Hitler's Last Secretary (20 page)

Frau Christian ran to meet them, and we were sent back and told not to go any further, because the place was barricaded off. We learned no more. The two officers scarcely heard us, which wasn’t surprising; the explosion had not only concussed them but burst their eardrums.

We went back to our hut. We still knew nothing about the cause of the accident, or its nature and effect. If only we could know what had happened! Was Hitler still alive? We hardly dared ask, but vague ideas of what might happen if Hitler was dead haunted my mind. I couldn’t think straight. Was there anyone among Hitler’s colleagues who could take over as his successor? Himmler, Göring, Goebbels? The idea struck me as impossible. They were just moons who drew their radiance from the sun and had no power of their own to give light. Or was there someone else in Germany, some opponent of Hitler, who might now seize power for himself?

Confused suppositions were going round and round in my head, yet it was only minutes since we’d heard the explosion. At last Otto Günsche passed our window. He must have been at the conference too, but he seemed to be all right and uninjured. We ran to him. ‘What’s happened? Is the Führer alive? Was anyone killed? What caused it?’ He couldn’t answer all our questions at once. ‘The Führer is all right. He’s back in his bunker, and you can go and see him. But the whole hut was blown up. It was an explosive device – probably hidden in the floor by the OT people.
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We don’t know any details yet.’

Curiosity drove us to the Führer bunker. I almost laughed at the sight of Hitler. He was standing in the little anteroom surrounded by several of his adjutants and servants. His hair was never particularly well cut, but now it was standing on end so that he looked like a hedgehog. His black trousers were hanging in strips from his belt, almost like a raffia skirt. He had thrust his right hand between the buttons of his uniform tunic; his arm was bruised. Smiling, he greeted us with his left arm. ‘Well, ladies, everything turned out all right again. Yet more proof that Fate has chosen me for my mission, or I wouldn’t be alive now.’

Of course we asked what had caused the explosion. ‘It was a cowardly assassination attempt,’ said Hitler. ‘The explosives were probably laid by a craftsman working for the OT. I don’t believe in the other possibility,’ he said, turning to Bormann, who nodded in agreement. Bormann was always nodding in agreement. We would have liked to know more details. But Linge looked at his watch and said, ‘My Führer, I think you’ll have to change your trousers. The Duce will be arriving in an hour’s time.’ Hitler looked down at his rags. ‘You may be right.’ He left us and went to his room, his stance more upright and erect than I had seen it for a long time.

We would have liked to see the scene of the incident at close quarters, but we weren’t allowed into it yet. All we could see from the entrance to the Führer bunker was that the part of the lightly built hut containing the big conference room had collapsed.

However, Grenadier Mandl, the youngest and most junior soldier in the Führer bunker, was happy to show off his importance by giving us a full description of what he had seen on orderly duty in the hut while the conference was in progress. ‘The explosives went off only two metres from the Führer, but General Bodenschatz,who was standing next to him and was just bending over the table, took the main force of the blast just as the device exploded. He’s very badly injured. So is General Schmundt. He lost large chunks of flesh torn out of his back, and he has a lot of burns. The stenographer sitting at the end of the table died instantly. Both his legs were torn off. Keitel and Jodl are wounded too, but the Führer wasn’t injured. Sturmbannführer Günsche and Major von John
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were flung out of the open window by the blast and landed in the grass several metres from the hut. Most of the men who were at the conference have splinter wounds, burns or minor injuries.’ Grenadier Mandl knew all about it.

There was feverish tension and excitement all over the camp. Whenever two people met they discussed the assassination attempt. Hours passed like minutes and minutes like hours. As soon as the last smoke from the explosion had dispersed, they managed to identify the assassin. And in Berlin, Fate came down on Hitler’s side.

While Hitler was returning to the scene with his companions after the assassination attempt, and they were going over all the details again, someone mentioned that Colonel von Stauf-fenberg
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was the only officer who hadn’t been present when the explosion occurred, because he had just left the room to make a phone call.

Suddenly Lance Corporal Adam from Intelligence came up to the Führer. He had been on telephone duty in the conference room, and suddenly announced, ‘My Führer, yes, Colonel von Stauffenberg did leave the conference room just before the explosion, but not to make a phone call. He left the hut instead. He had such an odd expression on his face that I feel it’s my duty to tell you he could have been the one who did it.’

Hitler was silent for a while. No one said anything. Up to now no one had suspected that an officer on Hitler’s own staff could be the assassin. This was a second bombshell. Hitler still didn’t want to believe it, but he gave orders to have Stauffenberg traced. The avalanche began to roll and the tragedy took its course. Not until that evening when we joined Hitler for tea did we hear the full story.

It really had been Colonel von Stauffenberg who brought a bomb in his briefcase and left it by the table leg, just two metres from where Hitler was sitting. Stauffenberg did not often attend the military briefings. This time he had volunteered to General Buhle for the duty. Major von John usually carried Stauffenberg’s briefcase for him because he had only three fingers on his right hand. Now John suddenly remembered that on this occasion Stauffenberg had refused to hand over his briefcase. With its fatal contents, it had been standing right next to Hitler for over an hour. Then Colonel von Stauffenberg left the scene of the crime and set off to join General Fellgiebel, one of his fellow conspirators, and wait for news that the plot had succeeded. The bomb went off just as he had planned. Stauffenberg got into his car and drove through the camp, past the ruined hut. He saw the wounded officers lying in the grass, no sign of Hitler, just the smoking, shattered wooden remains and bleeding men. He must have thought his mission had succeeded, and he drove to the airfield convinced that Hitler was dead. But by the time Stauffenberg drove past the hut the Führer was already back in his bunker, uninjured and fit and well.

Of course Goebbels was immediately informed of the failed assassination, but it wasn’t made public knowledge. No one knew yet how many accomplices Stauffenberg had and what was going on in Berlin. But soon there was much hurry and bustle, with a great many confused orders and counter-orders. All hell was let loose at OKW.
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None of them there knew where their allegiance lay – with the resistance movement in the Wehrmacht, or with those loyal to Hitler? The circumstances of what went on in Berlin were never quite clear to me. All I know is that the commander of the ‘Greater Germany’ regiment, Colonel Remer,
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decided the matter when he placed himself under the orders of Goebbels, ordered his men to occupy the Reich Chancellery and the radio station, and denied entrance to the resistance officers. This action earned him the award of the Knight’s Cross from Hitler next day, and peace was restored to the streets of Berlin without a shot being fired.

But it took a long time for the waves of excitement to die down at headquarters. When I saw Hitler that evening he was still full of fury and indignation over such treachery at the most crucial phase of the war. ‘What cowards they are! They could at least have shot at me – then I might feel some respect for them. But they daren’t put their lives at stake. There can’t be many people stupid enough to think they could do better than me. Those fools don’t know what chaos there will be if I let go of the strings. But I’ll make an example of them that will stop anyone else wanting to commit such treachery against the German nation!’ Hitler’s eyes were flashing. He was livelier than I’d seen him for a long time, although his right arm was causing him pain. He held it motionless between the buttons of his tunic. The table top had wrenched his arm when the bomb blast sent it up in the air.

I don’t know what would have happened if the assassination had succeeded. All I see is millions of soldiers now lying buried somewhere, gone for ever, who might instead have come home again, their guns silent and the sky quieter once more. The war would have been over.

But that vision is quickly banished by what really happened: the assassination attempt of 20 July was the greatest possible misfortune for Germany and Europe. Not because it was made but because it failed. Hitler saw all the unfortunate coincidences that foiled the plot as his personal success. His confidence, his certainty of victory and his sense of security, his consciousness of power and his megalomania now really passed beyond all the bounds of reason. If recent military defeats might perhaps have made him ready to compromise, if his inmost heart had sometimes wavered in its belief in victory, now he thought that Fate had confirmed his own worth, his ideals, his power and all that he did.

‘Those criminals who wanted to do away with me have no idea what would have happened to the German nation then. They don’t know about the plans of our enemies who want to destroy Germany so that it can never rise again. If the Jews, with the hatred they feel, ever get power over us, then all will finally be over for German and European culture. And if they think the Western powers are strong enough to hold back Bolshevism without Germany they’re wrong. This war must be won or Europe will be lost to Bolshevism. And I shall make sure that no one else can keep me from victory or do away with me. I am the only one who sees the danger and the only one who can stop it.’ Hitler thought it necessary to address the German people that same day. While we were still in the bunker a radio car was ordered from Königsberg, and the transmission line was set up in the tea-house.
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We went over there with Hitler just before midnight. The officers who had survived the assassination attempt with only slight injuries were in the tea-house as well. General Jodl had a bandage round his head, Keitel’s hands were bandaged too, and other officers wore plasters. It looked like the aftermath of a battle. For the first time you got the impression of a field headquarters. Men had really been wounded.

They were acting as if they had won a hard battle and a great danger had now passed. They congratulated the Führer on his miraculous survival, and we stood there and let their mood infect us, we went on believing in him, never realizing that the die had been cast to decide our fate that day.

Then Hitler spoke. He made a short speech intended to show the German nation that he was uninjured. He thanked Providence for averting a great misfortune from the German people, and urged them to go on believing in victory and work for it with all their might.

We listened, isolated and dazed by the frenzied aura of superior confidence radiating from these heroes of 20 July, and it never occurred to us that thousands of listeners out there were groaning in disappointment, burying their hopes and cursing the fate to which Hitler was so grateful. I still thought we had to win the war because otherwise all the terrible things Hitler had mentioned would happen, and they meant the end.

After the speech we went back to the bunker. Hitler summoned Professor Morell to come and examine him. He had had his pulse taken directly after the assassination attempt, and was very proud that it was perfectly regular and had been no faster than usual. Now, before he went to bed, he wanted confirmation that he was uninjured. We sat there for a while until the fat doctor made his way through the door, and then we went to bed ourselves. The morning sky was already showing pale through the trees. The sun would soon rise.

Of course the assassination attempt was the main subject of every conversation for a long time to come. Eva Braun was dreadfully upset, and wrote Hitler an anxious, desperate letter. He was very moved by her affection, and sent his wrecked uniform to Munich as a memento. Once he said, ‘I can rely absolutely on my presentiments. I once had such a restless, odd feeling at the Berghof that I just had to leave. And now I know an assassination attempt was being planned on the Obersalzberg. There was new equipment for me to look at, and one of the soldiers involved in the display was to have an explosive device put in his knapsack without his knowledge. But by chance a general who was one of the conspirators was present, and they wanted to spare him, so the attempt had to be called off. However, if that bomb had exploded at the Berghof or in the new bunker none of us would be alive now. I don’t fear death. My life is so full of care and so hard that death would come merely as a release. However, I have a duty to the German people, and I will do that duty.’

Although he said he felt ‘uninjured’, Hitler did summon an ear specialist from Berlin, because his hearing was giving him trouble and he was suffering from headaches. Dr Giesing
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found out that one eardrum was burst and the other damaged. Professor Brandt, who hadn’t been present when the assassination attempt took place, did not come. We wondered why not. There was nothing Professor Morell, a specialist in internal medicine, could do with his injections. After his treatment the badly injured men in hospital in Rastenburg recovered only with difficulty. There was no saving General Schmundt. He died of his injuries a few weeks later, although Morell had tried out his newest sulphonamides on him.