In the confusion in the Bendlerblock late on the night of 20 July, it had looked for a time as if other executions would follow those of the coup’s leaders (together with the assisted suicide of Beck). But the arrival soon after midnight of an SS unit under the command of Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny — the rescuer of Mussolini from captivity the previous summer — who had been dispatched to the scene of the uprising by Walter Schellenberg, head of SD foreign intelligence, along with the appearance at the scene of SD chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Major Otto Ernst Remer, newly appointed commander of the Berlin guards battalion and largely responsible for putting down the coup, blocked further summary executions and ended the upheaval.19 Meanwhile, Himmler himself had flown to Berlin and, in his new temporary capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, had given orders that no further independent action was to be taken against officers held in suspicion.20
Shortly before 4 a.m., Bormann was able to inform the Party’s provincial chieftains, the Gauleiter, that the putsch was at an end.21 By then, those arrested in the Bendlerstraße — including Stauffenberg’s brother, Berthold, former civil-servant and deputy Police President of Berlin Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, leading member of the ‘Kreisau Circle’ Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, Protestant pastor Eugen Gerstenmaier, and landholder and officer in the Abwehr Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld — had been led off to await their fate.22 Former Colonel-General Erich Hoepner, arrested by Fromm but not executed, and Field-Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, who had left the Bendlerstraße before the collapse of the coup, were also promptly taken into custody, along with a number of others who had been implicated.23 Prussian Finance Minister Popitz, former Economics Minister Schacht, former Chief of Staff Colonel-General Haider, Major-General Stieff, and, from the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris and Major-General Oster were also swiftly arrested. Major Hans Ulrich von Oertzen, liaison officer for the Berlin Defence District
Those who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo had to reckon with fearsome torture. It was endured for the most part with the idealism, even heroism, which had sustained them throughout their perilous opposition.25 In the early stages of their investigations, the Gestapo managed to squeeze out remarkably limited information, beyond what they already knew, from those they so grievously maltreated. Even so, as the ‘Special Commission, 20 July’, set up on the day after the attempted coup under SS-Obersturmbannführer Georg Kießel and soon growing to include 400 officers, expanded its investigations, the numbers arrested rapidly swelled. Kießel was soon able to report 600 persons taken into custody.26 Almost all the leading figures in the various branches of the conspiracy were rapidly captured, though Goerdeler held out under cover until 12 August. Reports reached Hitler daily of new names of those implicated.27 His early belief that it had been no more than a ‘tiny clique’ of officers which had opposed him had proved mistaken. The conspiracy had tentacles stretching further than he could have imagined. He was particularly incensed that even Graf Helldorf, Berlin Police President, ‘Old Fighter’ of the Nazi Movement, and a former SA leader, turned out to have been deeply implicated.28 As the list lengthened, and the extent of the conspiracy became clear (all the more so following the remarkably full confession of Goerdeler, anxious to emphasize in the eyes of history the significance of the efforts of the opposition to remove Hitler and his regime), Hitler’s fury and bitter resentment against the conservatives — especially the landed aristocracy — who had never fully accepted him mounted.29 ‘We wiped out the class struggle on the Left, but unfortunately forgot to finish off
