The Plots Against Hitler

by Danny Orbach

  Tyrannicide, then, is legitimate under the conditions of Nazi Germany, but it must be done only if one could be quite certain that it would improve things. At the end of the day, it was the responsible action of the assassins, and, as they would have to bear the guilt, it was also their duty to decide (and here I requote) “in the sphere of relativity, completely shrouded in the twilight that the historical situation casts upon good and evil.” Seen through Bonhoeffer’s lens, then, Stauffenberg, Haeften, and the others had to make an almost impossible moral decision. They had to dare to jump into the unknown. And they were ready.

  17

  A Wheel Conspiracy:

  The Stauffenberg Era

  EVEN WHILE RECUPERATING from his extensive injuries in the summer and autumn of 1943, Stauffenberg started playing his new role. He visited Berlin a couple of times and met his fellow ringleaders Beck, Olbricht, and Tresckow. Another meeting, in which Goerdeler was also present, convened in the office of the broker Hermann Kaiser. At that gathering, Stauffenberg confirmed his commitment to “joint, violent action against the Führer,” and accepted the overall leadership of Beck.1 The general, as Stauffenberg later told his confidant Joachim Kuhn, had given him full powers to plan the operation: “Although the two of us, General Olbricht and myself, are fully competent to deal with all of the technical aspects of the organization, I report weekly to General [Beck] . . . Every time I am astounded by his clear judgment and far-sighted political observations. His basic views fully correspond to our own.”2

  Tresckow, while convalescing in Berlin, was quick to establish a good working relationship with Stauffenberg, who was an old acquaintance of his. Now, Stauffenberg was finally informed of the abortive assassination attempts of spring 1943, as well as the prospective military plans and contacts in other resistance cells, such as the Kreisau Circle and the Social Democratic group. From the outset, Stauffenberg endorsed a policy of cooperation with all opposition groupings. His working relationship with both the remnants of the Kreisau Circle, formed through his relative Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, and the Social Democrats was especially warm. As part of his new responsibilities, Stauffenberg was very active in drafting cabinet lists, and he consistently lobbied to give key positions to the Social Democrats in order to build a basis for cooperation between right and left.3

  He focused his main efforts, however, on extending the resistance movement’s military reach. During the end of 1943 and early 1944, Stauffenberg met dozens of officers, shared his plans, and tried to convince them that eliminating Hitler was unavoidable and that Germany’s survival was now on the line. His new mansion, in the quiet suburb of Wannsee, partially shrouded by shrubs, quickly became (along with Olbricht’s house) the unofficial headquarters of the resistance.

  Meanwhile, Hermann Kaiser kept up day-to-day communication between the various civilian and military groups. “Kaiser was a confidant and mediator,” wrote historian Ger van Roon.

  He enjoyed the trust of the resistance leaders. Goerdeler, Beck, Tresckow, Olbricht, and many others stayed in constant touch with him. Meetings were often held in his office. Kaiser also tried to smooth over differences of opinion, which were minor in his view. Tresckow discussed with him the general state of affairs, as well as the possibilities and the details of the operation: Goerdeler shared with him plans and memoranda and asked for advice. Besides, [Kaiser] was the point of liaison between him [Goerdeler] and the army. Olbricht treated him with great confidence, entrusted him with secret files, assigned him important tasks and covered up his activity.4

  Kaiser’s centrality, however, was as dangerous as it was vital. At the end of August 1943, the conspirators learned that networks dependent on a small number of brokers and connectors could be seriously compromised, even eliminated altogether, if these actors were neutralized. A few months after Oster’s downfall, the Gestapo opened criminal proceedings against Kaiser because of some reckless anti-Nazi remarks he had made that hinted at his membership in a “resistance movement.” Given that Kaiser, the Berlin broker of the German resistance, was in personal touch with most groupings, his arrest could have compromised the entire conspiracy. Finally, Olbricht was able to have the proceedings dismissed with the help of powerful contacts, but he, like the others, knew that the resistance was now on the brink.

  In that instance, the negligence of the Gestapo is almost unbelievable. Even if one does not believe the unfounded theories that Himmler wanted the coup to succeed so that he could take Hitler’s place, it is a fact that the Gestapo could have done much more to crush the resistance.5 In fact, in 1939, the Gestapo had been very close to uncovering Oster’s attempt to warn the Belgians about the western offensive, as well as Josef Müller’s negotiations in Rome. Over time, much information was gathered on the civilian resistance, and rumors of a planned coup d’état were widespread. The conspirators made mistakes that could have given everything away. For example, Prof. Johannes Popitz, a prominent member of Goerdeler’s circle, recklessly tried to win over Himmler, of all people, to the movement. Yet, in Nazi Germany, strange rumors of all kinds were common, and the Gestapo found it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Nonetheless, the failure of the secret police to adequately follow Kaiser, despite the serious suspicions against him, was one of the gravest blunders of the National Socialist security apparatus, a blunder without which July 20, 1944, would not have been possible.6

  How long, however, could the conspirators count on their enemies’ negligence? As the abortive proceedings against Kaiser showed, one tactless remark was enough to push the resistance to the edge of the abyss. In order to forestall such disaster, the leaders of the military resistance set strict rules of secrecy. “Never mention names,” Tresckow warned the resistance secretary, Margarethe von Oven, “and above all never mention Stauffenberg’s name. The group must be kept as small as possible, otherwise it will get out.” He further instructed her to wear gloves while typing in order not to leave incriminating fingerprints.7

  Already in 1943, well before Stauffenberg’s rise to leadership, there had been strict rules of compartmentalization in the military wing of the resistance. Tresckow insisted that every conspirator should know “only the necessary minimum to carry out his duties.” When dispatching couriers with messages for other ringleaders, he did not inform them about the content of the letters they carried. Hans Crome, a key liaison in Paris and then at the eastern front, was never updated on Tresckow’s assassination attempts. Even the omnipotent broker Hermann Kaiser discovered some things very late. For example, only around February 1943 was he informed that an assassination attempt was being planned. Then, he ordered Captain Gehre, the leader of the Abwehr shock troops, not to brief his officers until the very last moment.8 Olbricht took care to hide his clandestine work even from his closest confidants.

  Stauffenberg considerably tightened the existing regulations for his coconspirators. As he suspected that Oster, who by the end of 1943 was under house arrest, was being constantly monitored by the Gestapo, Stauffenberg forbade all members of the resistance to meet or speak with him. Indeed, the mere existence of the military resistance was a closely guarded secret, all but unknown outside certain restricted military and (to a lesser extent) civilian circles. Though Stauffenberg tried to win over many officers, he guarded his secrets well from people he deemed unreliable.9 A Nazi lieutenant who worked with him on a daily basis, for example, was completely oblivious not only to his anti-Nazi activities but even to his oppositional sentiments. In spring 1944, Tresckow was defined in an official report as having a “spotless National Socialist worldview,” indicating that his direct superiors were either completely in the dark about his nocturnal activities or very keen to cover up for him.10 Even a sharp observer such as the Finnish ambassador to Berlin, Toivo M. Kivimäki, who monitored the activity of the civilian resistance and reported what he saw to Helsinki, knew nothing about the military wing of the resistance.11

  These stricter rules of compartmentalization were part of Stauf
fenberg’s unique style of leadership, marking the last dramatic shift in the network structure of the resistance. Under his command, the movement hardly resembled the cozy, dense clique founded by Oster and Gisevius in 1938, or even the model of connected cliques gradually developed in 1942 by Oster, Tresckow, Kaiser, and Olbricht. The fall of Oster and the disintegration of the resistance clique in the Abwehr, as well as Tresckow’s gradual loss of power after his transfer from Army Group Center, removed competing sources of power and marked Stauffenberg as the undisputed military leader of the movement and its supreme broker and connector.

  To use terminology taken from criminal-law theory, Stauffenberg’s style of leadership would turn the movement into a “wheel conspiracy.” That model has one commander (the hub) and many subordinates (spokes) who receive their respective missions directly from the commander. Unlike in a clique, in a wheel conspiracy “each member knows some of the other members, but not all of them,” while everybody knows and obeys the person at the center.12 As we have seen in chapter 3, Oster’s clique was dense enough to allow almost every conspirator to know most of his confederates. Above all, it was a circle of friends. The connected cliques of 1942–1943 were dependent on a small number of brokers, such as Schlabrendorff and Kaiser, and did not have one distinct leader. In Stauffenberg’s wheel conspiracy, by contrast, he himself stood at the center and demanded that all coup-related information pass solely through him. When later referring to the conspiratorial methods of Stauffenberg, Gestapo investigators rightly observed, “Stauffenberg was considered the person who was updated on all of the individuals and the discussions in the circle of the conspirators. He orchestrated them as such, striving to murder the Führer and taking upon himself the management of the coup d’état. Goerdeler reports that Stauffenberg demanded to be informed also of the political measures and about the people who were supposed to [fulfill political functions] after the revolt.”13

  Thus, Stauffenberg held firmly in his hands the roles of leader, connector, and broker, which had in the past been assigned to different people; as a result, the new leader had unprecedented power. Still, even under his leadership, the movement was not entirely identical to the ideal model of a wheel conspiracy. The count, who was subject, at least nominally, to Beck’s supervision, did not know every individual in the movement and often had to rely on subconnectors such as Goerdeler, who led the civilian wing, or on the brokerage services of Kaiser and Stauffenberg’s cousin, Lt. Col. Caesar von Hofacker.14 Nevertheless, even though some old brokers and connectors kept their prominence, they were subject more and more to the influence of Stauffenberg, the hub of the clandestine wheel. The superstructure was maintained by Stauffenberg’s charismatic personality, and it integrated people usually ignorant of each other, who knew only the necessary minimum about the conspiracy.

  The achievements of Stauffenberg and his associates—and in particular, his aspirations to centralize power in the superstructure of a wheel conspiracy—outraged several veteran conspirators. Many of them, embittered and marginalized, remembered fondly the cozy, small clique of 1938 and resisted Stauffenberg’s new system. Most bitter, perhaps, was Hans Gisevius, who quickly returned from Switzerland to take part in the expected coup. After his return, in early July 1944, he heard from his old friends, especially Count Helldorff, of serious grievances concerning Stauffenberg’s behavior. Both Helldorff and Gisevius heartily disliked the new leader. They were shocked to see how he was filling the movement with new members loyal to him alone, all the while marginalizing seasoned veterans of proven loyalty. Especially outrageous for them were Stauffenberg’s proclaimed intentions to replace Goerdeler with his Social Democratic friend Julius Leber as the future chancellor of the conspiracy. It cannot be, they protested, that a man as dedicated as Goerdeler would be humiliated by an opportunistic officer who had served Hitler loyally for years, only to abandon him now, when the war was evidently lost.

  The dislike was mutual. Stauffenberg distrusted Gisevius and Helldorff and despised Goerdeler, who was, in his eyes, an obsolete relic of Weimar politics. He even remarked once that he was not planning “a geriatric revolt.” Only at Beck’s insistence did he accept Goerdeler’s leading role, at least temporarily.15

  Intramural rivalries were merely a nuisance for Stauffenberg, as more serious troubles were at hand. On September 15, 1943, he took up his new position at the Home Army and began a highly stressful daily routine. His formal military duties, feeding the collapsing fronts with ever more reserve troops, were loathsome to him, and enough to bring a normal man to the brink of a nervous breakdown. “I must . . . send tens of thousands to their senseless deaths,” he told a relative.16

  Stauffenberg devoted as much time, if not more, to his nocturnal duties, however. His office was buried in the German War Ministry, a gray, dull cluster of buildings on Bendlerstrasse, in Berlin. There, he organized his daily routine as an officer and as a conspirator. Thus, for example, he looked for secretaries whom he could trust to type the plans of the coup. As usual in the German resistance, family ties were utilized for the job. Through Tresckow, Stauffenberg got in touch with three female volunteers: Erika von Tresckow (Henning’s wife), Ehrengard von der Schulenburg (Fritz’s relative), and Margarethe von Oven, a close friend of the Tresckows’ and a former military secretary. “I was nervous, nervous as a puppy,” she later related. “I prayed that I would break my hand so that I could get out without disgrace.”17 But, in the end, she took the job on.

  “The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead.” Upon encountering this sentence in the draft plan, Oven realized that she was privy to more than high treason; this was a plan to assassinate the supreme leader of the German Reich. In his Stauffenberg biography, Peter Hoffmann notes that Tresckow told her about the “tens of thousands” of murdered Jews, who were his and his friends’ main motive for joining the conspiracy.18 Stauffenberg knew, too, that masses of people were being exterminated in the gas chambers. In response to Yorck’s report about the killing of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz, Stauffenberg told him that this was yet another good reason to quickly assassinate the “mass murderer.”19 Oven reported that Stauffenberg was “businesslike yet radiating an inner fire.” When asked, he gave her an explanation similar to Tresckow’s, but in his usual style, accompanied with a poem written by his spiritual mentor, Stefan George, emphasizing the calling of heroic aristocrats to fight on behalf of the nation’s honor and its moral and spiritual standing.20

  Berthold, Claus’s brother, who was, as always, his closest confidant, told an acquaintance that “those responsible in Germany must be punished for their crimes, such as concentration camps, persecution of the Jews, before Germany’s total military defeat, and . . . no sacrifice was too great to achieve this.”21

  Apart from the technical details, Claus von Stauffenberg had to tackle the most sensitive and difficult task at hand: finding a volunteer to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Stauffenberg was able to win over dozens of officers, some of them in Hitler’s own headquarters, but none of them would agree to carry out the assassination. Stauffenberg’s right-hand man, Fritz von der Schulenburg, was roaming the fronts, under official pretexts, searching in vain for volunteers. As for Stauffenberg himself, his coconspirators agreed that he was not the right man for the job, mainly because of his severe disabilities.

  In November 1943, Schulenburg finally located a volunteer: Capt. Axel von dem Bussche, a highly decorated front officer. A year beforehand, on October 5, 1942, Bussche had witnessed a life-changing spectacle at an abandoned airport in Ukraine:

  In our Dubno garrison, a former Tzarist army base, the prefectural governor asked us to help in an operation, which Führer orders explained as an “anti-Jewish measure.” To refuse—that is all we could do. After a few days the residents of the Jewish quarter, 2,000 to 3,000 people, were made to stand in long lines in front of mass graves, to be killed one by one by shots to the base of the neck. On the following day, I was in the Ghetto. They began a manhunt a
fter the few who had managed to hide. A woman literally kneeled in front of me and begged for her life, but there was nothing I could do for her.22

  At Dubno, Bussche had witnessed for the first time a massacre committed by the government to which he was duty bound. His sense of impotence in the face of such evil engendered a conversion, a religious-like change of heart; and a vision, a higher calling, crystallized in his mind. Unlike other conspirators, he volunteered not only to aid and abet but also to be the cutting edge. The only thing he felt he could do to atone for his guilt was assassinate Hitler himself. In autumn 1943, Schulenburg arranged a meeting between Bussche and Stauffenberg, who promptly asked the young man whether he was ready to kill the Führer. “Yes,” he said simply.23

  Stauffenberg, Schulenburg, and Bussche began to plan the operation. First, they ruled out assassination by firearm. The Führer was known to wear an armored vest and was surrounded by elite bodyguards. As in the past, the conspirators feared that one bullet shot under great mental stress would likely miss its target. Worse, the assassin might well be caught alive, and Bussche knew Stauffenberg; if Bussche could not endure torture, the entire conspiracy would be done for. The sole alternative was to dispatch Hitler with explosives, preferably via a suicide bomber. In December 1943, Hitler was set to watch a military demonstration of newly designed winter uniforms. Bussche, who had perfect “Aryan” looks and proven combat experience, was the ideal man to model the uniforms and answer the Führer’s questions about their benefits and drawbacks in battlefield conditions. Bussche waited in East Prussia and reflected on his imminent death. “These days,” he later wrote, “were illuminated in that shining clarity that soldiers learn to recognize in the hour before they charge.”24