Operation Valkyrie
By 1944 the anti-Nazi groups had all failed to assassinate Hitler. The last hope now required an audacious plan, as Graham Caldwell describes
On the morning of the 20 July 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff of the Replacement Army and his ADC, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, had been summoned to Führerhauptquartier near Rastenburg
East Prussia (Hitler’s command centre named the Wolf’s Lair) to report on the manpower of the Reserve Army. They had with them a pair of British made
2lb plastic explosives concealed in each of their briefcases, supplied by Major General Helmuth Stieff, Chief Army HQ Organisation Branch, who traveled with them. Their plane touched down at Rastenburg airfield at 10.15am followed by a nine-mile car drive. The Wolf’s Lair was remote from civilisation situated in a dense forest with little sunlight penetrating its canopy. It was here where Adolf Hitler and his military entourage directed the war on the Eastern Front surrounded by electric fences, minefields, barbed wire and check-points on the road leading to Hitler’s conclave or Security Ring No. 1. General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Armed Forces Operations Staff, described it as a cross between a monastery and a concentration camp. Stauffenberg and Haeften passed through the inner compound and, at noon, were greeted by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Armed Forces High Command. Keitel explained that the Fὔrher’s morning conference had been brought forward to 12.30pm because of the expected arrival of Mussolini at 3pm. Plus, because of repairs to the underground conference bunker, the situation conference had been moved to the brick and timber hutment normally reserved for guests.
The change of location was to have a material effect upon subsequent events. Luncheon swallowed up precious time, so when Stauffenberg made an excuse to change his shirt, taking both briefcases
into an anti-room of the conference building, time restraints only allowed for him to fuse the first bomb, using a pair of pliers in his crippled fingers and starting a 10-minute fuse, but left no time to prepare the other. The conference room had three opened windows and an oblong map table measuring 12.5m by 5m, supported by two solid cross-timber supports, a metre in from each end.
When Keitel and Stauffenberg entered the room 21 others were already standing around the table, plus two seated stenographers. Neither Himmler, Göring nor Ribbentrop was present. Lieutenant General Alfred Heusinger, Director of Military Operations, had already begun his Eastern Front situation report, whilst Hitler, standing with Jodl on his left and Heusinger on his right with his back to the door, was attentively following the presentation.
Keitel briefly introduced Stauffenberg, who would speak next, then took up his entitled position next to Hitler on Jodl’s right. Stauffenberg gestured that he would leave his briefcase under the corner of the table (on Hitler’s side of the end cross-support) on the excuse of making an urgent phone call and left the room, upon which, fouling his foot, Colonel Heinz Brandt pushed the briefcase to the farthest side of the support, away from Hitler. Heusinger, drawing towards the end of his report, prompted Keitel to ask where Stauffenberg was. Seconds later, at precisely 12.42pm, the bomb exploded.
The origins of the plot
The purpose of Hitler’s assassination, which would instantly free all German soldiers from their oath of loyalty to him, was to take political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party, and then immediately make peace with the Western Allies to end the war. There were three uncoordinated resistance circles originating as far back as 1938.
The Abwehr Group (military intelligence) headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and his deputy Major General Hans Oster; the civilian Kreisau Circle of Protestants, Catholics and idealists led by Count Helmuth von Moltke, Lutheran Priest, Klaus Bonhoeffer and ex-Leipzig Mayor Carl Goerdeler, none of which approved of using violence and a secret cohort of over 200 disillusioned Army officers. They all had in common a disgust for the Nazi anti-Jewish programme, a return to democracy and since 1943, a realisation that the war could no longer be won. The Army clique was headed by senior and ex-senior Generals, who had agreed to form a provisional government once Hitler had been killed. They were Colonel General Ludwig Beck, the prewar Army Chief of Staff, would become
President; Goerdeler as Chancellor; Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben slated as Commander-in-Chief Armed Forces; Ex-panzer army commander Colonel General Eric Hoepner, who would be Commander-in-Chief Army; General Friedrich Olbricht, Fromm’s deputy, to be Minister of War; Major General Henning von Tresckow, who was Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Kluge at Army Group Centre in Russia, to become Chief of Police. However, none of the aforementioned would survive the putsch. Three very senior active Army officers sat on the sidelines ready to participate once Hitler and Himmler were removed. Von Kluge, recently transferred from the Russian Front and now Commander-in-Chief West (and since Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s serious injuries, temporarily standing-in as Commander of Army Group B fighting the Allied landing in France) who wanted a bet each way; Colonel General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief Reserve Army in Berlin, who we shall return to later and Rommel, who originally adored Hitler, but had become disillusioned. However, whilst he was not active in the actual bomb-plot, Rommel’s name was later revealed by another conspirator under torture, consequently he was visited at home and forced to commit suicide in return that his family would be saved. In fact such was Rommel’s prestige, Hitler gave him a State funeral.
Between 1921 and the spring of 1944 several attempts were made to assassinate Hitler by members of various civil or military underground cells, but due to sheer bad luck and Hitler’s sense of timing, none had been successful. Since September 1943 Stauffenberg became the driving force behind the plot to assassinate Hitler, who united the Army conspirators and drove them into action.
Plan Valkyrie
Valkyrie was an existing emergency operation approved by Hitler, ready to be executed by Headquarters Replacement Army Berlin, thus alerting Home Army formations in the event of a general breakdown of civil order within the nation. Olbricht, Tresckow and Stauffenberg modified it so as to disarm the SS, arrest the Nazi leadership and take over civil control of government by using regular troops following official orders. However, by the spring of 1944 the civilian Kreisau Circle had been exposed and Admiral Canaris’ Abwehr had been absorbed into the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Service of Himmler’s SS) ultimately leading to his (and General Oster’s) execution later that year. This left the hub of the conspiratory entrenched in the Bendlerstrasse, the Reserve Army headquarters building in Berlin. When Stauffenberg was promoted on 1 June 1944 to be Fromm’s Chief-of-Staff it gave him access to Hitler’s conferences.
Born in 1907, Stauffenberg fought in armoured formations during the Polish, French and early Russian campaigns. Within Army circles he soon became known for his criticism of the Nazi regime, but his career as an active officer was cut short in Tunisia on 7 April 1943 when serving with 10th Panzer Division. He suffered the loss of his right forearm, his left eye and two fingers on his left hand when his vehicle was strafed by fighter bombers. Expert surgery and sheer determination allowed him to report back for duty on the General Staff 14 months later. During early July 1944 Stauffenberg had already prepared for two assassination attempts in earnest, one at Berchtesgaden and the other at Führerhauptquartier, but since Himmler and Göring were not present he returned without detonating his bombs. This time everyone agreed that their nerves could not stand another false-start and that Stauffenberg could act if Göring and Himmler were missing.
Wolf’s Lair, 20 July: 12.42pm
The violent explosion instantly reduced the oak table to a cloud of splinters and jets of flame surged up on both sides, the men knocked off their feet or thrown through the open windows. The detonation produced hot flames and thick clouds of smoke from the ruined hut. Above the groans of the wounded, and the cries of the dying, Keitel was heard shouting, “Where is the Fὔhrer?” Miraculously Hitler was still alive! Brandt’s action in pushing the briefcase to the far side of the table support, plus Hitler leaning right over the table to check a map reference at the time of impact, meant that his body and to some extent his legs, were protected from the full extent of the blast. Hitler, his hair on fire and uniform trousers in rags, collapsed into the arms of the faithful Keitel. Yet, after his wounds were dressed, he recovered sufficiently to receive Mussolini at 3pm. Had the bomb exploded in the underground bunker normally used, then the death toll would have been much worse and no doubt Hitler killed outright. Three senior officers and a stenographer were killed or died of their wounds and everyone else was injured, three seriously. Stauffenberg and Haeften had reached the staff car by the time the bomb exploded, convinced that Hitler was dead they sped off to the first checkpoint where Stauffenberg was challenged, but such was the confusion he was allowed through after explaining he had urgent orders from Hitler to fly to Berlin at once. However, the outer checkpoint Sergeant refused to lift the barrier so Stauffenberg convinced him to check by phone with the Compound Commandant. The call was answered by his adjutant, Captain von Mὅllendorf, who was a member of the conspiracy!
On their way again Haeften quickly tossed the second bomb into the woods knowing that two explosives would have been even better. The plane took
off at 1.15pm and arrived in Berlin at 3.30pm, both officers convinced that the operation had been a total success. Unfortunately the Wolf’s Lair Communications Chief, General Eric Fellgiebel, a member of the conspiratory, only managed to cut-off communications for about an hour before he was arrested. Unrestricted communications from the Wolf’s Lair was a vital factor in quelling the revolt.
Berlin and Paris, later the same day
When Stauffenberg arrived back at the Bendlerstrasse he was horrified to learn that no hard news had been received by Generals Beck, Witzleben or Hoepner that (as he believed) Hitler was dead. Only now did General Olbricht confront his superior, General Fromm, with the news of Hitler’s death and that Operation Valkyrie was now in force, including the rounding up of all SS barracks, Gestapo headquarters and Goebbels Propaganda Ministry. Dumfounded, Fromm simply put a call through to Keitel at the Wolf’s Lair which Keitel answered. He assured Fromm that Hitler was not only alive, but at that moment was conducting Mussolini around the debris of the conference hut! Suddenly Gestapo SSOberfὔhrer Piffrader wandered into the Bendlerstrasse, on Himmler’s instructions, to discretely arrest prime bomb suspect Stauffenberg, but he had no idea as to the involvement of other high ranking officers present. So, Beck naively had Fromm, his supporters and Piffrader put under honourable detention in an office instead of anything more drastic.
Meanwhile, in Paris, the Military Governor, General Karl-Heinrich von Stὔlpnagel, received the code word Exercise Completed just after 3pm to launch Valkyrie in France. In fact it went so efficiently that the Army had all 1,200 SS and SD Security Service personnel in Paris promptly arrested, but everything now depended on what the commander of the Western Front, Field Marshal von Kluge, would do. Beck pressed
Kluge by telephone for a commitment, but he stalled for time having received contradictionary accounts of events all day. Instead he invited Stὔlpnagel to journey to his tactical headquarters at La Roche-Guyon for talks. At the 10pm meeting Stὔlpnagel appealed to Kluge to: ‘Take action on behalf of our country as Rommel would have done and free yourself from Hitler’s spell and put yourself at the head of our movement in the west!’ Kluge only said: ‘The
bloody thing’s misfired’ and ordered the immediate release all the imprisoned
SS in Paris, to which Stὔlpnagel replied: ‘Quite impossible! We can’t turn back. What’s done is done’.
Four weeks later, on 19 August, Kluge was recalled for a meeting with Hitler, but convinced that he had been implicated in the plot he took poison rather than face Himmler’s inquisitors. Stὔlpnagel blinded himself in a botched suicide attempt and was later hanged. Back in Berlin, the unsuspecting commander of the 500 strong Grossdeutschland Guards Battalion, Major Otto Remer, an ardent Nazi, received official Valkyrie orders to arrest Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry. When they met, Goebbels put Remer in direct contact with Hitler by telephone, who promoted him two grades to full Colonel, making him responsible for Berlin operations under Himmler’s instructions, who Hitler had sent to Berlin as Fromm’s replacement.
The game was finally over when Keitel and Hitler broadcast to the people at 6.45pm and midnight respectively. At 10.45pm, after Witzleben had gone home, Fromm, Piffrader and several others escaped detention, gained arms and resumed control, the short exchange wounding Stauffenberg in the back. In fear of his own position and needing to destroy incriminating evidence, Fromm conducted an impromptu court-martial of Beck, Hoepner, Olbricht, Lieutenant Haeften, Colonel von Quirnheim and Stauffenberg as traitors. Beck chose to shoot himself, but General Hoepner refused the offer and opted for his right to be arrested and tried. The others were immediately taken to the courtyard where Remer’s troops formed the firing party. Within minutes the Gestapo arrived, arrested Fromm and Hoepner, who, together with Witzleben, were all later horribly executed.
The aftermath
The Gestapo rounded up nearly everyone who had even the remotest connection with the plot, well over 7,000, including the extended families of all the conspirators. 4,980 people were executed or took their own lives, including three Field Marshals, 19 Generals and 26 Colonels. Those who survived brutal interrogation were put before Judge Roland Freisler’s People’s Court, the Army officers as civilians after first being drummed out by a Military Court of Honour presided over by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, assisted by Field Marshal Keitel. A vengeful Hitler ordered those found guilty should be hanged like cattle from meat hooks and slowly strangled with nooses made from piano wire. Henceforth, every member of the armed forces was required to re-swear their loyalty oath to Hitler and the military salute was replaced with the Hitler salute. It was not until 1990 that the first all-German commemoration of the event took place and since 2014 the plotters fighters have been generally considered as German heroes.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Sam Loverso and The Map Archive www. themaparchive.com who respectively provided a custom designed graphic of the movement of the briefcase-bomb in relation to Hitler and the plan of the Wolf’s Lair, illustrating Stauffenberg’s escape route.