Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member (13 page)

During the summer our regiment’s various battalions were successively mobilized for duty in several hot spots around Smolensk. The scenario was always the same: the enemy’s numerical superiority; penetrations that sowed panic in our ranks; the rapid intervention of the cavalry, which created a temporary stability; the evacuation
of what could be evacuated; and then, under assault by further waves of attackers, an orderly retreat of our units. The cavalrymen, in short, provided an orderly management of the inevitable retreat.

In mid-September, Kluge succeeded in convincing Hitler to abandon Smolensk. Army Group Center retreated on a part of the front called the Panther Line, which stretched from Vitebsk in the north to Gomel in the south. On September 25 the marshal ordered Georg to concentrate his troops southeast of Orsha; they were to be put at the disposition of the Fourth Army. Our regiment covered the 126 kilometers in thirty-six hours and reached the point indicated on September 27 at 8:00 a.m. We had to go immediately on the attack. For the first time, we took as part of our booty American radio equipment, tangible proof of deliveries from the United States to their Soviet ally. In early October, its mission accomplished, the regiment moved back to the north, under torrential rains.

But the regiment had to prepare itself for graver ordeals. Toward mid-October, the Russians broke the Panther Line at several points. Anticipating that such a break might take place, the line had been backed up first by the East Panther Line and then by the West Panther Line, separated by a few kilometers. One day, a reconnaissance patrol that I had sent into this unsecured area came under enemy fire. It took refuge in a forest and wandered about for a whole day in the marshy undergrowth,
the horses sinking in up to their bellies. Sandbanks with pines on them emerged here and there from the watery expanse. The patrol bivouacked on one of these sandbanks, curled up on a few square meters like a hedgehog in a defensive position. The men ended up giving their bread ration to the exhausted horses, for whom the birch branches they were offered were not enough. The next day, evading the enemy, the patrol managed to rejoin the battalion. How relieved I was to see these boys that I thought were lost! I handed out cognac liberally and gave each man twenty cigarettes—a luxury in those times.

Georg soon decided to use the battalion I commanded, because the Second Battalion had been overworked in the preceding weeks. My unit’s strength had already been sharply diminished; I had only one-third of my normal number of machine guns. So it was with 19 light machine guns, 4 heavy machine guns, and 7 grenade launchers that we took up, on October 21, our position in Sapolje. The mission was simple but suicidal: we were to retake the part of the old East Panther Line that the Soviets had held comfortably for several days.

Georg went out alone at dawn to examine the terrain. He saw that the enemy, overwhelming two infantry companies, had made a breakthrough. Quickly marshaling two cavalry detachments on reconnaissance that he had happened to run into, he launched, in his own way, an improvised counterattack. The little group (fewer
than seventy cavalrymen) headed toward the Russians at a gallop. The soldiers then noticed with terror that Georg was not armed. They offered him a pistol, but he laughed and rode on. When the Russians came into view, Georg separated his troops into two detachments, which attacked the enemy on both flanks. Taken by surprise, the Russians were routed in a few minutes, leaving behind them forty prisoners and as many dead. Without delay, our men galloped off to the regiment’s operations command post.

The next day, my men retook the village of Redki without a fight. Then we were ordered to take a rise somewhat to the south of the village, known as Hill 208. We approached it without difficulty. But we still had to cross a natural glacis—two hundred meters of open slope leading to the summit. In briefing the troops, I had been clear: “The quicker we carry out the assault, the fewer our losses.” I was not wrong. Mortar shells fell all around us. We had to launch several attacks in order to take the hill, with considerable losses, and ended up fighting hand to hand. We achieved our objective in the afternoon, but we already had thirty-two dead, nearly 10 percent of our troops. And we still hadn’t won, because less than a kilometer away the Russian artillery, positioned on another hill, was able to shell the one we had taken with such difficulty. The Russians’ aim was accurate: a whole group of my men was cut down, or rather pulverized, as soon as they took up positions on the summit.
We worked all night, restoring the trenches and resupplying the 400-square-meter area at the foot of the hill that separated the battalion from the next division. We also took advantage of the darkness to evacuate the dead and wounded, who had been loaded onto small carts.

At dawn the Russians attacked. They had crept up to the foot of the hill, taking cover in the small bushes and depressions in the terrain. They were thrown back twice. Here the cavalrymen were fighting like infantry in trench warfare, using rifles and machine guns. Soon the Russian artillery resumed its intensive bombardment, concentrating its firepower on the summit of the hill. The exploding shells shredded the thin layer of grass on the hilltop, uncovering sandy, shifting soil. Dust blew in everywhere, jamming the last machine guns that had not been put out of commission by the Soviet artillery. I was wounded, but still remained on the battlefield for some time. By ten o’clock, weak and dizzy with pain, I had to be evacuated. By eleven-thirty, the situation had become critical. The hill could no longer be held. Our losses were too great, and the attacks were unrelenting. Several of the battalion’s units had suffered 95 percent casualties, killed or wounded. The operational forces thrown into battle by the regimental commandant had been reduced to 120 men. At nightfall, the few dozen remaining able-bodied men were preparing to abandon the hill when Russian patrols attacked the lines, broke through the defenses,
and began to surround our troops. Pursuers and pursued mixed in the same chaotic race. Our men retreated as best they could toward the operations command post that had been set up in the village.

Georg was inside the command post. His second in command, Lieutenant Gigas, was struggling to establish a telephone connection with the divisional command. “Major,” he said, “something is wrong on the main highway and Hill 208, there’s heavy fire and it’s getting closer.”

Georg didn’t realize how great the threat was until Dr. Keltsch, the First Battalion’s physician, suddenly burst into the shack. “The Russians are here,” he cried breathlessly. Georg hurried outside and saw about sixty exhausted men grouped around the few armored vehicles he had at his disposal in the Redki sector. Three tanks were quickly rounded up, along with two antiaircraft guns. They were firing blindly into the dark. The Russians were coming down the slopes of the hill in successive waves and falling upon the remains of the battalion, protected by the darkness.

“Alert the engineering troops in Ssudilovitch,” Georg shouted to Lieutenant Gigas before collapsing; he had been hit by an enemy bullet. The staff’s physician, Dr. Deecke, saw that Georg had a deep wound in his hip. My brother was evacuated. Gigas, whom Georg had put in command, had great difficulty in evacuating the men toward the West Panther Line. On the way, the group,
already small, was attacked again, leaving behind still more dead, and once more were overwhelmed by panic. The lieutenant managed to reestablish order in the ranks by pointing out that they were crossing a minefield with only a very narrow path that was safe.

At last they reached the longed-for German lines. The men collapsed with fatigue. Though in retreat, Lieutenant Gigas had retained his ability to make decisions. He sent a handful of soldiers back to Redki, where the Russians were celebrating their rout of the Germans with heavy drinking. Without being noticed, the patrol managed to slip into the little house that had served as a command post. There it recovered maps, intelligence materials, and Georg’s precious fur-lined coat before returning safely to our lines.

On October 28 the remains of the regiment were withdrawn from the Panther Line and left the Fourth Army. For two months the regiment rebuilt its strength, trained recruits, transformed hundreds of infantrymen into cavalrymen, and incorporated new officers.

Georg and I, who had been wounded a few hours apart, were both taken to the military hospital in Minsk, where we were soon joined by Marshal Kluge. Seriously injured in an automobile accident—partisans had thrown a milk can at his windshield—he had given up command of Army Group Center. Less than a month later, I was able to resume command of my battalion. Georg’s wound, which was more of a problem, confined
him to desk work until the end of December. He continued to direct operations from a distance. He went to great lengths to obtain authorization to equip his men with MP-43 submachine guns, which were very easy to handle and well adapted to the Russian context. In pursuing this project he was opposing the views of Hitler’s circle, which feared that too much diversification of armaments would have deleterious effects on production lines. He finally got what he wanted; the Ministry of Armament surreptitiously encouraged experimentation with new equipment, and almost two thousand of the MP-43s were delivered in early 1944.

Despite the soldiers’ bravery, the sacrifice of whole units, and the technical quality of the command, the Wehrmacht could no longer stand up to an enemy that was constantly growing in numbers and equipment. According to Kluge’s analysis, Army Group Center needed more than two hundred thousand additional men. Each division had to hold a sector twenty to thirty kilometers wide, and the front lines had become too porous to allow the cavalry to fill the gaps. The eastern front was disintegrating.

In the early autumn of 1943, Georg ordered me to take some explosives to Stieff, now a general. In concert with Tresckow, then on leave in Berlin, he had started looking again for practical ways to carry out Operation Valkyrie, from a bomb attack to a coup d’état. It was no longer a question of an isolated assassination, but rather of beginning a complete overthrow of the regime.

As the regiment’s bomb expert, I had access to explosives in reasonable quantities, and had no difficulty removing some from our stocks. I took a regularly scheduled flight to the army headquarters in the Mauerwald camp near Lötzen, fifteen kilometers from the Führer’s Wolfsschanze. In my leather valise I carried explosives and detonators. The explosives were in the form of twenty bricks sheathed in aluminum.

The lingering effects of my wounds left me with a limp, and it was therefore agreed that a car would be waiting to take me to Stieff. When I got to the aerodrome, however, there was no one there, and so I tried to limp along carrying my heavy load. I had to ward off a zealous NCO who was passing through and offered to help. Finally, the car turned up and took me to Helmut Stieff. The general was in a conference, and I had to wait. Impatient, nervous, and clinging to my valise, I slipped into the staff’s movie theater, which was open day and night. The darkness provided a little tranquility, but I couldn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to the comedy that was being shown—
Das Bad auf der Tenne
. Spectators were coming and going as they went on and off duty. I gripped my valise with both hands, holding it between my legs and taking care that no one tripped over it. Finally someone came to get me. Stieff had left word not to be disturbed for any reason, and we locked ourselves into a windowless archive room. In a few minutes I handed over the explosives, explained how to use them, took my leave, and returned by the same route.

It was only after the war that I found out what happened to my valise. In November, Stieff went on leave and entrusted the explosives to Herwarth von Bitterfeld,
¹
second in command to General Köstring, who was in charge of the troops on the eastern front. At that time, Herwarth and his boss lived in a barracks called the
Jägerhöhe
, near army headquarters. They had facing rooms on
the same hallway. German women from the Banat region cleaned the rooms every other day, doing one side of the hallway one day and then the other side the next. Herwarth had hidden the precious valise under his bed. When his room was to be cleaned, he slipped it under the general’s bed, across the hall, and retrieved it that evening. He’d told Köstring what Stieff had told him: “Don’t look in the valise, its contents are too hot for you!” Thus, for several months, the valise traveled back and forth between the two rooms.

In the early summer of 1944, Stieff recovered the valise and gave it to Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
²
What happened next is well known.

From November 1943 to March 1944, Georg and I spent more time in military hospitals than on the battlefield. My brother’s condition continued to deteriorate. He had returned to his troops shortly before Christmas 1943. But his immune system had been weakened by overwork, and he really needed to remain completely inactive. At the end of December, he began to run a high fever and was moved from Kolodichi to Minsk. On examining his wounds, the military doctors discovered that he had developed multiple infections and was at risk of developing septicemia. Georg was therefore condemned to another period of rest.

During this time, our regiment, along with its 900 horses, 20 trucks, 5 tanks, and many light machine guns, was transferred to the Petrikov sector on the Pripyat River, where the Second Army’s staff, which Tresckow had headed since November, was located. Tresckow had two main concerns. First, he wanted to keep “his” cavalry regiment near him: Operation Valkyrie was now set, and he had to be ready to act at any moment. Second, he needed to secure the eighty to one hundred kilometers separating him from Army Group South. To be sure, the Rokitno marshes, whose waters did not freeze, formed a kind of natural defense, but they were not impenetrable. Tresckow had at first envisaged making sporadic use of the regiment for impromptu commando actions. But the situation, which had suddenly deteriorated, forced him to accelerate the transfer of the regiment and to mobilize my battalion immediately.