The thing that finally tipped the scales for me was the thought that if we managed through our involvement to make even a small part of the Russian assurances a reality, we should not hold back from collaborating. Hitler’s madness was leading Germany so surely to destruction that unconventional action on our part was required to salvage what we could. My two comrades, Dr Korfes and Lattmann, came to the same conclusion and decision quite independently, without any urging from me.
This account outlining the dilemma faced by the three generals and the outcome they arrived at was attested by the memoirs of other officers such as Dr Korfes, Steidle and von Einsiedel.
The decision taken by the generals around von Seydlitz at the founding of the BDO to stake everything on Hitler’s downfall and to work for a prompt peace settlement met with a hostile rejection from a section of the officers. Then again, as early as 1977, Bodo Scheurig, who edited Walther von Seydlitz’s memoirs posthumously, correctly pointed out: ‘We now know, however, that the situation at the time fully vindicated Seydlitz’s decision.’
Following the generals’ agreement, it still took some time for the BDO finally to be established. A preparatory conference took place at the end of August, at which the agenda for the inaugural meeting was sketched out, the next steps were planned, and the BDO’s relationship with the National Committee for a Free Germany was discussed. An agreement was also reached on the composition of the future executive committee, with Major General von Seydlitz as its president. As a member of the working party, Heinrich Gerlach was part of the inner circle of the BDO’s leadership.
VII. Heinrich Gerlach in Lunyovo special camp –
The founding of the BDO – Lost documentary footage
The summer of 1943 came and went in the Lunyovo special camp without any firm deadline being set for the founding of the organization. Then everything happened very suddenly. On 10 September, news came that the founding of the League of German Officers would take place the very next day. Frantically, the necessary arrangements were made. On 11 September, at around 10.00 a.m., the attendees at the inaugural meeting of the organization finally filed into the festively decorated dining room of the special camp. Heinrich Gerlach was impressed. But what surprised him even more were the ‘bundles of cables, the enormous spotlights, the microphones and the huge film camera’. The Soviet Interior Ministry had given instructions for the event to be filmed. Great store was set by this initiative by German officers, who were convinced that their involvement in trying to oust Hitler would help avert the worst outcome for Germany.
Heinrich Gerlach’s comment set me wondering what had become of the documentary footage recorded by the Soviet film crew in Lunyovo in 1943. It was widely thought to have been lost. But after a painstaking search, we managed not only to find the film stock in one of the Soviet archives but also – no easy task – to make a copy of it. The footage confirmed the account of proceedings written by Gerlach, who is clearly identifiable in various sequences.
Gerlach took his place in the middle of a row on the right-hand side at the front, from where he had a view of the entire hall. In the far-right corner, he spotted the lectern, draped with the black, white and red flag. The future members of the committee of the BDO had seated themselves up front on a separate table. As chairman by seniority, sixty-two-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Bredt opened proceedings. Spotlights and the camera were trained in turn on the committee and the prominent speakers, including Erich Weinert, who, as president of the National Committee for a Free Germany, welcomed the foundation of the officers’ association.
The tenor of all the contributions was the same: the officer’s league was seen as a way of forcing the Hitler regime’s resignation, demonstrating the German people’s readiness for peace and bringing about a ceasefire as swiftly as possible. The address given by Colonel Hans-Günther van Hooven particularly impressed all those present. Van Hooven, who had only been airlifted into the Cauldron at Stalingrad at the end of December 1942 as the Sixth Army’s new head of signals, gave a forensic analysis of the military, political and economic situation after Stalingrad, and asked:
Are we not compelled by a moral imperative, by human compassion and by a love of the German people and homeland to take decisive action before it is too late? You all know the answer to this. I have come to the conclusion that as a military commander Hitler has already lost this war. He unequivocally assumed the role of C-in-C when he dismissed Field Marshal von Brauchitsch. The failed Winter Campaign of 1941–42, undertaken without proper winter clothing, the risky offensives against Stalingrad and the Caucasus, and the loss of North Africa are all the result of his volatile nature and lack of military know-how. And as a statesman, Hitler has lost this war politically too. He has managed to bring together a coalition of countries against Germany, while the measures taken by him and his regime have ensured that not only other nations’ military might is now ranged against us but also the immeasurable hatred of their people. As an economic strategist, Hitler only reckoned on lightning wars and lightning victories. As in the First World War, time and space – whose effects, in the face of all experience, he tried to claim as his own – have now turned against us. Total war has become totally hopeless, and so to continue with it would be both pointless and immoral.
Like all the speakers who came after him, Colonel van Hooven’s aim was to underline the huge significance of the German Army in bringing about an end to hostilities and in securing postwar stability in Germany. ‘Reason and humanity therefore dictate,’ he argued, ‘that we end this war and sue for peace before it is too late.’ The colonel alluded to the end of the First World War and painted a clear-sighted picture of what they could look forward to if they failed to conclude a timely peace:
It is tempting to draw a comparison with 1918, but history does not repeat itself. This time, if the Wehrmacht is defeated things will be far worse, because this war was fought not just on the basis of economic and political questions of power arising from National Socialist Party doctrine, but also on ideological grounds, like the wars of religion in the Middle Ages. And because the hatred of the entire world is now directed against Germany. This time there is no German parliament, no political parties and no organs of the state such as existed in 1918. Once the Wehrmacht is smashed, nobody will be able to prevent the worst from happening or vouchsafe order and security. In such an outcome Germany would be nothing but an object with no weight of its own.
Looking at the current situation, van Hooven could only draw one conclusion:
Only a timely peace might avert this likely fate, inasmuch as it would preserve the only instrument that can safeguard order and prevent chaos, namely the German Army.
Following van Hooven’s speech, Colonel Luitpold Steidle spoke about the moral circumstances in Nazi Germany, pillorying the coercion exerted on people’s consciences and beliefs and the twisting of justice and the law. He, too, came to the same conclusion:
There is therefore only one hope of salvation. A clean break with Hitler! In this sense, in view of the total war that is being waged in an unprecedented way, we demand that we, as captured German officers, be heard, despite the fact that we have already been written off back home.