Claus von Stauffenberg and the German Officers' Plot of 1944

Contemporary Review, Nov, 2004 by Allan Ramsay

AMONG the celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of France one other anniversary appears to have been overlooked, that of the German Officers' Plot of July 1944. The obvious reason is that it failed. But to Claus von Stauffenberg and his closest accomplices--his brother Berthold, Count Schulenburg, Mertz von Quirnheim and a handful of others--there were reasons as important as the removal of Hitler: the attempt might be said to have been its own justification; they travelled, not necessarily to arrive but to be seen to be doing something.

With hindsight the plot was never likely to succeed, not because the plotters were not brave or because the planning was not detailed enough, but because some of them were doubtful about it from the start. They were not afraid of the Nazi apparatus, but Germany was at war and war was the profession of almost all of them. They feared that the plot might be seen as another 'stab in the back', like the defeat in 1918, though delivered this time by the Army itself. Those, Stauffenberg among them, who saw the plot as a means of redeeming the Army's reputation, accordingly found themselves in a fix. There was, moreover, no encouragement from Britain and the USA with whom the conspirators made contact (they were wary about approaching the Soviet Union for reasons for their own security, though they considered doing so). This remained the case even after the conspirators indicated that they were prepared to accept the principle of Unconditional Surrender, the loss of territory that would follow defeat, and the certain prospect of foreign administration, and even the possible de-industrialisation of Germany. The truth is that, whatever the conspirators themselves might have hoped and believed, in the eyes of the Allies at least the German Army was by that time beyond redemption.

That the plot went ahead was due to the energy, organising ability and conviction of one man, Claus von Stauffenberg. He determined to make the attempt where others hesitated. He was impelled to do so by complex motives in which honour, both personal and national, played its part. He wanted to restore the Army to its proper place at the heart of the German nation. Inaction would have carried the implication that the Army and nation were as responsible as the Nazi party for the crimes committed in Germany's name. In the military ideology of the time the Army was the nation itself, the ultimate expression of Germanness. Without its Army, Germany was nothing. These beliefs were the motivation behind the rebuilding of the German Army carried out by General Hans von Seeckt and others between the wars. They were clever, determined and scrupulous men who felt they were acting in a higher cause though they had their feet firmly on the ground all the time. The British historian, Sir John Wheeler-Bennett wrote a book about this period entitled Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-45. It is well worth reading. The attempted assassination was an act both of expiation and of restitution.

Such motivation need not surprise us if it had come from the traditional Prussian officer class. To the English mind, long accustomed to regarding the Army as anything but the expression of national identity, it seems an aberration. But Stauffenberg was not a Prussian. He was not a member of the Junker class. He could claim only the most distant family connection with the Prussian traditions of the Teutonic Knights, the Eastern Marches, the sense of exclusiveness, and of military caste. It was sui generis, unique of its kind. Goronwy Rees studied it in its Silesian habitat during a summer vacation from Oxford before the war, and wrote about it later, when the war was over, in an Encounter article called Innocent Abroad. He describes the hallucinatory effect of the landscape, the immense cloudless, pale-blue summer sky, the unending plains of wheat broken by forest and marsh, the thoroughbred quality of his host's family and the fanaticism underlying the ingrained belief in a higher calling and the destiny of the German nation of which they and their kind were the stewards. A more chilling portrait appears in Marguerite Yourcenar's novel Le Coup de Grace. Stauffenberg's background was that of a more evolue kind.

Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was one of twin sons born on 15 November 1907 to Caroline (nee Uxkull-Gyllenband) wife of Alfred Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg. His twin died the day after his birth. There were two elder sons, also twins, Berthold and Alexander, born in 1905. The Stauffenbergs were members of the Swabian aristocracy and Count Alfred was Court Chamberlain to the King of Wurttemberg until the defeat of Imperial Germany in 1918. Thereafter he continued to administer the estates of the former royal family on their behalf.

The Stauffenbergs were Catholics--though Countess Stauffenberg, an Austrian, was a Lutheran--and Claus von Stauffenberg was brought up in the family faith. It remained one of the principal sources of inspiration throughout his life. Family life was divided between his father's apartments in the Royal Palace at Stuttgart and one of the family estates, of which Lautlingen seems to have been the favourite. The even tempo of life was interrupted by the First World War, by the occasional air raid, by deaths in action of relatives and friends, and by the political disturbances which followed the Armistice.