Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Scenes in the Bendlerstraße were increasingly chaotic. Conspiring to arrange a coup d’état in a police state is scarcely a simple matter. But even in the existential circumstances prevailing, much smacked of dilettante organization. Too many loose ends had been left dangling. Too little attention had been paid to small but important details in timing, coordination, and, not least, communications. Nothing had been done about blowing up the communications centre at Führer Headquarters or otherwise putting it permanently out of action.⁹³ No steps were taken to gain immediate control of radio stations in Berlin and other cities. No broadcast was made by the putchists. Party and SS leaders were not arrested. The master-propagandist, Goebbels himself, was left at bay. Among the conspirators, too many were involved in issuing and carrying out commands. There was too much uncertainty; and too much hesitation. Everything had been predicated upon killing Hitler. It had simply been taken for granted that if Stauffenberg succeeded in exploding his bomb, Hitler would be dead. Once that premiss was called into question, then disproved, the haphazard lines of a plan for the coup d’état rapidly unravelled. What was crucial, in the absence of confirmed news of Hitler’s demise, was that there were too many regime-loyalists, and too many waverers, with too much to lose by committing themselves to the side of the conspirators.

Despite Stauffenberg’s intense avowals of Hitler’s death, the depressing news for the conspirators of his survival gathered strength. Beck declared that, whatever the truth of the matter, ‘for me this man is dead’, and his further actions would be determined by this.⁹⁴ But for the success of the plot, that was scarcely enough. By mid-evening, it was increasingly obvious to the insurrectionists that their coup had faltered beyond repair. ‘A fine mess, this (Scböne Scbweinerei, das),’ Field-Marshal Witzleben had muttered to Stauffenberg, on his arrival around 8p.m. in Bendlerstraße.⁹⁵

It rapidly became plain in Führer Headquarters that the assassination attempt was the signal for a military and political insurrection against the regime. By mid-afternoon, Hitler had given command of the reserve army to Himmler. And Keitel had informed army districts that an attempt on the Führer’s life had been made, but that he still lived, and on no account were orders from the conspirators to be obeyed.⁹⁶ Loyalists could be found even in the Bendlerstraße, the seat of the uprising. The communications officer there, also in receipt of Keitel’s order, was by the evening, as the conspirators were becoming more and more desperate, passing on the message that the orders he was having to transmit on their behalf were invalid.⁹⁷ Fromm’s adjutants were meanwhile able to spread the word in the building that Hitler was still alive, and to collect together a number of officers prepared to challenge the conspirators, whose already limited and hesitant support, inside and outside Bendlerstraße, was by now rapidly draining away. Early instances where army units initially supported the coup dwindled once news of Hitler’s survival hardened.⁹⁸

This was the case, too, in Paris. The military commander there, General Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel, and his subordinate officers had firmly backed the insurrectionists. But the supreme commander in the west, Field-Marshal von Kluge, vacillated as ever. In a vain call from Berlin, Beck failed to persuade him to commit himself to the rising. ‘Kluge,’ Beck said to Gisevius as he put down the receiver. ‘There you have him!’⁹⁹ Once he learnt that the assassination attempt had failed, Kluge countered Stülpnagel’s orders to have the entire SS, SD, and Gestapo in Paris arrested, dismissed the general, denounced his actions to Keitel, and later congratulated Hitler on surviving a treacherous attack on his life.¹⁰⁰