This announcement, like so many before it, was not to be fulfilled. First of all, Goerdeler probably cited far too early a date. The coup was apparently planned for the second half of October at the earliest. Then on October 12 Kluge was badly injured in an automobile accident and was laid up for a considerable period, which meant that no assassination attempts would be staged in the foreseeable future by the armies at the fronts. After so many failed attempts, Olbricht now turned with renewed vigor to an idea that had already been considered: using the home army for both the assassination and the coup.
What was lacking above all was an assassin. Around August 10, however, Tresckow had been introduced at Olbricht’s house to a young lieutenant colonel who would be taking up the duties of chief of staff of the General Army Office on October 1. He had been badly wounded in a strafing attack while serving on the North African front in April. He had lost his right hand as well as the third and fourth fingers of his left, and he wore a black patch over his left eye. After a lengthy stay in the hospital, he had asked the surgeon, Ferdinand Sauerbruch, how much longer he would need to recuperate. On hearing that two more operations and many months of convalescence would be necessary, he shook his head, saying he didn’t have that much time-important things needed to be done. While still in the hospital he explained to his uncle and close confidant Nikolaus von Üxküll, “Since the generals have failed to do anything, it’s now up to the colonels.”19 His name was Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg imbued the resistance with a vitality that had long been lacking but that now served to encourage Olbricht’s cautious deliberations and heighten Tresckow’s determination. He seemed to send an electric charge through the lifeless resistance networks as he quickly and naturally assumed a leadership role. This effect stemmed not only from the infectious energy that so many of his contemporaries have described but also from his unusual combination of exuberant idealism and cool pragmatism. He was familiar with all the complex religious, historical, and traditional reasons that had repeatedly stood in the way of action, but he had not lost sight of the far more basic truth that there are limits to loyalty and obedience. He was therefore able to put aside scruples about treason and the breaking of solemn oaths. Possessed of a finely honed sense of what was appropriate under the circumstances, he dismissed the foreign policy concerns of almost all the other members of the resistance, simply assuming that a German government that had overthrown the Nazis would be able to negotiate a peace treaty despite the Casablanca declaration. Most important, he was determined to act at all costs. Like Tresckow, he rejected the tendency of the resistance to make its actions contingent on circumstance-a failing that had first become apparent in 1938 and had resurfaced that spring in the collapse of the Oster group.
Stauffenberg was a scion of the Swabian nobility, related to the distinguished Gneisenau and Yorck families. When he was seventeen he and his brothers had joined the circle of intellectuals and students led by the famous poet Stefan George. Although he stood vigil at George’s deathbed in December 1933, along with some friends, he was not a true disciple. Like many other young officers, he had welcomed Hitler’s nomination as chancellor in 1933 and had agreed, in theory at least, with some of the Nazi platform, especially unification with Austria and hostility to the Treaty of Versailles. By the time of the Blomberg and Fritsch affairs, however, he had already begun to have serious doubts about the Nazis, doubts that Hitler’s recklessness during the Sudeten crisis only hardened, “That fool is headed for war,” he said. But when war was finally declared he threw himself into his chosen profession like a devoted soldier. His response to the numerous atrocities was that once the war was over there would be plenty of time to get rid of the “brown plague”—a reaction he shared with many of his colleagues.20
Stauffenberg proved to be a brilliant staff officer and was promoted to the army high command in June 1940. Since the launching of the Soviet campaign he had become familiar with the army’s organizational inefficiency and the complicated tangle of competing military hierarchies. Moved by his sense of “outrage that Hitler… was too stupid… to do what was required,” he strove stubbornly, though ultimately in vain, to form units composed of Russian volunteers so as to undermine the Nazis’ senseless policies toward the “peoples of the East.” At first his critical view of the regime was spurred by technical, military, and national concerns. Gradually, though, moral issues came more and more to the fore, and in the end all these considerations played their part in a decision best summarized by his laconic answer to a question asked of him in 1942 about how to change Hitler’s style of leadership: “Kill him.”21
The historian Gerhard Ritter has written that Stauffenberg had “a streak of demonic will to power and a belief that he was born to take charge” without which “the resistance was in danger of becoming bogged down in nothing but plans and preparations.”22 Once, when a member of the high command, appalled by the needless sacrifice of German soldiers and the staggering brutality being inflicted on the Soviet civilian population, asked Stauffenberg if it was possible to impress upon Hitler the truth of the situation, the young officer shot back, “The point is no longer to tell him the truth but to get rid of him,” a remark that sharply repudiated Goerdeler’s incurable optimism.23 At headquarters in Vinnitsa in October 1942 Stauffenberg spoke out openly before a gathering of officers about the “disastrous course of German policy in the East,” saying that everyone had remained silent even though it sowed hatred on all sides. Many witnesses have also reported his criticisms of generals who considered honor, duty, and service to be not binding ideals but simply grounds for making excuses; one report speaks of his contempt for all the “carpet layers with the rank of general. 2I
Stauffenberg’s entry into resistance circles caused an enormous shift in the distribution of power and influence without his doing anything in particular. It was inevitable that he would spark conflicts as well as hopes. Goerdeler and his close associates were particularly vexed by the eclipse of the civilian groups, which they felt should dominate the resistance, and began to mutter derisively about Stauffenberg’s lofty political ambitions and vaguely socialist tendencies. Soviet and East German historians later turned this grumbling to their advantage by depicting Stauffenberg as having moved close to Moscow in his political sympathies. But this myth, its somewhat grotesque origins, and the intentional exaggerations it underwent have all been investigated and disproved.25
What is clear is that Colonel Stauffenberg was far from the flunky whom the sell-confident Goerdeler had always expected and previously always found in his collaborators from the military. In Stauffenberg a far more politically minded officer stepped forward, one who had no intention of simply putting himself at the beck and call of some group and its “shadow chancellor.” What distinguished Stauffenberg from Goerdeler was less the former mayor’s conservative, bourgeois values than his reluctance to employ violence and his rationalist delusion that Hitler could be made to see the error of his ways. Stauffenberg considered this as far-fetched as the highly contemplative opposition shared by many in the Kreisau Circle, which he derided as a “conspirator’s tea party.” As the man who would soon lead the actual coup attempt, he almost inevitably found himself at odds with both groups of conspirators, although for different reasons. On the whole, he felt closest to Julius Leber, the undogmatic Social Democrat with whom he shared the realistic political views and normative pragmatism of a man of action.