The guard-battalion surrounding Goebbels’s house was under the command of Major Otto Ernst Remer, thirty-two years old at the time, a fanatical Hitler-loyalist, who initially believed the fiction constructed by the plotters that they were putting down a rising by disaffected groups in the SS and Party against the Führer. When ordered by his superior, the Berlin City Commandant, Major-General Paul von Hase, to take part in sealing off the government quarter, Remer obeyed without demur.107 He soon became suspicious, however, that what he had first heard was untrue; that he was, in fact, helping suppress not a putsch of Party and SS leaders against Hitler, but a military coup against the regime by rebellious officers. As luck had it, Lieutenant Hans Hagen, a National Socialist Leadership Officer (N
Goebbels reminded him of his oath to the Führer. Remer expressed his loyalty to Hitler and the Party, but remarked that the Führer was dead. Consequently, he had to carry out the orders of his commander, Major-General von Hase. ‘The Führer is alive!’ Goebbels retorted. I spoke with him only a few minutes ago.’ The uncertain Remer was visibly wavering. Goebbels offered to let Remer speak himself with Hitler. It was around 7p.m. Within minutes, the call to the Wolf’s Lair was made. Hitler asked Remer whether he recognized his voice. Standing rigidly to attention, Remer said he did. ‘Do you hear me? So I’m alive! The attempt has failed,’ he registered Hitler saying. A tiny clique of ambitious officers wanted to do away with me. But now we have the saboteurs of the front. We’ll make short shrift of this plague. You are commissioned by me with the task of immediately restoring calm and security in the Reich capital, if necessary by force. You are under my personal command for this purpose until the Reichsführer-SS arrives in the Reich capital!’109 Remer needed no further persuasion. All Speer, in the room at the time could hear, was, ‘Jawohl, my Führer… Jawohl, as you order, my Führer.’ Remer was put in charge of security in Berlin to replace von Hase. He was to follow all instructions from Goebbels.110
Remer arranged for Goebbels to speak to his men. Goebbels addressed the guard battalion in the garden of his residence around 8.30p.m., and rapidly won them over.111 Almost two hours earlier, he had put out a radio communiqué telling listeners of the attack on Hitler, but how the Führer had suffered only minor abrasions, had received Mussolini that afternoon, and was already back at his work.112 For those still wavering, the news of Hitler’s survival was a vital piece of information. Between 8 and 9p.m. the cordon around the government quarter was lifted.113 The guard-battalion was by now needed for other duties: rooting out the conspirators in their headquarters in Bendlerstraße. The high-point of the conspiracy had passed. For the plotters, the writing was on the wall.
Some were already seeking to extricate themselves even before Goebbels’s communiqué broadcast the news of Hitler’s survival.114 By mid-evening, the group of conspirators in the Bendlerblock, the Wehrmacht High Command building in the Bendlerstraße, were as good as all that was left of the uprising. Remer’s guard-battalion was surrounding the building. Panzer units loyal to the regime were closing in on Berlin’s city centre. Troop commanders were no longer prepared to listen to the plotters’ orders. Even in the Bendlerblock itself, senior officers were refusing to take orders from the conspirators, reminding them of the oath they had taken to Hitler which, since the radio had broadcast news of his survival, was still valid.115
