Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member (9 page)

This was too much for me: the gravity of the fate of the Ninth Army had met with moral and intellectual poverty and a disconcerting futility. Without a word, boiling with rage, I left the table and went out to smoke a cigarette to calm down. A few moments later, an aide-de-camp stuck his head out to say “Reichsleiter Bormann is asking for you.”

Coffee and liqueurs were being served. Bormann asked me to explain what I had done. I told him how I felt: “As a lieutenant and aide-de-camp to Marshal Kluge, I had imagined the Führer’s headquarters differently. I accompanied the marshal to discuss the tragic fate of the Ninth Army, which is surrounded at Rzhev, and here people are talking about strawberries!” My frankness, though clothed in politeness, did not please Bormann. Without answering, he turned around and called hoarsely to an SS man: “Take this guy away.” I was locked up nearby in a small room, almost a cell. I thought of the episode in the garage in Bonn, ten years earlier. What was going to happen now? I lit another cigarette.

Having finished his lunch, Kluge was already preparing to leave, in a state of irritation not unlike my own. He came out of the mess hall and looked around for me. I
heard him calling me. The guard posted outside the room finally whispered something to the marshal, thereby betraying his boss. Pushing the SS man aside, Kluge tore open the door and demanded, “What are you doing there?” I stammered a few words. The marshal interrupted me: “You’ll tell me all about it in the plane. Come on, out of there, we’re leaving!” We quickly got into the car, which took us to the aerodrome. During the flight, I told him about my marvelous half day. Kluge concluded, “That’s enough, that’s enough. This time I was able to save you. The next time, you’ll keep your mouth shut. But basically, you’re absolutely right!”

My misadventure in Vinnytsya had proven instructive. However, I was constantly asking myself, what could I do, as a young subordinate officer without operational duties? What could I do alone, without support? The answer was to come by itself two months later.

It was October 29, 1942. Hitler had called the marshal, as he often did. I was at my post in the aide-de-camp’s office, which was next to the marshal’s. I picked up my receiver in order to listen in on the conversation. This was not an indiscretion on my part: I was supposed to listen in on telephone conversations in order to offer my impressions to the marshal and to ensure that there was no misunderstanding. This systematic monitoring shows the degree of mistrust that existed between Hitler and his generals.

As commander in chief, Hitler liked to give his instructions directly to the marshals. Eager for revenge, the little ex-corporal from 1918 wanted to pit his tactical genius against what he regarded as the excessively academic minds of the military professionals. He wanted to tear them away from the comfortable certainties that he viewed as mediocre and pedestrian. He despised these pros, but he needed their expertise and their obedience. Thus, the conversations were always animated by an almost electrical anxiousness. Kluge’s operational considerations, which followed a rather classical schema, collided with the Führer’s implausible strategic designs—the technician versus the amateur; the pragmatist versus the ruthless aesthete. Kluge never minced words; Hitler sometimes gave his anger free rein. I often believed that when the conversation was over Kluge would be relieved of his command. However, at the last moment, Hitler, with Machiavellian cleverness, managed to avoid a definitive rupture and reduced the tension by an adroit pirouette—a sudden change of subject, a personal compliment. The monster turned the situation around with acrobatic agility. “Oh, by the way,” he would say, for example, “I’ve had your wife sent a bouquet of her favorite flowers, with my best wishes for her birthday. As for the rest, I’ll call you back later.” Finishing the conversation on an almost friendly note, the dictator then made his decision in private, without consulting anyone else, because he was commander in chief.

This time, Hitler was calling simply to congratulate the marshal on the occasion of his birthday, which was the following day. He concluded this way: “Marshal, I’ve heard that you intend to have stables built at Böhne.
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In consideration of the many services you have rendered to the German people and to me personally, I’m giving you two hundred and fifty thousand marks for construction materials! Happy birthday, and good-bye!”

“Heil, mein Führer,”
the marshal replied automatically.

But Hitler had already hung up. The gift was sumptuous. In a Germany that was completely focused on the war, it was extremely difficult to procure construction materials, especially since 1941 and the beginning of extensive air attacks on German cities, where daily destruction increased the need for wood, cement, and bricks.

The bell rang in my room. I went into Kluge’s office. Obviously embarrassed that I had listened to this conversation, he asked, “You heard what the Führer said at the end of his call. Just between us, what do you think about it?”

Despite my efforts to get along with my superior—I was still only twenty-five years old—I answered the sixty-year-old man somewhat coolly: “Marshal, I admit I don’t recall that any Prussian marshal ever accepted a present from a sovereign in the course of a campaign. After a victory, yes. But during a conflict, never. If I were you, Marshal, I would give the money to the Red Cross.”

Suddenly embarrassed by my temerity, I took my
leave of the marshal, who was stunned. I was afraid that he might bring up this incident later, especially at teatime, but he didn’t. When we had finished our tea, I went, pensively, to the officers’ wing of the staff headquarters. Had I exceeded the limits of an aide-de-camp’s freedom? I asked to see General Tresckow. I knew that I could confide in and almost confess to the staff’s first officer, whose human qualities and good sense invited that sort of thing. Tresckow was a discreet man; he would not talk to others about the incident. The staff’s workroom was full of people. We retired to a small room next door, where maps were kept. I told him about what had happened and asked his advice, for I had no doubt that the marshal would return to this telephone conversation when we were alone again.

The reaction of Tresckow, who was almost as upset as I was, surprised me. My astonishment grew when he asked my permission to speak with the marshal. I protested energetically: impossible; I knew secrets that I had to protect. We got unusually testy with each other. “Colonel,” I said, “I’m an orderly in the personal service of Marshal Kluge. This is a position that requires absolute discretion. You cannot mention our conversation. I came to you as an experienced counselor, not as my superior. Furthermore, the marshal is my only superior.”

Tresckow looked at me with a serious air. After a moment’s silence, he said to me in a penetrating voice,
weighing his two short sentences and speaking slowly in order to be sure he was understood, “The marshal must not make himself dependent on the Führer. We need him in our fight against Hitler.” With these few words, Tresckow had unveiled himself. He had at the same time enlisted me in his group of conspirators. I couldn’t go backward; he left me no choice. Several times, waiting outside Kluge’s office before the morning briefings, we had occasion to exchange double entendres, and he was able to test my mental dispositions. These two very simple sentences now demanded my absolute confidence.

My heart swelled. Filled with an immense feeling of relief, I knew in whom I could confide, and with whom I could act. I was dazed, intoxicated by the trust of this superior officer whose prudence, intelligence, and shrewdness I admired. Tresckow had wrenched me out of the spiral of silence, remorse, fear, and disgust. The filth and blood of the war were no longer my sole horizon. I found hope again.

The next day, Kluge received the staff to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. Assuming that news of Hitler’s gift might have gotten out, he put it at the center of the conversation: “What do you think about this little ‘tip’?”

Major General Krebs saw no problem in accepting the gift as an equivalent of the fiefs granted under the Kaiser. But Tresckow warned Kluge, imploring him, “I beg you, Marshal, don’t accept a penny!”

I repeated my suggestion regarding the Red Cross. I don’t know what the marshal decided in the end.

I never considered for an instant not telling Georg about all of this. We were too close. But I had to hold my tongue for a long time. He was in Romania; correspondence was subjected to random censorship. The telephone worked well, but it was not secure. I had to wait until we could see each other. This opportunity came at the end of 1942.

Tresckow, a Prussian Protestant, was an officer and the son of an officer. His vigorous soul, faultlessly upright, radiated from an inner peace that infused his whole way of being. The strength of his personality, imbued with an authentic and unostentatious piety, was naturally communicated to those around him. Strict with himself but not austere with others, Tresckow had not confined himself to a great estate or the Reichswehr’s bunkers. Professional experience in banking and living in Latin America in the 1920s had given him an openness of mind that was rare in his milieu. He was a generous man. In a group, his presence created a natural force of attraction, a magnetism. He never forced people to go along with him; they came spontaneously, of their own accord. He was one of
those rare individuals who combine kindness, intelligence, and effectiveness.

The experience of war and the proximity of death had not hardened him excessively. He expressed his feelings modestly, loved nature, and was constantly admiring the work of his Creator. One day, we had gone hunting together at dawn. The first rays of sunlight were slowly dissipating the darkness, and the milky clouds were tinted a very pale pink. Nature, in the freshness of dawn, had taken on the first colors of autumn. We heard the hoarse, spellbinding serenading of the stag. Then came the nuptial song of the woodcock, and his proud, grotesque strutting. I aimed my rifle. Tresckow put his hand on my shoulder, stopping me. We took the time to inhale deeply the early morning air, to contemplate Nature’s preparations, and to listen to the strange melodies of the animal world. We started out again in pursuit of the woodcock, then stopped to observe in silence multicolored jays hopping around in the great, shady mass of the drowsy forest.

It is difficult to describe a man’s faith without descending into hagiographical platitudes. Henning von Tresckow was inhabited by an ardent piety that he was not afraid to express. For Christmas 1942, the general command of the Wehrmacht had forbidden any celebration. Nazi officers had been assigned to see to the observance of this injunction. Thus, it was surprising when Tresckow came silently forward among his men, flanked
by Georg Schulze-Büttger and Hans-Ulrich von Oertzen. The operations officer read the Christmas gospel just as he would have done amid his own family. I had informed Kluge of what Tresckow was going to do; thus the marshal had come to the junior officers’ mess solely to provide cover for his subordinate. It was a true Christian Christmas, to the joy of the overwhelming majority.

Tresckow had a philosopher’s forehead, meditative eyes, and an artist’s hands. This soldier loved peace, because he knew what war was. He had tasted its bitterness in 1917, when he enlisted as a cadet at the age of sixteen. In June 1918, he had gone to the front in France as a second lieutenant in the Imperial Guard’s prestigious First Infantry Regiment. During the deadly retreat, he had contemplated the distress of people in the combat zones. After the war was over, he had to readapt to civilian life, with the same appetite for discovery. As the operations officer on the staff of Army Group Center since early summer 1941, he had seen the proof of inconceivable atrocities piling up on his desk. A surfeit of corroborating evidence made an unshakeable resolution of the vague project that he had envisaged as early as 1939: to kill Hitler. At first fleeting, the idea that it was up to him to take the initiative had become a deep conviction. For while some generals were ready to act, others, although tempted by the military adventure, were paralyzed by the Prussian tradition of obedience to the monarch.

Tresckow had thus resolved to count on himself and
on younger officers to decapitate the regime. Without overestimating his abilities, he knew he could be both the architect and the brains of the operation, but he needed helpers. He had tried in vain to get his uncle, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, the commandant of Army Group South, to join him. He had also struck higher up, in the circle of his acquaintances, beginning with Gersdorff. Since the beginning of the 1941 campaign, the two had talked quite freely. Gersdorff was the staff’s intelligence officer; in regular contact with the intelligence services in Berlin, toward which a nebulous group of regime opponents led by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the Abwehr chief, and Colonel Hans Oster gravitated, he was able to fill out the picture of the massacres, counting up the victims and transmitting these figures to Tresckow and their Berlin counterparts.

Among the subordinate officers, Fabian von Schlabrendorff was, I think, the first one approached. He was Tresckow’s aide-de-camp, his cousin, and his junior by five years. A lawyer and the son of a general, he knew what law and justice were. At family reunions before the war, he had shared with Tresckow his conviction that Germany had to be rid of tyrants. His intransigent nature, coupled with a rather contrarian spirit, naturally led him into the Resistance. He and Tresckow formed a complementary pair: if Tresckow was the soldier full of humanity, Schlabrendorff typified the man of law, the civilian in uniform—a uniform that was, moreover, frequently
in slight disarray. A courtroom duelist with a sharp tongue, tenacious, caustic sometimes to the point of cruelty, he was not afraid to embarrass an interlocutor or even to wound him. But his intellectual’s spectacles and the quibbler’s chatter could not hide his heart, nor the freedom of conscience nourished by his faith in God. The austere Schlabrendorff was to maintain an exemplary fidelity to all of us, even under torture.