Company Valkyrie

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Colonel i. G. Claus Schenk Count of Stauffenberg
Major General Henning von Tresckow

The Walküre company was originally a plan by the German Wehrmacht to suppress a possible uprising against the National Socialist regime . It was converted by the resistance fighters around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg for their plan of overthrow.

Original planning

The planning was started at the beginning of the Second World War in order to prevent feared uprisings by the civilian population as well as by prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners . Soldiers of the reserve army were supposed to occupy important points in Berlin and other larger cities and take action against insurgents. The activation by the code word Valkyrie was reserved for Adolf Hitler personally and for the commander of the reserve army. The implementation thus depended on two key people. The plan was drawn up during the winter disaster on the Eastern Front in December 1941 and was intended to mobilize the replacement and training troops and the approximately 300,000 soldiers who are on home leave at any time, so that they can be quickly thrown to the front or used against enemy air or coastal landings. On cue, all available troops had to form reinforced regiments or combat groups, arm themselves and be ready to march within a few hours.

Modification of the plan in 1943

Henning von Tresckow and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg recognized the weak point in the plan. They relied on the Wehrmacht and, from 1943, inconspicuously adapted the Valkyrie to the needs of the planned assassination attempt on Hitler, so that associated, central persons of the SS , the security service (SD) , the Gestapo and the NSDAP would have been arrested.

According to the planning, the updated Valkyrie order to the armed forces should serve as the basis for the elimination of the party apparatus of the NSDAP and the SS agencies (insofar as they were part of the police apparatus) : The armed part of the SS is to be separated from the party hierarchy and subordinated to the Wehrmacht. In addition, according to the order, in the event of this state of emergency, all civil state authorities would be subordinated to the locally competent Wehrmacht commander (as executive authority ).

Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben , who had already been involved in plans for the deposition of Hitler in 1938 and 1939 and had joined the preparations for the Tresckows and von Stauffenbergs since 1943, was to become the new commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht as a result of the assassination attempt on Hitler . He signed this order as early as 1943:

I. The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead!
Taking advantage of this situation, an unscrupulous clique of party leaders outside the front tried to stab in the back of the struggling front and to usurp power for selfish purposes.
II. At this hour of greatest danger the Reich Government imposed a military state of emergency in order to maintain law and order and at the same time transferred executive power to me with the supreme command of the Wehrmacht.
III. To do this, I order:
1. I transfer the executive power - with the right of the delegation to the territorial commanders - in the homeland war area to the commander in chief of the replacement army with simultaneous appointment as commander in chief in the home war area - in the occupied western territories to the commander in chief West - in Italy to the commander in chief southwest - in the occupied eastern territories to the commanders in chief of the army groups and the armed forces commander Ostland for their respective areas of command - in Denmark and Norway to the armed forces commanders.
2. The owners of the executive are subordinate to:
a) all departments and units of the Wehrmacht in their area of ​​command, including the Waffen SS, the RAD and the OT ;
b) all public authorities (of the Reich, the states and the municipalities), in particular the entire order, security and administrative police;
c) All officials and branches of the NSDAP and its affiliated associations;
d) the transport and utilities.
3. The entire Waffen SS is incorporated into the army with immediate effect.
4. The holders of the executive power are responsible for maintaining order and public safety. In particular, you are responsible for:
a) securing the communication systems,
b) switching off the SD .
Any resistance to military law enforcement must be ruthlessly broken.
In this hour of greatest danger to the fatherland, the unity of the armed forces and the maintenance of full discipline are paramount.
I therefore make it the duty of all commanders of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to support the owners of the executive power in carrying out their difficult task with all possible means and to ensure that their instructions are followed by the subordinate agencies. The German soldier is faced with a historical task. Whether Germany is saved will depend on his drive and attitude.
All territorial commanders, the high commands of the armed forces and the command authorities of the army, navy and air force directly subordinate to the high command have the same thing.
The Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht
signed v. Joke life
Field Marshal General

The conspirators made the NSDAP politically responsible for the assassination attempt against Hitler. So they wanted to justify their measures against the party and the supreme Reich authorities to the mass of Germans loyal to the regime.

Triggered by Valkyrie on July 20, 1944

When, after the bomb explosion at 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, it turned out that Hitler had survived, General Erich Fellgiebel reported ambiguously to those waiting in Berlin for the key word “Valkyrie” shortly after 1 p.m. instead: "Something terrible has happened, the Führer is alive". Stauffenberg, however, when he found out around 3:45 p.m. after landing in Rangsdorf that Valkyrie had not yet been triggered, called General Friedrich Olbricht from the airport , asserted that Hitler was dead and urged Olbricht, even before he left for Berlin, Valkyrie trigger. Thereupon Olbricht's chief of staff, Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim , began to pass on the Valkyrie orders by telex and even by telephone, without the knowledge of the chief of the replacement army, Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm , who was the only one authorized to do so : One of the first telex messages to trigger Valkyrie was dated 16:45 Uhr, is addressed to the Military District Command XII, unlike the version from 1943, it does not have the heading “The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead!” But “Inner Unrest”, but is otherwise almost identical to the text and ends with “The Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht - signed v. Witzleben, Field Marshal General ”. Before sending this first series of telexes, a fatal technical mistake was made: Stauffenberg's adjutant, Captain Friedrich Karl Klausing , had it marked with the highest level of urgency (FFR) in response to a request from the telecommunications operator, but also classified it as a "secret matter of command" (gKdoS). As the latter, they could not be forwarded to 30 recipients at the same time, but first had to be encrypted and then sent individually and page by page. In addition, there were only four teleprinters available instead of about twenty . It took about three hours for the last telex to trigger Valkyrie to reach the recipient. In individual cases, like Mertz von Quirnheim, Stauffenberg himself notified the resistance group at General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel's headquarters in Paris that Valkyrie had been triggered. The Linz lieutenant colonel i. G. Robert Bernardis forwarded the Valkyrie order by telephone to the combat units stationed in Wehrkreis III (Berlin) . All three were obviously not authorized to do this because of their position. In addition, between 6:28 and 6:42 p.m., all departments were informed by three special reports from the German broadcaster that Hitler had only suffered minor injuries. Further telexes from the Bendler block, for example with details of the execution, arrived later than 9 p.m., although they were now classified as “secret”. For example, telex from the Bendler block partially overlapped with the telex from General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel from 8:20 p.m., in which he declared orders from the Bendler block to be invalid and announced: “The Führer is alive! Completely healthy! ”To make matters worse , some telexes from the Bendler block also went unnoticed to the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze because it had not been removed from the usual distribution list. So they were well informed there about the planned action of the opponent and telexes immediately went out that commands from the Bendler block were invalid.

The recipients of the telex from the Bendler block had to notice further inconsistencies. After Valkyrie was triggered, Erich Hoepner signed numerous other telexes from the Bendler block with the function indication "The Commander-in-Chief in the Homeland War Area" and the rank of Colonel General, although Hoepner had been dismissed from the Wehrmacht by Hitler in 1942 with subsequent confirmation by the Reichstag .

Other early telex had been sent in his name without Fromm's knowledge. Olbricht finally revealed this to Fromm and urged him, who had long been informed of the assassination plans, to support the measures of the Walküre company himself. When Fromm hesitated, Olbricht wanted to convince him of Hitler's death by calling Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in Wolfsschanze . But Keitel made it clear to Fromm that Hitler was only slightly injured. Fromm now refused to give further orders himself. When Stauffenberg finally arrived in Berlin around 4:30 p.m., he described Keitel's statement as a lie that Hitler must at least be seriously injured. In turn, Stauffenberg asserted to Fromm that he had seen Hitler himself being carried out of the building dead after the explosion, which he himself had ignited. Fromm was not convinced and declared Stauffenberg, Olbricht and Mertz arrested, but was arrested by them in a neighboring room. Another telex from the Bendler block dated 6:00 p.m. is addressed to almost all military area commands, invokes an authorization by the Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht (allegedly von Witzleben), contains a series of commands on practical procedures and is signed by the Colonel General Fromm established in truth and by Colonel i. G. Count of Stauffenberg.

Overall, because of these and other formal, technical and organizational deficiencies, the planned arrest of the SS and SD units only came about in Paris and Vienna , as the Valkyrie orders reached the military district commanders much too late and the countermeasures of the Nazi regime did began to grab. There was also uncertainty and confusion about whether Hitler was still alive and whose orders should be obeyed.

Later episodes

After July 20, 1944, Hitler suspended Valkyrie in this form. In addition, he handed over the command of the reserve army to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , who was then responsible for security in the Reich. Fromm's indecision also had consequences for himself: just one day later, it turned out that he was aware of the overturn plans. His withdrawal was not counted as loyalty. Since no direct involvement could be proven, he was sentenced to death by the People's Court "for cowardice in front of the enemy" and shot on March 12, 1945 in the Brandenburg prison .

See also

literature

  • Gerd R. Ueberschär : On the way to July 20, 1944, motives and development of the military opposition against Hitler. In: From Politics and Contemporary History B 27, 2004 ( online ).
  • Bernd Rüthers : Mirror image of a conspiracy - Two farewell letters for July 20, 1944. In: Juristenteitung. 14, 2005, pp. 689-698.
  • Evangelical Church AuHB in Austria (ed.): Robert Bernardis, Austria's Stauffenberg in honor of commemoration on the occasion of his 100th birthday. With an introduction by Federal President Dr. Heinz Fischer. Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85073-314-4 .
  • Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (ed.): Mirror image of a conspiracy. The opposition to Hitler and the coup d'état of July 20, 1944 in the SD reporting. Secret documents from the former Reich Security Main Office. 2 volumes. Stuttgart 1984.
  • Peter Hoffmann : Resistance, Coup, Assassination. The fight of the opposition against Hitler. Munich 1985.
  • Tobias Kniebe: Operation Valkyrie. The drama of July 20th. Berlin 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Federal Center for Homeland Service (ed.), Erich Zimmermann, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: July 20, 1944 . Berto-Verlag, 3rd edition, Bonn 1960, p. 124 ff.
  2. ↑ Appendix to the order of the conspirators of July 20, 1944 under the designation "The Commander-in-Chief in the Homeland War Area" to the military district commands I to XIII, XVII, XVIII, XX and XXI - quoted in after Jacobsen (ed.), Opposition to Hitler and the coup d'état of July 20, 1944, Stuttgart 1989.