In the summer of 1943, Adolf Hitler had said on the radio that never in the Third Reich could a July 25 like the one that had ousted Benito Mussolini in Italy occur. But for him there will be July 20, 1944: not to remove him, but to assassinate him. The common point between the Grand Council and the Wehrmacht officers who had promoted and implemented the plot was that both did not act in the name of an abstract freedom, but to save the system by sacrificing its leaders: the fascists for Italy’s exit from the war while preserving the regime, the Germans to reach peace with the Allies and turn the army against the Soviets. The concept of betrayal, however, was different. Because the hierarchs who had voted for Dino Grandi’s Order of the Day had placed his sovereign prerogatives in the hands of King Vittorio Emanuele III, but the officers had sworn allegiance directly to Hitler, and in German public opinion, unlike the Italian one, having tried to kill the Fuhrer was considered high treason.
And it will be like this for a long time to come. Hitler, in the aftermath of the attack on Rastenburg, had spoken with contempt of a “small clique of ambitious, irresponsible, insensitive and stupid officers” and had unleashed a ruthless revenge; Winston Churchill had dismissed the attempt on the Fuhrer’s life on July 20, 1944 as a showdown between the centers of power of the Third Reich and had observed cynically that the Nazi leaders were now killing each other. Few, in Germany, attributed to Operation Valkyrie the value of an attempt to regain freedom by eliminating its tyrant, but rather the expression of the self-preservation of the military caste to survive annihilation.
The Roar at the Wolffschanze and Rommel’s Letter
The bomb detonated at 12.42 by Claus von Stauffenberg during a meeting at the Wolffschanze in East Prussia was the trigger for a complex plan that was to lead to the reconquest of Germany after eleven years of absolute Nazi power, and to start negotiations with the Allies as soon as possible to direct all the war effort to the east where the Red Army was about to overrun. After the Normandy landings on June 6, the Western front was showing signs of weakness. An experienced soldier like Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had not missed the general picture and on July 16 he had sent a report on the situation in France to the supreme command, and therefore to Hitler, whose significance was clear: “I believe it is necessary to ask you to draw all the political consequences of this situation”.
He had immediately deleted the word “political” but the sense of the need to negotiate to end that war remained intact. The next day, in a conversation with the commander of the 1st SS Armored Division, Sepp Dietrich, he had been surprised to hear from him and his commanders that the situation was becoming unsustainable and that it had to be ended. Dietrich was a tough guy, a former driver and former bodyguard of Hitler, if he allowed himself to say this freely then it meant that there was very little that could be done. Just under 97,000 men had already been lost and only 6,000 had arrived as reinforcements. In the face of 227 out-of-combat panzers, 17 had been sent to the units. The Luftwaffe was a simulacrum of the one at the beginning of the war.
The Conspiracy to Negotiate with the Allies
There are already those who have thought that to save what can be saved nothing can be done if the root of all the problems is not first eliminated: Hitler. A nucleus of conspirators has gathered that includes high personalities of the army and civil society, diplomats, Catholic and Protestant churchmen, exponents of the aristocracy, who will have to fill the power vacuum and ferry towards the end of hostilities and prevent total disaster. Operation Valkyrie matures in this context, with the eighth attempt on the life of the Fuhrer who has miraculously escaped all previous attempts, generating in him the belief that he is under the protection of Providence. The plan is complex and must lead to the neutralization of all Nazi structures, starting with the SS. If its political head is in Germany, its operational military heart is in France, where the most difficult game is being played. Rommel, who joined the conspiracy only later and remained in the background, had already drawn up the composition of the Wehrmacht delegation that would have to go and negotiate with the Allies.
Wehrmacht vs. SS: Nothing Goes Right
But nothing goes well that July 20 in Rastenburg. Because of the heat, a room with wooden walls is chosen, not reinforced concrete, which would have multiplied the devastating effect of the device triggered by Stauffenberg; moreover, the briefcase he had placed near Hitler was taken and moved. When the explosion occurs, the colonel is convinced that everything has gone well and flies to Berlin for the operational part. But while the Wehrmacht disarms the SS units and arrests the leaders, more than one thing jams in communications, between doubts, hesitations, second thoughts, lack of decisiveness, ambiguity.
Hitler is not dead, he is only wounded, and in his shock he does not utter any phrase that makes history but is only concerned with his ruined trousers, worn for the first time. There are four victims, but even this is not enough to make history. Stauffenberg has imposed the distribution of the password “Walküre”, claiming that he himself saw Hitler dead, but it takes little before the real picture emerges in its dramatic truth. Some generals try to backtrack and opt out, Minister Joseph Goebbels launches proclamations of fire and vengeance, Hitler foams at the mouth.
The Embarrassing Encounter with Mussolini
At the meeting with the Duce scheduled for that day, Hitler will show up with an arm out of use due to temporary paralysis and a cotton ball in his ear due to the damage to his eardrum caused by the explosion. He will tell him that Providence has once again protected him so that he can carry out his mission for Germany. In the Reich there will be no military government like Badoglio’s to lead the way to the end of hostilities: General Ludwig Beck will not become Head of State, the former mayor of Leipzig Carl Gördler will not be chancellor, restoring the two constitutional offices that Hitler had merged after Hindenburg’s death, becoming Führer.
That denazified provisional government will never see the light of day. The conspiracy should have been completed within 24 hours or it would have failed if the Rastenburg attack had also succeeded: at 6 pm the most powerful German radio station, the Deutschlandsender, announces that Hitler has escaped the attack and will address the people in the evening. Minister Goebbels, who has remained in his office at Wilhelmplatz, has Major Otto Ernst Romer speak by telephone with the Führer in Rastenburg to prove to him that he is alive: the latter appoints him colonel and places him under the orders of Himmler with his entire Wachtbataillon. It is over. The reprisal will be merciless. Stauffenberg is pinned against the wall, summary executions take place everywhere, in the order of thousands like the arrests.
An orgy of revenge and blood
General Friedrich Fromm had tried to save himself by ordering the immediate shooting of General Friedrich Olbricht, Stauffenberg and Lieutenant von Haeften, to get rid of inconvenient witnesses, which took place in the light of the headlights of cars and trucks in the courtyard of Bendlerstrasse. General Beck asked to be able to shoot himself in the temple. Fromm himself would not escape the orgy of blood. Rommel, who thought he could have remained safe because of the accident caused by an aerial strafing that had caused him to be hospitalized, was forced to commit suicide: a public trial of a national hero was too risky for the regime, and in exchange his family would be spared. Hitler had announced on the radio that there would be no military trials but the judgment of the people’s court, and within two hours the sentence would be carried out.
No shootings, but hangings. Judge Roland Freisler will sadistically humiliate the defendants, who are forced to hold up their trousers without belts with their hands. The executions in prison are filmed by cameras and the footage is shown in the Chancellery. The head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, will be hanged by a piano wire. Stauffenberg’s body will be dug up and burned, and the ashes scattered “but not on cultivated land.”