Hitler and his God

Claus von Stauffenberg

Times of extremes often produce remarkable personalities trying to bridge the extremes. In our story Stefan George would be no more than one of the exceptional Germans above the masses of average people if from his circle there had not issued Claus Schenck von Stauffenberg (1907-1944), the driving force behind the attempt on Hitler’s life on 22 July 1944. “I had the greatest poet of the age as my master”, said Stauffenberg proudly. His inspiration for a daring undertaking, which he knew could cost him his life, were George’s ideals, and after the attempt had misfired and Stauffenberg was put up against a wall, his last words echoing within that courtyard on the Bendlerstrasse were: “Es lebe das geheime Deutschland”, long live Secret Germany – a Germany of greatness, not of murder, destruction and death.

Claus von Stauffenberg met George in 1924, a year after his two brothers had been accepted into the circle. “This meeting and the relationship that developed were to be among the most influential experiences of his youth, and – occurring at a formative age – were to shape his development, his attitudes, his values, his entire Weltanschauung from then on.” 716 Claus had all the characteristics of the ideal George disciple: he was an aristocrat, very much conscious of this status; he was tall and good-looking, resembling the fine medieval statue The Bamberger Reiter, the Knight of Bamberg, in the cathedral of this town; he was intelligent and talented; and he had an extraordinary will power.

To George and his disciples, poetry was more than a noble pass-time; it was a way of fullest existence and a means of knowledge and power. “The poet should not replace the political Leader but prepare him”, wrote Wolfskehl, a member of the George Circle. “He should tune the German soul to the global will, revealed through him; he should provide her with the grace of her second wedding and prepare her for the break of dawn when the youth of the new fatherland feels its ardent unity amidst the clanging of their formerly deep buried weapons.” “The poet as leader”: in this slogan was manifested not so much the claim of the George circle to exert political leadership as the mission which would consist in leading the Leader. 717

George’s disciples “were to be the custodians of Germany’s future, an exclusive and elite cadre meticulously nurtured and honed for the task of leadership. The training and refinement of this cadre was something George regarded as a mission, a sacred duty, a discharging of his own personal responsibility to Germany – and, beyond Germany, to humanity as a whole, to the life of the spirit, to the cosmos and whatever gods or governing principles presided over it.” 718

His also had to be mystical warriors, soldiers of the spirit engaged on a spiritual crusade. In this respect they were heirs to the knights in George’s poem “Templars” (from which the motto of our present chapter is chosen) – of course not those of Lanz von Liebenfels’ Order of the New Templars, but the medieval high-minded, spiritual warriors ready to sacrifice everything for their ideals and the protection of others. “The latter-day ‘Templars’ George gathered around him comprised for him an unique kind of nobility and aristocracy of the spirit, not unlike that extolled a few years earlier by Nietzsche and a few years later by D.H. Lawrence … It was for this nobility, for the sources of their inspiration and for what they were expected to achieve, that the words ‘Secret Germany’ were first employed … George, unlike Nietzsche, did not choose to be alone; it was the heart of his method to build a secret empire for the sake of the new Reich to come … It was an elitist programme pushed to the very limits of elitism; the secret Germany was a club to which new members were elected and for which they were trained, one by one.” 719

Claus von Stauffenberg chose to serve his fatherland in the armed forces. One of his subordinates remembered later: “I was extraordinarily impressed by Stauffenberg’s personality. He seemed to me the ideal of an officer … He was a man possessed of natural authority.” He was also “universally recognized as the single most brilliant and promising young officer in the entire Wehrmacht … One of his colleagues observed: ‘What surprised me was the manner in which those who surpassed him in rank recognized his natural superiority and yielded to it’. In view of one of his commanders, he was ‘the only German staff officer of genius’. Heinz Guderian, the mastermind of German armoured warfare and architect of its panzer formations and the Blitzkrieg, was soon to put Stauffenberg’s name forward as most likely candidate for Chief of the General Staff.” 720

Then Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. “George had always decreed that politics were alien to art – and, by extension, inimical to the life of the spirit and to the very essence of humanity itself. His attitude towards the Nazis, however, sometimes appeared inconsistent, and this allowed a few members of his circle to support them … Ultimately, George was hostile to the new regime … George’s sometimes equivocal disapproval did not deter the Nazis from hailing him as a spiritual precursor and trying to co-opt him, much as they did Nietzsche.” 721

Resurgence and greatness of a new German Reich, leading to a new world and a new man; the fulfilment of the Führer expectation; the redress of alleged injustices by the morally and culturally inferior victors of 1918; ostentation of strength and will power; rituals and music which made the German innards vibrate – National Socialism had everything to allure national, conservative and traditional Germany, including the idealists, who were much more influenced by all these notions than they themselves realized. Hitler masterly conducted his revolutionary movement to exploit these elements in the mentality of the German population, and few escaped the spell of the music of this Pied Piper.

“Thus a generation of young men and women could be duped with a readiness that now appears both inexplicable and culpable. Yet had not Nazism evolved as it did, and culminated in the horrors that have seared themselves into our collective consciousness, its appeal would have been considerable today, not just to louts and skinheads, but to the literate, the thoughtful, the well-educated, the artistically inclined … A number of the future conspirators … found elements in National Socialism they felt they could endorse. So, too, could certain members of Stefan George’s circle.” Claus von Stauffenberg would say: “Hitler is capable of putting into words certain basic and genuine ideas which could lead to a spiritual revival. As a result both the idealistic and the high-minded might indirectly be attracted to him.” According to one of his friends, Stauffenberg “ was stirred by the magnetism this man was able to generate, and by his vehemence which made what seemed impossible in a stagnant world suddenly appear feasible … [Stauffenberg] had initially been quite impressed by Hitler’s accomplishments … By the time I met Stauffenberg, however, he had already become thoroughly alarmed over what was taking place”. 722

The falling of the scales from his eyes happened gradually. The iron-fisted totalitarianism, the vulgar and systematic suppression of the Jews, the never ceasing flood of blatant propaganda, the black side of Hitler and his paladins, the arrogance and ruthlessness of the SS, the atmosphere of suspicion and fear – it all looked more and more ominous to those who managed to keep their head an inch above the water. Revealing steps in their growing awareness were “the beheading of the SA” in what is called “the Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, and in 1938 what Nazi humour called the Kristallnacht, the night of shattering crystal, but what was in fact the biggest pogrom in German history. Stauffenberg was “mortified”.

In 1941, Stauffenberg was horribly wounded in Africa when a P-40 strafed his staff car. “He was found half-conscious beside his overturned, burnt out and shell-pocked vehicle. His injuries were appalling. His left eye had been hit by a bullet, his right seriously damaged as well. His right forearm and hand had been virtually shot away, as had two fingers on his left. One knee was badly wounded and his back and legs were pitted with shrapnel … While the surgeons laboured over him, he adamantly refused all pain-killing drugs, all soporifics, anaesthetics and sedatives. Even the Gestapo report speaks admiringly of the great will-power with which he embarked on his recovery … To an uncle who visited him at the hospital he confided that his survival had not been coincidental; his life, mutilated though it might now be, had been spared for some specific purpose, some ordained design.” 723

Stauffenberg reached the conclusion that Hitler had to die, this in spite of his own moral principles, his code of honour and the oath of allegiance to Hitler he had sworn as an officer. There was no longer an alternative. “I know that he who acts will go down in German history as a traitor; but he who can and does not will be a traitor to his conscience. If I did not act to stop this senseless killing, I should never be able to face the war’s widows and orphans.” For now it was no longer a matter of the killing of a hundred persons whom Hitler disliked, or of a thousand Jews caught at random, but of hundreds of thousands of German soldiers, people of other nations, and of the systematic genocide of the Jews. In Stauffenberg’s position as a staff officer he could not but know about this, even if he did not know all of it. “Stauffenberg was the acknowledged leader of the conspiracy, the figure to whom everyone turned for guiding force and strength of resolve.”

General Henning von Tresckow, one of the chief conspirators, is reported to have said: “The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be undertaken. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance movement dared to take this decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.” 724 Who wanted to stand up to Hitler had to put his life on the line, there was no other way since he had been handed the power on 30 January 1933. Even one week before that day Hitler could have been pushed into the dustbin of history; from that day onward the fate of Germany was sealed.

How many attempts have there been on Hitler’s life? Will Berthold has published a book about Die 42 Attentate auf Adolf Hitler¸ others say there have been more than 46. The fact is that Hitler survived all of them, often in the most incredible way as if he was forewarned or protected. The Stauffenberg attempt on 20 July 1944 affected him more badly than officially acknowledged, and from that day onward his health will decline rapidly. After meeting with him, Goebbels noted in his diary that Hitler “was firmly decided to set a bloody example”, and that in the weeks since the coup “he had been almost exclusively occupied with planning his revenge”. 725 It was on Hitler’s orders that the surviving conspirators, including a field-marshal and several high-ranking generals, were hanged with piano strings instead of ropes, thus being slowly strangled, and that the proceedings were filmed so that he could watch and enjoy them at his villa on the Obersalzberg. The killing of other conspirators, accomplices, suspected accomplices and relatives continued until the very moment of the Armistice; the reprisals took more than 5000 lives.

Not only Goebbels propaganda machine but also public opinion in general condemned the attempt unanimously. Tresckow, like Stauffenberg, had foreseen this reaction and said on the day after the attempt’s failure: “Now they will all fall upon us and cover us with abuse. But I am convinced, now more than ever, that we have done the right thing. I believe Hitler to be the arch enemy not only of Germany, but indeed of the entire world … A man’s moral worth is established only at the point where he is prepared to give his life for his convictions … Just as God once promised Abraham that he would spare Sodom if only ten just men could be found in the city, I also have reason to hope that, for our sake, he will not destroy Germany.” “According to some accounts”, write Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, “[Major-General Henning von] Tresckow walked from his headquarters to the front line and there shot himself. According to others, he simply strode out amid an artillery barrage into the no-man’s-land between German and Russian lines.” 726

Afterwards the conspirators have been accused time and again of betraying their fatherland in its hour of need, and of not honouring their soldier’s oath, sworn on Adolf Hitler by name. It is seldom mentioned that such an oath had never before been sworn on a particular person, and that it was sworn under duress, in circumstances hastily set up the day after President von Hindenburg’s death and in which no man could refuse to swear without paying dearly for his refusal. Nor is it remembered that Hitler himself had written in Mein Kampf: “A State is entitled to demand respect and protection for its authority only when such authority is administered in accordance with the interests of the nation, or at least not in a manner detrimental to those interests. The authority of the State can never be an end in itself, for, if that were so, any kind of tyranny would be inviolable and sacred. If a government uses the instruments of power in its hands for the purposes of leading a people to ruin, then rebellion is not only the right but also the duty of every individual citizen. The question of whether and when such a situation exists cannot be answered by theoretical dissertations but only by the exercise of force, and it is success that decides the issue.” 727 Finally, there is the question of the weight of an oath against the monstrous acts of inhumanity of which the man on which it was sworn, and the regime built up and directed by him, were guilty.

“The nine months between 20 July 1944 and the end of the war in Europe were to witness an appalling loss of life … Altogether they took more lives than the previous four years and eleven months of conflict. This statistic offers some gauge of the stakes involved in Stauffenberg’s conspiracy. Had Hitler died on 20 July 1944, the total casualties of the Second World War would have been halved.” (Baigent and Leigh 728)