Read The Song Before It Is Sung Online
Authors: Justin Cartwright
'It's a trick,' says von Gottberg. 'Stauffenberg himself confirms that Hitler is dead.'
But they can get no information from the Bendlerblock, Reserve Army Headquarters. Von Gottberg is desperate to speak to von
Stauffenberg, and von Haeften tries many times to reach his brother. The lines are dead or overloaded. Two hours pass as they
wait, helpless.
After placing Fromm under arrest, von Stauffenberg starts on a round of telephoning to assure the other conspirators that
Hitler is dead. He tells them that it is impossible that Hitler has survived: he has seen the explosion and the body being
carried out. He calls von General von Stülpnagel, the Military Governor of Paris, and other conspirators in Prague and Vienna.
Some of the troops are ordered out, as the plan demands, and they set off from Potsdam to occupy the government quarter of
Berlin. But a diligent Major Remer, a convinced Nazi in charge of the Guard Battalion, manages to speak to Hitler himself
and orders some of the troops back to barracks. Tanks from the Officers' School in Krampnitz are moving fast, however. Von
Stauffenberg's inner circle come and go, increasingly uncertain.
Wilhelmstrasse. At about 5.30 p.m. von Gottberg sees that the street below is cordoned off and steel-helmeted soldiers are
taking up their positions on both sides of the road, right up to the Adlon Hotel. Von Gottberg and von Haeften are delighted;
they embrace. They have a list of people who are to be arrested as soon as the military leaders are ready. Von Gottberg tries
to call the Bendlerblock again, but still he cannot get through. They decide to delay any announcements and appointments within
the office until they are certain.
At the Bendlerblock, an SS colonel arrives to ask von Stauffenberg to a meeting with the Chief of Secret Police. Von Stauffenberg
has him arrested. The confusion deepens as reports come in that Hitler will himself soon make a statement. Support melts away.
The conspirators are not, after all, in control of Berlin or of communications. Junior officers loyal to the Führer arm themselves
and shooting breaks out. Von Stauffenberg is hit in the shoulder. Now he telephones Paris, his last hope, from Fromm's office,
but he is told, 'The SS are advancing.'
He slumps in the seat.
'They have left me in the lurch,' he says to von Haeften, who is burning papers in a bin. At 6.15 p.m. the radio announces
that an attempt has been made on the life of the Führer, but that he is unhurt.
At about 7 p.m. there is an awful moment: the troops below in Wilhelmstrasse are withdrawing and soon the traffic is flowing
again. Von Gottberg, who has been deathly pale all day, has the feeling that the blood is draining from him with the soldiers
as they file away. It is all over. He stays in the office until eleven, destroying papers, thinking of his alibi, hoping to
speak to von Stauffenberg. Maybe General Stülpnagel is even now bargaining from Paris with the Allies about surrender.
At Army headquarters in Bendlerstrasse, Fromm is brought back to his office by the junior officers. He confronts von Stauffenberg
and the other conspirators, saying that they are now under arrest and must hand over their weapons: they have committed an
act of high treason. General Beck asks to keep his pistol in order to shoot himself. Fromm agrees. Others want to write statements.
For half an hour von Stauffenberg stands in bitter silence as they write. Fromm declares that he has convened a court martial
and that it has found the colonel, whose name he cannot speak, as well as Lieutenant von Haeften, Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim
and General Olbricht, guilty. Von Stauffenberg now speaks: the others were under his command and he takes full responsibility.
The four men are led down some stairs and outside to where sandbags have been piled against a wall in the long, cobbled, rectangular
courtyard. Drivers from the car pool have been ordered to light up the place of execution with the headlights from their vehicles.
Ten non-commissioned officers stand ready with their rifles. The conspirators are shot one by one. It is reported that von
Haeften tries to throw himself in front of von Stauffenberg, as a last act of devotion. Just before he is shot, von Stauffenberg
shouts, 'Long live our sacred Germany.'
Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland.
One person reports that he shouts, 'Long live secret Germany,' and that is possible, because the words
heiliges
and the unfamiliar
geheimes
could easily have been confused.
Upstairs General Beck, who has shot himself in the head, is still alive after two attempts. He lies groaning in a corner asking
if he is dying. Fromm orders an officer to finish him off. The officer says he cannot shoot a German general lying wounded
and defenceless on the floor. He orders a soldier of the Guard Battalion to do it. This man drags Beck into a corridor, leaving
a trail of blood from his head, and shoots him.
Von Gottberg and von Haeften stop off at the Adlon for a drink with a colleague from their office.
'At least we tried,' von Haeften says.
'There is no more hope. Hitler has destroyed Germany,' says von Gottberg.
At 1.30 a.m. they hear that Hitler has made a broadcast denouncing a small clique of disappointed officers. The Führer speaks
to the German people from the Wolfschanze: a small, but deluded, group of officers, including von Stauffenberg, has tried
to kill him, but he has been spared. He is very lightly injured.
That night he declares in front of Mussolini that he will practise
Sippenhaft
without mercy. Mussolini is reported to be shocked. The armoured divisions have withdrawn to barracks.
The bodies of the five dead men shot in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock are loaded on to a lorry and driven to a graveyard
beside the Matthiaskirche in Schoneberg and hastily buried on Fromm's orders in their uniforms and decorations. The next day
Heinrich Himmler has the bodies exhumed, cremated and their ashes scattered in the open spaces of a park near by.
CONRAD' S BELL RINGS harshly. It takes him some time to understand what the noise is, as if he has never heard his bell before.
In fact the sound is a kind of grating cry, the cry of a crow. He wakes where he has fallen asleep, on the sofa. He is losing
a sense of the days. He has no idea of the time or the date. He goes downstairs and finds Tony, who hands him a registered
letter.
'Morning, mate. This came for you. I signed for it. You weren't answering.'
'Thanks, Tony.'
'You orright?'
'Yes, I'm fine. I've been working hard.'
And Tony gives him some freshly baked bread, still warmly aromatic.
'Pugliese. Where me gran come from. You must eat, my son.'
'I'm eating, Tony. Trust me. But thanks very much.'
He goes upstairs with the bread and the letter. Fritsch has written to him at last. After how many weeks? He can't work it
out. He opens the letter and reaches for his Cassell's dictionary.
Sehr Geehrter Herr Senior,
I have the only known copy of the film in which you have shown interest. This film has been in my possession since 1944. Many
times I have wondered what I can be doing with it. I believe from the Bundesfilmarchiv that you are writing about some of
the resisters. I was an assistant to Mr Steuben, of Wochenschau, deceased, and the footage filmed on B Camera, Arri 2C, by
me was on August 15th, 1944, and never used. This is the footage of the execution of four of the plotters of July 20th, 1944,
which event I believe is known to you. The four executed include Count Axel von Gottberg. I am not interested in selling this
footage to you, but in making sure that it is given to a responsible person. It can never be shown in the public media. I
have lived with this secret for sixty years. Also, I cannot allow this footage to be held in Germany. Many times I have decided
to destroy it. If you can come to Berlin there is a possibility that I can give you this film and the negative. Please telephone
this number to make an appointment.
Conrad immediately calls the number in Berlin. He is trembling as it rings. A woman answers and he asks for Herr Fritsch.
'Papi. Telefon!
'Guten Tag.
I am Conrad Senior. I received your letter.'
They stumble along in German. Conrad agrees to meet him in four days' time outside Schonhauser Allee 23, in Prenzlauer Berg.
He imagines Fritsch in East Berlin — he has a strong urge, at times uncontrollable, to fill in the details of other lives
-keeping this awful film for years, like some venomous creature, some poisoned substance, all through the communist days and
then in the new united Berlin wondering what he could do with it, how he could atone, perhaps, for his part in this terrible
act. And maybe all this time, sixty years now, Fritsch has never been able to talk about it or think of any way of disposing
of it honourably until he sees Conrad's notice in the archive or hears about it at a showing or a reunion of other Wochenschau
veterans.
Conrad feels faint. He hasn't been eating. He books himself a ticket to Berlin at a local cheap-flight shop. He has no money
in the bank but his credit card is still acceptable, apparently. And then he goes to the Café where workers and taxi drivers
gather for breakfast. He tries to estimate how many days have gone by, conscious that during this time the baby has been growing.
He leaves a message for Francine:
I must go to Berlin. I believe that this is coming to a conclusion now. Please call me to discuss our situation.
He sits in this Café. The taxi drivers are enthusiastic talkers. They meet here every day for a little
Midrash
of their own. He wonders how many taxi drivers are still Jewish. It was once the immigrants' route to accumulation. And the
taxi drivers' test demanded prodigious feats of memory. Are Jews more intelligent than the rest of us? Is that what the Nazis
really feared?
He remembers von Stauffenberg's guru, the poet Stefan George's, view of Jews:
One Jew is very useful but as soon as there are more than two of them, the tone becomes different and they tend to their own
business. Jews do not experience life as deeply as we do. They are, in general, different people.
It was the knowledge of the extermination of Jews and political commissars in the East that turned von Stauffenberg from conservative
aristocrat to regicide. An army major reported to him seeing one thousand naked Jews shot by the SS in the Ukraine. Mendel
wanted Conrad to determine in what state von Gottberg died. Did he die a German patriot or as someone who wanted to atone
for the sins visited on the Jews, on Mendel's people? For Mendel that was the issue when all else was forgotten. And soon
he may be able to provide the answer and then his task will be complete.
Francine has been doing nights as a locum, but she wants to see him before he goes to Berlin. They meet at the flower market
in Columbia Road for breakfast on Sunday morning when she comes off shift. Night shifts affect her badly: he is distressed
to see the imprint on her face, as deeply worn as the action of water on rocks, so deeply that she seems permanently to have
aged. But worse for Conrad than this haggardness is the certainty that she is profoundly unhappy. She is possibly still in
love with John.
They eat a bagel with smoked salmon and scrambled egg, and they drink dark Arabica. Outside the Café, as though they are in
a jungle clearing, is a dense wall of greenery and blossom. On a Sunday morning it is almost impossible to walk out on the
pavement, such is the commingling of people and plants. Suddenly, to his utter dismay, he sees that Francine is sobbing. He
stands up and puts his arm around her and leads her out into the flower market. They stand in a courtyard amongst coppery
bougainvillea, tree ferns and large blue pots. He holds her until her sobbing eases.
'I've got rid of it.'
She stands, silent within his embrace.
'I love you,' he says. 'We'll be fine.'
But in his heart he feels a certain bitterness that she should have destroyed the child without consulting him.
'I've waited for days to speak to you. You never rang,' she says.
He feels her body quaking.
'I am so sorry. I was completely lost.'
IN THE MORNING von Gottberg and the others turn up for work as usual. They appear to be paralysed with disappointment. In
the next few days they wait for the inevitable. Although he is offered several opportunities to escape to Switzerland, to
France or to Sweden, von Gottberg is unable to leave his wife and children at the mercy of the Gestapo. In any event he feels
a sacrifice is due to Germany. Different conspirators react in different ways. On the Eastern Front Major-General Henning
von Tresckow, who supplied the explosive, writes a note:
Now everyone in the world will turn upon us and sully us with abuse. Hitler is not the archenemy of Germany, he is the arch-enemy
of mankind. In a few hours' time I will stand before God to answer for my actions.
He drives out into a wood with his adjutant, asks him to go back to the car for a map, and then blows his head from his body
with a hand grenade. Other conspirators denounce their colleagues. A few escape across the borders by one means or another.
Five days later von Gottberg is arrested. Two Gestapo men are waiting for him in his office when he comes in. One sits, as
is traditional, at his desk going through his papers. Von Gottberg is taken away to Gestapo headquarters, and then to Oranienburg.
Dr Six sends an emissary to the prison: he is keen to keep von Gottberg and his foreign contacts as a bargaining chip when
the final defeat comes. It is, for the moment, only Schweizer's logbook that ties von Gottberg to Schweizer's master, von
Stauffenberg. Later Six turns on von Gottberg saying,
Wir haben einen Schweinehund unter uns gehabt — We have had a schweinehund among us
— when a document proposing high office for von Gottberg in the new government is discovered. He is to be the ambassador to
Great Britain. But Six may be playing a double game, speaking at the same time to his boss, Himmler; the prospect of a settlement
with the Allies has been on Himmler's mind too. Who better to send as an emissary to Churchill than an Oxford man? Every day
von Gottberg is brought from Oranienburg which is not far from where he and Elizabeth sat in the little DKW looking at Sachsenhausen
six years before. Every day he is driven to Gestapo headquarters in Albrechtstrasse, where, the records show, he only incriminates
people who are already dead or out of danger. Von Stauffenberg is one of these. Stauffenberg's remains are by now lost in
Schoneberg, dispersed, ashes to ashes. The Gestapo are sure von Gottberg knows more and, at Himmler's behest, want to find
out about all his contacts abroad.
Von Gottberg is beaten and he is made to stand for hours without sleep. Other conspirators are tortured on a rack, or half
drowned in buckets of water. The guards are creatures of the movement; their continued existence is tied to the regime. They
see these men, distinguished men, who are being dragged in in ever-increasing numbers, as the enemy within; it is always the
case that the enemy within, the ones who refuse to accept the articles of faith of the masses, are hated most. The guards
have dealt with Jews and Ukrainians and Poles and now they see that they have, in this patriotic work, been insulted by the
privileged who own castles set in broad acres and from time immemorial have had everything - fine linen, wines, and leather-bound
books - while they have had nothing. Worse, these are the very people who stabbed Germany in the back in 1918. It's an opportunity
many of them cannot resist. Their vindictiveness and cruelty are beyond belief.
Von Gottberg's daily interrogations are interrupted. It is announced that he and the other traitors will be summoned before
the People's Court presided over by Judge President Roland Freisler, to be condemned to death. The purpose of the court is
to minimise the importance of the uprising; Freisler's job is to blacken the name of the conspirators for home consumption.
They are a small group of deranged ingrates, who believe they know better than the Führer, which, of course, is logically
impossible, because the Führer is the people. The Führer principle demands that the people hold no doubts or even opinions
of their own. Throughout the trials Freisler is to enunciate these ideas clearly.
To Field Marshal von Witzleben he sneers, 'A Field Marshal and an Oberst General declare that they can do better than our
Führer. You understand why we call this overweening ambition? You shrug your shoulders? Well, that is a kind of answer. We
are of one opinion that the Führer is of the greatest help to us all alive and well.'
And to another defendant - although no defence is permitted - Major-General Stieff, Freisler says, 'What you reject is of
as little interest to us, as the perverted desires of a homosexual are to the healthy German male; for if you do not see that
that is rabid defeatism, then you are politically just as perverted. But here it is our healthy opinions which matter, not
yours.'
To the former Mayor of Leipzig, Carl Gordeler, who says he wanted power restored to the General Staff, he replies, 'But we
have that now! Yes, because we always have it in the person of the Führer. There is no more complete quintessence of all
the powers emanating from the people.'
And then Axel von Gottberg's turn comes. The defendants have been given an assortment of clothes that look as though they
may have been donated to help the homeless. He wears a loose jacket, a grey workman's shirt, and trousers without a belt or
braces. His shackles are removed in an anteroom. Two guards lead him into the courtroom to a bench where the defendants wait.
Behind Freisler, who is wearing juridical robes, is a huge Nazi flag. The light from the arc lamps is very strong, blinding
to the defendants.
Just as von Gottberg, transparently pale, almost ethereal, is summoned from the box, there is a commotion outside the court
on the landing. Two women are demanding to be let in. That they haven't fully understood what is going on is quickly apparent:
'We demand to be let in to attend this hearing.' They are led away and arrested. Von Gottberg recognises their voices, the
voices of his wife Liselotte and his sister Adelheid. His head sinks into his hands, as though any support it had has gone.
A few days later the children, Robert, three, Angela just two, and the baby, Caroline, are taken away to an orphanage where
they are given the names Horst, Waltraud and Heidi.
Von Gottberg stands calmly, already imagining death, perhaps longing for death after what he has been through. He doesn't
understand why there are film cameras in the court. The film is being made by Wochenschau on the orders of Reichsfilmintendant
Hans Hinkel, to demonstrate to the public that the small claque of traitors is decadent scum, who never fully understood the
legitimate and heroic struggle of ordinary German people under the Führer, a struggle against humiliation and unemployment
and decline.
Freisler is particularly interested in Oxford and the Rhodes Scholarship.
'An English scholarship. Ideal preparation for a traitor. So your years at Oxford were not entirely wasted. You proposed negotiating
with the armies in the West and capitulating?'
Von Gottberg replies
'Gewiss!
Certainly.
He is going to his death with composure. When von Gottberg says, 'I believed it was best for the people of Germany to negotiate,'
Freisler replies, 'We are not interested in what you thought. We are not interested in your view of foreign policy. We want
to know if a German stands before us.'
Of course von Gottberg is not allowed to reply. But he stands there as if he has already passed from this hellish nightmare.
That night in the small block next to Plotzensee Prison six people are hanged; they are brought in - it is reported - half-naked
and one by one they are slowly hanged. The cameras turn, as Hitler wants urgently to see the death throes of his enemies.
But von Gottberg is not executed; he is held back for further questioning because the interrogators believe he has more information.
He is held for eleven agonising days. Himmler wants his death sentence commuted so that he can use him and his contacts. When
this suggestion is passed to Hitler he falls into one of his terrifying rages, which are becoming increasingly frequent, and
he declares that the traitors at the Auswartiges Amt are the worst of all.
'Hang them, hang them like cattle.'
Axel von Gottberg is hanged in a batch of four on August the 26th.