Tresckow reverted to the original plan to blow up Hitler. During the meal at which, had the original plans been carried out, Hitler would have been shot, Tresckow asked one of the Führer’s entourage, Lieutenant-Colonel Heinz Brandt, travelling in Hitler’s plane, to take back a package for him to Colonel Hellmuth Stieff in Army High Command. This was in itself nothing unusual. Packages were often sent to and from the front by personal delivery when transport happened to be available. Tresckow said it was part of a bet with Stieff. The package looked like two bottles of cognac. It was, in fact, two parts of the British clam-bomb that Tresckow had put together.
Schlabrendorff carried the package to the aerodrome and gave it to Brandt just as he was climbing into Hitler’s Condor ready for take-off. Moments before, Schlabrendorff had pressed the fuse capsule to activate the detonator, set for thirty minutes. It could be expected that Hitler would be blown from the skies shortly before the plane reached Minsk. Schlabrendorff returned as quickly as possible to headquarters and informed the Berlin opposition in the Abwehr that the ‘ignition’ for the coup had been undertaken. But no news came of an explosion. The tension among Tresckow’s group was palpable. Hours later, they heard that Hitler had landed safely at Rasten-burg. Schlabrendorff gave the code-word through to Berlin that the attempt had failed. Why there had been no explosion was a mystery. Probably the intense cold had prevented the detonation. For the nervous conspirators, ruminations about the likely cause of failure now took second place to the vital need to recover the incriminating package. Tresckow rang up Brandt to say a mistake had occurred, and he should hold on to the package. Next morning, Schlabrendorff flew to Army High Command with two genuine bottles of cognac, retrieved the bomb, retreated to privacy, cautiously opened the packet with a razor-blade, and with great relief defused it. Mixed with relief, the disappointment among the opposition at such a lost chance was intense.24
Immediately, however, another opportunity beckoned. Gersdorff had the possibility of attending the ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’, to take place on 21 March 1943 in Berlin. Gersdorff declared himself ready to sacrifice his own life in order to blow up Hitler during the ceremony. Tresckow, for his part, assured Gersdorff that the coup to follow Hitler’s assassination would lead to an agreement with the western powers for capitulation while continuing the defence of the Reich in the east and introducing a democratic form of government. With some difficulty, problems of ensuring that Gersdorff would be close enough to Hitler to bring off the assassination, and problems of establishing precisely what time the ceremonials would begin — given security precautions, betrayal of this fact was in itself dubbed sufficient to warrant the death penalty — were overcome. The timing of the attempt was a third problem. The best fuse that Gersdorff could come up with lasted ten minutes. The ceremony itself, in the glass-covered courtyard of the Zeughaus, the old arsenal, on Unter den Linden, the beautiful tree-lined boulevard running through the centre of Berlin, presented no possibility of detonating an explosion in his close proximity. And once Hitler was outside, inspecting the guard of honour at the war memorial on Unter den Linden, laying the wreath, speaking to selected wounded soldiers, or conversing with guests of honour, Gersdorff would have no cause to be near him. His chance would have gone.
The attempt had to be made, therefore, while Hitler was visiting the exhibition of captured Soviet war-booty, laid on to fill in the time between the ceremony in the Zeughaus and the wreath-laying at the cenotaph. Gersdorff positioned himself at the entry to the exhibition, in the rooms of the Zeughaus. He raised his right arm to greet Hitler as the dictator came by. At the same moment, with his left hand, he pressed the detonator charge on the bomb. He expected Hitler to be in the exhibition for half an hour, more than enough time for the bomb to go off. But this year, Hitler raced through the exhibition, scarcely glancing at the material assembled for him, and was outside within two minutes. Gersdorff could follow Hitler no further. He sought out the nearest toilet and deftly defused the bomb.25
