Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member (15 page)

How, with the war in full swing, could one carry out a maneuver of this kind without arousing suspicion? How could the withdrawal of so many troops go unnoticed? The fact was that the disintegration of the front was so advanced that battalions and even squadrons were attached to their brigades and to their divisions only with regard to logistics and supply. From an operational point of view, the basic units, which were supposed to constitute a self-sufficient point of resistance to the enemy’s advance, were put under the control of an army corps commander. This abbreviated chain of command short-circuited all the intermediate levels. Moreover, in the chaotic retreat, squadrons, detachments, and even patrols were largely autonomous. The movements of the cavalrymen thus took place without either the brigade commander or the regimental commander being informed. They were all the less surprised by this momentary disappearance, because it had been planned to withdraw the cavalry from the front to Brest-Litovsk and to hold it in reserve.

Furthermore, the cavalry’s tactics of defense and retreat provided us with good cover. The retreat, in fact, took place through the successive movements of three lines. The first line (A–C) was supposed to reconnoiter, sometimes far behind the front, and to purge the sector of partisans. It began setting up a retreat position (digging trenches, camouflaging artillery pieces, cutting down
pine trees to make fortifications, running barbed wire, and so on). A second line (D–E), about three to five kilometers behind the front, laid mines, drew up a chart of them, and prepared to blow up bridges and roads at the most critical points. The third line (F–G) was the only one engaged in defensive combat. When it had to retreat, the second line of defense, well installed in its entrenched positions, could in turn resist the enemy assault. The troops withdrawn from the front then established a new line A–C, and so on. Thus, it was usual to see units leaving the combat zone and galloping a few kilometers toward the rear.

The remnants of the Thirty-first Cavalry Regiment covered the infantry’s retreat. When the latter had established a new line of defense, I withdrew all my cavalrymen from the front. At my last operations command post, I had received a green light from Georg: “To Berlin!” I took the car and during the night caught up with the squadrons on their way to Brest-Litovsk. The cavalrymen continued on their way for a day and a night without dismounting. Some of them, beyond exhaustion, fell asleep in the saddle and slipped to the ground. The lingering effects of my wounds prevented me from riding for hours on end. Therefore, I sometimes directed the movement of the three squadrons, and sometimes reconnoitered by automobile. Georg joined us and took command of the three squadrons. Brest-Litovsk had been designated as a fixed strongpoint. We had great difficulty
in traversing the city without being requisitioned like every other unit that turned up there. Georg informed me by radio that he had managed to overcome the obstacles put in his way by the commandant of the place, and I was able to take my troops around the city on the north side. My brother then returned to be with Tresckow

Apart from Georg and me, only two officers had been told about the ultimate goal of our maneuver: König—who had already been involved in the failed attempt of March 1943—and the head of the Third Squadron, Captain Hidding. The others who participated in this exhausting ride learned the secret only after the war. One detail of the operation, however, had surprised people: I had myself given the order to keep the horses at a trot when crossing cities. For a horseman, trotting on pavement is heresy, because the horse’s shoes slip and put both rider and mount in danger. A few officers thus suspected something unusual, but they kept quiet about it. As the cavalrymen were crossing Brest-Litovsk, they rounded a corner and came face-to-face with Georg. They expected to be scolded, but he just shouted at them, “Faster, faster!” The men thought something very special must be going on.

We finally reached the village of Lachovka at 3:00 p.m. on July 20. I gave orders for the units to be reorganized and loaded on the trucks. The horses were to stay put, under guard of a few dozen men. In combat situations, the ratio was normally four horses per guard; this
time it was ten per guard—another indication, for the most observant, that this was an exceptional operation.

While I was resting for a few moments in the shade of a birch tree, I was surprised to see my brother’s regimental postmaster approach. Sergeant Retel was a dedicated Communist, but the whole regiment liked him. He handed me a paper on which Georg had scribbled this message: “Everyone to the old foxholes!” This was a code that meant that the assassination had not been carried out.

There was not a moment to lose. We immediately got back in the saddle and set out in the opposite direction, at the same breakneck speed, toward the front line, which had moved closer to us in the interim. It was only that evening that we heard on the radio about the failure of the assassination attempt and the catastrophe of the unsuccessful coup d’état. In the glum silence punctuated by the
clip-clop
of the horses’ hooves, I had plenty of time for reflection. I was obsessed by one question: was it still really necessary to carry out this assassination? Stauffenberg had asked the same question of Tresckow a few days before the attempt. Why should one risk one’s life, and especially that of dozens of other people, when the military situation suggested that in a few months the dictatorship would be over? Tresckow responded forthrightly, as usual: “The assassination has to take place, whatever the cost. Even if it doesn’t succeed, we have to try. Now it is no longer the object of the assassination that matters,
but rather to show the whole world, and history, that the German resistance movement dared to gamble everything, even at the risk of its own life. All the rest, in the end, is merely secondary.”

I took a dim view of my future. The connection between the ride of the 1,200 and the conspiracy that had been discovered was much too obvious not to put Georg and me in danger. Soon I would be asked to account for what I’d done, and it would be very difficult to explain our four hundred kilometer ride, especially since it had not been without losses. During the night of July 19, in fact, I had stopped my car along the road a little to the northwest of Brest-Litovsk: I was watching the cavalry units file by, monitoring the condition of the animals and the men. Then I heard in the distance the sound of a mine exploding. Generally speaking, the explosion of a mine, whose force is largely absorbed by the belly of the mount, killed the horse but only wounded the rider’s legs. This time, Captain Hidding had been killed instantly. Oddly, his squadron brought up the end of the column; a thousand men had passed over the same place before him. I raced back along the column. I had to inspect the victim’s body as soon as possible, not only because he was a friend, but especially because he carried the maps of Berlin on which were marked in red pencil the areas that we were to seize, the itinerary from Tempelhof, and so on. These bits of evidence could not be allowed to fall into anyone else’s hands. The body would be searched,
because it was usual to send personal effects and valuables (medals, watches, wedding rings, signet rings, and so on) to the next of kin. Hidding was lying by the wayside; I approached the body and was able to keep others away on the pretext that I wanted to pray. Hunched over the cadaver, almost in contact with his disfigured face, I slipped my hand into his map bag, which was sticky with sweat and blood. I was able to extract the documents, which I hastily stuck inside my shirt. Then I allowed Hidding’s orderly to proceed as usual in such cases. I had his coffin loaded onto a truck, with the hope of taking it back to Germany.
¹

At the same time another incident cost us still more dearly. As well as the forty trucks promised by Army Group Center, Captain Gigas had provided fifteen additional trucks, with thirty drivers and thirty men to accompany them. But near Brest-Litovsk, the military police diverted the convoy and made it go around the city on the north side. Unfortunately, it was ambushed by Russian tanks and cavalrymen, who had succeeded in making a breakthrough without the Germans’ knowledge. Fourteen trucks and about fifty men were captured. One of the trucks managed to get away and was eventually abandoned, the men scattering in the surrounding wheat fields. One soldier thought he’d found a way to save himself by jumping onto a freight train that was passing nearby. But he quickly realized that the train, which was not under control—one of the engineers had
been killed, the other wounded—was rolling toward a burning station where a Soviet tank would end up firing on them. The clandestine passenger jumped off the train and managed to get back to the German positions by passing through the fields.

The panic that reigned over the front was such that no one had really noticed the temporary disappearance of the various squadrons. During the rout, units often lost contact with one another. Sometimes an entire battalion was surrounded and destroyed. The high command was very happy to see 1,200 men appear—they constituted, after all, about 10 percent of the brigade’s troops.

This was no time for explanations. Officers could not be harassed when maximum operational effectiveness was being asked of them. Therefore, Major Brinckmann, who commanded the regiment, did not ask me any questions.

Shortly after the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, Georg was named commander of the Third Cavalry Brigade. The responsibilities that awaited him were crushing and left no time for gloomy thoughts. In theory, he had under his command 11,500 men, the same number of horses, and a thousand Cossack cavalrymen as auxiliaries. In reality, he lacked more than 2,200 men, 200 auxiliaries, and about one-third of the planned equipment.

The battle raged all through the month of August. One incident almost cost Georg his life when he arrived at his new post. He had gone out early in the morning with his driver, who had defected from the Red Army. The road from the Second Army’s headquarters to the brigade was considered secure, but their car was
ambushed by the Russians. The two men immediately abandoned their vehicle, crossed a little prairie under fire, and took refuge in the undergrowth. Georg saw a murky pond covered with dead leaves and plant debris, in which the roots of several large trees formed natural hiding places. He and his reluctant driver entered the muddy water up to their chins and stayed there motionless. Beating the thickets with the butts of their rifles, firing pointblank into copses, the Russians searched for them in vain. Later in the morning, they came back with dogs, which were unable to track the two men in the malodorous swamp. The afternoon came, and everything seemed calm; birds were warbling. The driver started to move out of the water, but Georg held him back. As an experienced hunter, he had noticed that the birdsong was being imitated with bird whistles. They had to wait until the Russians got tired, gave up their search, and left the area at nightfall. Georg wanted at all costs to avoid falling into their hands. In the context of the period after July 20, his disappearance and capture by the enemy would have caused him to be seen as a traitor, and it would have directed the authorities’ attention toward me, with questions regarding the true nature of our westward-bound ride. Major Kuhn, the operations officer for the Twenty-eighth Hussars Division, who also participated in the conspiracy and was also engaged to a member of Stauffenberg’s family, had gone over to the enemy as soon as the failure of the assassination attempt became known. His desertion was interpreted as a simple capture,
¹
but a second case would have revealed this disguised escape for what it was.

The two brothers with their comrades from the Third Cavalry Brigade
.
(photo credit 20.1)

The following weeks were depressing. The disintegration of the front continued as the beautiful, sunny summer wore on. One piece of terrible news after another reached me in the course of conversations. First Eberhard von Breitenbuch told me that Tresckow had died, immediately after the failure of the assassination attempt. Breitenbuch was the liaison officer for General Model, who had been made commandant of Army Group Center a few weeks earlier. On the morning of July 21, a car with a driver was posted in front of the Ostrow barracks, the seat of the Second Army command. Breitenbuch stood near the vehicle, waiting for Tresckow. In his earlier duty he had known Tresckow well, and he wanted to say good-bye to him. When Tresckow appeared, he was calm, relaxed, completely imbued with that inner balance that shaped his appearance. The sunshine seemed to herald a beautiful day—perhaps a little warm. Tresckow smiled at Breitenbuch. The young captain, who had heard about the failed assassination attempt very late the preceding night, excused himself for not being able to accompany his superior officer to the front, where the Twenty-eighth Rifle Regiment was located, because he had an assignment to carry out for General Model. He saw a flash of disappointment in Tresckow’s eyes: “Too bad. I would have liked you to witness my death.”