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Claus von Stauffenberg

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Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German army officer and one of the leading figures of the failed July 20 Plot of 1944 to kill Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany.

File:Stauffenberg-signature-head.jpg
Claus von Stauffenberg

Early life

Stauffenberg was born the third of three sons (the others being the twins Berthold and Alexander) in the then Stauffenberg castle of Jettingen between Ulm and Augsburg, in the eastern part of Swabia belonging then to the Kingdom of Bavaria, forming part of the German Reich. He was born to the von Stauffenberg family, one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic Roman Catholic families of southern Germany. His parents were Alfred Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the last Oberhofmarschall of the Kingdom of Württemberg, and Caroline Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg (née Countess von Üxküll-Gyllenband). Among his maternal ancestors were several famous Lutheran Prussians, including Field Marshal August von Gneisenau.

Like his brothers, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was carefully educated and inclined toward literature, but eventually took up a military career. In 1926, he joined the Reichswehr, also called in German the "100.000 Mann Armee" and more specifically the Bamberger Reiter- und Kavallerieregiment 17 (17th Cavalry Regiment) in Bamberg, the family's traditional regiment (see also Bamberg Horseman) as a professional soldier. It was around this time that the three brothers were introduced by Albrecht von Blumenthal to poet Stefan George's influential circle, from which many notable members of the German resistance would later emerge. Claus was commissioned as a Leutnant (Lieutenant) in 1929.

In his military career, Stauffenberg had studied modern weapons at the Kriegsakademie in Berlin-Moabit, but remained focused on the use of horses in then modern warfare. In fact, horses carried a large part of transportation duties throughout and at the end of the war, when fuel supplies were short. He was promoted to Rittmeister in 1937. His regiment became part of the German 1st Light Division under General Erich Hoepner who had taken part in the 1938 German Resistance coup plans which were choked by Hitler's unexpected success, the Munich Agreement. The unit was involved in the occupation of the western part of Czechoslovakia, in Germany then called the "Sudetenland". Once the Second World War started in 1939, Stauffenberg and his regiment took part in the attack on Poland, the "Polish campaign".

World War II

Stauffenberg found some aspects of the Nazi Party's ideology repugnant, although he agreed with its nationalism. Moreover, Stauffenberg remained a Catholic; the Roman Catholic Church had signed the Reichskonkordat in 1933, the year the Nazi Party came to power, but soon the Nazi government violated this agreement and German catholic bishops and the papacy protested against these violations, culminating in the papal encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Concern") of 1937. On top of this, the growing systematic maltreatment of Jews and suppression of religion had offended Stauffenberg's strong personal sense of morality and justice; he felt, for instance, that the November 1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of the broken glass") had brought shame upon Germany. While his uncle, Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll, had approached him before to join the resistance movement against the Hitler regime, it was only after the Polish campaign in 1939 that Stauffenberg's individual conscience and his religious convictions made him consider joining. Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld urged him to become the adjutant of Walther von Brauchitsch, then Supreme Commander of the Army, in order to participate in a coup against Hitler. Stauffenberg declined at the time, reasoning that all German soldiers had pledged allegiance not to the institution of the presidency of the German Reich, but to the person of Adolf Hitler.

Stauffenberg's unit was reorganized into the 6th Panzer Division, and he served as officer of its General staff in the Battle of France, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. Like many others, Stauffenberg was impressed by the overwhelming military success, which was attributed to Hitler.

After Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union) was launched in 1941, mass executions of Jews, Poles, Russians and others as well as what he believed was an already apparent deficiency in military leadership (Hitler had assumed the role of supreme commander in late 1941 after sacking Hoepner and others) finally convinced Stauffenberg in 1942 to join resistance groups within the Wehrmacht, the only force that had a chance to overcome Hitler's Gestapo, SD, and SS. During the idle months of the so called phony war preceding the military actions of the battle for France, he had already been transferred to the organizational department of the Oberkommando des Heeres, the German high command over the Eastern Front. Stauffenberg opposed the Commissar Order, which Hitler wrote and then canceled after a year. He tried to soften the German occupation policy in the conquered areas of the Soviet Union by pointing out the benefits of getting volunteers for the Ostlegionen which were commanded by his department. Guidelines were issued on 2 June 1942 for the proper treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) from the Caucasus region which had been captured by Heeresgruppe A. As the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention (1929), German POWs in Soviet hands could not expect treatment according to this convention, and in turn, many Germans were not inclined to protect the millions of Soviet POWs as demanded by the Geneva convention. However, Stauffenberg did not engage in any coup plot at this time. Hitler was at the peak of his power in 1942. The Stauffenberg brothers (Berthold and Claus) maintained contact with former commanders like Hoepner, and with the Kreisau Circle; they also included civilians and social democrats like Julius Leber in their scenarios for a time after Hitler.

In November 1942 the Allies landed in North Africa, and the 10th Panzer Division occupied Vichy France (Case Anton) before being transferred to Tunis to support Rommel's Afrikakorps.

In 1943 Stauffenberg was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on a general staff (Oberstleutnant i. G. (im Generalstab)), and was sent to Africa to join the 10th Panzer (tank) Division as its Ia or "First Officer in the General Staff." There, while he was scouting out a new command area, his vehicle was strafed on 7 April 1943 by British fighter-bombers and he was severely wounded. He spent three months in hospital in Munich, where he was treated by Ferdinand Sauerbruch. Stauffenberg lost his left eye, his right hand, and the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand. He jokingly remarked to friends never to have really known what to do with so many fingers when he still had ten of them.

For rehabilitation, Stauffenberg was sent to his home, Schloss Lautlingen, then one of the Stauffenberg castles in Southern Germany. Initially he felt frustrated to not be in a position to stage a coup by himself. But by the beginning of September 1943, after a somewhat slow recuperation from his wounds, he was sent by the conspirators as a staff officer to the headquarters of the "Ersatzheer" (Home Army), located on Bendlerstrasse in Berlin.

There, one of Stauffenberg's superiors was General Friedrich Olbricht, a committed member of the resistance movement. The Ersatzheer had a unique opportunity to launch a coup, as one of its functions was to have "Operation Valkyrie" in place. This was a contingency measure which would let it assume control of the Reich in the event that internal disturbances blocked communications to the military high command. Ironically, the Valkyrie plan had been agreed to by Hitler and was now secretly prepared to become the means, after Hitler's death, of sweeping the rest of his regime from power. For the assassination to be committed by Axel von dem Bussche in December 1943 a detailed military plan was created to occupy Berlin and the different headquarters in Eastern Prussia by military force, once Hitler had died. Stauffenberg confided in von dem Bussche with part of this plan. von dem Bussche in accordance with Stauffenberg's orders passed it on to Major Kuhn once he arrived at Wolfsschanze. After the plot of von dem Bussche failed for the second time, Kuhn hid these documents in the nearby OKH under a watch tower. Kuhn became a POW of the Soviets after the July 20 plot. He led them to the hiding place in February 1945. In 1989 Gorbachev returned these orders as a present to the German chancelor Helmut Kohl.

In 1944 as the tide was increasingly turning against the conspirators, they were forced to switch from meticulous planning to improvisation.

Stauffenberg had been for years convinced by the criminal nature of the Hitler regime, but since early 1943 he believed, that Hitler's strategies would ruin Germany and cost millions of additional innocent lives. He felt like many people around him that there had to be an attempt on Hitler's life. Later in July 1944 Claus had doubts about the chance of success. His friend Tresckow convinced him that the plot had to be attempted even with no chance of success, if this would be the only way to prove to the world that the Hitler regime and Germany were not necessarily identical and to demonstrate that not all Germans tolerated Hitler's crimes. In June 1944 the Allies landed in France on D-day. Like most German military professionals, Stauffenberg had absolutely no doubt that the war was lost. Only an immediate armistice could avoid even more tremendous bloodshed and further damage to Germany and its people.

Stauffenberg was aware that by German law (then and now) he was about to commit high treason. He openly told young conspirator Axel von dem Bussche in a meeting 1943: "Let's be matter of fact, I am with all my power and means pursuing high treason...." ("Gehen wir in medias res, ich betreibe mit allen mir zur Verfuegung stehenden Mitteln den Hochverrat...") He justified his project to Bussche by reference to the right under natural law (in German, "Naturrecht") to defend millions of people's lives from the criminal aggressions of Hitler (in German: "Nothilfe").

From the beginning of September 1943 until July 21, 1944, Claus was the driving force behind the plot. His resolve, his organisational abilities, and his revolutionary approach put an end to inactivity caused by doubts and long discussions on hitherto military virtues made obsolete by Hitler's behavior. Helped by Henning von Tresckow, he united the conspirators and drove them into action.> Joachim Fest; "Hitler - Eine Biographie" .

File:PICT4156.JPG
Bust of Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Memorial to the German Resistance, Berlin)

July 20 Plot

Main article: July 20 Plot

Stauffenberg's part in the original plan required him to stay at the Bendlerstrasse offices in Berlin, from where he would phone regular Army units all over Europe and the Reich in an attempt to convince them to arrest leaders of Nazi political organizations such as the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo. Unfortunately, he found himself having to both kill Hitler far away from Berlin and organize the military machine in Berlin at practically the same time. He was the only conspirator who had regular access to Hitler (during his briefing meetings) by mid 1944, as well as being the only officer among the conspirators who knew most of the German military leaders personally, which gave him the best chance of convincing them to throw in with the coup once the assassination had taken place.

Thus in 1944 Stauffenberg, who by this time was promoted to Oberst (Colonel), agreed to carry out the assassination of the German Führer, Adolf Hitler himself--a need that became further apparent to him after several other attempts (e.g. the one of Axel von dem Bussche) had failed. The attempt after several trials by Stauffenberg would, through chance, ultimately take place at a briefing hut at the military high command in Eastern Prussia called Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) near Rastenburg, East Prussia (today Kętrzyn, Poland) on July 20, 1944. Albert Speer had met Claus in some of the meetings near Berchtesgaden and in Eastern Prussia during summer 1944. He described the heavily mutilated, tall Colonel in his memoirs as a person of "mystical good looks."

On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg's briefcase contained two small bombs, each with a simple soundless chemical timer that could be set with a ten to fifteen-minute detonation delay once activated. After having traveled that morning from Berlin to Eastern Prussia (today, Poland) by a special plane, he entered the briefing room before Hitler had shown up. The meeting had unexpectedly been changed from the subterranean "Führerbunker" to the wooden barrack or hut of Speer. He told Hitler's butler that he needed to go to the restroom and thus left the meeting room, taking his briefcase with him. Once in the restroom he began to arm the first bomb, a task made difficult by the lack of his right hand and his missing of all but three fingers on his left. Somebody knocked on the door and urged him to hurry as the meeting was due to begin immediately. Stauffenberg was able to arm only one of the two bombs, which he placed back into his briefcase. He left the restroom, handing the second, unarmed bomb to his assistant and proceeded back to the briefing room, where he placed his briefcase under the conference table, not far from Hitler. After some minutes he excused himself, pretending to need to make an urgent phone call to Berlin, and left the meeting room. He waited in a nearby shelter until the explosion tore through the hut. From what he saw, he was fully convinced that no one in the room could have survived. Although four people were killed and almost all present were injured, Hitler himself was injured only slightly as he was shielded from the blast by the heavy, solid oak conference table. Some researchers have speculated that if Stauffenberg had placed the briefcase in a slightly different location that the bomb might have had its intended effect on the primary target, since the bomb was supposedly placed behind a very thick leg of the heavy oak wood conference table. The leg apparently deflected the blast and prevented any of the force from reaching Hitler. This thesis is supported by the fact that others seated in less fortunate positions were killed or more seriously injured than Hitler. There is also speculation that had Stauffenberg left the second bomb in his briefcase, even without arming it, the detonation of the first bomb could have triggered the explosion of the second bomb and the combined force of the two bombs going off nearly simultaneously might have killed Hitler. An alternate analysis is that the single bomb might have been effective had the meeting been held as originally planned in Hitler's reinforced bunker (the "Fuhrerbunker"), instead of the wooden hut that doubled as Speers barracks and makeshift briefing room. Both compact bombs were designed to kill by expansion inside a room encased with reinforced walls. Speer's wooden hut with open windows did not correspond to these specifications, as it allowed a substantial amount of the blast force to escape to the outside. Since some of the blast escaped the room, only those who were in the immediate path of the blast were killed or severely injured, whereas had the room been able to contain the blast then others in the room, even if not immediately adjacent to the blast, might not have fared so well.

Stauffenberg and his aide-de-camp, Leutnant Werner von Haeften, who carried the second bomb, quickly walked away and talked their way out of the heavily guarded compound. They were driven to the airfield. In a small forest nearby they got rid of the second bomb, then flew back to Berlin in a Heinkel He 111 specially prepared by Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg only learned of the failure to kill Hitler several hours later, some hours after he had landed in Rangsdorf airport south of Berlin, where he was met by his brother Berthold. While he was still in transit, an order was issued from the Führer's headquarters to shoot Stauffenberg and Haeften immediately, but the order landed on the desk of a fellow conspirator, Friedrich Georgi of the air staff, and was not passed on.

After his arrival in Berlin around 16:30, Stauffenberg, still mistakenly believing Hitler to be dead, began to motivate his friends to initiate the second phase of the project: to organize the military coup against the Nazi leaders. A short time later however, Joseph Goebbels announced by radio that Hitler had survived an attempt on his life. At 19:00 Hitler himself personally broadcast a message on the state radio, and the conspirators realized at that point that the coup had completely failed. The conspirators were tracked to their Bendlerstrasse offices and were shortly thereafter overpowered in a short shoot-out during which Stauffenberg was shot in the shoulder.

In an attempt to save his own life, Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army present in the Bendlerblock (Headquarters of the Army) and who had been involved in the conspiracy, arrested the conspirators, held an impromptu court martial, and condemned the ringleaders of the conspiracy to death. Stauffenberg and fellow officers General Olbricht, Leutnant von Haeften, and Oberst Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim were shot around 01:00 that night (July 21, 1944) by a makeshift firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which was lit by the headlights of a truck.

File:Bendler Block Memorial.JPG
Memorial at Bendlerblock

As his turn came, Stauffenberg spoke his last words: "Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland!" ("Long live our sacred Germany!") Fromm gave orders that the executed officers (and his former co-conspirators) receive an immediate but honorable burial in the Matthäus Churchyard in Berlin's Schöneberg district. Today there is a stone in memory of this event. The next day, however, Stauffenberg's body was exhumed by the SS, stripped of his medals, and cremated.

Another central figure in the plot was Stauffenberg's eldest brother, Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Berthold was tried before Roland Freisler in the special court established by Hitler for political offenses (called "People's Court" Volksgerichtshof) on August 10, 1944 and was one of eight conspirators executed by slow strangulation in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, later that day (reputedly with piano wire used as the garrote). More than a thousand fellow conspirators were condemned in show trials and executed.


One generation later, 35 years after the end of the war, the Bendlerblock was transformed by the German government into a memorial for the failed anti-Nazi resistance movement. Bendlerstrasse was renamed to Stauffenbergstrasse, and the Bendlerblock now houses the Memorial to the German Resistance, a permanent exhibition with more than 5,000 photographs and documents showing the various resistance organisations at work during the Hitler era. The courtyard where the officers were shot on July 21, 1944, is now a site of remembrance with a plaque commemorating the events and includes a memorial bronze figure of a young man with his hands symbolically bound which resembles Graf Stauffenberg.

Family

Stauffenberg married Nina Freiin von Lerchenfeld in November 1933 in Bamberg. They had five children: Berthold, Heimeran, Franz-Ludwig, Valerie and Konstanze. Konstanze was born in a concentration camp after Claus's death, as Nina was interned in a concentration camp after her husband's execution. She died aged 92 on 2 April 2006, at Kirchlauter near Bamberg and was buried there on 8 April. Their eldest son, Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, became a general in West Germany's post war army, the Bundeswehr, while his brother Franz-Ludwig became member of both the German and European parliaments.

Stauffenberg's widow Nina described her late husband :

"He let things come to him, and then he made up his mind ... one of his characteristics was that he really enjoyed playing the devil's advocate. Conservatives were convinced that he was a ferocious Nazi, and ferocious Nazis were convinced he was an unreconstructed conservative. He was neither."

Popular culture

  • Tom Cruise is set to play Stauffenberg in the movie Valkyrie, which is based on the plot and events leading up to the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler. Germany has barred the makers of the movie from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a member of the Church of Scientology. The film is slated for a 2008 release, will be directed by Bryan Singer and will co-star Kenneth Branagh. In an interview for Süddeutsche Zeitung Stauffenberg's eldest son Berthold appeared less than impressed by the casting of the movie. He advised Cruise to leave his father alone and rather climb a mountain or go surfing in the Caribbean ("Er soll seine Finger von meinem Vater lassen. Er soll einen Berg besteigen oder in der Karibik surfen gehen. Es ist mir wurscht, solange er sich da raushält.").

Notes

  1. Regarding personal names: Graf was a title before 1919, but now is regarded as part of the surname. It is translated as Count. Before the August 1919 abolition of nobility as a legal class, titles preceded the full name when given (Graf Helmuth James von Moltke). Since 1919, these titles, along with any nobiliary prefix (von, zu, etc.), can be used, but are regarded as a dependent part of the surname, and thus come after any given names (Helmuth James Graf von Moltke). Titles and all dependent parts of surnames are ignored in alphabetical sorting. The feminine form is Gräfin.
  2. The family's original name was Stauffenberg, and they held the noble titles of Schenk and Graf =Count. After 1918, when the Weimar Republic abolished all noble titles, the Stauffenberg family, like the other formerly noble German families added the words Schenk and Graf to their surname. Stauffenberg's formal surname was thus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. By convention he is usually (and wrongly) referred to in English simply as von Stauffenberg.
  3. Wunder,"Die Schenken von Stauffenberg"
  4. Quoted from Burleigh (2000).

Literature

  • Hoffman, Peter (1995). Stauffenberg : A Family History, 1905-1944. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45307-0. Translation of the German-language original, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Brüder.
  • Roger Moorhouse (2006), Killing Hitler, Jonathan Cape, ISBN 0-224-07121-1
  • Wheeler-Bennett, John; Overly, Richard (1968). The Nemesis of Power: German Army in Politics, 1918-1945. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing Company (New Impression edition). ISBN 0-333-06864-5.
  • Template:De icon Hoffmann, Peter (1998). Stauffenberg und der 20. Juli 1944. München: C.H.Beck. ISBN 3-406-43302-2.
  • Burleigh, Michael (2000). The Third Reich: A New History. Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-64487-5.
  • Stig Dalager, "Zwei Tage im Juli", documentary novel dealing with the 20th of July. Aufbau Taschenbuch-Verlag 2006.
  • Gerd Wunder, "Die Schenken von Stauffenberg". Stuttgart 1972, Mueller und Graeff

External links

interview with Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (the son) concerning the Tom-Cruise-movie

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