Killing Hitler (38 page)

In truth, Tresckow had begun to have second thoughts about using Boeselager and his troops. He may have feared a collective loss of nerve, or been unwilling to endanger the life of Kluge. So he had another plan up his sleeve. For some months, he and Schlabrendorff had been testing various explosives, mines, and fuses, with the intention of planting a bomb on Hitler’s plane. As Schlabrendorff related:

We finally decided on British explosives of the plastic type and British fuses. British planes had been dropping large amounts of such material over German-held territory, in an effort to equip Allied agents for acts of sabotage. Naturally, a good deal of this material fell into the hands of our own military.

The British explosive had two great advantages. It was extremely powerful, but not bulky. A package no bigger than a thick book was capable of tearing apart everything within the space of a fair-sized room…. After we had concluded our experiments we went ahead with preparations for the assassination.
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Tresckow filled four clam mines with the plastic explosives and added a time-pencil fuse, which could be set to detonate after half an hour. He then fashioned the bomb into a parcel resembling two bottles of Cointreau. In this way, he thought, it could easily be infiltrated into Hitler’s luggage for his return flight to Rastenburg.

On the morning of 13 March 1943, Tresckow himself drove to Smolensk airport to meet Hitler and his entourage. To his horror, he saw Hitler’s party—consisting of cooks, bodyguards, adjutants, and a doctor—arrive in
two
identical aircraft.
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If he was going to plant his bomb, he would have to make sure that he got the right one. Schlabrendorff, meanwhile, telephoned Berlin and advised his co-conspirators that Operation Flash was ready. He was informed that Berlin was prepared and that “the ignition can
be switched on.”
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Returning to headquarters, Tresckow then participated in the official conference, chaired by Hitler, during which he appeared pale and distracted. After lunch, he sought out Schlabrendorff for moral support. “Should we really do it?” he asked.
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Schlabrendorff was adamant. Soon after, Tresckow approached Colonel Brandt, a member of Hitler’s staff, and coolly asked if he would be traveling back with Hitler. Brandt replied that he would, as he was due to make a presentation to the Führer during the flight. Tresckow then asked him if he might take two bottles of brandy back to High Command headquarters for his friend Colonel Stieff. Contrary to regulations, Brandt readily agreed. Operation Flash was under way.

After lunch, Tresckow then accompanied Hitler on his return journey to the airport. He bade his farewells and watched the Führer climb into one of the two specially equipped Focke-Wulf Condors. Schlabrendorff then surreptitiously set the fuse on the bomb and handed the parcel to Colonel Brandt, who also boarded the plane. A few minutes later the aircraft and their fighter escort disappeared into the clear skies above Byelorussia. Tresckow and Schlabrendorff then returned to headquarters. They knew the potential pitfalls, but, after months of planning and testing, they were confident of success. As Schlabrendorff wrote in his memoirs:

We knew that Hitler’s plane was equipped with special devices designed to increase its safety. Not only was it divided into several special cabins, but Hitler’s own cabin was heavily armour plated, and his seat outfitted with a parachute. In spite of all this, Tresckow and I, judging from our experiments, were convinced that the amount of explosive in the bomb would be sufficient to tear the entire plane apart, or at least to make a fatal crash inevitable.
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With bated breath, the two assassins waited for news of the “accident.” For two hours they waited. Then they received the crushing news that Hitler’s plane had landed safely at Rastenburg. They had failed.

Their first priority, of course, was to alert their co-conspirators in Berlin that the attempt had not succeeded. That done, Tresckow calmly telephoned Colonel Brandt to inquire whether the parcel had been delivered to Colonel Stieff. When he was told that it had not, he apologized and explained that the wrong parcel had been sent by mistake and that another would be sent for exchange. The following day, Schlabrendorff hurried to Hitler’s headquarters armed with two genuine bottles of brandy. He blanched when Brandt, clearly unaware of its contents, playfully juggled the bomb on handing it back to him.
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Smiling weakly, he exchanged it for the brandy and made his excuses.

Once secure inside a railway carriage en route to Berlin, Schlabrendorff opened the package and cautiously examined the bomb. He identified the cause of their failure as a defective fuse, although others have suggested that the extreme cold in Hitler’s plane (due to a malfunctioning heater) may have prevented the explosive from detonating.
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Either way, Hitler had once again escaped injury. As one of the conspirators quipped, he appeared to have a “guardian devil.”
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Nonetheless, despite the failure, the conspirators had not been discovered, and even the explosive had been successfully retrieved. Their colleagues in Berlin, though standing down, were ready for action. Once they recovered from their disappointment and their nerve-jangling experience at Smolensk, Tresckow and Schlabrendorff were free to resume their plotting. They wasted little time.

Some days later, Tresckow was informed that Hitler would be present at the annual Heroes’ Day celebration in Berlin, where an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry was also to be held. As most of the exhibits for the display had been collected by Army Group Center, he was told that his senior intelligence officer, Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, had been detailed for duty at the ceremony. Gersdorff, who had often served as an unofficial emissary for Tresckow, was similarly convinced of the need to remove Hitler. And when asked if he would be prepared to undertake an assassination attempt, he readily agreed. Tresckow then proceeded to fill his colleague in on all the necessary details concerning
the failed Smolensk attack, the resistance network in Germany, and the prospects for a new attempt. During a long walk along the banks of the Dnieper, he quipped to Gersdorff: “Isn’t it dreadful? Here we are, two officers of the German General Staff, discussing how best to murder our commander in chief.” He went on gravely: “It must be done. This is our only chance…. Hitler must be cut down like a rabid dog.”
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The following day, Gersdorff caught a flight to Berlin.

As he had been unable to plan his attempt in any detail, Gersdorff spent the day before the event surreptitiously reconnoitering the venue—the impressive Armory building on Unter den Linden—while being instructed on the procedures and protocol for the ceremony. He soon realized that security was such that it would prove impossible to plant a bomb under the dais, for example, or in the lectern. As he would later recall: “At this point it became clear to me that an attack was only possible if I were to carry the explosives about my person, and blow myself up as close to Hitler as was possible.”
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He was to be history’s first suicide bomber.

That night, when Schlabrendorff arrived with the clam mines retrieved from Colonel Brandt, Gersdorff found that though the mines were small enough to be comfortably carried in his jacket pockets, the only detonator he had was an old ten-minute fuse that he had brought with him from Smolensk. Given that Hitler’s tour of the exhibition was scheduled to last thirty minutes, he was reasonably confident of success. But nonetheless, feeling like a condemned man, he was unable to sleep.

The following day, as he loitered inconspicuously in the Berlin Armory, he watched a succession of party bigwigs and senior military personnel file into the hall. Göring, sporting a white uniform, red leather riding boots, and makeup, struck him as “grotesque.” Himmler followed, along with Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the army, and Karl Dönitz, commander in chief of the German navy. If his attack was successful, Gersdorff realized, he could wipe out the entire leadership clique of Nazi Germany.

Around 1:00 that afternoon, the ceremony began. After a performance of the first movement of Bruckner’s mournful
Seventh Symphony, Hitler ascended the podium to deliver a trademark speech full of optimism, defiance, and praise for Germany’s fallen. As the speech drew to a close and applause echoed around the room, Gersdorff positioned himself at the entrance to the exhibition, preparing to welcome his guests. As introductions, greetings, and pleasantries were being exchanged with the paladins of the Reich, he reached into his jacket pocket and set the fuse. He had ten minutes.

He began gamely, providing information on the numerous items on display and attempting to engage Hitler’s interest. As he pointed out the exhibits, he stayed as close as possible to Hitler’s side, concerned that the explosives might detonate at any moment. However, he quickly realized that Hitler wasn’t listening and was distracted. He tried once again to interest the Führer in one of the exhibits—one of the Napoleonic standards raised from the river Berezina at Borisov—but in vain. “Instead,” he recalled, “[Hitler] went—or rather ran—out of the side door…. During [his] short tour around the exhibition, he had barely looked at anything and had not said a word.”
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The planned thirty-minute tour had lasted a mere two minutes.

Gersdorff was stunned, but as he could not follow Hitler without arousing the suspicion of the SS bodyguards, he had to accept that he had been thwarted. After hurrying to the lavatories to defuse his mines, he retired to a nearby club to compose himself. There, he was approached by an acquaintance who boasted that he “could have killed Adolf today.” The man went on to explain that he had watched as Hitler “drove very slowly in an open-top car down [Unter den] Linden, right in front of my ground-floor room in the Hotel Bristol. It would have been child’s play,” he said, “to heave a hand grenade over the sidewalk and into his car.”
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Gersdorff said nothing.

In one week, Tresckow had made two attempts on Hitler’s life. Both had failed, thwarted by circumstance and ill-fortune. One might have forgiven the plotters if they had abandoned their efforts, content that they had done their best and preferring to sit out the war and endeavor merely to survive. Such thoughts, especially after the unbearable strains of the past weeks, would certainly
not have been far from their minds. But, remarkably, Tresckow took his failures as renewed inspiration. He refused to be disheartened and indefatigably drove his plans on. Fresh attempts, it appeared, would only be a matter of time.

In the early morning of 7 April 1943, Claus von Stauffenberg, the newly arrived staff officer of the 10th Panzer Army in North Africa, was directing a tactical withdrawal toward the Tunisian coast. Standing in his Horch jeep, issuing orders and directions, he was moving slowly along the column of vehicles and armor that had crammed into a mountain pass, when the convoy attracted the attention of American fighter-bombers patrolling overhead. Though he remained at his post for as long as possible, trying to manage the chaos developing around him, he soon became a target himself. As the planes approached on another strafing run, he finally threw himself from the vehicle and instinctively covered his head with his hands.

When the attack had subsided, Stauffenberg’s jeep was peppered with holes. Though his driver was unhurt, a lieutenant traveling in the backseat had been killed. Stauffenberg had also been hit. He had lost his left eye, most of his right hand, and two fingers of his left. He was also riddled in the back and legs with shrapnel. Semiconscious and running a high fever, he was transferred to a nearby field hospital for emergency treatment. His doctors did not expect him to survive the day.
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After surgery, however, in which the remnants of his right hand and left eye were removed, his condition stabilized and he was eventually taken to a clinic in Munich. There, after a succession of follow-up operations, he slowly recovered. Sight in his remaining eye was restored, and he soon grew accustomed to the loss of his hand and fingers, even stubbornly insisting on dressing himself and tying his own shoelaces.
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By early July, three months after his injury, he was discharged. Soon after, he was transferred to the staff of the Reserve Army, based in Berlin.

Stauffenberg refused to accept the easy life of a war invalid, however. Indeed, his experiences seem to have made him all the
more determined. He confided to his uncle, Nikolaus von Üxküll, that he did not consider his survival to be mere good fortune; rather, he thought he had been spared for a purpose.
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By late summer, he had made contact again with Tresckow. From then on, he would devote himself wholeheartedly to the preparations for a military coup.

As it turned out, from his position within the Reserve Army, Stauffenberg was superbly placed to become the linchpin of a new conspiracy. There he was responsible for updating the official emergency mobilization plans—code-named “Operation Valkyrie”—that were to be activated in the event of domestic unrest. It would be a simple task for him to revise the plans to suit his own purposes.

The original and official Operation Valkyrie had been drawn up early in 1943 to deal with possible internal disturbances such as a rising among foreign laborers within Germany, an SS revolt, or an enemy paratroop landing. Orders—approved by Hitler—had been distributed to the military districts, outlining how the disparate forces of the Home Army, training facilities, barracks, and reserve cadres were to unite and form into fighting units to secure key sites across the country. The plans were to be held in readiness, and, if required, were to be activated upon an agreed signal from the Supreme Army Command in Berlin. The unofficial Valkyrie, drawn up by Stauffenberg, differed from the original in one crucial respect. Its trigger was to be the assassination of Hitler, whereupon the loyal and dutiful troops of the Wehrmacht would seize control of the Reich in unwitting support of the resistance.