by Mark Felton
Inside Stauffenberg’s briefcase was a bomb, a British bomb. It was the same slab of explosives that had already been unsuccessfully used to try and destroy Hitler’s plane over the Soviet Union in 1943. Stuck into the Plastic-C was a British time pencil chemical fuse and it had already been crushed – acid was slowly eating through a spring holding back a firing pin. A detonation was imminent but the weapon was not precise, it could go off early due to the warm temperatures at the Wolf’s Lair. Stauffenberg knew he had only a few minutes to leave the conference hut before the bomb detonated. Stauffenberg had no intention of dying alongside his Führer – he intended to survive so that he could play a central role in the military coup to be launched against the Nazi state in the wake of Hitler’s successful assassination – Operation Valkyrie.
He glanced to his left at his target, the maniac who was dragging sacred Germany into the abyss. Stauffenberg’s face betrayed no emotion. He looked around at Generalfeldmarschall Keitel’s adjutant, Major John von Freyend and muttered something about a telephone call. Freyend and Stauffenberg stepped out of the conference. They went into the telephone operator’s room where a call was placed to General-major Erich Fellgiebel’s nearby communications centre. ‘This is Stauffenberg,’ he announced curtly into the phone, appeared to listen for a few seconds, then calmly replaced the receiver in its cradle. Not pausing to retrieve his cap and belt with its holstered automatic pistol, Stauffenberg quickly left the conference building and started to walk towards his staff car parked close by outside. He expected the deafening explosion at any second. This time Hitler would not escape his fate.
Stauffenberg had been presented with an opportunity to attack Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair because he was a member of the Führer’s inner staff. However, even someone as trusted as the Count faced virtually overwhelming obstacles to kill Hitler. Security at the Führer’s Eastern Front headquarters was formidable in comparison to the discreet arrangements at Berchtesgaden. It was designed to be overt and intimidating so that visitors were in no doubt that they were entering Hitler’s nerve centre for his most important front. It was also relatively close to the Front, so security had to be tight to prevent a surprise Soviet attack. SS-Begleitkommando and RSD personnel guarded all the conference rooms.
On the morning of 20 July Stauffenberg was to have a meeting with General der Infanterie Walter Bühle, Chief of Staff of OKW in Jodl’s House within Sperrkreis I. Afterwards, the participants attended another meeting in Keitel’s Bunker. Stauffenberg was then due to report on new Replacement Army units at the Führer’s midday situation conference.
At 12.30pm Keitel’s adjutant, Major von Freyend, reported that Generalleutnant Heusinger, who was due to deliver a report on the Eastern Front at the conference, had just arrived on the trolley from the nearby Mauerwald Headquarters complex. Keitel announced that it was time to go to Hitler’s situation room near the Guest Bunker. At this point Stauffenberg managed to excuse himself from the group, as Major von Freyend led him to somewhere private where he could wash his face and change his shirt. Freyend led him to a private room but Stauffenberg appeared again shortly afterwards looking for his aide, Oberleutnant Werner von Haeften, who was carrying the bomb materials in his briefcase.3 While Stauffenberg and von Haeften worked feverishly to put their bomb together Keitel and the others waited outside the building. Stauffenberg, who only had three fingers on his one remaining hand, struggled to crush the time pencil fuse that Haeften had pushed into the 1kg slab of plastic explosive. Using specially prepared pincers, Stauffenberg managed to set the fuse off. At this point an orderly, FBB Sergeant-Major Werner Vogel, tried to enter the room to find out why Stauffenberg was taking so long. The Count was nervous and curtly ordered him out, but Major von Freyend called out from the front of the building: ‘Herr Oberst Stauffenberg, do come along now!’ Stauffenberg quickly left the room with only one bomb prepared, armed and fused, stuffed into his briefcase while von Haeften still had the other slab of explosives and time pencil.4
Keitel, having grown impatient waiting for Stauffenberg, had gone on to the conference hut, but the Count quickly joined Freyend and the others and started walking towards the security gate. Freyend offered to carry Stauffenberg’s briefcase for him, but the Count, looking tense, curtly refused. But as they approached the security gate that led into Sperrkreis A, Stauffenberg handed the briefcase and its live bomb to Freyend and asked him to place him as close to the Führer as possible because his injuries had left him hard of hearing.
Outside the conference hut was an SS-Begleitkommando sentry and nearby lurked an RSD officer on patrol. Inside, a sergeant from the FBB manned the building’s telephone switchboard. As the officers entered the hut they removed their caps and belts with their holstered service pistols and placed them on racks outside the conference room. Noone’s briefcase was searched and Hitler’s bodyguards did not frisk the visitors for weapons. A few days after the bombing the RSD concluded its report on the incident, writing: ‘Any failure of security measures provided against an assassination attempt cannot be discovered, since the possibility had never been taken into consideration that a General Staff officer who was summoned to the situation conference would lend his hand to such a crime.’5
There were two SS officers present in the room: SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, Hitler’s personal aide, and SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, Himmler’s SS liaison at Führer Headquarters. The other twenty men in the room were all army or navy officers, apart from two shorthand writers who would record everything that was said, and Minister Franz von Sonnleithner, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop’s liaison man. Keitel introduced Stauffenberg to Hitler, who shook his mangled hand briefly before turning back to the conference table.6
Stauffenberg excused himself from the meeting barely two minutes after stepping into the room, on the pretext of making a telephone call. Stauffenberg asked Freyend to arrange the connection for the call that he said he still had to make to Fellgiebel. Freyend did as he was asked and Stauffenberg was left alone in the telephone operator’s room to speak to Fellgiebel. As soon as Freyend had gone back into the briefing, Stauffenberg hung up and left the building.
When Stauffenberg left the conference room Hitler was leaning on the table, his chin cupped with one hand, his elbow on the desk as Generalleutnant Heusinger described the worsening situation on the Eastern Front.7 Stauffenberg walked out of the building and across to where Fellgiebel waited in the doorway of the communications centre with von Haeften. At 12.50pm, just as Stauffenberg reached the building, a loud detonation went off behind him in the direction of the conference hut.
Oberleutnant Ludolf Sander, a communications officer in Fellgiebel’s department, was standing near to Stauffenberg and von Haeften when the bomb went off. The Count and his adjutant were anxiously making arrangements for a car. The explosion was deafening. Fell-giebel gave Stauffenberg a startled look, but the Count just shrugged his shoulders. Sander was unsurprised by the detonation – tens of thousands of mines had been sown around the Wolf’s Lair complex and wild animals often set them off by accident.
The explosion inside the conference hut was tremendous – the British Plastic-C explosive packing a mighty punch. Flames, debris and bodies were flung through the open windows while the detonation reverberated off the surrounding buildings. All hell broke loose as security personnel, shouting at the tops of their voices, raced towards the hut and an alarm siren started its mournful wail. FBB medics rushed to tend the injured while Stauffenberg and von Haeften hurried towards a nearby staff car.8 The two plotters witnessed the scene of confusion as a huge cloud of black smoke and dust completely obscured the conference hut. Several guards looked skyward, expecting to hear the drone of aircraft engines, for it seemed as though the bomb had to have come from above. Stauffenberg climbed into the back of the black Mercedes believing that no one in the conference room could have survived such a catastrophic detonation.
Inside Hitler’s conference hut the pleasant room had been red
uced to a complete shambles. The huge map table had collapsed and was partly on fire. Bits of paper and dust twirled in the disturbed air. The walls and ceiling had also partially collapsed and the window frames had disintegrated, with wood and glass spread over the grass outside. But the bomb had not done its work. Stenographer Dr Heinrich Berger had taken the full blast of Stauffenberg’s bomb, losing both of his legs. He died later that day. Oberst Brandt lost one of his legs and died the following day. Generaloberst Gunther Korten, Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, was speared by a piece of wood and also died the next day. Chief of the Army Staff Office, Generalmajor Rudolf Schmundt, was severely wounded, losing an eye and a leg, and also suffered burns to his face. He died in hospital several weeks after the attack. But most of the participants survived with injuries that ranged from serious to superficial – unfortunately for Stauffenberg and the plotters Hitler fell into the latter category.
The problem for Stauffenberg was the venue – if the situation conference had been held in the windowless concrete Führerbunker the explosive power of the 1kg charge would have been magnified and probably killed everyone in the room. But because of the stifling July heat, the venue had been changed to the cool and shady conference hut. The use of the term ‘hut’ is a little disingenuous as it was built of concrete and brick, but it had large windows and was wood and plaster lined, so some of the power of the blast dissipated through the windows and doors or was absorbed by the plaster and wood interior.
Hitler was blown off his feet by the blast. After the initial shock of the blast, Hitler, a veteran of the trenches, established that he was all in one piece and that he could move. He made it through the wreckage to the door beating flames out from his trousers and the back of his head as he went. He bumped into Keitel, who embraced him, weeping and crying out: ‘My Führer, you are alive, you are alive!’9 Keitel helped Hitler outside.
Hitler’s singed hair stood on end, his trousers and long white underwear had been shredded and hung in strips like a raffia skirt, and his legs bled from hundreds of wooden splinters that had flown around the room like high velocity needles. His face was blackened and he was deaf in one ear, his eardrum ruptured by the blast. He also had bad bruising to his hands and a haemorrhaged elbow because he was leaning on the table when the bomb had exploded. His right arm was swollen and painful and he could barely lift it. He also had cuts to his forehead. But he was very much alive and none of his injuries was life threatening. As with so many things in Hitler’s life, his survival had been purely by chance. After Stauffenberg had left the room to answer his telephone call, Oberst Brandt’s boot had connected with the Count’s briefcase. To clear some standing space Brandt, who was standing closest to Hitler, had leaned down and moved the briefcase to the other side of one of the very thick oak table supports, away from Hitler. If the bomb had remained where it was Hitler would almost certainly have been killed – as it was, the table support absorbed much of the bomb’s blast leaving Hitler with only superficial injuries. Stauffenberg had also only been able to arm one of the two slabs of plastic explosives that he had carried into the Wolf’s Lair after being disturbed when he and his aide had been priming the time pencil fuse. The other slab remained in von Haeften’s possession as they drove away from the scene of the crime in the staff car.
Dr Morell soon arrived to begin treating Hitler’s wounds. When the Führer’s valet, Heinz Linge, rushed to his master’s side he was surprised to find Hitler composed and with a grim smile on his face. ‘Linge, someone has tried to kill me,’10 said Hitler. The identity of that ‘someone’ had yet to emerge.
Stauffenberg’s car passed through the checkpoint out of Sperrkreis I without any problems, the Count bluffing the guards, muttering something about ‘Führer orders’ of the highest priority. The guards should not have let the car pass, but they were still reeling with confusion after the nearby bomb blast. When Stauffenberg and von Haeften arrived at Wache Süd, the southern guardhouse in the perimeter fence, they found their path to freedom was blocked. The FBB manning the gates had dropped the barrier and placed obstacles across the road. The NCO in charge resolutely refused to let the plotters pass. Stauffenberg, feigning anger at such an insufferable delay, got out of the Mercedes and paced into the guardroom where he telephoned his breakfast companion, Rittmeister Leonhard von Möllendorf who worked in the HQ Commandant. Repeating his story about ‘Führer’s orders’ von Möllendorf interceded on Stauffenberg’s behalf and ordered the guard commander to open the gates. Speeding through, Stauffenberg and von Haeften headed for the airfield where General Wagner had placed a Heinkel He 111 transport at his disposal. Within a few minutes they were on their way to Berlin, confident that Hitler was no more and ready to take charge of the coup.
At the Wolf’s Lair Hitler continued to receive treatment from his personal physician, Dr Morell. When Hitler had been dragged from the burning and ruined conference hut Fellgiebel had been watching from in front of the Guest Bunker, trying to ascertain whether Hitler was alive or dead. Later, Fellgiebel fell into conversation with General-oberst Jodl, remarking about the attack: ‘You see, this comes from being so close to the front lines.’ Jodl retorted sharply: ‘No, this comes from the HQ being a construction site.’11 It appeared that at this stage most of Hitler’s entourage believed that the bomb had been planted by one of the several hundred Organisation Todt workers who were labouring at the Wolf’s Lair. But suspicion would soon fall on Stauffenberg when it was noticed that he was missing from the headquarters and he had been seen leaving by the switchboard operator without his briefcase.
Hitler, rather than being downhearted or depressed by his latest close call with death, was ecstatic. As Morell patched him up he kept repeating ‘I am invulnerable, I am immortal!’12 It was indeed some sort of miracle that Hitler survived such a powerful explosion only feet from him. Many would attribute Hitler’s survival once again to having his own ‘guardian devil’.
The RSD immediately sealed off the ruined conference hut and began a forensic investigation of the scene in order to gather evidence. The Führerbunker was also sealed off and very carefully searched for explosives. The entire Wolf’s Lair complex was placed on high alert. Over the coming days security was considerably tightened, meaning that Stauffenberg’s failure would actually make it even harder to kill the Führer.
Stauffenberg’s coup attempt began to unravel very quickly. While he was aboard the plane taking him to Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, a two-hour flight from Rastenburg, he was identified as the assassin. General Fellgiebel had severed all communications to and from Führer Headquarters, or at least thought that he had. Fellgiebel had sent off one short message to Generalmajor Fritz Thiele, Communications Officer at Army High Command in Berlin, stating that Hitler was still alive. No further details were given. Later, further messages came through that something had happened at the Wolf’s Lair, but that Hitler had survived.13 Hitler had summoned Himmler and Göring to the Führerbunker and he had placed Himmler in command of the Replacement Army. At the Bendlerblock, Replacement Army Headquarters in Berlin, Olbricht concluded that to take action before having definitive news would be to court disaster, and his resulting inaction caused a lot of time to be lost.14
At the Bendlerblock Generaloberst Fromm had been growing increasingly concerned about what was happening at the Wolf’s Lair. Fromm got through to Keitel at 4.00pm, thirty minutes before Stauffenberg landed at Tempelhof Airport. Keitel informed Fromm that there had been a bomb but that Hitler had suffered only minor injuries. Keitel also asked him about Stauffenberg’s whereabouts.15 Then Stauffenberg phoned from the airport insisting that Hitler was dead. When Stauffenberg and von Haeften had landed they had discovered that there was nobody to meet them, not even a car and driver. It was a bad sign. The Count was forced to make his own way to headquarters, where he found the mood to be cautious and hesitant.
Stauffenberg managed to pull the plotters together for a while, sending out a flurry of orders. He gave his c
olleagues an account of Hitler’s death, admitting that he had planted the bomb. ‘No one who was in that room can still be alive,’16 he asserted. Olbricht demanded that Fromm sign the alert order for Operation Valkyrie, but Fromm, having spoken to Keitel, knew that a coup was being attempted and he refused. Oberst Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, one of Stauffenberg’s plotters, grew impatient at the delay and faked the alert order himself. When Fromm tried to have von Quirnheim arrested Stauffenberg instead placed Fromm under arrest and had him locked in his apartment in the building.17
Operation Valkyrie was activated with units of the Replacement Army surrounding or occupying all offices of the Nazi state and SS, including in the regions and foreign capitals under German occupation. In Paris, General der Infanterie Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel and his subordinate officers firmly backed the coup. But the Supreme Commander in the West, Generalfeldmarschall Gunther von Kluge, vacillated. Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, who had arrived at the Bendlerblock, tried to persuade Kluge on the telephone to back the coup, but failed.
The plotters also failed to order the troops to seize the Nazi broadcast and communications network, or to arrest senior SS and Party leaders. Keitel and Jodl at the Wolf’s Lair began to issue a stream of counter-orders along with Reichsführer-SS Himmler, all firmly scotching rumours of a coup against Hitler by the Party and the SS. Most began with the chilling sentence: ‘The Führer is alive! In perfect health!’18
