Joachim Fest - Plotting Hitler's Death

8. Freya von Moltke, Michael Balfour, and Julian Frisby, Helmuth James von Moltke, 1907-1945: Anwalt der Zukunft (Stuttgart, 1975), 298. See also Archiv Peter, ed., Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung: Die Kaltenbrunner-Berichte über das Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944 (Stuttgart, 1961), 188-89. In the cleanup following a bombing raid, an envelope was found in Goerdeler’s destroyed hotel, the Hospiz on Askanischer Platz. It had been placed in a safe before the raid and never retrieved. Various documents were found in it, including Goerdeler’s inaugural address.

9. Wassiltschikow, Tagebücher, 267, and Schwerin, Köpfe, 44-45.

10. Ehlers, Technik, 113.

11. Zeller, Freiheit, 461-62.

12. See Walter Wagner’s portrait of Freisler in “Der Volksgerichtshof im nationalsozialistischen Staat,” Die Justiz und der Nationalsozialismus, Institut fur Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1974), esp. 832ff. See also Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante portas… Es spricht der erste Chef der Gestapo (Stuttgart, 1950), 295, and Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya, 1939-1945, ed. and trans. Beate Ruhm von Oppen (New York, 1990), 399.

13. Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichishof Nürnberg, 14. November 1945-1. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg, 1949), vol. 33, PS-3881, 299ff. Freisler’s concluding words are on 529. The text is one of the few surviving records of the trials before the People’s Court. Unlike the text of the introductory comments, it is not a word-for-word transcript since, as a few sequences in some films of the trial show, Freisler’s cursing in particular is omitted. In all likelihood, the defendants’’ statements of what they believed were also omitted. Detlef von Schwerin points out that according to the transcript Witzleben responded, “I approved of that,” when asked whether he assented to the new regime’s arresting Nazi functionaries and liberating political prisoners. In actual fact, as can be seen in other documentation, Witzleben replied in much more definite tones: “But of course I approved of that” (Köpfe, 422-23).

14. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 647-48 (for Wirmer and Haeften); Hans Rothfels, Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler: Eine Würdigung, exp. ed. (Tübingen, 1969), 108 (for Kleist-Schmenzin); Schwerin, Köpfe, 426 (for Schwerin); Peter Hoffmann, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Brüder (Stuttgart, 1992), 445, and Zeller, Freiheit, 296 (for Hofacker); Hoffmann, Widerstand, 648 (for Fellgiebel and for other comments of the accused).

15. Harald Poelchau, Die letzten Stunden: Erinnerungen eines Gefängnispfarrers (Cologne, 1987), 101.

16. See Gerhard Ritter, Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Stuttgart, 1984), 9 and 423, and Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, 1981), 395. For an extensive discussion of different versions of the executions and of the reactions in Führer headquarters, see Hoff­mann, Widerstand, 871ff.

17. Qtd. in Ursachen und Folgen: Vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart. Eine Urkunden und Dokumentensammlung zur Zeitgeschichte, ed. Hebert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler, vol. 21 (Berlin, 1970), 505-06.

18. Lothar Meissner, “Handstreich im Pustertal: Ein Zeitdokument,” rpt. in Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, June 5, 1964, 12-13.

19. Ritter, Goerdeler, 416.

20. Ritter, Goerdeler, 432 and 440.

21. Ritter, Goerdeler, 422.

22. For a lengthy discussion of the delays, see Ritter, Goerdeler, 426ff. Photo­copies of the judgments against Goerdeler and others were made available to the author in documents numbered I L 316/44, O J 17/44 gRs.

23. Ritter, Goerdeler, 441,

24. Spiegelbild, 430.

25. For informative details of the discovery of the documents in Zossen, see Heinz Höhne, Canaris: Patriot im Zwielicht (Munich, 1976), 552ff.

26. Zeller, Freiheit, 472.

27. Gert Buchheit, Der deutsche Geheimdienst (Munich, 1966), 445.

28. Höhne, Canaris, 566; see also Count Romedio Galeazzo von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschwörer: General Oster und die Militäropposition (Berlin, 1982), 271.

29. Höhne, Canaris, 569; Josef Müller, Bis zur letzten Konsequenz (Munich, 1975), 252. According to Fabian von Schlabrendorff, the crematorium in Flossenbürg was not working at that time, and the daily toll of executed prisoners had to be burned on specially constructed pyres (Offiziere gegen Hitler [Frankfurt and Ham­burg, 1959], 155).

30. Zeller, Freiheit , 468-69.

31. Zeller, Freiheit ,463. See also Freya von Moltke el al., Moltke, 303ff., where extended passages from both letters are printed. For a complete version, see Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters, 398ff.

32. Schlabrendorff, Offiziere, 153-54. The doctor who was summoned was Rolf Schleicher. His brother Rüdiger worked at the Institute for the Law of the Sky on Leipziger Platz, which he turned into a meeting place for the opposition. Rüdiger was related by marriage to Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In reaction to the death sentence Freisler had handed down, Rolf Schleicher refused to issue a death certificate for him.

33. Momm told the Gestapo that he said not “swine” but “sow,” which he alleged was a proper hunting term and not at all derogatory. Despite this flimsy explanation, he received only relatively mild punishment and a demotion. He later regained his former rank. See Hoffmann, Widerstand, 838, n. 170.

34. Freya von Moltke et al., Moltke, 300.

35. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 652ff. See also 20. Juli 1944, ed. Erich Zimmerman and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, special ed. of Das Parlament, 3rd ed. (Bonn, 1960), 212-13.

36. Ernst Jünger, Strahlungen (Tübingen, 1949), 496 (entry of March 3, 1944).

37. Heinz Boberach, “Chancen eines Umsturzes im Spiegel der Berichte des Sicherheitssdienstes,” in Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jürgen Schmädecke and Peter Steinbach, (Munich, 1968), 820.

38. On August 2, 1944, Churchill told the House of Commons that the “highest personalities in the German Reich are murdering one another, or trying to, while the avenging Armies of the Allies close upon the doomed and ever-narrowing circle of their power.” The events in Germany were, he continued, a manifestation of “inter­nal disease.” For Herrnstadt, see Christian Muller, Oberst i.G. Stauffenberg: Eine Biographie (Dusseldorf, 1970), 417-18.

39. The ban was broken when Hans Rothfels, who had emigrated to the United States, published The German Opposition to Hitler there in 1948. One year later it was published in Germany.

40. Baron Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, Soldat im Untergang: Lebensbilder (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1979), 203-04.

41. Ritter, Goerdeler, 441ff.

1. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler (Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1959), 13.

2. Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposi­tion gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 453-54.

3. Peter Hoffmann, “Motive,” Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jürgen Schmädecke and Peter Steinbach (Munich, 1986), 1089.