Planning a Coup 1942

 While many isolated individuals remained vehement opponents of Hitler, as long as Hitler was enjoying near bloodless victories and expanding German power, wealth and territory, it was impossible to consider a coup against him. It was not until the Wehrmacht stalled and was temporarily thrown back in the winter of 1941/1942 that Hitler's bitter opponents started to hope the time might come when they could strike. Planing for such a strike started surprisingly early, when the German army was still on the offensive in the Soviet Union and North Africa.

In the years following the "September Conspiracy," Hitler went from success to success. His regime swallowed the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 – although this was not ethnically German.  He ordered the invasion of Poland just six months later, and a significantly larger army was crushed in just weeks.  In April 1940 his armed forces walked into Denmark and Norway, overwhelming the ill-prepared defences of both neutral countries.  Then in May/June 1940 Hitler pulled off the miraculous: his Third Reich conquered Belgium and Holland in just days, threw the British Expeditionary Force off the Continent in weeks, and forced the French to surrender in little more than a month of fighting.  Hitler controlled the Continent of Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean Sea.  Never had a dictator been so popular, even adored, and there were many who latter joined the Resistance to Hitler – most notably Claus Graf Stauffenberg – who were so euphoric about the dictator's successes that they dismissed all his "minor" faults as irrelevant.

But not everyone in German shared this adulation of Hitler.  A tiny minority of Germans retained their moral principles and their abhorrence of the immoral Nazi regime.  They had no opportunity to take action against the oppressive dictatorship, however, as long as Hitler remained so successful and so popular.

Then in June 1941 came the invasion of the Soviet Union.  Although this campaign was widely popular and initially went very well, by October the offensive started to bog down.  By the start of December 1941, it had failed to reach either Moscow or St. Petersberg.  On 6 December 1944, the Soviet Army opened a massive counter-offensive with fresh troops just brought in from the Urals and beyond.  They exposed the extreme over-extension and exhaustion of the German Wehrmacht, rolling the German front hundreds of kilometers backwards.  

 

The retreating troops were confronted – often for the first time – with the atrocities committed behind their lines by the SS. The evidence of mass murders, the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war, and the military setback soon created a different psychological environment inside Germany.  Those who had always opposed the Nazis, men like Ludwig Beck and Friedrich Olbricht, saw the first glimmer of hope that a coup against the Nazis might gain sufficient popular support to have a chance of success.

In the winter of 1941/1942 General Friedrich Olbricht, the highly decorated and audacious commander of the 24th Infantry Division, found himself trapped in a desk job in Berlin. 

 

General Friedrich Olbricht in Poland 1939

He was now the Chief of the "General Army Office" (GAO) – a central office with responsibility for recruiting, organizing, arming, equipping, clothing, and otherwise providing for the replacements that were sent to the now voracious front.  This position gave him command of no combat troops, but it did put him in a position to oversee practically everything the military was up to inside Germany.  Olbricht convinced the Chief of Counter Intelligence, Admiral Canaris, to convince Hitler that there was a serious threat of revolt on the part of the millions of slave labourers imported to work in the Reich from all the occupied territories.  Hitler in response ordered the Home Army (and hence Olbricht) to develop a General Staff plan for suppressing such an uprising.  The plan was given the code name "Valkyrie."

Decades later, Axel von dem Bussche, a man who would later volunteer to become a suicide bomber in order to eliminate Hitler, spoke with enthusiasm and admiration of his first encounter with "Valkyrie."  

 

Axel von dem Bussche in 1942

Bussche by early 1942 was already an opponent of Hitler.  He was warned by a family friend (who was also an opponent of the Nazis) that he was to obey any orders he got from a "certain" General Olbricht.  Bussche was a 1st Lieutenant at the time; Olbricht was a "three star" general. Since it was obvious to Bussche that he did not need specific instructions from a friend to follow the military orders of a general, he understood perfectly that the "orders" Olbricht was to give him were not normal military orders but rather something else again.

Then one day in early spring 1942, Bussche, then serving as adjutant in a replacement regiment stationed just outside of Berlin in Potsdam, got a call saying that General Olbricht was on his way to visit.  Now, as Bussche worded it, the Chief of the GAO was as far above him as the "dear God is from earth."  Bussche knew at once that this visit had nothing to do with official military duties – a suspicion reinforced after the general's arrival by a series of harmless questions and pleasant small talk that did not warrant the visit.  But then Olbricht suggested that Bussche and he "stretch their legs."  In the middle of an exercise field where no one could hear them, Olbricht started to "educate" Bussche about "Valkyrie."

"Valkyrie" was in Bussche's words: "A well organised plan of the Home Army that was to be used in the event that millions of forced labourers in Germany rose up in revolt."  But Bussche understood perfectly well when Olbricht in his relaxed, Saxon inflection "explained" to Bussche:  "Now Valkyrie, that is for when the forced labourers strike and we have to restore order, you understand?"  And Bussche dutifully assured the general, "Jawohl, Herr General."  So Olbricht continued, smiling, "And if it gets really bad, then we'll have to occupy the radio stations and the ministries in Berlin, you know what I mean?"  "Jawohl, Herr General."  And so the conversation continued until by the end, Bussche knew exactly what the General expected of him – without ever hearing a single word that could be construed as treason or even disloyalty.

Bussche would soon be transferred back to the Eastern Front and so the time frame for this meeting can be fixed without doubt to the late spring of 1942.  It took place at a time when German arms were again on the advance, and the population had forgotten the winter of their discontent.  It took place at a time when Stauffenberg was still convinced that Hitler could – and should – win the war.  But Olbricht, Bussche, Beck and other individuals remained unswerving opponents of the Nazi regime, and although they were few and far between they now had a plan, a plan that could and would be employed to bring down the Nazis as soon as the necessary pre-conditions had been created.

The preconditions for the successful implementation of a coup based on Plan "Valkyrie" were two fold.  First, there had to be a reasonable degree of disillusionment with the regime to make the population supportive of or at least neutral toward Hitler's removal from power.  Second, but most important, Hitler had to be dead.  It was no longer possible to contemplate the mere arrest of Hitler.  First, the Valkyrie Orders could only be issued by the C-in-C of the Home Army if Hitler was "incapacitated," and, second, the army was not freed of its personal oath of "unconditional obedience" to Hitler unless he was no longer among the living.  Thus Hitler's assassination was the first and essential step to a coup d'etat.

Responsibility for the assassination was assigned by Beck and the leadership of the evolving military conspiracy to the cell of anti-Nazi opponents centered in the military Counter Intelligence Department and led by Hans Oster.  Oster's opposition to Hitler's policies also pre-dated the war.  He had been in among the men in the September Conspiracy of 1938 that advocated Hitler's assassination even at this early date.  His opposition to Hitler's aggression had been so great that he had taken the dramatic step of warning the Dutch of the impending German invasion in 1940.  By 1942, Oster's hatred of Hitler and his regime was so intense that he was desperate to kill the dictator and happy to provide the means for doing so in the form of captured British plastic explosives.  

But access to the increasingly cautious and reclusive dictator proved a greater challenge than anyone had initially anticipated. It was this, more than anything, that foiled repeated coup attempts over the next two years.

The German Resistance to Hitler was the subject of my PhD thesis. At the time I was the first Western academic granted access to key military archives and documents in what was then still "East Germany." In addition, I conducted interviews with over one hundred survivors of Nazi Germany, both supporters and opponents of the regime. The research culminated in a published dissertation and, later, an English-language biography of General Friederich Olbricht based on the dissertation. It also inspired me to write a novel about the German Resistance, which was recently re-released in ebook format under the title: "Traitors for the Sake of Humanity." Find out more and read reviews of "Traitors" at the publisher's website: Cross Seas Press.

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Tribute to the German Resistance to Hitler

On July 20, 1944, Germans appalled by the moral depravity of the Nazi regime, made the last of many attempts -- going back to before the Second World War -- to remove Hitler from power. A bomb was detonated in Hitler’s bunker and a military coup set in motion. Because Hitler survived the blast, the plot failed. The conspirators were arrested, tortured and killed, but they should not be forgotten.

I wrote my PhD about one of those conspirators, General Friedrich Olbricht.  In addition, based on a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, I wrote a novel that tells the story of these brave individuals who risked their lives to fight against one of history’s most dangerous and oppressive regimes from the inside: Hitler’s Demons.

Here is an excerpt from that novel describing the hero’s decision to join the conspiracy.

It was raining the next morning, which encouraged them to stay in bed. They called room service for breakfast, and lay in bed talking and making love alternately until the sun came out about noon. Then they decided to go down for lunch and take a walk. They bathed, dressed and went downstairs. It was a mistake.

Sauckel and the men meeting with him had just started their lunch break. The lobby was awash with brown uniforms, and the unfortunate other guests passing in and out felt compelled to raise their arms and bark “Heil Hitler!” Philip’s mood was instantly shattered. Alix watched with concern and growing sense of helplessness as his face closed and his lips grew thin.

In the dining room there was not one table free, and the waiter offered to seat them at a table for four at which one man was sitting alone. As it was already quite late and the lone man was a civilian, Philip agreed. They were taken over by the waiter and introduced themselves. The man stood, bowed to Alexandria, and shook hands with Philip. “Heinrich Froehlich,” he introduced himself, “Chief of Personnel at Siemens.”

“And what brings you to Baden-Baden?” Philip asked politely.

“The gentlemen behind us,” the businessman answered candidly. “If we aren’t to be starved of labor, I have to ensure the goodwill of Sauckel and his underlings. That can’t be done nowadays without personal contact – and, of course, the appropriate payments.”

“Bribes, you mean,” Philip corrected acidly.

The businessman shrugged. “It’s the way it is.”

From the neighboring tables, the conference participants complained about the lack of fresh strawberries and the limitations of the wine menu. Philip lost his appetite, and there was nothing Alexandra could do but cut lunch short and depart.

Outside, Alexandra took her husband’s hand and smiled at him, trying to break through his gloom. He smiled back, but it was an absent smile – an alibi, while his thoughts lingered elsewhere. They walked hand in hand through the park, Alexandra chatting to distract Philip. He made an effort to  listen, but after a while he gave up and admitted, “Alix, I can’t stand it. Even here everything has been poisoned by that brown filth.” He indicated the benches with the “for Aryans only” painted on them, the troop of little boys in the uniform of the Jungvolk, and the SS soldiers opening the doors of the black Mercedes disgorging brown-uniformed passengers and “glamorous” women before the Casino.

“Is this what so many men are dying for out there? A Germany where only the corrupt have power? Where helpless patients are murdered and  young girls are turned into whores by the nations ‘leaders’? Is this what Christian and I are supposed to die for?” He was looking at his wife as if he expected her to give him an answer.

Alexandra’s first reaction was sheer panic. How could she answer such a question? But if she didn’t find an answer, their precious time together was going to be ruined by the oppressive shadow of the regime. Then she realized that she did have an answer: she had to tell him about Valkyrie. She had to tell him that decent people were working to put an end to this rule of terror. She had to share with him the reason she felt hopeful for the future. She had to tell him what she was risking, or their whole marriage would be based on a lie.

But she was afraid he might not approve of what she was doing. She avoided his sharp, penetrating eyes by putting her arms around him and leaning her head on his chest. “No, Philip,” she whispered, “it’s not what you are meant to die for. The war has to be stopped….”

Philip took her words for a helpless attempt to deny reality. He tightened his arms around her, ashamed of himself for ruining her honeymoon. Alexandra clung to him; her heart beating rapidly. She was suddenly very, very afraid of Philip’s reaction. Philip could sense her fear, and he assumed it was just his talk of death. He gently tried to pry Alexandra away from his chest so he could look into her face, but she resisted tenaciously. He would have had to use more force than he was willing to use with her, so he gave up and said, “Forgive me.”

“It’s not that. It’s…”

Philip asked gently, “What is it, Alex? Tell me.”

“I have a confession to make.”

“I’m listening,” he waited, holding her patiently.

“Philip,” she started in a timid voice, very frightened that he would angrily order her to stop her activities. If he did that, she would never forgive him. “General Olbricht asked me to type up some top-secret plans – plans for putting down a forced laborers’ revolt or to eliminate an enemy commando raid in the center of Berlin. But that’s not what they’re really about….” He voice faded away, afraid to be more articulate.

Philip hesitated and then asked sharply, “Is Tresckow part of these plans?”

“Yes, but I don’t know Oberst Tresckow’s role. There are lots of things I don’t know. I don’t know the names of the civilians who are working on the plans for what comes afterwards. I don’t know what Admiral Canaris and Oberst Oster have to do with things. And although I know that Oberst Tresckow is kept informed of developments, I don’t know why. The plans themselves are being worked out in AHA.”

Philip had stopped breathing. Then speaking very slowly and softly, he told her: “Tresckow wants me to help him with these plans…. Would you approve of that?”

Alexandra looked up, hardly daring to believe her ears. Philip wasn’t just willing to let her continue; he would be part of it. They would be working together. “Of course!”

“What do you mean ‘of course’? We’re talking about me breaking my oath and committing High Treason!” he rebuked her.

“It may be treason against the government, but not against the nation, Philip. We’re talking about putting an end to the murder of innocent people and stopping the senseless sacrifice of others – like Christian and Stefan.”

“Only if we succeed. The chances of success are pitiable.”

“Maybe. Personally, I think General Olbricht is brilliant. And the supplementary orders – things like closing the Concentration Camps and the arrest of Gauleiter – are being handled by Uncle Erich and Generaloberst Beck.”

“Beck? Generaloberst Ludwig Beck is involved?” Philip took as step back, holding Alexandra at arm’s length and searching her face intently.

She nodded, meeting his eyes. “Olbricht always refers to him as the CO of the Operation.”

“Beck, Olbricht, Hoepner, Tresckow – good company to die in.” Philip managed  a little twitch of his lips as if he were trying to smile.

“Better than for the Fuehrer,” Alexandra insisted.

“There’s a difference. On the front I die alone. As a traitor, I drag you down with me.”

“I’m already there, Philip.”

“No, you’re not. As Olbricht’s secretary, you can always say you were just doing your job – following orders. You can claim you never had any reason to think the plans went beyond their official purpose. But if I join this conspiracy, they’ll never believe that. You’ll pay the same price as I. You could be tried for treason and beheaded.”

In an impulsive and passionate gesture, Alexandra reached up and took Philip’s head in her hands. She went on tiptoe to kiss him. “That you would hesitate on my account is flattering, but I can’t love you because you’re a man of conscience and character, and then expect you to behave like an opportunist. In the midst of so much death, I want to believe there is something worth dying for, and you can’t go on as you have been. You can’t continue to serve a criminal regime without it destroying you. Don’t you see, Philip? Only this can give our lives meaning.”

“What about our love?”

“What chance has our love in a world poisoned by moral depravity on this scale? Just think of the last two days: all our love couldn’t change the world around us, and it has ruined our wedding. Without hope for a better future, why should we go on living at all – much less have children?”

She was right, Philip realized with a touch of surprise. How could he have been so stupid? She was right, and so was Tresckow. The fight against the Nazis was not a military operation, which should only be risked if the chance of success was better than 50/50. Joining this conspiracy was the only means of saving his sanity -- and soul.

A Suicide-Bomber Targeting Hitler: Axel Baron von dem Bussche

Last week I introduced Marion Countess Yorck. This week I'd like to introduce another survivor of the German Resistance, who had an even more profound impact on my novel An Obsolete Honor: A Story of the German Resistance to Hitler (soon to be released in Kindle format under the title "Hitler's Demons.") I came to know Axel very well, twice spending time as his house guest in Switzerland. He was a witty conversationalist, an insightful observer and commentator on contemporary events, and a haunted man. Few people who met him went away unimpressed.

“The survivors of a failed coup are never its heroes,” Axel Baron von dem Bussche told me the first time we met, but by most standards Bussche was a hero. At the age of 24, while a captain in the German Army, Bussche agreed to carry out a suicide-bombing against Adolf Hitler.

When he made this offer it was November 1943 and the conspiracy against Hitler, headed by former Chief of the German General Staff Ludwig Beck, had already made several unsuccessful attempts on Hitler’s life. Twice explosive devices had been activated in Hitler’s proximity, but in one case the bomb failed to detonate and in the other Hitler got out of range before the device could go off. Opportunities to get explosive devices near to the increasingly paranoid German dictator were few and far between, and the conspirators recognized that Hitler’s insistence on seeing the new officer’s uniform modeled for him personally was a rare and perfect opportunity for an assassination attempt. Under normal circumstances, anyone admitted to Hitler’s presence was first searched for arms, but a man modeling a uniform would have to be fully outfitted with side-arms - and grenades.

Axel Baron von dem Bussche was known to the conspirators as a “reliable” officer – i.e. a man who was a bitter opponent of Hitler. He was also tall, blond, blue-eyed, and good-looking. Furthermore, he was a veteran with multiple wound badges and he had been highly decorated. Bussche had the Iron Cross First and Second Class, and the German Cross in Gold at the time he was asked to serve as a model/assassin; he would later receive the Knight’s Cross. In short, he made an ideal “model.” Bussche was asked if he was willing to carry out an assassination attempt and agreed without hesitation.

Bussche traveled to Hitler’s HQ in East Prussia and prepared for the fateful meeting. The Conspiracy provided him with English plastic explosives and a fuse that could be set to various lengths, but Bussche preferred to use a German hand grenade instead. “I was a lot bigger and stronger than Hitler,” Axel told me bluntly, “and I figured I could hold on to him long enough for a three second fuse to go off. The plastic explosives were too unreliable.”

The date for modeling the uniform in front of Hitler was set: Nov. 23, 1943. Bussche waited impatiently, but the uniform failed to arrive. It had been destroyed in the previous night’s air-raid. Meanwhile, Bussche’s leave had run out. His division was involved in the heavy fighting on the Eastern Front, and as a company commander he was needed there urgently. He could not wait for another uniform to be sent. He returned to duty – and was shortly afterwards so severely wounded that his leg had to be amputated. He was in an SS hospital recovering from surgery – with the English plastic explosives he had not used in a suitcase under his bed - when Claus Count Stauffenberg made his assassination attempt on July 20, 1944.

On that same night, after hearing the news, Axel ate his address book page by page to prevent it falling into Gestapo hands. He also resolved to ask his first visitor to dispose of the incriminating explosives in the suitcase under his bed. Unfortunately, the first person who came to see him was “a young lady” and, as Axel put it, “unthinkable to impose on her.” So he had to wait for a second visitor, this time a fellow officer, who obligingly took the suitcase and threw it in a near-by lake – without asking any questions.

But in Berlin, more and more of Axel’s friends and comrades were being swept up in the Gestapo investigation of the July 20th Coup. Guilt by association was the rule, and over the remaining months of the war, men and women hanged for nothing more serious than giving a friend a place to stay the night, or expressing sympathy with the conspirators. As Axel made sure I knew, I had the opportunity to meet him only because friends and comrades did not betray his name - even under Gestapo torture.

So Axel survived the war, and I will never forget the first time Axel contacted me. I was working for a Washington area consulting firm when one day the phone rang. I answered unsuspecting with the company name and the standard question, “How can I help you?”

On the other end of the line a deep male voice barked: “Bussche. Ludwig Hammerstein says we should meet. I want you to come to dinner on Thursday.” The address and time followed. I really wasn’t given a choice – but I would have jumped at the opportunity any way. I knew who Axel Baron von dem Bussche was because by the time I got that call I had been researching the German Resistance for years; I knew Ludwig Baron von Hammerstein, the son of the Chief of Staff and C-in-C of the German Army in the 1930s, quite well.

That dinner in Georgetown was the start of a long friendship which included many conversations particularly during my visits to Axel’s baroque manor outside of Geneva, Switzerland. Axel had a way of telling stories that kept one breathless – but the laughter was never far behind. By the time I knew him, however,  he not only suffered from severe “phantom pains” in his missing leg, but from a guilt complex. He felt guilty for having failed to kill Hitler – although it was not his fault. And he felt guilty that so many of his friends had died in the war and in the aftermath of July 20th, but he was still alive. Last but not least, he felt guilty for not having done more to stop Hitler’s atrocities. This was largely because Axel was one of the few members of the German Resistance who had actually witnessed the atrocities.

It was the summer of 1942. Bussche, having finally recovered from a lung wound that had kept him in Germany “convalescing” in the position of Adjutant to his Regiment's Reserve/Training battalion in Potsdam, was back on the Eastern Front. He was an Infantry First Lieutenant. One quiet day, a sergeant, one of the company couriers, rode up on a motorcycle. “Herr Leutnant, you better come and see this for yourself,” was all the man said. It was an unusual request but something about the man’s demeanor made Bussche go along with the messenger without question.

When he told me the story, he turned on me at this point and, scowling fiercely, growled: “You grew up knowing about Auschwitz! You know that we murdered millions! But I grew up thinking we were a civilized people – the people of Goethe and Beethoven. I had to stare at what was happening for five minutes before my brain would accept what my eyes told me: civilians were being brought up by the truck-load. The SS made them strip off their clothes – men, women and children – and then climb into an open pit which was already filled with a layer of corpses – some of them still twitching. The SS ordered them to lie face down on the others and then the SS shot them in the back of the head.”

Axel was never the same after this experience, and more than 40 years later he told me that he had given much thought to what he should have done. At the time, he said, he had wanted to rush to his superiors and demand that the Army intervene to stop the SS. But he soon recognized that this was futile. The Army had no control over the SS. Only Hitler could stop the SS – and Hitler had given the orders. So Axel became an even more fanatical opponent of Hitler than he had been before. He was prepared to kill himself in order to kill Hitler. But he did not have an easy conscience. He told me that after much soul-searching he had finally realized that what he should have done was step up to the edge of the pit, remove his officer’s uniform with the many decorations for bravery and recording his wounds, and climb into the pit with the victims.

Axel Baron von dem Bussche was a hero by almost any definition of heroism – except his own.