By Firoze Sameer
20 July 2008
The day is Thursday, July 20, 1944, the time 12.42 hours,
and the place the Nazi nerve centre, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s
Lair), in Rastenberg, East Prussia. The scene is a military
conference. The room is filled with black-suited SS officers
standing around as the chief of operations of the army high
command, General Adolf Heusinger, reads a report on the central
Russian front. Chairing the conference is
Adolf
Hitler, and with him are 23 other Nazi officers. A time
bomb explodes from below the table, killing four. The blast
is the culmination of Operation Valkyrie, organised by a group
of army officers.
Adolf
Hitler survives.
Director Bryan Singer and his team are presently working on
a Hollywood film based on the World War II incident. The United
Artists’ US$100 million production, titled “Valkyrie”,
is slated for release on February 13, 2009. Shooting commenced
at the Bendlerblock memorial in Germany last July. The official
trailer is now on YouTube. Tom Cruise acts as the key instigator
of the revolt, Colonel Claus Schenk Count Stauffenberg, chief-of-staff
to Col-Gen. Erich Fromm (Tom Wilkinson), commander of the
reserve or home army.
Tom Cruise as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. (Pic courtesy firstshowing.net)
The plot to assassinate
Adolf
Hitler is well documented in a number of books, including
British historian Alan Bullock’s “
Adolf
Hitler” (1952); John Wheeler-Bennett’s “The
Nemesis of Power” (1953); Constantine Fitzgibbon’s
“The Shirt of Nessus” (1955); William Shirer’s
“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (1960); Jacques
Delarue’s “The Gestapo” (1962); and Roger Manvell
and Heinrich Fraenkel’s “The July Plot” (1964),
and the brilliant 822-page “Inside the Third Reich”
(1970), by
Adolf
Hitler armaments minister
Albert
Speer.
A Roman Catholic aristocrat, Col. Stauffenberg arrives at
the Rastenberg conference attired in a field-grey Wehrmacht
uniform, glittering with an array of medals, including the
Iron Cross 1st Class, the Wound Badge and the German Cross,
both in gold. He cuts a remarkable figure: he is wearing a
black eye-patch, the result of a war incident in Tunisia,
on April 7, 1943, when his staff car was riddled with fire
from low-flying aircraft, causing him to lose his right hand
and arm, two fingers of his left hand and his left eye, with
injuries to his left ear and knee.
The colonel walks into the room carrying a briefcase containing
a time bomb. Depending on what side you were on, Stauffenberg’s
act was either heroic or high treason. When Marcus Brutus
delivered the coup de grâce in the assassination of
Roman dictator Julius Cæsar, he said he was doing so
not because he loved Cæsar less, but because he loved
Rome more. Every German officer had to pledge a personal oath
of loyalty to
Adolf
Hitler.
Adolf
Hitler early victories saw the Third Reich taking control
of almost the whole of Europe, sections of Scandinavia, the
Balkans and North Africa. It was during
Adolf
Hitler advance on Russia, when the German army had almost
reached Moscow, that the tide turned.
Following the failed plot to kill
Adolf
Hitler, Col. Stauffenberg and three other officers faced
a summary court martial decreed by Gen. Friedrich Fromm. They
were shot that very evening, on July 21, 1944, in the courtyard
of the Bendlerstrasse by a firing squad of 10 men commanded
by a lieutenant. Fromm turned the tables on the conspirators
when the putsch misfired. But it did not save his neck. He
finally faced a firing squad on March 19, 1945.
Those who fell with Stauffenberg that evening were his adjutant,
Lieut. Werner von Haeften; Col. Gen Freidrich Olbricht (played
by actor Bill Nighy); head of the supply section of the reserve
army, and his chief-of-staff, Col. Mertz von Quirnheim (Christian
Berkel). Gen. Ludwig Beck (Terence Stamp), who was Franz Halder’s
predecessor as chief of the army general staff, was given
the option of shooting himself, which he failed in doing twice.
He was dispatched by a sergeant.
Major Otto Ernst Remer and SS Obersturmbannfuehrer (Lieut.
Col.) Otto Skorzeny, both holders of the Knight’s Cross
with oak leaves, were key bulwarks against the conspirators
and contributed indefatigably towards quashing the coup.
Major Remer (Thomas Kretschmann), who commanded the guard
battalion inside Berlin, was ordered by Lieut-Gen. Paul von
Hase, commandant of Berlin, who was a conspirator, to throw
a cordon around the ministry buildings in the Wilhelmstrasse
and the SS security offices. However, Remer was confused and
referred to propaganda minister Dr Joseph Goebbels, who put
through Remer on a priority call to
Adolf
Hitler. The Führer directly instructed Major Remer
to quell the coup, promoting him two grades to full colonel.
Shirer writes: “On July 24, the Nazi salute was made
compulsory in place of the old military salute ‘as a
sign of the Army’s unshakeable allegiance to the Füehrer
and of the closest unity between Army and Party’.”
View www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQgESliKQUA. Col. Remer was made
major-general and given command of the legendary Panzer Führer-Begleit
division.
Lieut.-Col. Skorzeny, famous for rescuing Mussolini in a daring
operation in September 1943, was hauled out of his sleeping
berth on the night-express to Vienna when it stopped at Lichterfeld,
where repeated announcements went over the tannoy for him
to immediately report to Berlin on the instructions of SS
Brigadefuehrer (Maj-Gen.) Walther Schellenberg, the number
two man in the SD. Skorzeny’s company entered the Bendlestrasse
and took control from within, while Remer’s detachment
isolated the entire block.
Former Afrika Korps commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s
role in the conspiracy was revealed after the war. Although
the “Desert Fox” was privy to the plot, he favoured
arresting rather than killing
Adolf
Hitler. Rommel’s last posting was as commandant of
Heeresgruppe B (Army Group B) amongst five other army groups
spread out in northern France in defence of the D-Day operation.
Rommel’s staff car was strafed on July 17 and he sustained
major head injuries. On October 14, 1944, Rommel was given
the option of suicide by poison, followed by a state funeral
with full military honours, instead of facing treason in the
People’s Court. Rommel chose suicide.
Field Marshal
Günther
von Kluge was replaced by Field Marshal Walther Model
as the Heeresgruppe commander in France, and was recalled
to Berlin. On his way by car near Verdun,
Kluge (who, like Fromm, switched sides on learning of
Adolf
Hitler escape), probably guessed the game was up and committed
suicide by poison.
Col. Gen Heinrich von Stuelpnagel, the military governor of
France, moved to arrest all SS and SD personnel in Paris.
SS Obergruppenfuehrer (Gen.) Karl Oberg and his deputy, SS
Obersturmbanfuehrer (Lieut-Col.) Dr Helmuth Knochen, with
their troops were later released after the coup had gone awry.
Recalled to Berlin, Steulpnagel, shot himself at Verdun during
a car journey, only to blind himself in both eyes. He and
Lieut. Col. Caesar von Hofacker, who served on his staff,
were sentenced to death and hanged.
Shirer states the Gestapo recorded 7,000 arrests, and another
source some 4,980 deaths, but the figure is thought to be
much higher.
The SS, its intelligence unit the SD, the Gestapo, and a series
of departments fell under the umbrella of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
or RSHA (Reich Security Main Office), headed by SS Obergruppenfuehrer
(Gen.) Dr Ernst Kaltenbrunner. He was placed in charge of
the Special Commission of July 20 by
Adolf
Hitler (David Bamber) and Himmler (Matthias Freihof),
now Commander in Charge of the reserve army, and conducted
extensive investigations and interrogations to round up even
those remotely connected with the attempt.
According to Manvell and Fraenkel,
Adolf
Hitler appointed a military court of honour led by field
marshals Wilhelm Keitel,
Rudolf
von Rundstedt and Col. Gen
Heinz
Guderian, who replaced Gen. Kurt Zeitzler as chief of
the general staff, “to dismiss from the Army all officers
remotely concerned in the putsch”. The conspirators were
tried by Roland Freisler in his People’s Court as civilians
and hanged, instead of facing a firing squad. Notable was
the acquittal of Rommel’s chief of staff Maj-Gen. Dr
Hans Speidel, a conspirator.
The architect of the conspiracy, Maj-Gen. Henning von Trescow
(Kenneth Branagh), chief-of-staff in the central army group,
Eastern Front, walking on no-man’s land towards the Russian
Forces, exploded a hand grenade and died.
Trescow’s last words to von Schlabrendorff were: “God
once promised Abraham to spare Sodom should there be found
10 just men in the city. He will, I hope, spare Germany because
of the thing that we have done, and not destroy her …
Whoever joined the resistance movement put on the shirt of
Nessus. The worth of a man is certain only if he is prepared
to sacrifice his life for his convictions.
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