Joachim Fest - Plotting Hitler's Death

Stülpnagel presumably only participated in the game in an attempt to protect his staff, which had always gone along with Hofacker’s and his wishes. (In fact, a relatively large number of his officers did sur­vive the ensuing purge.) For himself, Stülpnagel realized, there was no hope-even though he did not yet know that he had already been betrayed to Keitel by Kluge, who brushed Blumentritt’s astonishment aside with the comment, “Things will now take their course.” Early in the morning orders arrived from Keitel: Stülpnagel was to return to Berlin at once. He look leave of his colleagues and set out by car. Near Verdun, where he had fought in the First World War, Stülpnagel had his driver drop him off and proceed ahead a little. With Mort-Homme Hill rising before him, he climbed down the em­bankment of the Meuse canal. The report of a pistol split the air. Stülpnagel’s two traveling companions hurried back and dragged his body out of the swirling waters. He was still alive, having succeeded only in blinding himself. Nursed back to health under constant guard, Stülpnagel was arraigned before the People’s Court on August 30. He refused to name any accomplices, and when Roland Freisler, the judge, asked specifically about Rommel and Kluge he answered tersely, “I will not discuss the field marshals!” Later that day the executioner led the blind man to the gallows. 30

Many factors led to the failure of the July 20 plot. Among those most frequently mentioned is the “amateurism” of the leading conspira­tors, insufficient planning, blind trust in the chain of command, and poor coordination among the participants, which led to the bedlam that broke out at army headquarters. As Admiral Canaris observed, not without a certain cynicism, to an acquaintance he met on the street two days later, “That, my dear fellow, was not the way to go about it.” 31

In any event, many important aspects of the plan did indeed go awry, from the failure to establish the loyalty and presence of the Döberitz and Krampnitz commanders to the defection of the task forces, which caused Colonel Jäger so much grief, to the absurd de­ception practiced on Major Jakob after he seized the broadcasting center on Masurenallee. Numerous other oversights and blunders- and simple human frailty-played a role as well, which is all the more surprising because the coup was planned and carried out by experi­enced officers of the general staff. The uprising lacked drive, but perhaps even more fatal was the fact that the staff officers who planned it did not have proven commanders at their disposal-resolute, careful officers experienced at overseeing troops and accustomed to bearing complete responsibility. Goebbels was amazed, for instance, to discover on the evening of July 20 that although the government quarter had been surrounded and two sentries posted in front of his apartment his telephone line had not been cut. 32

Nevertheless, it was not these obvious weaknesses that ultimately caused the uprising to fail. Strictly speaking, success or failure hinged on just two things: the assassination of Hitler and the interruption of all communications from the Wolf’s Lair. When the first of these conditions was not fulfilled, the second could not be maintained for long. One can hardly fault General Fellgiebel, who, astonished to see Hitler walk by him right after the explosion, made the fateful decision to call Berlin and pass along the news.

But however damaging the “logistical” failure, it does not capture the essence of the problem. Far more decisive on July 20, as on so many other days, were deeply ingrained attitudes and behaviors that inhibited any kind of revolt. Although criticism of Hitler and his re­gime was widespread within the army, not a single officer who had not been privy in advance to the plans for the uprising decided to join the rebels on the spur of the moment. The radio broadcasts in the early evening proclaimed not only that Hitler had survived but, even more important, that “legal” authority remained in his hands. There­after, most officers almost instinctively dismissed the rebels as insur­gents or traitors.

The enormous respect accorded “legality” greatly impeded the conspirators, stifling any questions as to why they were acting as they were. It was precisely in order to circumvent the army officers’ pro­found aversion to mutiny and broken oaths that the conspirators had planned to dress the coup up as a “legal” takeover. With the failure to assassinate Hitler, however, their reliance on legality was turned against them. This shift was clear in the initial reluctance and then the quite open defiance of the department heads on Bendlerstrasse, as well as in the passionate arguments that broke out in the Döberitz mess and prompted Colonel Wolfgang Müller to report that evening, “The troops cannot possibly be persuaded to fight against Hitler. They refuse to obey me against him.” Even among units that were deployed according to plan, a reference to “personal orders from the Führer” worked “like magic,” so that the troops turned around and headed smartly back to barracks. 33Thiele and Thüngen reacted the same way and, most critical of all, so did Kluge. After his telephone conversation with Stieff, he was totally impervious to all appeals or attempts at persuasion, despite his previous close affiliation with the rebels.

It is here that the weakness of the Valkyrie plan-its reliance on orders being followed unquestioningly down the chain of command- clearly emerges. Even if the attack on Hitler had been successful, many generals with troops at their command would still have had to decide to obey the new government. A few examples suggest that this decision was far less certain than the conspirators imagined: on re­ceiving instructions from army headquarters in Berlin, the com­manders of military districts in Hamburg, Dresden, and Danzig immediately contacted their regional party commanders or local Ge­stapo officials for clarification. They may have been exceptions, but they illustrate the extent to which innumerable individual decisions would have had to go the right way in order for the rebels to pose a serious challenge to the logistical might of the established legal au­thorities. In his complex combination of contempt for the regime and submissiveness to it, indecision and legalism, Field Marshal Kluge illustrates better perhaps than any of his fellow officers the problem that would likely have doomed the coup even if the attack on Hitler had succeeded.

As always in human history, only a small minority of men were willing to raise moral principle not only above the traditions with which they grew up but above life itself. When Henning von Tresckow discovered in the early hours of July 21 that the attack on Hitler had failed, he said to Schlabrendorff “in a totally calm, col­lected way” that he would now take his own life because he feared what would happen when he was pressured to reveal the names of his accomplices. The next morning, as he took his final leave of his friend and prepared to drive out past the German lines into no-man’s-land in order to end his life, he added another reason for his actions: “The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in a few hours’ time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify in good conscience what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if just ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope that for our sake God will not destroy Germany. None of us can bewail his own death; those who consented to join our circle put on the robe of Nessus. A human being’s moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.” 34