less starvation cells, the rate of desertions from the Red Army was relatively high.41 The National Socialist policy in the east was therefore not only immoral but also impractical. Stauffenberg knew it well.

  In spring 1942, Stauffenberg still believed that his country could win the war in the east, as long as the German abuse of the local population abated. In April, in a conversation with an Abwehr officer, he “expressed outrage at the brutal treatment of the civilian population in the German-occupied Soviet Union, the mass murder of ‘racially inferior’ persons, especially Jews, and the mass starvation of Soviet prisoners of war.”42 In May, he met an officer fresh from the front, who told him about a massacre committed by the SS in a Ukrainian Jewish town. “They led them [the Jews] to a field, made them dig their own mass grave, and then shot them.” Stauffenberg replied, “Hitler must be removed.” As he heard more about the escalating atrocities, he became increasingly convinced that the Nazi regime must be removed by fo
rce without any further delay. He believed that doing so was the duty of the high command. The Wehrmacht leaders would surely not be indifferent to such horrors for long. He was still unhappy at the idea of isolated assassination attempts. When told that Schulenburg was planning something, for example, he advised his counterpart to ignore the “little bomb throwers.” A revolt must be done not by individuals but by the army as a whole.43

  Stauffenberg was ripening for conspiracy, but he still had to lose his belief in the generals and field marshals. More importantly, circumstances needed to change. As we saw in chapter 3, people usually become conspirators when legitimate social connections mutate into revolutionary ones. This mutation presumes an internal change in outlook and opinions, but it is also dependent on being socially connected to people in the resistance. Stauffenberg knew some such people in 1942, but these connections were still not solid enough to draw him toward their cause.

  Yet his resistant ideas continued to develop quickly. In August 1942, he even tried, quite awkwardly, to form an oppositional network of his own. “You seem to believe that I am engaged in conspiracy here,” he told an officer half jokingly. When broaching the subject in a conversation with a friend, he maintained that after Hitler’s overthrow, neither the Weimar Republic nor the empire should be reestablished, but, rather, “something new” must come into being.44 Not for a moment did he stop dreaming about the ideal Secret Germany imagined by der Meister, Stefan George, and his circle.

  Meanwhile, the German war effort faced mounting difficulties. Army Group North failed to occupy Leningrad, and Army Group Center could not reach Moscow. Hitler ordered his army to turn to the south, simultaneously occupying Stalingrad and the oil-rich Caucasus. The Sixth Army, led by Gen. Friedrich Paulus, was getting close to Stalingrad. While it is true that many postwar accounts have exaggerated Hitler’s personal responsibility for the debacle, it is certain that his incessant meddling in operational affairs precluded clear, organized strategic thinking. Stauffenberg was very bitter over the way the war was being fought, and his hatred of Hitler was growing by the day. In August, he explained to his close friend Maj. Joachim Kuhn what had precipitated his dramatic change of mind. The amateurish management of the armed conflict was bad enough, but the main problem lay elsewhere. A few years later, Kuhn recounted this conversation to Red Army intelligence officers: “The daily staff reports on the treatment of locals by the civil administration, lack of political direction in the occupied countries, and the treatment of Jews—all of these prove that Hitler lied to us when saying that his intention is to fight for a new European order. Therefore, this war is monstrous.”45

  Stauffenberg told other officers that “they are shooting Jews in masses. These crimes must not be allowed to continue.” The young major was so indignant that tyrannicide began to seem justifiable. Germany could not and should not win the war, he emphasized, because that would allow Hitler to continue murdering Jews and committing other horrors.46 From that moment on, his remarks about the legitimacy of tyrannicide grew in frequency and intensity “in nearly every outing.” “It is time,” he said bitterly, “that an officer went over there with a pistol and shot the dirty fink.” During a conversation with another embittered officer after Halder’s removal, in 1942, he said that there was no point in telling Hitler the truth. “No fundamental change is possible unless he is removed. I am ready to do it.” That remark expressed yet another dramatic shift in his mode of thinking. Now, Stauffenberg was placing himself—and not only the generals and field marshals—at the heart of the equation. He was taking responsibility.47

  At this time, Stauffenberg was working as a lone wolf, without a support network. He warned yet more colleagues that Hitler’s military folly would bring disaster upon Germany and that his crimes would sully its name for generations. “We are sowing hatred that will visit our children one day,” he told a senior officer in despair.48 All was for nothing. Many officers in the high command agreed with him in principle, but then there were so many practical difficulties: the time was not ripe, one should not betray one’s country during war, the front might collapse, civil war might break out, and—crucially—the officers had made the oath of allegiance, attaching each of them to the Führer in a personal bond of loyalty.49

  Stauffenberg did not know, and actually could not know, that the main network of the resistance was at work all around him. Tresckow and others watched him from a distance but did not acquaint him with their plans.50 In a police state like Nazi Germany, one had to be extremely careful with whom one spoke. Here, the absolute importance of network structure is apparent. Had Stauffenberg joined the conspiracy in 1942, he would have probably reached the margins of Tresckow’s clique in the east. Gradually, he could have become an important conspirator. Certainly, he could not have been a leader in 1942, as the center was still occupied by strong wire-pullers such as Oster. For Stauffenberg to assume the central role he eventually would, the center had to be cleared. This was not to happen until almost a year later.

  Resentful and tired, Stauffenberg understood that he had failed. He could not convince senior officers to join him, nor could he build a network of his own. The danger was acute, and he knew he was putting his family at risk. In one instance, when he was trying to win over an officer, he got a cold and angry response. The officer who reprimanded him asked that the conversation be written down “for further examination.”51 In December 1942, Stauffenberg asked to be transferred from the General Staff to find refuge at the front for a while.

  In February 1943, freshly promoted to lieutenant colonel, he assumed his new role, divisional chief of staff in North Africa. At the end of the month, he arrived at the Tunis headquarters of Major General Broich, likewise a critic of the regime. Stauffenberg enjoyed being at the front, then as always. “How refreshing it is to visit [the front],” he wrote hapless General Paulus, commander of the Sixth Army, several months before his troops fell into captivity, “a place where one dares without hesitation and sacrifices without complaints . . . while the leaders, or the people who should serve as an example squabble over prestige and fail to rise to the level suitable to their responsibility over the lives of thousands.”52 Stauffenberg escaped from the center to the margins. Had he not done so, or had he transferred later to Italy, the Balkans, or Greece, he would probably never have met the conspirators again. Chance, no less than his talents or the internal development of his ideas, played a crucial role in igniting his conspiratorial career.

  “Stauffenberg’s uniform had not yet been bleached by the African sun,” writes Peter Hoffmann. “And he looked very much the newcomer, but this impression faded more quickly than the color of his uniform.”53 In autumn 1942, military conditions in North Africa were difficult, as the Axis forces were already on the defensive. The German and Italian armies, led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, were defeated in El Alamein and pushed back to Libya. In November that year, combined British and American forces landed in North Africa to surround the Germans in a pincer movement. The Allies, led by General Eisenhower, were set to destroy Rommel’s Africa Corps, occupy North Africa, and form a naval base for a landing in Italy. For the Axis powers, that posed an existential danger.

  To thwart Eisenhower’s plans, Rommel decided to occupy the ports of northern Tunisia before the Americans did, thus taking control of vital supply routes. But Rommel could not push the Allies back into the sea, and his forces were diminishing. The RAF controlled the sky, its planes pulverizing the ammunition, tanks, and other vehicles of the Africa Corps. Reinforcements from Germany arrived, but too late, and the days of the Axis in North Africa were numbered.

  From his limited capacity as a divisional chief of staff, Stauffenberg did everything possible to avert catastrophe. For two months, from February to April, he became known as a daring combat officer able to make quick decisions and keep his composure under fire. In early April 1943, he helped to orchestrate, along with his commander, Major General Broich, the German retreat from Tunis. But on A
pril 7, his life changed again. Misfortune brought him back to Berlin, and to the conspiracy.

  Late that morning, Stauffenberg took leave from Broich in order to direct the division’s retreat to the new command post, near Mezzouna. Broich warned Stauffenberg that there was a high danger of fighter bombers attacking, and indeed, Stauffenberg’s force found itself locked in an inferno of enemy fire. The fighter bombers shot again and again into the burning vehicles, and wounded men were abandoned amid exploding ammunition rounds. As Stauffenberg was driving around in a desperate attempt to control the troops, the enemy airplanes targeted his car. The lieutenant colonel threw himself to the ground and covered his head with his hands. And then the bullets pierced his body.54

  The young officer was badly wounded, and when his soldiers rushed him to the military hospital, it seemed that hope was lost. But the local medical officers were able to stabilize his condition, albeit at a cost: they had to amputate his right hand and two fingers of the left. During the attack, he had lost an eye, too. When he regained consciousness, it became possible to evacuate him back to Germany. His high-ranking friends took care to bring him to the Charité Hospital in Munich to be treated by the best surgeons.

  An endless stream of officers came to visit him. His mother and wife were always by his side, and, so that he could visit, his brother Berthold was granted a special leave from the naval court where he served. Many acquaintances, friends, and colleagues from all over the Wehrmacht came to pay their respects, including Chief of Staff Zeitzler, who brought with him a golden medal and a bottle of good liqueur.