type='note'>[45] Hitler had evaded death by changing his movements at the last moment, almost as if he had a feral sixth sense. Yet the plotters faced a more fundamental problem of which they seemed to be unaware: what would be the attitude of the Allies?
The British were far from convinced that removing Hitler would be an advantage. His direction of military affairs since just before the Battle of Stalingrad had been disastrous for the Wehrmacht. Six weeks before D-Day, 21st Army Group summed up the position: ‘The longer Hitler remains in power now, the better are Allied chances.’ Yet during June, there was a subtle shift. ‘The Chiefs of Staff,’ Churchill was informed, ‘were unanimous that, from the strictly military point of view, it was almost an advantage that Hitler should remain in control of German strategy, having regard to the blunders that he has made, but that on the wider point of view, the sooner he was got out of the way the better.’ Special Operations Executive took this pronouncement as a green light to start planning Operation Foxley, their own assassination attempt on Hitler. The idea was to ambush Hitler near the Berghof, but it was never seriously pursued. Hitler had in any case left Berchtesgaden, never to return, but, more importantly, Churchill became convinced that this time Germany had to be utterly defeated in the field. The Armistice in November 1918, and the consequent failure to occupy Germany itself, had provided the opportunity for the stab-in-the-back myth among nationalists and Nazis. They had convinced themselves that the German Army had been betrayed at home by revolutionaries and Jews.
In 1943, Stalin had cancelled his own plans to assassinate Hitler, although for rather different reasons.[46] After Stalingrad, the Soviet Union no longer faced defeat, and he had suddenly begun to fear that if Hitler were removed, the western Allies might be tempted to come to a separate peace with Germany. There is absolutely no evidence that this was ever considered, but right up to the end of the war Stalin, who tended to judge others by himself, was haunted by the idea of a Wehrmacht rearmed by American industry, turning back the victorious advance of the Red Army. In fact, Churchill and Roosevelt were totally committed to the principle of forcing unconditional surrender on Germany.
Stauffenberg, Tresckow and most of their comrades might be considered naive for expecting the western Allies to enter into negotiations on the death of Hitler. Their planning and preparation were also astonishingly amateur, when one considers their general staff training. A few had been early admirers of Hitler, until they were forced to face the criminal reality of the regime. Yet nobody can cast doubt on their courage and self-sacrifice. They longed somehow to preserve their idealized image of Germany, a high-minded, less nationalistic version of the pre- 1914 Wilhelmine era. And they may have hoped to save family estates from Soviet destruction, although they probably recognized it was far too late. Their overriding motive, however, had become a moral compulsion. They knew that there would be very little popular support for this act, so they and their families would be treated as traitors by everyone, not just the Gestapo. The chances of success were slim. But, as Stauffenberg put it, ‘Since the generals have up to now managed nothing, the colonels have now to step in.’ It was their duty to attempt to salvage the honour of Germany and the German Army, despite the danger of laying down another stab-in-the-back legend for the future.
During his interrogation by Allied intelligence officers at the end of the war, General Walter Warlimont described events in East Prussia on 20 July. The midday situation conference took place as usual in the long wooden hut. Hitler entered at about 12.30. The room was bare save for a few chairs and a heavy oak table twenty feet long which ran the length of the room. Among those present were Field Marshal Keitel, Generaloberst Jodl, General Warlimont, General Buhle, Gruppenfuhrer Fegelein and Hitler’s adjudants: General Schmundt, Admiral von Puttkamer and Oberstleutnant von Below.
General Heusinger, representing the chief of the army general staff, had begun his briefing when Stauffenberg entered. He was the chief of staff of the Replacement Army, the Ersatzheer. Stauffenberg, according to Warlimont, was carrying a ‘strikingly large briefcase’, which he placed under the oak table not far from Hitler, who had his back to the door. Because of the briefing, nobody noticed that Stauffenberg left the room a few minutes later.[47]
At 12.50 hours, ‘There suddenly occurred a terrific explosion which seemed to fill the whole room in dust, smoke and fire, and throw everything in all directions.’ When Warlimont recovered his senses, he saw Hitler being ‘led backwards through the door, supported by several attendants’. Casualties were remarkably few, only because the blast was dissipated through the windows and the thin walls. Hitler had been saved by Stauffenberg’s failure to arm the second bomb and by the heavy oak table support between the briefcase and him when the explosion took place.
At first, suspicion focused on the Organisation Todt workers, but during the early afternoon, a sergeant on the staff mentioned that Oberst von Stauffenberg had arrived with a briefcase and had been seen to leave without it. He had flown back to Berlin.
Stauffenberg, convinced that nobody could have survived the blast, had driven straight to the airfield. Meanwhile, a garbled message from a co-conspirator at the
To make matters worse, there was no car waiting at Tempelhof airfield to collect Stauffenberg, which delayed his return to the Bendlerblock for a further hour. Stauffenberg’s assistant rang through from the airfield to say that Hitler was dead. Stauffenberg also insisted that this must be true when he finally arrived, but Keitel had rung Fromm, demanding where Stauffenberg was. Keitel insisted that Hitler’s injuries were not serious. Fromm refused to act as a result, but other officers in the conspiracy went ahead. They sent out signals to different headquarters announcing that Hitler was dead.
The plan was to exploit an existing mechanism specifically designed to suppress a revolt in Berlin against the Hitler regime. The authorities feared an uprising, because there were ‘over a million foreign workers in Berlin, and if any revolution did start, these people would be a very great menace’. The codeword to set this counter-insurgency plan in motion was ‘
At exactly the same time, the plot was triggered in Paris. General Blumentritt, Kluge’s chief of staff, was told by one of his own officers that Hitler had been killed in a ‘Gestapo riot’. He rang La Roche-Guyon to speak to Kluge, but was told that he was visiting the front in Normandy. Generalmajor Speidel asked Blumentritt to come immediately, as Kluge would be back that evening. Blumentritt, however, had no idea that General von Stulpnagel, the military commander, was issuing orders for the arrest of all Gestapo and SS officers in Paris.
There were many senior officers involved in the plot and so little organization or effective communication that the uncertainty over Hitler’s death was bound to cause delay and chaos. When Remer reached Hase’s office he noticed that the atmosphere was very nervous. Remer was told that the Fuhrer had died in an incident, that a revolution had broken out and that ‘executive powers had been passed to the army’. Remer claimed later to have asked a series of questions. Was the Fuhrer dead? Where was the revolution, as he had seen no sign of anything on his way? Were the revolutionists foreign workers? Why had executive power passed to the army rather than to the Wehrmacht? Who was to be Hitler’s successor and who had signed the orders passing control to the army?
Evidently, the plotters had not prepared themselves for such questions. Their answers were evasive and lacked confidence. Remer was suspicious, but still confused. He returned to his headquarters and summoned his officers. He ordered them to set up a cordon round the government buildings right down the Wilhelmstrasse. Remer’s suspicions were further aroused when he heard that a general who had been dismissed by Hitler had been sighted in Berlin. Then Remer received an order from General von Hase to arrest Goebbels. He refused, as Goebbels had been patron of the
