when he attended to regular business and showed unusual dilatoriness in putting out the broadcast urgently demanded from Fuhrer Headquarters, was odd. Possibly he had decided that any immediate crisis had passed, and that he would await further information before putting out any press communique. More probably, he was unsure of developments and wanted to hedge his bets.
Eventually, after this lengthy interval, further news from the Wolf’s Lair ended his inaction. He rang Speer and told him to drop everything and rush over to his residence, close to the Brandenburg Gate. There he told Speer he had heard from Fuhrer Headquarters that a full-scale military putsch in the entire Reich was under way. Speer immediately offered Goebbels his support in any attempt to defeat and crush the uprising. Within minutes, Speer noticed armed troops on the streets outside, ringing the building. By this time, it was early evening, around 6.30p.m.103 Goebbels took one glance and disappeared into his bedroom, putting a little box of cyanide pills — ‘for all eventualities’ — in his pocket.104 The fact that he had been unable to locate Himmler made him worried. Perhaps the Reichsfuhrer-SS had fallen into the hands of the putschists? Perhaps he was even behind the coup ? Suspicions were rife.105 The elimination of such an important figure as Goebbels ought to have been a priority for the conspirators. Amazingly, no one had even thought to cut off his telephone. This, and the fact that the leaders of the uprising had put out no proclamation over the radio, persuaded the Propaganda Minister that all was not lost, even though he heard disquieting reports of troops moving on Berlin.106
The guard-battalion surrounding Goebbels’s house was under the command of Major Otto Ernst Remer, thirty-two years old at the time, a fanatical Hitler-loyalist, who initially believed the fiction constructed by the plotters that they were putting down a rising by disaffected groups in the SS and Party against the Fuhrer. When ordered by his superior, the Berlin City Commandant, Major-General Paul von Hase, to take part in sealing off the government quarter, Remer obeyed without demur.107 He soon became suspicious, however, that what he had first heard was untrue; that he was, in fact, helping suppress not a putsch of Party and SS leaders against Hitler, but a military coup against the regime by rebellious officers. As luck had it, Lieutenant Hans Hagen, a National Socialist Leadership Officer (N
Goebbels reminded him of his oath to the Fuhrer. Remer expressed his loyalty to Hitler and the Party, but remarked that the Fuhrer was dead. Consequently, he had to carry out the orders of his commander, Major-General von Hase. ‘The Fuhrer is alive!’ Goebbels retorted. I spoke with him only a few minutes ago.’ The uncertain Remer was visibly wavering. Goebbels offered to let Remer speak himself with Hitler. It was around 7p.m. Within minutes, the call to the Wolf’s Lair was made. Hitler asked Remer whether he recognized his voice. Standing rigidly to attention, Remer said he did. ‘Do you hear me? So I’m alive! The attempt has failed,’ he registered Hitler saying. A tiny clique of ambitious officers wanted to do away with me. But now we have the saboteurs of the front. We’ll make short shrift of this plague. You are commissioned by me with the task of immediately restoring calm and security in the Reich capital, if necessary by force. You are under my personal command for this purpose until the Reichsfuhrer-SS arrives in the Reich capital!’109 Remer needed no further persuasion. All Speer, in the room at the time could hear, was, ‘Jawohl, my Fuhrer… Jawohl, as you order, my Fuhrer.’ Remer was put in charge of security in Berlin to replace von Hase. He was to follow all instructions from Goebbels.110
Remer arranged for Goebbels to speak to his men. Goebbels addressed the guard battalion in the garden of his residence around 8.30p.m., and rapidly won them over.111 Almost two hours earlier, he had put out a radio communique telling listeners of the attack on Hitler, but how the Fuhrer had suffered only minor abrasions, had received Mussolini that afternoon, and was already back at his work.112 For those still wavering, the news of Hitler’s survival was a vital piece of information. Between 8 and 9p.m. the cordon around the government quarter was lifted.113 The guard-battalion was by now needed for other duties: rooting out the conspirators in their headquarters in Bendlerstra?e. The high-point of the conspiracy had passed. For the plotters, the writing was on the wall.
IV
Some were already seeking to extricate themselves even before Goebbels’s communique broadcast the news of Hitler’s survival.114 By mid-evening, the group of conspirators in the Bendlerblock, the Wehrmacht High Command building in the Bendlerstra?e, were as good as all that was left of the uprising. Remer’s guard- battalion was surrounding the building. Panzer units loyal to the regime were closing in on Berlin’s city centre. Troop commanders were no longer prepared to listen to the plotters’ orders. Even in the Bendlerblock itself, senior officers were refusing to take orders from the conspirators, reminding them of the oath they had taken to Hitler which, since the radio had broadcast news of his survival, was still valid.115
A group of staff officers, dissatisfied with Olbricht’s increasingly lame explanation of what was happening, and, whatever their feelings towards Hitler, not unnaturally anxious in the light of an evidently lost cause to save their own skins, became rebellious. Soon after 9p.m., arming themselves, they returned to Olbricht’s room. While their spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Franz Herber, was talking to Olbricht, shots were fired on the corridor, one of which hit Stauffenberg in the shoulder. It was a brief flurry, no more. Herber and his men pressed into Fromm’s office, where Colonel-General Hoepner, the conspirators’ choice as commander of the reserve army, Mertz, Beck, Haeften, and the injured Stauffenberg also gathered. Herber demanded to speak to Fromm and was told he was still in his apartment (where he had been kept under guard since the afternoon). One of the rebel officers immediately made his way there, was admitted, and told Fromm what had happened. The guard outside Fromm’s door had by now vanished. Liberated, Fromm returned to his office to confront the putschists. It was around 10p.m. when his massive frame appeared in the doorway of his office. He scornfully cast his eye over the utterly dispirited leaders of the insurrection. ‘So, gentlemen,’ he declared, ‘now I’m going to do to you what you did to me this afternoon.’116
As Gisevius later pointed out, what the conspirators had done to Fromm had been to lock him in his room and give him sandwiches and wine.117 Fromm was less naive. He had his neck to save — or so he thought. He told the putchists they were under arrest and demanded they surrender all weapons. Beck asked to retain his ‘for private use’. Fromm ordered him to make use of it immediately. Beck said at that moment he was thinking of earlier days. Fromm urged him to get on with it. Beck put the gun to his head, but only succeeded in grazing himself on the temple. Fromm offered the others a few moments should they wish to write any last words. Hoepner availed himself of the opportunity, sitting at Olbricht’s desk; so did Olbricht himself. Beck, meanwhile, reeling from the glancing blow to his head, refused attempts to take the pistol from him, and insisted on being allowed another shot. Even then, he only managed a severe head-wound. With Beck writhing on the floor, Fromm left the room to learn that a unit of the guards battalion had entered the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. He knew, too, that Himmler, the newly appointed commander of the reserve army, was on his way. There was no time to lose. He returned to his room after five minutes and announced that he had held a court-martial in the name of the Fuhrer. Mertz, Olbricht, Haeften, and ‘this colonel whose name I will no longer mention’ had been sentenced to death. ‘Take a few men and execute this sentence downstairs in the yard at once,’ he ordered an officer standing by. Stauffenberg tried to take all responsibility on his own shoulders, stating that the others had been merely carrying out his orders. Fromm said nothing, as the four men were taken to their execution, and Hoepner — initially also earmarked for execution, but spared for the time being following a private discussion with Fromm — was led out into captivity. With a glance at the dying Beck, Fromm commanded one of the officers to finish him off. The former Chief of the General Staff was unceremoniously dragged into the adjacent room and shot
