SEVENTEEN
HYAZINTH VON STRACHWITZ’S DISILLUSIONMENT WITH Hitler was a gradual process. No doubt the Commissar order shocked him as much as it did many other officers. With the harshness of the war in the east still not yet apparent, the German leader was ordering the execution of serving Russian officers. This was against all the rules of warfare. Equally, allowing German troops to commit crimes against Russian civilians without mandatory punishment not only went against the maintenance of good order and discipline among the troops, but was a criminal act in itself. He had in all probability heard rumours or reports of the mistreatment of Jews and civilians during the invasion of Poland but would have put these down as isolated incidents committed by an undisciplined SS. This opinion was reinforced by the correct behaviour shown by the army in the French campaign.
The next step in his path to enlightenment was the callous incompetence that left soldiers without winter clothing during the disastrous winter campaign of 1941/42. Surely Hitler and the High Command should have foreseen the need for warm clothing, thus preventing the catastrophic casualties caused by exposure and frostbite.
What von Strachwitz knew of the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war and civilians further to the rear of the occupied area can only be guessed; he was probably too far forward and busy fighting to give it much attention. Similarly the murder of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen (German for “task forces,” in this situation simply a euphemism for murder squads) would probably have been unknown to him, occurring as they did well in the rear where they were only seen by rear-echelon troops. Front-line troops would only have been aware of them from rumours or if they happened to be passing through or temporarily stationed in areas where they occurred.
Certainly the troops of 16th Panzer Division followed the rules of war. General Hube, a decent man to the very core, and all his divisional officers would have insisted and strictly enforced this, although no doubt lapses did occur. There would have been simply no question of mistreating Russian civilians or prisoners of war. Even had Hube been a different commander, von Strachwitz would have behaved correctly, no matter what the circumstances or who was in charge.
The next blow to his Nazi convictions came when, on Hitler’s orders, General Paulus sacked General von Wietersheim, the commander of the XIV Panzer Corps, outside Stalingrad in 1942. The Graf knew von Wietersheim to be a very capable corps commander, a man of great decency, ability and integrity. The sacking was not only unjustified, but wrong on so many levels that an angry von Strachwitz complained to Hube about it, who sympathised but could do nothing.
Then there came Hitler’s callous disregard for the agony and suffering of the men of Sixth Army when they were locked in a murderous battle of primitive attrition in the ruins of Stalingrad. Without food, proper shelter or clothing, and short of basic necessities and medical attention they were expected to do the impossible with minimal assistance from the overstretched Luftwaffe. Hitler was clearly writing off an entire army, denying it a chance for survival with his “hold at all costs” order. For the Führer, Sixth Army was a flag on the map, while for Graf von Strachwitz it was men he had fought with and alongside, many of whom he knew personally. So it came as a bitter blow when, much against his will, he was evacuated because of his wound on Hube’s express orders. After he was flown out he noted with some despair, “The day I left my comrades in a hopeless situation … I took a firm resolve to seek a way of freeing our military leaders from the thralldom of Hitler, and restoring freedom of action to German politics.”1
Von Strachwitz clearly blamed Hitler rather than the generals for leaving the men of Sixth Army to a miserable fate of starvation, misery, death or imprisonment, and clearly resolved to do something about it. This left him ripe for the overtures of the anti-Hitler conspirators. He just needed a push to finalise his resolve and, just as importantly, the opportunity to take action.
No doubt this resolve was nurtured throughout the long agony and final death throes of Sixth Army as he recuperated in the hospital at Bleslau. When Sixth Army finally capitulated, all of Germany went into mourning, as there was no disguising the scale of the defeat. Not only was it Germany’s greatest defeat to date, but the large number of casualties meant that hundreds of thousands of Germans were personally affected, their friends or loved ones killed, wounded or captured.
During his long recuperation he met up with Colonel Wessel Freiherr von Freytag-Loringhoven, a descendant of a Baltic German family which had settled in Latvia. Freytag-Loringhoven had joined the Latvian Army after World War I, leaving for Germany in 1922 where he served in the 4th Prussian Cavalry Regiment. He and von Strachwitz were kindred spirits. A posting on General Staff duties with XI Army Corps followed, then with Army Group Centre’s High Command. He was fully aware of the atrocities the Germans were perpetrating in the rear and within the occupied nations, and informed Graf von Strachwitz of some of the details. This information affected the Panzer Graf profoundly, ensuring his resolve to do what he could to end the loathsome regime he was forced to serve. No doubt he was offered the possibility of a staff posting by one of the conspirators, such as Henning von Treskow, a position where he could play an effective part in the conspiracy. As tempting as this involvement would have been, the Graf was a front-line soldier first and foremost. He resolved to stay at the front with the fighting troops, but no doubt told Freytag-Loringhoven that he could be counted upon when the appropriate time came about.
Having the resolve to act, and being able to translate that resolve into action, were two very different things. He needed an opportunity, and this came from a very unexpected quarter, none other than the headquarters of Army Detachment Lanz, to which the Grossdeutschland Division was attached during the battle of Kharkov.
The Chief-of-Staff of the army was the Württemberg-born General Major Dr. Hans Speidel. At first glance he seemed a most unlikely person to be involved in the dangerous game to overthrow Hitler. He had a studious, most unmilitary air, his rimless spectacles made him look like the academic he was, having studied at Stuttgart and Tübingen universities, and finally getting a doctorate for a historic graphical thesis in 1925. He had served as a company commander in the Württemberg Guard Grenadier Regiment King Charles during World War I. He became a staff officer in the post-war Reichswehr in 1930, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1936. After the invasion of France Speidel was employed in the headquarters of the military governor of Paris. Here he formed a small circle of anti-Nazis who met at the Hotel George V in Paris. He was strongly opposed to the wholesale looting of French art and treasures and later to the shooting of hostages, which was implemented by the military government. Speidel tried whenever possible to alleviate these excesses. In 1942 he was transferred to the Eastern Front, taking up chief-of-staff positions for which he was ideally suited. After the catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad he became convinced that the war could not be won and that Hitler would be the ruination of Germany. In talks with colleagues such as General Edward Wagner, the army quartermaster-general, and General Adolf Heusinger, chief of operations, he came to the conclusion that fundamental changes needed to take place and that Hitler had to be removed.2
Speidel found a receptive ear in General of Mountain Troops Hubert Lanz. Lanz was a troubled soul. A devout Catholic and officer of the old school, he strenuously disagreed with Hitler’s anti-Semitic and racial views, feeling a great deal of disquiet with the whole Nazi regime. Yet he was also weak-willed, finding it difficult to deal with the young fanatical Nazi officers he often found himself commanding. Like Speidel, he had also served in a Württemberg regiment during World War I as a lieutenant, going on to join the Reichswehr after the war. He was awarded the Knight’s Cross while serving as Chief-of-Staff of the XVIII Army Corps during the Battle of France in 1940. On 26 October he took command of the 1st Mountain Division of mixed Germans and Austrians, leading it in the invasion of Yugoslavia, and then Russia. On 30 June his division captured Lvov. There, following the discovery of several thousand bodies of prisoners executed by the NKVD, there took place a large-scale massacre of 4,000 Jews by Ukrainians and SS and German troops, which Lanz couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop. This vexed him even more, so that he was ready to listen to Speidel’s seditious talk when the pair finally met.
Hitler dismissed him from his command on 17 December 1942. Six days later, almost as a consolation prize, he was awarded the Oak Leaves for his division’s excellent performance in the Caucasus. He was later reinstated and promoted to general with command of the army detachment that bore his name, which he led into the third Battle of Kharkov.
When Speidel received advance warning of Hitler’s intended visit to the army’s headquarters at Poltava, he quickly began to consider assassinating Hitler there. He couldn’t do it alone and needed Lanz’s active, or at least tacit, support. It was a major and defining step for both of them, amounting as it did to high treason. Most, if not all, German officers regarded acting against Hitler as treason, rather than as just a regime change, and Graf von Stauffenberg unambiguously said, “Let us get down to brass tacks; I am carrying on high treason with all the resources at my disposal.”3 However some distinction must be drawn between treason which gave direct aid or comfort to the enemy—as was committed by Admiral Canaris and some of his subordinates in Military Intelligence—and acts merely seeking a regime change without endangering the lives of friendly forces, as carried out by von Strachwitz, von Stauffenberg and others. The German officers who conspired against Hitler nevertheless regarded their actions as treasonable, going against their oaths of allegiance, but they all chose the call of their conscience over their loyalty to the regime.
Lanz and Speidel still needed troops specifically loyal to them, or their cause, to carry out the deed. Hitler not only travelled with an entourage but had a personal bodyguard of picked SS men under Standartenführer Rattenhuber whose sole duty was to ensure Hitler’s safety, and who would be likely to resist with their lives any attempt to kill or abduct their Führer. Hitler also had special army and SS guard battalions stationed at his headquarters, while for travel his special close escort of SS men attached to the Reich Security Service (SD) always travelled with him. They also checked his travel routes, his quarters and the army headquarters itself, before Hitler’s arrival. They also drove his escort vehicles and guarded his temporary quarters at all times. They were, however, singularly inept, as Hitler only survived the various planned assassination attempts against him through sheer luck, and his own erratic and unpredictable behaviour, although for several attempts they did act as a deterrent. These troops would have to be overcome and for this Lanz and Speidel needed loyal and determined men.
How they arrived at von Strachwitz’s name is unknown. Von Strachwitz did have many attributes in common with a great many of the anti-Nazi conspirators. An aristocrat of the old school, from a distinguished military family with a long tradition of service and conservative values, he was also a devout Christian with a strong moral sense. He was also a man of great courage, as his high decorations clearly attested. Still all this didn’t necessarily make him an anti-Nazi, as of course he was also a member of the Nazi Party and SS, as indeed were many aristocratic and decorated army officers. Doubtless Speidel and Lanz did their homework, checking von Strachwitz out with officers they knew to be soundly anti-Nazi and who knew von Strachwitz well, a likely candidate being Freiherr Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdörft, von Strachwitz’s cousin, the intelligence general staff officer with Field Marshal von Kluge’s headquarters at Army Group Centre, and an active anti-Hitler conspirator.
Once a background check was carried out it just remained to approach von Strachwitz. On 8 February 1943 General Speidel held discussions with von Strachwitz regarding the use of his Panzer Regiment, which was then acting as a mobile reserve. It seems certain that Speidel sounded out the Graf’s views on Hitler at this time. Trusting Speidel, and outspoken as always, von Strachwitz would have made no secret of his feelings, and Speidel passed this on to General Lanz. That evening Lanz invited von Strachwitz to his headquarters in the village of Valki between Kharkov and Poltova. After some preliminary tactical discussions Lanz sounded out von Strachwitz himself, finding that their viewpoints converged. Lanz now had a combat commander who could provide the troops necessary for the plot to succeed.
What arguments Speidel or Lanz used to get a final commitment from the Graf are not known beyond the theme that most anti-Hitler plotters used, which was that Hitler was ruining Germany as well as the sheer criminality of the regime. In this way the crimes and atrocities being committed against the Jews, Poles and Russians would surely have come up. After all the generals needed some strong arguments to overcome the oath of personal allegiance von Strachwitz had made to Hitler. For men of von Strachwitz’s generation, especially military officers steeped in tradition of service and the concept of allegiance and obedience, the oath meant everything. It could not, and indeed would not, be broken lightly. The German military oath was unambiguous:
I swear by God this Sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and People; Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces, Adolf Hitler, and that as a brave soldier I shall be at all times prepared to give my life for this oath.4
Even for those for whom the oath didn’t mean anything it was still a good excuse to do nothing but continue to serve a reprehensible regime, even with full knowledge of its criminal actions. Nevertheless, it held many a German officer fast to his allegiance, when common sense and conscience dictated otherwise. With what von Strachwitz had already been told about the atrocities being committed he would not have needed much further persuasion. It is not clear how much senior generals like Speidel and Lanz knew about these crimes. Lanz of course had direct experience, but could have easily blamed it all on the outraged Ukrainians, but it is fairly certain other more organised mass murders would have come to his and Speidel’s attention. The German murder squads had been in full operation behind the lines for some considerable time and could not be completely hidden from view, in the manner that the horrendous crimes being committed in the concentration camps generally were. Rear-echelon troops in the areas where the atrocities were committed not only saw what happened, with many taking ghoulish photographs, but some actually participating of their own volition. Others of course were appalled, and not a few officers complained to higher authorities. In this way the generals were made aware as to what was occurring in their rear areas. Some, like von Manstein, somewhat disingenuously refused to believe it. His aide Alexander Stahlberg informed him that the army group’s senior quartermaster, Colonel Finckh, had been advised by some officers that the SS and SD had recently murdered over 100,000 Jews in the area of the army group’s responsibility. Von Manstein’s retort was that it was simply unbelievable, that if 100,000 Jews had really been killed in one area of woodland, then would someone kindly tell him how one could make 100,000 corpses disappear.5 He clearly didn’t want to believe it, or even make any further enquiries, as a genuinely concerned commander would have done.
Von Kluge, as has already been mentioned, made some protests early in the war and then gave up when he saw that it got him nowhere. His response was to allow—with his full knowledge and support—Henning von Treskow to operate freely in his attempts to kill Hitler. Von Kleist, on the other hand, firmly forbade any actions that were unjustly cruel or harmful to the local populations, while von Rundstedt was too tired to care, or be bothered by anything outside his immediate area of responsibility. He certainly wasn’t prepared to complain or bother Hitler about it. Why add to his overall angst in what was to him a futile cause. So the mass murders were an open secret, at least to the senior officers and rear-echelon troops, if not to the front-line fighting troops, especially if they were not involved in anti-partisan actions. Until he was informed otherwise, this ignorance certainly applied to von Strachwitz, who had spent virtually his entire career serving at the front.
Once he was brought in, the conspirators had a regimental commander of combat troops on their side, but he still had to provide the troops. Grossdeutschland was not a homogeneous unit of troops from one locality with the bonding and loyalty this fostered. Nor did it have old traditions or values that would have quickly fused the men together; rather they came from all over Germany and Austria with their overriding loyalty to Germany and the Third Reich, personified by Adolf Hitler. Certainly the division included many anti-Nazis as Alfred Novotny, a Grossdeutschland fusilier, related in his memoirs, in the aftermath of the 20 July bomb attempt on Hitler’s life:
All of a sudden rumours flew around. “Hitler is dead, the war will be over quickly!” Then came the word that he had been assassinated! No one seemed to know anything more.
However very shortly officers from other GD units came around telling us that they had finally gotten rid of Hitler, that we will all go home soon, that this was not Germany’s war but rather Hitler’s war! We had no idea what to make of it or how to behave. From youth we had been conditioned to show respect to our elders and for those in authority, especially our leaders; thinking on our own had never been encouraged. We were told to stay put as a new regime would be giving orders …
Equally however, the division contained many pro-Nazis like Otto Remer who went on to put the putsch down, as Novotny continues:
It was not long before contrary rumours flew. Hitler is not dead; wait for orders from Oberst Remer … We ourselves were to witness the hanging of GD officers by Remer loyalists. In the morning these officers had been going around telling us things would be different, and different they were; later that day they were hanging from quickly erected gallows.6
Given the mixture of loyalties, selecting the right officers was clearly crucial, as von Stauffenberg discovered to his cost when he relied on someone like Otto Remer. Graf von Strachwitz obviously knew which of his officers he could trust and who would follow his orders in arresting Hitler. His officers in turn had to know that their men would obey them unquestioningly. Being hardened combat troops, they would have developed strong bonds with the officers who had shared their dangers, privations and above all cared for their well-being. The junior officers and men all had a deep respect for the Panzer Graf, who was one of them, sharing in their deadly daily life of struggle and pain. So the Graf had the men available although it is not known what explanation, if any, he provided to justify their actions. Certainly, he hand-picked them all, but only told a few officers, leaving explanations for the men if any, to be made at the last minute.
The next question was how to execute the plot and what to do with Hitler. This involved a great deal of planning and discussion. Assassination was rejected by von Strachwitz as being beneath the dignity of a German officer—they were soldiers, not murderers. That this distinction was lost on a large part of the German armed forces was a fact he perhaps did not even consider, as he had his own morals, by which he and most of the men around him lived. The alternative was to arrest Hitler, and the Graf volunteered to lead the arresting force in person. Weapons would only be used if his bodyguard resisted, it being preferred that they would surrender. Hitler was only to be executed if there was no other choice, due to resistance from him or his bodyguard. The next step was to put Hitler on trial, with either a hastily convened drumhead court martial or a public, properly constituted, trial by the hopefully newly installed regime. For this to happen other outside forces would have to become involved, so for this reason other senior generals had to be informed of the plot. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was aware of it through Dr. Strolin, the mayor of Stuttgart, who was informed no doubt by Speidel. Von Kluge would also have been informed as Hitler would have been handed over to him for the properly convened trial. If von Kluge knew, then so did Henning von Treskow and all the conspirators around him, braced to form a new government after Hitler’s arrest. Whether Rommel had any influence as to the decision not to assassinate is unclear, however this was certainly Rommel’s view in 1944 when he adamantly opposed assassination in favour of putting Hitler on trial.7
Being the older and wiser head in the conspiracy, General Speidel probably opted for the straight-out assassination option. He no doubt realised that the longer they held Hitler the greater the chance of troops loyal to their Führer mounting a rescue attempt and the greater the risk of their own troops wavering. Whether the conspirators knew it or not, at this stage in the war, the vast majority of people, including the army, still loyally supported their Führer. In fact this loyalty would only waver in the very final dying days of the Reich, upheld as it was by unremitting propaganda, a natural support for the leadership when the nation was being assailed from all sides, and finally by a desperate belief in the new miracle weapons that the Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels continually boasted about. Besides, occupation by the rapacious Russians was not even to be contemplated. The anti-Hitler conspiracy only involved the tiniest fraction of the population. Many tens of thousands despised Hitler, including many in the armed forces, but most had no opportunity or inclination to actively oppose the regime. A large number of those who did oppose the regime ended up in the hands of the Gestapo, betrayed by neighbours and friends who remained loyal to the regime.
Killing Hitler quickly, either immediately on contact during an ambush or afterwards on the completion of a very hasty trial offered the best solution. Even the drumhead court martial, however, presented problems, such as finding a willing firing squad. So assassination would have been the best option. In this event, who would have carried out the deed? Graf von Strachwitz refused on moral grounds; as a good Catholic he could not countenance cold-blooded murder, no matter how evil the target. It would have made him judge, jury and executioner, and in his eyes no better than Hitler himself, especially as he felt that other options existed. Killing an unarmed man in cold blood was not an act that all could countenance, as clearly illustrated in Alexander Stahlberg’s memoirs when he recounted how he met with Henning von Treskow after Hitler’s visit to von Manstein’s headquarters at Zaporozye. Upon questioning, Stahlberg admitted he had had several opportunities over the preceding days when he could have shot Hitler, but that he hadn’t because he didn’t know what was going to happen when Hitler was dead, and also because he hadn’t the strength to do it: “I have taken part in plenty of attacks with my division. I also have the assault badge. But I have had the great good fortune never to have had to shoot a man face to face.”8
This then would have been the situation Graf von Strachwitz did not want to face. Nevertheless, the Graf was prepared to kill Hitler if it came to a firefight with his escort. So the basic plan was to arrest Hitler and put him on trial. As such it would in all probability have failed with dire consequences for von Strachwitz, unless he was prepared to shoot Hitler before his small force of panzer troops was overpowered by Nazi loyalists. But it never came to that. At the last minute Hitler changed his plans and flew to Zaporozye and von Manstein’s headquarters instead of Poltava.
Von Strachwitz went on to fight in the third Battle of Kharkov, Kursk, the Baltic States and Germany. Lanz, after his dismissal for the loss of Kharkov, went on to lead his mountain troops in the Balkans where they committed numerous atrocities, killing innocent villagers as reprisals for partisan attacks. Some of these atrocities were sanctioned by Lanz, for which he was sentenced to imprisonment after the war. These killings were committed by ordinary German and Austrians in a standard army mountain division. It seemed that Lanz was often unable to assert control over his young pro-Nazi subordinate officers. One crime he was found not guilty of was the murder of Italian prisoners of war. As for General Speidel, after two years’ service on the Eastern Front, he was promoted to lieutenant general and went on to serve as chief-of-staff of Army Group B in France under Field Marshal Rommel. He continued his conspiratorial activities until the failure of the 20 July plot.
The Poltava plot was only one in a long line of attempts or plans to kill Hitler. There were over thirty planned or actual attempts from July 1921 to 1945. Hitler feared that some nonentity might assassinate him before he could achieve his worldview. He particularly feared a sniper on a roof or building so that his cap was fitted with armour plating. The army made or planned most of the attempts; some civilians were also involved, while air force and navy officers were, apart from Admiral Canaris, unrepresented. Some attempts came very close to succeeding, such as the bomb painstakingly built into a pillar in the Burgerbrau Beer Cellar by Johann Georg Elser on 8 November 1939. It was set to detonate while Hitler was making a speech, but Hitler ended his speech 12 minutes early, hurriedly leaving the building so the bomb exploded after he had left, killing eight and wounding 65, including Eva Braun’s father. While 1943 was a bumper year for planned assassination attempts, with several efforts being made including von Strachwitz’s at Poltava, the most famous attempt, and the one which came closest to success, was the bomb plot enacted by Colonel Graf Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg on 20 July 1944.
Von Stauffenberg left a bomb in a briefcase under a map table a few metres from Hitler at Hitler’s his headquarters at Rastenburg. He then made his excuses and left, returning to Berlin to initiate Operation Valkyrie, a plan to mobilise troops and prevent any revolt by the millions of slave labourers working in the Reich. The plotters were to use the plan for their own purposes to take over the government. Hitler survived the bomb blast with only minor injuries, so the plot failed. Loyal officers at the Home Army Headquarters where the plotters were based, along with the Nazi Otto Remer commanding a Grossdeutschland guard battalion, seized control of the Bendlerstrasse headquarters.9 Von Stauffenberg, his aide von Haeften and General Olbricht were taken out to the courtyard and shot on the orders of Home Army Commander General Fromm. This particular general had supported the planned coup but hastily switched sides on learning that Hitler was alive. The round-up of plotters and suspects then began. These included Admiral Canaris, head of military intelligence, whose history of chicanery went back to the Freikorps days, and his chief subordinate, General Oster.
Canaris and Oster were clearly traitors who betrayed their country, passing on information and aiding the enemy. Oster himself calculated that by warning the Dutch of the German invasion he would cost 40,000 German lives, although the Dutch ignored the advanced warnings. The other conspirators may have been technically guilty of treason but they did not betray their country. Von Stauffenberg’s wife was imprisoned, and released by the Allies at war’s end. Admiral Canaris and others were less fortunate however, tortured and then hung from meat hooks by piano wire for a long painful death by strangulation which was filmed for Hitler’s private viewing.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was also caught in the aftermath. He had been willing to arrange a separate peace with the Western Allies and serve the new anti-Nazi regime. Interestingly, SS General Sepp Dietrich, former commander of the SS Leibstandarte Division and now an army commander, was also prepared to serve an anti-Nazi regime. Knowing something was in the wind and in response to Rommel’s query as to his support he stoutly replied, “You’re my superior officer, so I’d carry out every single one of your orders.” It was unequivocal and clearly indicated his support for the army should it rebel against the Nazi regime.10 Waffen SS General Hausser was also not a Nazi fanatic, as von Gersdorff attests in his memoirs:
He [Hausser] also appeared to have a notion of my attitude towards the regime. He asked me about it one day, point blank. “You’re not one of the Führer’s supporters?” I answered just as openly.
“No Herr General Oberst. I regard him as the ruination of Germany.” Hausser remained very calm and said only that he understood me; but I would be so good to understand in turn that as an SS commander he still had a sense of loyalty toward Hitler.11
It was hardly a ringing endorsement of the Führer, nor did he arrest, or report von Gersdorff as he was obliged to do. Clearly by this time the Waffen SS was aligned more with the army than with the regime. Certainly very few of their commanders, if any, had any love or respect for Himmler or the rest of Hitler’s coterie.
Field Marshal Günther von Kluge was another victim of the purge of officers. He had actively supported and sheltered anti-Nazi conspirators including von Treskow, von Boeselager and von Gersdorff, and if not the stuff that great rebels are made of, he nevertheless deserves more credit than he is usually given for his anti-Hitler stance. On 12 July he and Rommel agreed that the war could not be won and Hitler had to be eliminated. This was far more than Field Marshal von Manstein was ever prepared to do. He maintained in his self-serving memoirs that when approached by Stauffenberg he was not asked to join the conspiracy to eliminate Hitler but to become chief of the army, which he was prepared to do. Von Manstein maintained that his chief concern was to preserve the integrity of the army, which indeed it was, but it was also to preserve and advance his own position by supporting Hitler.
When the bomb plot failed, Rommel was already out of action from wounds caused by an Allied strafing attack on his car, leaving von Kluge undecided what to do. Urged by von Gersdorff and others to make a separate peace with the Allies, he vacillated, telling von Gersdorff that he was not the “great man” to make such a momentous decision.12 However he went missing from his headquarters for a whole day on 15 August, saying on his return that he had been caught in a traffic jam. However Allied intelligence was waiting to receive von Kluge or an emissary to discuss possible surrender terms, but no one showed up or made it through to the Allied lines. The whole truth will never be known. However, Hitler became suspicious when advised of an Allied signals intercept inquiring as to von Kluge’s whereabouts. Hitler relieved him of his command and summoned him to appear at the Führer-Haupt Quartier. Knowing what this meant, von Kluge killed himself with a cyanide capsule on the road between Verdun and Metz.
Speidel was arrested by the Gestapo but only revealed that he knew of the conspiracy, which was of course sufficient to have him executed. However, he escaped this fate by saying that he reported this knowledge to his superior Field Marshal Rommel as he was obliged to do. This got him off the hook but implicated Rommel. A military court of honour exonerated Speidel, but at a separate hearing found Rommel guilty, who was subsequently forced to commit suicide to save Hitler the embarrassment of a trial of a popular war hero.13 Von Treskow blew himself up with a hand grenade rather than submit to arrest and torture. Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven also committed suicide on 23 July 1944 for the same reason.
For his part Hitler felt that destiny had saved him once again to continue his mission. He also felt a deep sense of betrayal as he confided to his Luftwaffe Adjutant Nicolaus von Below in December 1944: “After 20 July everything came out, things I had considered impossible. It was precisely those circles against me who had profited most from National Socialism. I pampered and decorated them. And that was all the thanks I got.”14 The fact that most of his officers remained loyal to him, despite the horrendous evil of his regime, and that he was leading them all to destruction, was lost on him.
In the hunt for the plotters Graf von Strachwitz’s name came up, either in a document or during an interrogation. It was either connected to his Poltava plot, or because of some disparaging remarks he may have made about Hitler or the regime. It could also have been simply conspirators considering him as a useful friend or ally in their own conversations or correspondence. Either way he came to the attention of the dreaded Gestapo. In the heightened circumstances of the time a mention would have certainly involved further investigation and a summons for interrogation, but he wasn’t called. In all likelihood this was because he had joined the Nazi Party before the massive 1933 influx, which made him a true believer, not just an opportunist. He was also by this time a high-ranking officer in the SS, and a highly decorated one, who clearly enjoyed Heinrich Himmler’s support. To start implicating high-ranking and decorated SS officers on such flimsy grounds was just too big a step to take without further and stronger evidence. So Graf von Strachwitz was spared arrest and possible imprisonment. His Party and SS membership had ironically saved him.
The final words of this chapter should perhaps cite the memorandum that General Ludwig Beck, then Chief of the General Staff, read to senior generals in August 1938:
History will indict those commanders [who blindly follow Hitler’s orders] of blood guilt if, in the light of their professional and political knowledge, they do not obey the dictates of their conscience. A soldier’s duty to obey ends when his knowledge, his conscience and his sense of responsibility forbid him to carry out a certain order.15
NOTES
1. Günter Fraschka, Der Panzergraf: Ein leben für Deutschland (Rastatt, 1962).
2. Klaus-Jurgen Muller (ed. Corell Bryant), Hitler’s Generals (Phoenix Gian, 1995). Speidel himself stated that he decided to oust Hitler at the end of 1943, yet clearly he was prepared to do so at the beginning of the year with the Poltava plot.
3. Joachim Kramarz, Stauffenberg: The Man who nearly killed Hitler (Mayflower 1970), p.132.
4. Constantine Fitzgibbon, The Shirt of Nessus (Cassell & Co, London, 1956).
5. Alexander Stahlberg (trans. Patricia Crompton), Bounden Duty (Brassey’s UK, 1990), pp.81–82.
6. Alfred Novotny, The Good Soldier (The Aberjona Press, PA, 2003).
7. Fitzgibbon, The Shirt of Nessus.
8. Stahlberg, Bounden Duty.
9. Remer’s reward for thwarting the coup was rapid promotion to major general. He was also made a commander of the Führer Begleit Division (Hitler’s Escort unit, which expanded throughout the war from battalion-size to division), but that was above his ability. He remained an unrepentant Nazi for long after the war.
10. Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, Soldier in the Downfall (The Aberjona Press, PA, 2012) p.125. Dietrich’s biographer Charles Messenger disputes this, maintaining Dietrich would not have rebelled against Hitler. Perhaps not, although von Gersdorff also wrote how Dietrich frequently fulminated against Hitler, and Dietrich was clearly an army supporter, although his friendship for Hitler was still strong. What is certain, however, is that had Hitler been killed, Dietrich would have unequivocally sided with the army against the Nazi regime.
11. Von Gersdorff, Soldier in the Downfall.
12. Ibid.
13. Speidel always strenuously denied betraying Rommel. He certainly didn’t implicate Rommel any further, which he could easily have done. He went on to achieve high command with NATO after the war.
14. Von Below, At Hitler’s Side, p.223.
15. James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci, Target Hitler: The Plots to Kill Adolf Hitler (Praeger, Westport, CT, 1992), p.50. The memorandum was dated 16 July 1938.