Pierre Galante - Operation Valkyrie: The German Generals Plot Against Hitler

Operation Valkyrie

The German Generals
Plot against Hitler

Pierre Galante
with Eugne Silianoff

Translated from the French
by Mark Howson and Cary Ryan

First Cooper Square Press edition 2002

This Cooper Square Press paperback edition of Operation Valkyrie (originally published in France under the title Hitler est-il mort?) is an unabridged republication of the edition first published in New York in 1981. It is reprinted by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright 1981 by Librairie PlonParis-Match, as Hitler est-il mort?

English translation copyright 1981 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2002107028

ISBN-13: 978-0-8154-1179-6 (pbk : alk. paper)

Manufactured in the United States of America.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

I would like to express my profoundest gratitude to General Adolf Heusinger for his valuable, exclusive, and enriching cooperation, and to Frau Heusinger for her warm and gracious hospitality on innumerable occasions.

To my friend Louis Franois-Poncet, without whose aid and encouragement this book could never have been written.

To Mlle Jacqueline Sarrazin and the Berger-Levrault Library for allowing me to consult their files on Hitler and the German high command.

To Roger Thrond, managing editor of Paris-Match, who inspired me to write this book.

To John Toland and Oron J. Hale for their sheer kindness.

To George Wagner, Robert Wolfe, and William H. Cunliffe of the National Archives and Records Service.

To General von Witzleben, in Munich; Frulein von Hofacker, in Paris; Herr von Hase, in Bonn; and to Michel Tournier, of the Acadmie Goncourt, in Paris.

Eugne Silianoff and I wish to give a special vote of thanks to Dr. Helmuth Krausnick, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich; to his assistant, Frulein Dr. von Kotze, and to their colleagues Dr. Broschat, Dr. Auerbach, and Frau Violet, chief librarian of the Institute, as well as to Dr. Hans Stercken, former director of the Federal Center for Political Education in Bonn.

You must realize that the generals who occupied key positions refused to engage in any kind of subversive activity until they had made certain of Hitlers death.

GENERAL ADOLF HEUSINGER

Born in Lower Saxony, near Hannover, in 1897, Adolf Heusinger served in the First World War as a second lieutenant until he was taken prisoner by the English in 1917. He spent the next two and a half years in a POW camp. From 1927 to 1931 he attended the War College, and in 1932 he was promoted from first lieutenant to captain in the Reichswehr, the (theoretically) restricted 100,000-man army provided for in the Versailles Treaty. After marking time for seventeen years as a lieutenant, Heusinger achieved rapid promotion; he became a general in less than ten years. During his four-year tenure as operations chief of OKH he met with Hitler between six and seven hundred times, primarily at the midday military briefings at OKW headquarters. Suspected of complicity in the events of July 20, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo, and shortly after his release he gave himself up to the Americans. Once again it was several years before he regained his freedom. He subsequently served as a military adviser to the West German Defense Ministry.

In 1952 he was asked by General Eisenhower, How is it that you never succeeded in getting rid of Hitler?

He came to power quite legally, Heusinger replied. If I asked you to get rid of Truman, would you do it?

In 1957 General Heusinger was appointed inspector general of the Bundeswehr, and finally, from 1960 until 1964, he served as president of the Military Commission of NATO, which has its headquarters in the Pentagon. Today General Heusinger is retired; he and his wife live in Cologne, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. He has never forgotten that he has spent almost six years of his life in prison camps.

All the scenes and events described in this book at which General Heusinger was present were reconstructed by him shortly after the collapse of the Third Reich in May 1945, from extensive notes he had compiled during the course of the war. Descriptions of conditions at the front are based on eyewitness testimonyletters and transcribed conversations that General Heusinger has preserved in his personal archives; attitudes and opinions attributed to individuals or factions in the German military are also based on written memoranda of staff meetings and personal conversations prepared by General Heusinger during his tenure as chief of the Operations Section of OKH from 1940 until July 20, 1944.

Some of the material that concerns Hitler and the general staff, and some of General Heusingers own observations, were originally included, in somewhat different form, in a short account of the subject General Heusinger wrote after the war entitled Befehl im Widerstreit: Schick-sals-stunde der Deutschen Armee, 19231945 (Command in Conflict: The German Armys Hour of Decision). This work is not available in English, however, and the material presented here has been revised and updated to include information that was still classified when General Heusingers original account appeared in 1947. (As for the background and authenticity of scenes involving Claus von Stauffenberg, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, and other actors in the Valkyrie drama, see Sources.)

On the night of July 19, 1944, Hitler stayed up until two in the morning, as was his custom. After the midnight conference broke up, he continued to hold forth for the benefit of two of his four secretaries, Frau Johanna Wolf and Frau Christa Schrder. Before bidding them good night, he announced, I have a feeling of foreboding, but it is critical that nothing happen to me. I have neither the right nor the time to fall ill. After he had swallowed the narcotic sleeping potion that was prepared for him every night on the orders of his personal physician, Dr. Theo Morell, Hitler finally went off to bed.

As always, his valet, Heinz Linge, who had been in his service for over ten years, was waiting to hand him his nightshirt and put away his field-gray uniform. (Hitler never slept in pajamas, and no one, not even Linge, had ever seen him naked, or even stripped to the waist, a fact that gave rise to a great deal of amused speculation on the part of his entourage.) The Fhrer indulged his taste for luxurious surroundings and bourgeois comfort only at the Berghof, the chalet in Berchtesgaden he shared with Eva Braun; the decor of the Wolfs Lair here in Rastenburg was starkly functional. His bedroom was furnished with almost monastic simplicity; Gertraud Junge, one of his private secretaries, remembers it as very much like a bedroom in a youth hostela wooden bedstead, a wardrobe, a chair, a bedside table with a few books and magazines, and four bare walls. Marshal von Bock, who had once caught a glimpse of the Fhrers private quarters, commented approvingly, This is something that the men at the front should see.