The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (215 page)

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According to the account given Allied interrogators by Admiral Kurt Assmann, who was present, Stauffenberg had whispered to Brandt, “I must go and telephone. Keep an eye on my briefcase. It has secret papers in it.”

^†
A good many writers have contended that at this moment General Fellgiebel was to have blown up the communications center and that his failure to do so was disastrous to the conspiracy. Thus Wheeler-Bennett (
Nemesis
, p. 643) writes that “General Fellgiebel failed lamentably in the execution of his task.” Since the various communications centers were housed in several different underground bunkers, heavily guarded by S.S., it is most improbable that Stauffenberg’s plans ever called for blowing them up—an impossible task for the General. What Fellgiebel agreed to do was to shut off communication with the outside world for two or three hours after he had sent word to Berlin of the explosion. This, except for an unavoidable lapse or two, he did.

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The official stenographer, Berger, was killed, and Colonel Brandt, General Schmundt, Hitler’s adjutant, and General Korten died of their wounds. All the others, including Generals Jodl, Bodenschatz (Goering’s chief of staff) and Heusinger, were more or less severely injured.

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Ribbentrop had been a champagne salesman and then had married the daughter of Germany’s leading producer of the wine. His “von” had come through adoption by an aunt—Fräulein Gertrud von Ribbentrop—in 1925, when he was thirty-two years old.

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A few weeks before, Leonrod had asked an Army chaplain friend of his, Father Hermann Wehrle, whether the Catholic Church condoned tyrannicide and had been given a negative answer. When this came out in Leonrod’s trial before the People’s Court, Father Wehrle was arrested for not having told the authorities and, like Leonrod, was executed.

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“To think that these revolutionaries weren’t even smart enough to cut the telephone wires!” Goebbels is said to have exclaimed afterward. “My little daughter would have thought of that.” (Curt Riess,
Joseph Goebbels: The Devil’s Advocate
, p. 280.)

^*
There are conflicting stories as to why the Berlin radio was not seized. According to one account, a unit from the infantry school at Doeberitz had been assigned this task, which was to be carried out by the commandant, General Hitzfeld, who was in on the plot. But the conspirators failed to warn Hitzfeld that July 20 was the day, and he was away in Baden attending the funeral of a relative. His second-in-command, a Colonel Mueller, was also away on a military assignment. When Mueller finally returned about 8
P.M.
he found that his best battalion had left for a night exercise. By the time he rounded up his troops at midnight, it was too late. According to a different story, a Major Jacob succeeded in surrounding the Rundfunkhaus with troops from the infantry school but could get no clear orders from Olbricht as to what to do. When Goebbels phoned the text of the first announcement Jacob did not interfere with its being broadcast. Later the major contended that if Olbricht had given him the necessary orders the German radio network could easily have been denied the Nazis and put at the service of the conspirators. The first version is given by Zeller (
Geist der Freiheit
, pp. 267–68), the most authoritative German historian on the July 20 plot; the second is given by Wheeler-Bennett (
Nemesis
, pp. 654–55/1.) and Rudolf Sammler (
Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler
, p. 138), both of whom say Major Jacob gave the above testimony.

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His treachery did not prevent his being arrested for complicity in the plot and hanged for it.

^*
Though the film of this trial was found by the Allies (and shown at Nuremberg, where the author first saw it) that of the executions was never discovered and presumably was destroyed or the orders of Hitler lest it fall into enemy hands. According to Allen Dulles the two films—originally thirty miles long and cut to eight miles—were put together by Goebbels and shown to certain Army audiences as a lesson and a warning. But the soldiers refused to look at it—at the Cadet School at Lichterfelde they walked out as it began to run—and it was soon withdrawn from circulation. (Dulles,
Germany’s Underground
, p. 83.)

^*
Father Alfred Delp, Jesuit member of the Kreisau Circle, was executed with them. Goerdeler’s brother, Fritz, was hanged a few days later. Count von Moltke, the leader of the Kreisau Circle, was executed on January 23, 1945, though he had had no part in the assassination plot. Trott zu Solz, a leading light in the Circle and in the conspiracy, was hanged on August 25, 1944.

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“The sentence affected him deeply,” Schlabrendorff, who saw a good deal of Fromm at the Prinz Albrechtstrasse Gestapo prison, later recounted. “He had not expected it.” (Schlabrendorff,
They Almost Killed Hitler
, p. 121.)

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It is only fair to add that Rundstedt probably did not know of the circumstances of Rommel’s death, apparently learning them only from Keitel’s testimony at Nuremberg. “I did not hear these rumors,” Rundstedt testified on the stand, “otherwise I would have refused to act as representative of the Fuehrer at the state funeral; that would have been an infamy beyond words.”
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Nevertheless the Rommel family noticed that this gentleman of the old school declined to attend the cremation after the funeral and to come to the Rommel home, as did most of the other generals, to extend condolences to the widow.

^†
General Speidel himself, though incarcerated in the cellars of the Gestapo prison in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin and subjected to incessant questioning, became neither broken nor bewildered. Being a philosopher as well as a soldier perhaps helped. He outwitted his S.D. tormentors, admitting nothing and betraying no one. He had one bad moment when he was confronted with Colonel von Hofacker, who, he believes, had been not only tortured but drugged into talking, but on this occasion Hofacker did not betray him and repudiated what he had previously said.
⁴⁵

Though never brought to trial, Speidel was kept in Gestapo custody for seven months. As American troops neared his place of confinement near Lake Constance in southern Germany, he escaped with twenty others by a ruse and took refuge with a Catholic priest, who hid the group until the Americans arrived. Speidel omits this chapter of his life in his book, which is severely objective and written in the third person, but he told the story to Desmond Young who gives it in his
Rommel—The Desert Fox
(pp. 251–52 of the paperback edition).

Capping an unusual career, Speidel held an important command at NATO in the late 1950s.

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In his memoirs, Guderian, who constantly emphasizes how he stood up to Hitler and criticizes him bitterly, makes no mention of these orders of the day.

If necessary we’ll fight on the Rhine. It doesn’t make any difference. Under all circumstances we will continue this battle until, as Frederick the Great said, one of our damned enemies gets too tired to fight any more. We’ll fight until we get a peace which secures the life of the German nation for the next fifty or a hundred years and which, above all, does not besmirch our honor a second time, as happened in 1918 … I live only for the purpose of leading this fight because I know that if there is not an iron will behind it, this battle cannot be won.

The time will come when the tension between the
Allies
will become so great that the break will occur. All the coalitions in history have disintegrated sooner or later. The only thing is to wait for the right moment, no matter how hard it is.
³