Read Online Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member by Philip Freiherr von Boeselager - Free Book Online
Authors: Philip Freiherr von Boeselager
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Monsignor Galen, in addition to being my distant cousin, was a compatriot. The bishop was highly regarded among officers with any sense of morality, and his influence on the resistance in the military can be seen in a brief exchange I had with Colonel Hans Oster of the Abwehr toward the end of 1942. Knowing my connection to the Rhineland and Westphalia, and although he was himself a Lutheran, he asked me about the prelate:
“Are you a relative of Monsignor Galen?”
“No, not really.…”
“Too bad. He’s a man of courage and conviction. And what resolution in his sermons! There should be a handful of such people in all our churches, and at least two handfuls in the Wehrmacht! If there were, Germany would look quite different!”
In this context, certain incidents led me to enter the conspiracy. In retrospect, compared with the horror of the war and the magnitude of the Nazis’ crimes, these incidents seem minor. Another person might have reacted coolly to these experiences, and not been affected by them. But for me, they served as a catalyst. It is time to tell about them.
* Hitler ordered the T4 program halted on August 24, 1941, but some local officials continued killing people with disabilities until the end of the war.
9
An Encounter with the Demon
JUNE 1942
By early May 1942, I had largely recovered from my wound, but I remained handicapped. Limping, unable to ride a horse, I could not resume an operational assignment. I was therefore attached to the staff of Army Group Center, as aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Kluge. My role, like that of aides-de-camp in every army in the world, varied between all-purpose handmaiden and office manager: handling the marshal’s schedule, accompanying him, participating in discussions, writing up reports on meetings, summarizing the dispatches and radio messages that had come in overnight so they could be read in the early morning, running errands, transmitting orders, and, in short, organizing the marshal’s material life in order to facilitate his direction of operations. Kluge did not mistreat me. On the contrary, he was concernedabout making full use of my abilities. The marshal, who was overloaded if anyone ever was, often asked me to write the orders for the following day—a function that obviously belonged to the operations officer, namely, Tresckow. The next day, the marshal compared Tresckow’s orders with mine, and to train me he pointed out my errors and their possible consequences.… In the afternoon, when nothing special was planned, we took tea together. In the evening I joined him on his walks. I had, in a way, become the confidant of this old military man, who was a very interesting person.
I was lodged in the same group of huts as Kluge, along with General Wöhler, who was the chief of staff, and the service personnel (the orderly, the cook, and the driver), while the rest of the staff lived in a barracks about three hundred meters away. We went on duty at 6:00 a.m. At that hour we received the night bulletin from the staff’s operations office. I was supposed to present it to the marshal at exactly 7:00 a.m. During the first weeks I found this exercise very difficult. On his 1/300,000 map, Kluge had marked only the front, with a thick, dark line. He had not indicated the limits of the respective sectors held by the divisions. At that time Army Group Center included ninety divisions, and I was supposed to indicate, using a long wand, exactly where the night’s battles—thrusts, captures, attacks—had taken place, and continue my analysis down to the level of the regiment and the village. Fortunately, I had good eyes. After this presentation came breakfast, which the marshal and I always ate separately, whereas we shared the other meals with the marshal’s staff. In the course of the morning, General Wöhler, the chief of staff; Tresckow, the operations officer; the intelligence officer; and other department heads came in to report. That was the
“Are you a relative of Monsignor Galen?”
“No, not really.…”
“Too bad. He’s a man of courage and conviction. And what resolution in his sermons! There should be a handful of such people in all our churches, and at least two handfuls in the Wehrmacht! If there were, Germany would look quite different!”
In this context, certain incidents led me to enter the conspiracy. In retrospect, compared with the horror of the war and the magnitude of the Nazis’ crimes, these incidents seem minor. Another person might have reacted coolly to these experiences, and not been affected by them. But for me, they served as a catalyst. It is time to tell about them.
* Hitler ordered the T4 program halted on August 24, 1941, but some local officials continued killing people with disabilities until the end of the war.
9
An Encounter with the Demon
JUNE 1942
By early May 1942, I had largely recovered from my wound, but I remained handicapped. Limping, unable to ride a horse, I could not resume an operational assignment. I was therefore attached to the staff of Army Group Center, as aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Kluge. My role, like that of aides-de-camp in every army in the world, varied between all-purpose handmaiden and office manager: handling the marshal’s schedule, accompanying him, participating in discussions, writing up reports on meetings, summarizing the dispatches and radio messages that had come in overnight so they could be read in the early morning, running errands, transmitting orders, and, in short, organizing the marshal’s material life in order to facilitate his direction of operations. Kluge did not mistreat me. On the contrary, he was concernedabout making full use of my abilities. The marshal, who was overloaded if anyone ever was, often asked me to write the orders for the following day—a function that obviously belonged to the operations officer, namely, Tresckow. The next day, the marshal compared Tresckow’s orders with mine, and to train me he pointed out my errors and their possible consequences.… In the afternoon, when nothing special was planned, we took tea together. In the evening I joined him on his walks. I had, in a way, become the confidant of this old military man, who was a very interesting person.
I was lodged in the same group of huts as Kluge, along with General Wöhler, who was the chief of staff, and the service personnel (the orderly, the cook, and the driver), while the rest of the staff lived in a barracks about three hundred meters away. We went on duty at 6:00 a.m. At that hour we received the night bulletin from the staff’s operations office. I was supposed to present it to the marshal at exactly 7:00 a.m. During the first weeks I found this exercise very difficult. On his 1/300,000 map, Kluge had marked only the front, with a thick, dark line. He had not indicated the limits of the respective sectors held by the divisions. At that time Army Group Center included ninety divisions, and I was supposed to indicate, using a long wand, exactly where the night’s battles—thrusts, captures, attacks—had taken place, and continue my analysis down to the level of the regiment and the village. Fortunately, I had good eyes. After this presentation came breakfast, which the marshal and I always ate separately, whereas we shared the other meals with the marshal’s staff. In the course of the morning, General Wöhler, the chief of staff; Tresckow, the operations officer; the intelligence officer; and other department heads came in to report. That was the
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