Songs of the Dead (33 page)

You have heard rumors of this before, and you know enough about how the government works to know that these men are acting under orders, and that there are many other groups carrying out similar actions all over Russia.

What do you do? Do you invoke paragraph 227 of the code of common law, which states explicitly one's right in an emergency “to defend oneself or another against unlawful attack,” and in doing so hope to halt the operation? Of course this would have been impossible. Even if you were able to get the SS men to take notice of you—improbable at best, considering that you're a mere captain—you know that the “special treatment” would just have resumed as soon as you left, and in any case would have stopped nowhere else. In other words, you recognize almost immediately that you are witnessing one manifestation of a much larger problem.

What do you do?

Now, picture this. It is the present. You are who you are. You see a clearcut, with several thousand trees cut and stacked. Or you see a factory trawler, with several thousand tons of fish killed and containerized. Or you see an entire economic and social system that is changing the climate of the planet, that is deforesting the planet, that is killing the oceans, that is toxifying everything it touches, that is killing humans and nonhumans alike.

You know enough about the system to know that the people who are deforesting, who are murdering the oceans, who are changing the climate, who are rendering the planet toxic, are acting consonant with an entire social system that values money and power over life itself, and that there are many other groups of people carrying out similar actions all over the world. In other words, you recognize almost immediately that you are witnessing one manifestation of a much larger problem.

If you are in this situation—which of course you are— what do you do?

Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche determined to kill Hitler. As with Colonel Freiherr von Gersdorff, he and other plotters decided they would blow him up during an inspection. Bussche would bring a hand grenade, and would use his movements as he modeled a uniform to disguise igniting the fuse. Then he would cough to mask the fuse's distinctive hissing, and at the last moment throw his arms around Hitler and blow the both of them up.

The plotters obtained a hand grenade—once again, no easy task for someone not at the front—but while they waited for Hitler to commit to a day and time for the demonstration, an Allied air raid destroyed the railroad car holding the uniforms.

Bussche was sent back to the front, where he lost a leg and was thus unable to participate in any attack on Hitler.

After Bussche lost his leg, someone else came forward to try to kill Hitler. His name was Ewald Heinrich von Kleist. He was a lieutenant. Kleist asked his father for permission to give his life for this cause. His father said that under no circumstances must he let this opportunity slip to perform such a crucial duty. Kleist, like Gersdorff and Bussche, was to carry an explosive into a demonstration, killing both himself and Hitler. For reasons unclear to this day the demonstration was never held.

Yet another person came forward to kill Hitler. His name was Eberhard von Breitenbuch. As an aide to Field Marshall Busch, Breitenbuch had routine access to Hitler during briefings. On the day Hitler was supposed to die, Breitenbuch sent his wristwatch and rings to his wife. She knew what this meant. He arrived at the site, left his service revolver in the coat room, and carried a briefcase full of Busch's papers into the anteroom. Unbeknownst to almost everyone there, he also carried a loaded 7.65 mm Browning, this in his pants pocket. It was rumored that Hitler wore a bullet-proof vest—(these rumors came about in part because Hitler walked hunched over, as though carrying a heavy weight; he may or may not have worn armored vests, but the reason he hunched, known only to his physician, was that he had scoliosis)—so he would have to aim for the head.

At last the doors to the conference room opened, and an SS guard invited the men in for the briefing. Because Breitenbuch was the most junior officer present, he waited last in line. As he reached the door the SS man grabbed him by the arm and said that on this particular day no aides were to be allowed into the room. Both Breitenbuch and Busch protested that his presence was necessary. The SS man had his orders, and would not be swayed.

Breitenbuch sat alone in the anteroom. Occasionally an SS guard would enter the room, then leave. Each time, Breitenbuch was certain he was about to be arrested. He knew what would happen then.

But no arrest ever came, and no explanation was ever made for Breitenbuch's exclusion. Saying, “One can only do that sort of thing once,” Breitenbuch never made another attempt.

If people know only one thing about German resistance to the Nazi regime, it is that on July 20, 1944 Lieutenant Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg set off a bomb that very nearly killed Hitler.

Stauffenberg had himself nearly been killed fourteen months earlier, when American P-40f fighters attacked a column of the 10th Panzer Division in Tunisia. Stauffenberg's scout car was riddled with machine gun bullets, and Stauffenberg lost his left eye, his right hand, the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, and part of his hearing. After surgeries and stabilization at a military hospital in Carthage he was transferred to a hospital in Munich. His wounds became infected, and he was delirious for weeks. Once through the delirium, and through further surgeries on his head and hand, Stauffenberg began to teach himself how to write with his left hand, and to dress himself with his remaining fingers and his teeth.

Stauffenberg became convinced that his life had been spared so that he could help rescue Germany by assassinating Hitler. Long before, he had complained to one fellow soldier, “Is there no officer over there in the Führer's headquarters capable of taking his revolver to the brute?” And now he said, manifesting perfectly the transition from outrage to accountability and from there to action, “As General Staff officers we must all share the burden of responsibility. . . . I could never look the wives and children of the fallen in the eye if I did not do something to stop this senseless slaughter.”

The doctors wanted to keep Stauffenberg at the hospital to fit him with an artificial eye and hand, but Stauffenberg had no time for this: he had work to do, and so chose merely a black eye patch and a pinned-up sleeve.

On the second finger of his left hand he wore a ring with raised lettering: Finis initium (Finish what you begin). This is what he would do.

He began working with General Friedrich Olbricht, who was already part of the conspiracy. Olbricht's work brought Stauffenberg into regular contact with Hitler's inner circle, whom he described to his wife as “rotten and degenerate,” and as “patent psychopaths.” He also noted how poor was their security: neither he nor his briefcase were ever searched.

Stauffenberg and the rest of the conspirators continued to look for opportunities to kill Hitler, and continued also to make plans for an armistice with the Western powers after their coup. These plans were dealt a blow when the Allies invaded France. Everyone who was not entirely delusional knew then even more than ever before that the current regime could not last. (Of course those who come after will say the same about us and our time.) Stauffenberg sent a message to Tresckow asking whether there was any reason for them to proceed with their plans, now that the end was so obviously near. Tresckow responded immediately, “The assassination must take place, cost what it will. Even if it does not succeed, the Berlin action must go forward. The point now is not whether the coup has any practical purpose, but to prove to the world and before history that German resistance is ready to stake its all. Compared to this, everything else is a side issue.”

Would that we now had the same courage.

So Stauffenberg moved forward, recruiting more than a hundred officers into the conspiracy. Twice he carried a bomb in his briefcase into Hitler's presence, but each time he did not detonate it. The first was on July 10, 1944. He did not set the fuse because he saw that Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring and Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler were absent, and most of the conspirators agreed that they should try to kill as many of the top Nazis as possible. When it came time for Stauffenberg to give his presentation, he coolly removed the appropriate papers from his briefcase, gave his talk, and withdrew.

Unlike Breitenbuch, this was something Stauffenberg could do more than once. On July 15 Stauffenberg attended another briefing. Again Göring and Himmler were absent. This time Stauffenberg slipped from the room and called his headquarters in Berlin to ask whether he should proceed anyway. While Stauffenberg stood waiting for an answer, those in Berlin argued back and forth for at least fifteen minutes, finally telling him not to set the bomb. Frustrated at their hesitation, Stauffen-berg decided to move forward anyway, but by the time he returned to the conference room, the meeting was nearly over. Because the bomb had a ten-minute fuse, no purpose would have been served by igniting it now.

The next time there would be no such hesitation. On July 20, Stauffenberg flew to Hitler's headquarters in Prussia, arriving a couple of hours before the briefing. He met with several generals for about an hour and a half, then retrieved from his assistant his briefcase containing two bombs. He asked one of the generals' aides where he might freshen up and change his shirt: he wanted to be immaculate, he said, for his meeting with the Führer. The truth is that he needed some time unobserved so he could use specially-twisted pliers—remember, he had only two fingers on one hand—to start the fuses. A few moments earlier, however, another of the conspirators, General Fellgiebel, had telephoned headquarters to ask to speak to Stauffenberg. A non-commissioned officer had been sent to find him. He did, and asked him to come to the phone. Stauffenberg crossly attempted to send the other man away, but the man remained in the doorway, looking in. Stauffenberg stood with his back to him, busy with something the man could not see. Finally another man approached, and said, “Stauffenberg, come along, please!” Stauffenberg never received the necessary privacy, and only started one fuse. The bomb was only half the strength it could have been.

Stauffenberg briskly made his way to the briefing room. There he asked, “Could you please put me as near as possible to the Führer so that I catch everything I need for my briefing afterwards?” He was placed to Hitler's right. They stood in front of a massive oak table—nineteen feet long, four feet wide, and four inches thick—covered with maps. Stauffenberg noticed that the windows were open. This was unfortunate, since that would allow some of the blast to escape. He placed his briefcase partway under the table, remained a few moments, then murmured that he needed to make a telephone call—something that happened all the time at these conferences—and left the room. He could not remain to make this a suicide attack because he was invaluable to the coup that was to happen in Berlin immediately upon Hitler's death. Soon after Stauffenberg left, a Colonel Brandt moved forward so he could see the maps more clearly. But he felt a briefcase against his foot, and pushed the briefcase farther under the table, against the table's solid oak support. This movement—as well as the telephone call made by a conspirator for Stauffenberg, causing someone to stand in the doorway and watch Stauffenberg's back as he set the fuse—saved Hitler's life. The bomb went off, but protected as Hitler was by so much solid oak, Hitler survived.

The war continued.

Hitler often said that a miracle had saved his life. “I am grateful to Destiny for letting me live,” he would say, and he would say that the reason Destiny had let him live was that Providence still had a task for him.

Perhaps this was the same Providence that George Washington invoked in his inaugural address.

Perhaps this is the same Providence that has so far allowed the
wétikos
to overrun the planet.

When we return to Spokane, my mother is on a deathwatch. She hasn't slept more than a couple of hours in a few days. One of her cats—perhaps her sweetest cat ever—is in the final stages of kidney failure. My mom knows from research she's done that there's nothing she can do. A trip to the vet will only scare the cat and not prolong her life. So she sits with the cat in her last hours and sews a small quilt in which the cat will be buried.

There is something unspeakably beautiful about watching this process. I contrast it with the death of one of my own cats from this same condition, not long before Allison and I left for New York. She too was an extraordinarily sweet cat, and she, too, entered these final stages. Still she purred, still she flicked her tail when I spoke her name. She crawled into a closet, I know now looking for a place to die. I did not yet know there was nothing to be done, so I took her to the vet. She purred and blinked at me as he took her away for tests and hydration. He called later that day to say she was dead. I brought her home and buried her wrapped in some of my shirts. I regret that I did not keep her home to die, and I worried that after her death she might not be able to find her way home. She came to me three nights later, though, and said she was fine, and she was happy, she was glad to be home, that death was okay, and that she had been tired, that's all.