Before Fromm could reply, Olbricht announced that the orders for Operation Valkyrie had already been issued. At this news, Fromm exploded with rage, banging his fist on the desk. Was he not in command here? He would not tolerate his subordinates doing what they liked. They were guilty of insubordination, revolution, high treason. The penalty for all of them would be death. Who, he demanded, had actually issued the orders to activate Valkyrie? When Olbricht replied that Merz von Quirnheim had issued them, Merz was summoned to confirm the assertion. When Merz did so, Fromm declared that he, Olbricht and Stauffenberg were all under arrest. Merz was then commanded to go to the teleprinter and cancel the orders. Merz simply sat down in the nearest chair.
‘Colonel-General,’ he replied drily, ‘you’ve just put me under arrest. My freedom of movement is therefore restricted.’10
Fromm then turned on Stauffenberg. The attempted assassination had miscarried, he shouted. Stauffenberg now had no alternative but to shoot himself.
‘I have no intention of shooting myself,’ Stauffenberg answered coldly.
Olbricht added to Fromm, ‘You are deluding yourself about who actually has the power. It is we who are arresting you.’11
Lurching up from his desk, Fromm lunged forward with fists flailing—at Stauffenberg according to some reports, at Olbricht according to others. Junior officers, who by now had gathered in the room, intervened. Haeften drew his pistol. So, too, did Lieutenant Ewald von Kleist, the man who, earlier that year, had volunteered to model a new uniform for the Führer with explosives strapped around his waist. With the muzzle of Kleist’s pistol pressing into his stomach, Fromm subsided back into his chair. Stauffenberg told him he had five minutes in which to think things over, and, accompanied by Olbricht, left the room. When Olbricht returned and asked Fromm for his decision, he replied, ‘Under the circumstances, I regard myself as under constraint.’ Without any further protest, he allowed himself and his aide to be locked in an adjacent office. The telephone was disconnected and sentries were placed at both exits. By five o’clock, the coup had begun to show the momentum it should have had four hours earlier.
Olbricht reported to Stauffenberg that all requisite Valkyrie orders had been issued. It was now a matter of waiting for troops to arrive, seal off the Bendlerstrasse and protect the conspirators. In the meantime, General Hoepner, Stauffenberg’s former superior in the field, assumed Fromm’s command. Other conspirators began to appear at the War Office, including Berthold, Stauffenberg’s brother, and General Beck, the intended new head of state. When informed that Hitler might indeed have survived, Beck decided the possibility could not be entertained. ‘For me,’ he said, ‘this man is dead.’12 Such was the premise on which things were to proceed, regardless of the reality.
Shortly after five o’clock, according to eyewitnesses, an SS Oberführer, or colonel, made an ingenuous appearance.
Suddenly thumping footsteps sounded in the corridor. The door flew open and an SS . . . of the typical butcher type appeared in the doorway. A more vivid, more typical SS hangman could scarcely be imagined. This creature clicked his heels with a report like a pistol shot, raised his hand in the ‘German’ greeting and growled loudly, ‘Heil Hitler.’13
He had orders, he announced, to question Colonel Count von Stauffenberg. Formal but as genially cordial as ever, Stauffenberg invited the SS man into his office. Here, the SS man was disarmed by Kleist and a colleague, Lieutenant Ludwig von Hammerstein (son of the former German army C-in-C), and placed under guard in the same room as Fromm.
Shortly thereafter, the commander of Berlin’s military district appeared, having been summoned by Olbricht. He was horrified to find a coup in progress, refused adamantly to co-operate and yelled repeatedly that ‘the Führer is not dead’. In an attempt to escape, he dashed down the corridor towards the exit. Here he, too, was stopped by Kleist and an NCO with drawn pistols, then placed under guard with Fromm and the SS colonel. When he invoked his oath of loyalty to the Führer, Beck replied:
‘How dare you talk of oaths? Hitler has broken his oath to the constitution and his vows to the people a hundred times over. How dare you refer to your oath of loyalty to such a perjurer?’14
For the next four hours, the War Office was a maelstrom of frenzied activity. Confirmations were received that troops everywhere were ready to move. Instructions for Operation Valkyrie were transmitted beyond the precincts of the Reich, to Austria, Italy, Czechoslovakia and France. The orders previously promulgated within Germany proper were now promulgated in occupied territory as well. Martial law was declared to be in effect. The army was to assume absolute control. All SS, SD, Gestapo and Party personnel were to be arrested or placed under military authority.
It was already too late. The delay during the afternoon had been fatal, and so had at least two other factors. Stauffenberg was urged to deal with Goebbels, who remained safely ensconced at the Ministry of Propaganda in the nearby Prinz Albrechtstrasse. For the first and only time in the course of that crucial day, he hesitated, as did the more senior of his colleagues. Perhaps—although it seems inconceivable—they underestimated Goebbels’ importance. Or perhaps they shrank from the prospect of unleashing a reign of terror in Berlin. To assassinate the Führer was one thing. To embark on a wholesale purge was quite another, entailing precisely the same evils they were endeavouring to overthrow. They had no wish to perpetrate their own Night of the Long Knives.
Beck, Olbricht, Hoepner and Stauffenberg all procrastinated when Gisevius tried to impress on them the need to radicalize the coup by summarily executing some top Nazis. The very outrage at the methods of the Nazi régime became an impediment to a coup d’état, which depended, in part, on those same methods.15
Such scruples were present even though the conspirators at the War Office had now been joined by the head of the Ecumenical Section of the Evangelical Church, with a pistol as well as a Bible in his pocket. On a day such as this, the clergyman had declared, a day which involved revolt against monsters like the SS and National Socialist Party leaders, shooting must be expected. Excessive probity, he argued, would endanger both the coup and its participants.
Of equally fatal consequences was the conspirators’ failure to shut down, effectively and completely, all broadcasting. They had dispatched contingents of troops to occupy the relevant radio stations and transmission centres, but these troops had lacked the technical expertise to do anything more. As a result, broadcasting by Nazi authorities was soon to recommence and continue uninterrupted; and the loyalties of the troops sent to curtail it were soon to be disastrously divided.
By five-forty-two, orders were issuing from the Führer’s headquarters and other bastions of Nazi power, contradicting those from the War Office. In the War Office itself, telephone wires were clogged by confused commanders besieging the conspirators. Kassel and Hannover rang. Nuremberg rang. Vienna rang. Prague rang. Stauffenberg personally answered all requests for clarification. At the same time, he and Hoepner were also ringing out, galvanising their network in Königsberg, in Stettin, in Münster, in Breslau, in Munich and Hamburg.
By this time, it was clear to Stauffenberg that the conspiracy was doomed. He refused, however, to capitulate—or to perform some such facile gesture of martyrdom as, say, shooting himself. He continued to inspire his colleagues and to comport himself as if success were still within easy reach. The eyewitness Otto John has described him at his desk, answering the telephone. John’s words may not be accurate in every detail, but they convey a stirring impression of Stauffenberg, single-handedly trying to keep the coup on course:
‘Stauffenberg here—yes—yes—they are all C-in-C’s orders—yes, that stands—all orders to be carried out at once—you must occupy all radio and signal stations forthwith—any resistance will be broken—you will probably get counter-orders from the Führer’s head-quarters—they are unauthorised—no—the Wehrmacht has assumed plenary powers—no one except the C-in-C Replacement Army is authorised to issue orders—do you un
derstand?—yes—the Reich is in danger—as always in time of supreme emergency the soldiers are now in full control—yes, Witzleben has been appointed Commander-in-Chief—it is only a formal nomination—occupy all signal stations—is that clear?—Heil.’16
Here and there, this arrogation of authority proved convincing and effective. In Vienna, all SS officers were arrested and the army occupied key installations. In Paris, General Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel (commander-in-chief of France and a long-standing member of the conspiracy) imposed martial law and imprisoned all SS, SD and Gestapo personnel. Summary courts-martial were scheduled for that night and sandbags were piled up in the barracks for the shooting of those condemned to death. For a few hours at least, and in certain areas, the Third Reich was actually overthrown.
But time was running out. On the radio an increasing number of reports stated that the Führer had survived an attempt on his life. Himmler was on the telephone giving orders to SS units in Berlin. There was even one announcement that Himmler himself was now to be placed in command of the Reserve Army. In Rastenburg, Hitler, propped up by aides and still shaken, was recording a speech. It would not be broadcast until one in the morning, but the gist of it was already on the airwaves:
A small clique of ambitious, irresponsible and at the same time senseless and criminally stupid officers have formed a plot to eliminate me and the German Wehrmacht command. The bomb was placed by Colonel Graf von Stauffenberg ... I myself sustained only some very minor scratches, bruises and burns. I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed on me by Providence to continue on the road of my life as I have done hitherto ...17
In Berlin, the commander of the city’s standing garrison, Major Otto Ernst Remer, had spent much of the afternoon in a quandary. There had never been any question of him becoming associated with the conspiracy—he was too mindlessly fervent a Nazi for that—but the confused situation had already taxed far more capacious brains than his. At four-thirty, he had received the alert for Operation Valkyrie and driven off to report to the city’s commandant, a member of Stauffenberg’s circle. The commandant had told him the army was assuming supreme power and ordered him to deploy his battalion in a protective cordon around all government buildings, including the War Office in the Bendlerstrasse. Although he later claimed to have been immediately suspicious, he nevertheless complied, and the cordon was in place by six-thirty. Remer was also instructed, albeit belatedly, to arrest Goebbels at the Ministry of Propaganda; but this, he decided, ‘would be asking too much of the troops’ because Goebbels was their honorary colonel.
Shortly thereafter, Remer was summoned by Goebbels himself. Remer dithered. In the meantime, Goebbels established contact with Rastenburg, spoke to Hitler personally and learned precisely what had happened. Not knowing how far the coup in Berlin had proceeded, he was badly frightened. He alerted a local SS detachment but simply ordered the men to stand by, unsure whether or not to trust them. As a precaution against capture by the conspirators, he slipped a number of cyanide capsules into his pocket. Then, at last, around seven o’clock, Remer appeared, having finally decided at least to find out what was happening. Goebbels must have been profoundly relieved. Remer’s would have been the first even potentially friendly face he had seen all day from outside the Ministry of Propaganda, and it was not difficult to ensure the allegiance of so embryonic a mind. He rang Rastenburg again and let Remer speak to the Führer in person. Hitler promoted Remer to colonel on the spot and entrusted him with control of all security measures in Berlin. Remer briefed his subordinates and redeployed his troops. They were ordered to surround the Bendlerstrasse and, if necessary, storm the War Office.
In the War Office itself, the minions of the Reich had also begun to regroup. Overlooked by the conspirators, a handful of officers loyal to General Fromm had contrived to arm themselves. Around ten-thirty, gunfire suddenly erupted inside the building. As Stauffenberg hurried down a corridor, a shot cracked behind him and a bullet tore into his shoulder. Staggering, he turned and managed to draw his own pistol. According to most accounts, he returned fire, though one eyewitness reports he did not.18 Alerted by the noise, other conspirators rushed to the scene and more shots were exchanged. It was clear, however, that the situation was hopeless. Stauffenberg, partially supported by colleagues, was bleeding profusely. Morale among the other conspirators was haemorrhaging away. Outside, Remer’s battalion of troops was preparing for a full-scale assault.
Stauffenberg and his immediate attendants did not surrender their weapons, but allowed themselves to be conducted to Fromm’s office. A few moments later, Fromm himself entered, released from the adjacent room in which he had been confined. Haeften drew his pistol and levelled it at the general. Fromm cringed. Despite his wound, Stauffenberg, his will again asserting itself, held himself erect. He is said to have fixed Fromm with a glare of withering contempt; then, with a glance, he signalled Haeften to lower the pistol trained on his former superior. His personal code of honour precluded petty vindictiveness and revenge; and the death of a single abject general could hardly accomplish anything now. Fromm was doomed anyway. In the days to come, he would equivocate, prevaricate and lie outright in an attempt to exculpate himself, but the scythe of Hitler’s vengeance would sweep through the ranks of anyone even remotely connected with the conspiracy, and Fromm would be among the first to fall. The charge against him would not be treason, but cowardice, thus setting the seal on his ignominy.
Now, released from his confinement, Fromm surveyed the men before him, the nucleus of the coup that had come so near to success. These men, he realised, were not only an embarrassment. They were also a dangerous liability, for they could testify to his own involvement in the conspiracy, tepid though it had been. To leave them alive for interrogation would be too risky. They would have to be dispatched at once. Fromm pronounced them officially under arrest and declared that he had just convened a summary court martial. Provoked further by their comportment of continued defiance, he sentenced four of them to immediate execution. ‘Colonel Merz, General Olbricht, this colonel whose name I will not mention and Lieutenant von Haeften are condemned to death.’19
At this point, Stauffenberg spoke for the first time. ‘In a few short clipped sentences, he assumed responsibility for everything.’20 His colleagues, he said, had simply conducted themselves as soldiers and as his subordinates. They had been guilty of nothing save carrying out his orders.
It is likely that Beck would also have been sentenced to summary execution. The old and beloved general requested to keep his pistol, however, ‘for private use’. Fromm consented, ordering him ‘to hurry up’. Under armed guard, Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Haeften and Merz von Quirnheim were escorted down the stairs to a courtyard below. Stauffenberg was still bleeding copiously from his shoulder, and Haeften again supported him. All four men walked calmly, ‘showing no emotion’. In the room to which he had retired, Beck shot himself twice. When he was found to be still alive, Fromm ordered an officer to administer the coup de grâce. The officer could not bring himself to do so, and entrusted the task to a sergeant.
For the Nazis, one of the greatest (and most improbable) ‘heroes of the hour’ was the toadying and robotlike young Major Remer. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of major-general. Age was to bring no very marked wisdom in its wake. After the cessation of hostilities, Remer remained a dedicated Nazi, eager to disseminate his warped Weltanschauung. In 1950, he joined the neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party (SRP) and became its second chairman. With bizarre sanctimoniousness and sententiousness, he fulminated against Stauffenberg and other members of the conspiracy, branding them ‘traitors to their country’ and a ‘stain on the shield of honour of the German officers’ corps’. They had, he blustered (in an all-too-familiar clichéd phrase) ‘stabbed the German army in the back’. ‘The time will come,’ he frothed in 1951, ‘when men will be ashamed to admit that they were part of the 20 July Putsch ...’21
In the same year, a statement was
issued by an ex-officer, one of Remer’s wartime colleagues:
We, his former comrades, have deeply regretted that destiny confronted this young officer in July, 1944, with a situation with consequences the bearing of which I should assume are beyond the powers of a human being. No judgement will be made here as to whether his decision on July 20 was right or wrong. But the consequences of his decision were so terrible, and have cost so much of the best German blood, that we old soldiers had expected that a man to whom destiny gave such a burden to carry until the end of his life would recognise this, and would thereafter live quietly and in seclusion. We, his former comrades, lack any sympathy for the fact that Herr Remer fails to summon up this attitude of self-effacement.22
In the spring of 1952, Remer was sentenced to three months in prison for the ‘collective libel of the Resistance circle’. He promptly fled Germany, resurfacing in Egypt. But stupidity, as Schiller observed, is something with which the gods themselves must contend. Forty years later, in October 1992, Remer was again arrested in Germany and sentenced to twenty-two months in prison for publishing neo-Nazi propaganda and denying the occurrence of the Holocaust.23 One can perhaps be forgiven a certain outrage at the fact that this creature is still alive, continuing to pollute the cosmos with his existence.
While Remer survived to preen himself on his comportment in Berlin, the aftermath at Rastenburg was less conducive to such vanity. Mussolini had been scheduled to arrive for a meeting at four o’clock. When he did so, the Führer was still dazed and overwrought, and even more prone to hysteria than usual. This hysteria was contagious, transmitting itself to the other Nazi leaders present. The arranged ‘talks’ quickly degenerated into a sequence of manic and unseemly rows. Goering at one point challenged Ribbentrop’s right to parade a ‘von’ before his surname. Ribbentrop retorted by calling Goering a ‘champagne salesman’. Apoplectic with rage, the Reichsmarshal threatened to batter the foreign minister with his bejewelled baton. His nerves further abraded by this dissension among his associates, Hitler lost all vestiges of control and launched into a tantrum. He would be ruthless, he screamed: he would annihilate everyone associated with the conspiracy, would exterminate them all, would show no mercy, would exact revenge even from women and children. In the past, Mussolini had been awed and cowed by what he saw as the forbidding majesty of the Reich’s hierarchy. When he left Rastenburg, he was shaken and bewildered, feeling, as he reported afterwards, that he had been in a madhouse.
Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie Page 7
