The next day, June 22, Leber and Reichwein went to meet two members of the central committee of the Communist Party, Anton Saefkow and Franz Jacob, in the apartment of a Berlin physician. When they arrived, however, they found that Saefkow and Jacob were accompanied by a third man, who had not been mentioned in the agreement. More disturbingly, one of the Communists greeted Leber by his full name, though this, too, ran counter to their agreement. Leber must have regarded their salutations as a sort of kiss of Judas. In any case, he apparently realized immediately that the meeting was a terrible mistake that posed an enormous danger not only to him but to the entire conspiracy, just as it was gathering its strength for another, perhaps final attempt on Hitler’s life.
Although both sides had previously agreed to meet again on July 4, Leber did not attend. Reichwein showed up alone and was arrested along with Saefkow and Jacob. The next morning the Gestapo nabbed Leber in his apartment.
By this time the war was entering its final phase. On June 6, 1944, the Allies had begun their invasion of Normandy. Just over two weeks later they had firmly established a beachhead and shipped one million men, 170,000 vehicles, and over 500,000 tons of materiel across the Channel. What is more, on June 22 four Soviet army groups, outnumbering the Germans six to one, broke through the thin, porous line of Army Group Center between Minsk and the Beresina River. They drove deep behind the German positions, isolating three pockets containing twenty-seven German divisions-far more than at Stalingrad-which they surrounded and quickly destroyed.
Henning von Tresckow, who had been restored to his position as chief of general staff of the Second Army on the southern flank of Army Group Center, was once again pressing for immediate action against Hitler. Stauffenberg had always believed that the invasion of France was a point of no return, alter which a coup would be only a futile gesture any hope for a negotiated “political” settlement would die. The fear of having arrived on the scene too late dominated all his thoughts and made him extremely impatient.
Stauffenberg sent Tresckow a message through Lehndorff asking whether there was any reason to continue trying to assassinate Hitler now, since they had missed their last opportunity and no political purpose would any longer be served. Lehndorff returned promptly with Tresckow’s response, which signaled a final break from all concern with external circumstances, which had so often paralyzed the conspirators, as well as from political goals of any kind: “The assassination must be attempted, coûte que coûte. Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin. For the practical purpose no longer matters; what matters now is that the German resistance movement must take the plunge before the eyes of the world and of history. Compared to that, nothing else matters.”46
8. THE ELEVENTH HOUR
On July 1 Stauffenberg was promoted to the rank of colonel and simultaneously assumed his new duties as chief of staff to the commander of the reserve army. General Fromm had always been a vigilant, cautious, opportunistic man, whose suspicions that Stauffenberg and Olbricht were plotting a coup had long since hardened into certainty. It seems all the more curious, therefore, that he went to such lengths to have Stauffenberg appointed to his staff. Fromm may simply have wanted to use Stauffenberg, who had written a report that drew extremely laudatory reviews from Hitler, to escape the disfavor into which he had himself fallen. “Finally a general staff officer with imagination and intelligence!” Hitler is said to have remarked.1 It is also possible that Wehrmacht adjutant General Rudolf Schmundt recommended the brilliant young officer-who had been widely noticed and even considered as a possible successor to General Adolf Heusinger, the chief of operations-in the hope of reviving Fromm, who had “grown tired.” In any case, when Stauffenberg first met with his new boss and intimated that he was indeed considering a coup, Fromm merely thanked him for his frankness and let the matter drop. Stauffenberg’s successor on Olbricht’s staff was Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, whom Stauffenberg had known since their days together at the War Academy.2
Of crucial importance to Stauffenberg and to Olbricht, who now had to do without Stauffenberg’s services, was the fact that the new position gave Stauffenberg the access to Hitler that the conspirators had long sought. No longer would they need to arrange presentations of new uniforms or other difficult events. On June 7, the day after the Allied invasion of Normandy, Stauffenberg had already accompanied Fromm to a discussion at the Berghof, Hitler’s Obersalzberg headquarters. Stauffenberg recalled that Hitler seemed “in a daze,” pushing situation maps back and forth with a trembling hand and casting repeated glances at him.3 Now, barely one week after his new appointment, Stauffenberg found himself back at the Berghof once again.
It is not clear whether he intended to assassinate Hitler then, but he did take a bomb with him and the other conspirators were warned in advance. It had always been assumed in resistance circles that Göring and Himmler would also have to be killed in any attack on Hitler. As things turned out, they were not present at this meeting, which may explain why Stauffenberg did not set off the bomb. It may also be, however, that he was still counting on Helmuth Stieff, whom he went to see when he learned that Stieff would preside at the following day’s long-postponed presentation of new uniforms at Schloss Klessheim-an occasion identical to the ones at which Bussche and Kleist had planned to blow themselves up with Hitler half a year earlier. But when Stauffenberg informed Stieff that he had brought “all the stuff along,” Stieff declined the mission.
This response reinforced Stauffenberg’s resolve to carry out the assassination himself. Upon learning of his new appointment in June, he had begun accustoming himself to the idea-over the objections of Beck-and had informed Yorck and Haeften of his intention. No one had ever proposed that Stauffenberg himself be the one to kill Hitler, both because of his severe war wounds and because the plans for a coup made his presence in Berlin indispensable. In view of what he termed “our desperate situation,” however, he decided that there was no other way. In early July he began to make the necessary preparations (arranging, above all, for an airplane to fly him back to Berlin) and to think through the changes that would have to be made to the plan to accommodate his dual role as assassin and leader of the uprising in the capital.
It is revealing that Stauffenberg’s decision to take so much upon himself raised no practical objections from the other conspirators, though it considerably increased the hazards of their undertaking. Only the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch advanced serious reservations following a meeting held at his house. Stauffenberg, who had stayed behind, told him about what was planned, at least in part. Sauerbruch’s qualms at first focused on Stauffenberg’s still seriously weakened physical condition but ultimately broadened to include many other concerns as well.4
Stauffenberg’s fellow conspirators, by contrast, were troubled once again mostly by deep philosophical concerns. In lengthy discussions running from early spring until June, Stauffenberg finally managed to assuage the theological and ethical objections that Yorck and other members of the Kreisau Circle had to killing Hitler. He made especially great strides in this regard when he was able to confront the “hairsplitting scholars of the loyalty oath” with evidence of orders from Kaltenbrunner prescribing “’special treatment’ for 40,000 or 42,000 Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz.”5 Nevertheless, Hans-Bernd von Haeften wrestled to the very end with his anxieties about assassination, tied in knots as he was by professional codes of honor, ethical maxims, and, most important, religious strictures. When, early in the year, his brother Werner returned from a meeting with Stauffenberg and announced that he had agreed in principle to be the assassin the conspirators needed, Haeften asked: “Are you absolutely sure this is your duty before God and our forefathers?” But then, as the daily toll of the dead and injured mounted, he was tormented by the thought that he had dissuaded his brother and saved Hitler.6