Authors: Roger Moorhouse
Tags: #History, #General, #Europe, #Western, #Germany
Five days later, on the eleventh, he returned to Berchtesgaden for another meeting with Hitler. This time, he took the precaution
of stationing a plane at Salzburg airport, ready to fly him to Berlin after the attack. Once again, he brought the bomb—concealed in his briefcase—into the conference room. But once again, he failed. Given Himmler’s absence, he was persuaded by Stieff, much against his own instincts, to postpone the assassination until the entire leadership of the Reich could be targeted together.
That night, back in Berlin, Stauffenberg met Hans Gisevius, one of the conspirators from within the Abwehr. In a long and sometimes heated conversation, he allowed the strain of his unofficial activities to show. According to Gisevius, he was “rude” and “boorish,” a “swashbuckler” who was playing the role of assassin and was attempting to “overcompensate for the inferiority feelings engendered by his mutilation.”
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Most historians are agreed that Gisevius was wide of the mark in his criticisms, prejudiced by his loyalty to Hans Oster and possessing an “unrivalled lack of tact.”
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But on one point his assessment was absolutely accurate. During his meeting with Stauffenberg, he recalled, he “had the impression that before [him] was a man who would go to the limit.”
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After all the near misses and frustrations of the preceding weeks, Stauffenberg was absolutely determined to act. As he confided to a colleague, it was too late for scruples:
It is now time that something was done. But the man who has the courage to do something must do it in the knowledge that he will go down in German history as a traitor. If he does not do it, however, he will be a traitor to his own conscience.
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Four days later, Stauffenberg was again summoned to see Hitler, this time at his East Prussian headquarters, Wolfschanze, near Rastenburg. On arrival early that morning, he breakfasted and attended a briefing with Field Marshal Keitel. Soon after midday, he proceeded to Hitler’s presentation room, where he participated in three short conferences, of no more than twenty minutes each. As before, he had the explosives with him, concealed beneath a spare shirt in his briefcase.
The bomb, which Stauffenberg had been ferrying between
Berlin, Berchtesgaden, and Rastenburg for two weeks, consisted of two 1-kilogram slabs of plastic explosives, British in origin, that had been captured from failed SOE circuits and had passed through the conspirators at the Abwehr. The fuse, known as a time-pencil, had come from the same source. In order for the bomb to be activated, the time-pencil would have to be pressed into the explosive and then set by squeezing the bronze casing with a pair of pliers. This crushed a glass vial and released acid, which ate through a piece of wire holding a spring-loaded detonator.
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Naturally, the timing mechanism was far from exact and was easily influenced by external factors, such as temperature: slowing its action with the cold, and accelerating it with heat. Thus, in some circumstances, such as on a hot summer’s day, it was possible that a thirty-minute time-pencil might detonate after only fourteen minutes.
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Stauffenberg, therefore, had to hurry. He first had to ascertain that Hitler was indeed in the briefing room, and then had to excuse himself to set up his bomb. He would then have to return to the room, place his briefcase as close to his target as he could, and then leave the room again—all without arousing any suspicion. All of this only added to the tremendous stress under which he was already operating.
It is unclear exactly why Stauffenberg’s attack of 15 July failed. Some suggest that Stieff scuppered the attempt by removing the briefcase from the room, as Göring and Himmler were once again absent.
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Others maintain that Stauffenberg either wavered or was unexpectedly requested to make a presentation and was thus unable to excuse himself to set his fuse.
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The most dramatic explanation claims that Stauffenberg left the room to confer with Berlin and prime his bomb, but when he returned Hitler had already left and the meeting was breaking up.
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The truth may, of course, be more mundane: perhaps Stauffenberg—having traveled without his adjutant—had simply been physically unable to fuse his bomb, or he realized that he lacked the time necessary to leave the room, set the fuse, and then return. Whatever the cause of the failure—and it will probably never be known for certain—Stauffenberg had been frustrated again. However, spurred on by his repeated disappointments, he only grew more determined.
Next time he would act, come what may. “There is no other choice,” he said. “The Rubicon has been crossed.”
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Back in Berlin, meanwhile, the resistance was facing a race against time. Their activities, it is claimed, were already known to the SS.
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A week earlier, two of their most prominent civilian members, Adolf Reichwein and Julius Leber, had been arrested by the Gestapo. Both were implicated in the planning for Operation Valkyrie, and both were well aware of Stauffenberg’s activities. It would surely only be a matter of time until they were “persuaded” to confess all they knew. Moreover, the conspirators had been so sure that the attempt of 15 July would go ahead that orders for the necessary troop movements in Berlin had been issued that morning, in anticipation of a successful attack. When the attack failed to materialize, the orders could be explained away as exercises or drill, but crucially, there could now be no more false alarms. If the troops were to be called out again, it would have to be in earnest.
Unsurprisingly, Stauffenberg was under tremendous strain at this time. Whereas a previous would-be assassin had claimed of his attempt that “you only do something like that once,” Stauffenberg was already a veteran.
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In little over a week he had arrived at three briefings with Hitler, carrying explosives. At two of those, he had come explicitly as an assassin. Each time he had had to risk betrayal, exposure, and certain death. Each time he had had to prepare himself psychologically for the greatest challenge of his life. And each time he had been thwarted. As a result—and as Gisevius discovered—he was tired, irritable, and preoccupied. One colleague spoke with masterly understatement of his nerves being “not in a good state.”
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Another summed up the situation by saying that Stauffenberg “had gone down that terrible road in vain.”
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Yet Stauffenberg was determined that his efforts would not be in vain. On the morning of 20 July 1944, he flew to Rastenburg for the last time. Arriving with his adjutant, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, he breakfasted in the sunshine beneath an oak tree before proceeding to a preliminary briefing and a meeting with Field Marshal Keitel at 11:30 a.m. There he learned that
the conference with Hitler had been brought forward to 12:30 p.m., due to the expected visit of Mussolini that afternoon.
The venue for the conference was to be a briefing room in a long, single-story building located inside the inner perimeter of Wolfschanze. The block, often erroneously described as a wooden hut, was constructed of wood, fiberglass, and plaster with a roof of reinforced concrete resting on brick piers. The briefing room, located at its northeastern end, measured approximately 10 by 4 meters, with a number of windows opening out to the trees and grounds beyond. Inside, it was dominated by a heavy oak conference table, covered with maps, and surrounded by some twenty-five chairs to accommodate Hitler’s numerous guests, adjutants, and stenographers.
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At 12:25 that afternoon, as Hitler’s conference was due to begin, Stauffenberg asked Keitel’s adjutant, Major von Freyend, if he might find somewhere to freshen up and change his shirt. He was ushered into Freyend’s quarters, where he was joined by his own adjutant, Lieutenant von Haeften, who was naturally required to help the maimed man dress. There the two hastily constructed the bomb. They were hurriedly unwrapping the explosives and setting the fuse when a second adjutant interrupted them, saying that Stauffenberg was required for the briefing. Gruffly, the assassin replied that he was on his way, and left the room. Despite the extreme tension of the moment, most eyewitnesses recalled that he did not betray a trace of nerves.
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He had, however, committed a grievous error. In his haste, he had had no time to set a fuse in the second slab of explosive. What is more, he had neglected to place the unfused explosive in his briefcase. His bomb, therefore, was only half the bomb that it should have been.
When he reached the conference room, the briefing was already under way: General Heusinger was making a situation report about the Eastern Front. Stauffenberg had requested a seat close to the Führer, as he claimed his hearing was still impaired following the injuries sustained in North Africa. Muttering his apologies, he pushed his way to his seat, with Heusinger and then Hitler to his left and Colonel Brandt, Tresckow’s unwitting
courier at Smolensk, to his right. His arrival was noticed by another participant, General Walter Warlimont, who would later recall that Stauffenberg appeared to him as
the classic image of the warrior through all of history. I barely knew him, but as he stood there, one eye covered by a black patch, a maimed arm in an empty uniform sleeve, standing tall and straight, looking directly at Hitler. He was‖a proud figure, the very image of the General Staff officer…of that time.
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Warlimont had no inkling that the “warrior” before him was about to try to kill his commander in chief.
Stauffenberg placed the briefcase on the floor in front of him, barely a meter from its intended target, and then, almost as soon as he had arrived, muttered something about a phone call and promptly left the room again. This was in itself unremarkable. The participants of Hitler’s conferences were constantly coming and going; making telephone calls and fetching maps and documents. It is most unlikely, therefore, that Stauffenberg’s sudden departure would have aroused any suspicion. General Heusinger, now twice interrupted, merely continued with his description of the perilous situation facing Army Group North in Russia.
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It would not be long before he was interrupted again.
At around 12:42, Wolfschanze was shaken by an explosion. As one eyewitness recalled: “In a flash the map room became a scene of stampede and destruction…there was nothing but wounded men groaning, the acrid smell of burning and charred fragments of maps and papers fluttering in the wind.”
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Beyond the immediate vicinity of the map room, however, the explosion raised little more than a few eyebrows. In fact, the sound was not that unusual: weapons were constantly being fired in the area, and flak teams often practiced their drill.
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One soldier even commented to Stauffenberg himself that it was probably an animal that had strayed into the minefield around the site.
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This confusion enabled Stauffenberg to make good his escape. Convinced that Hitler had been killed, he bluffed his way past the
sentries and hurried to Berlin with Lieutenant von Haeften to take charge of the resultant coup.
It did not take long, however, for word to circulate at Rastenburg that the explosion had not been an exercise or a distant mine. The briefing room had been all but destroyed, its windows and part of the wall blown out. Outside, the grass was littered with burned papers, splinters of wood, and rubble. As the wounded stumbled out, it soon became a makeshift field hospital. Inside the room, chaos reigned. As a cloud of smoke and dust cleared, the grisly scene slowly came into view. The floor had buckled under the force of the blast. The oak table, on which Hitler had been leaning, had been shattered. Everywhere wooden beams had collapsed into the room, bringing the plaster ceiling and partition walls crashing down. Injuries to the briefing participants were numerous. Almost all of them had suffered burst eardrums and concussion. Ten of them were more seriously injured, three of those gravely: General Heusinger’s deputy, Colonel Brandt, had lost his left foot; Colonel Schmundt, one of Hitler’s senior adjutants, had lost an eye and a leg; and General Korten—who had given Stauffenberg his seat—had been disemboweled. All three would succumb to their injuries. Amid the wounded, one man was already fading: the stenographer Heinrich Berger had lost both legs and lay in a spreading pool of his own blood. He would not last the afternoon.
Hitler found himself in the open doorway. Momentarily deafened and concussed, he was helped to his feet by Keitel and escorted to his bunker, where first aid was administered. He had suffered cuts to his forehead, burns to his right calf and left hand, and severe bruising to his lower right arm. In addition, over a hundred wooden splinters had to be removed from his legs.
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He was shaken, agitated, and initially less than lucid—complaining that his new trousers had been ruined.
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Within an hour, however, he had regained his composure. As one of his secretaries described:
Curiosity drove us to the Führer bunker. I almost laughed at the sight of Hitler. He was standing in the little anteroom, surrounded by several of his adjutants and servants. His hair was never particularly well cut, but now it was standing on end so that he looked like a hedgehog. His black trousers were hanging in strips from his belt, almost like a raffia skirt…Smiling, he greeted us, “Well, ladies, everything turned out all right.”
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