The original plan,
designed to deal with internal disturbances in emergency
situations, was designed by General Friedrich Olbricht's
staff in his capacity as head of General Army Office and was
approved by Hitler.The idea of using the Reserve Army in
the German homeland for a coup existed before, but the
refusal of Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm, Chief of the
Reserve Army and the only person who could initiate
Operation Valkyrie besides Hitler, to cooperate, was a
serious obstacle to the conspirators. Nevertheless, after
the lessons of a failed assassination attempt on 13 March
1943, Olbricht felt that the original coup plan was
inadequate and that the Reserve Army should be used in the
coup even without Fromm's cooperation.
Henning von Tresckow in 1944 : The original Valkyrie order
only dealt with strategy to ensure combat readiness of units
among scattered elements of the Reserve Army. Olbricht added
a second part, 'Valkyrie II' which provided for the swift
mustering of units into battle groups ready for action. In
August and September 1943, General Henning von Tresckow
found Olbricht's revision inadequate, thus greatly expanded
the Valkyrie plan and drafted new supplementary orders. A
secret declaration began with the words: "The Führer Adolf
Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of party leaders has
attempted to exploit the situation by attacking our
embattled soldiers from the rear to seize power for
themselves." Detailed instructions were written for
occupation of government ministries in Berlin, Himmler's
headquarters in East Prussia, radio stations, telephone
exchanges, other Nazi infrastructure through military
districts, and concentration camps. (Previously, it was
believed that Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was
mainly responsible for the Valkyrie plan, but documents
recovered by the Soviet Union after the war and released in
2007 suggest that a detailed plan was developed by Tresckow
in autumn 1943.) All documents were handled by Tresckow's
wife, Erika, and by Margarete von Oven, his secretary. Both
women wore gloves to leave no fingerprints.
In essence, the plan was to trick the Reserve Army into the
seizure and removal of the civilian government of wartime
Germany under the false pretense that the SS had attempted a
coup d'État and assassinated Hitler. The key requirement was
that the rank-and-file soldiers and junior officers who were
supposed to execute this plan would be motivated to do so
based upon their false belief that it was the Nazi civilian
leadership who had behaved with disloyalty and treason
against the state, and were therefore required to be
removed. The conspirators counted on the soldiers to obey
their orders as long as they came from the legitimate
channel — namely, the Reserve Army High Command in the
emergency situation following Hitler's death. Apart from
Hitler, only General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the
Reserve Army, could activate Operation Valkyrie. Therefore,
Fromm had to either be won over to the conspiracy, or in
some way neutralized for the plan to succeed. Fromm, like
many senior officers, largely knew about the military
conspiracies against Hitler, but neither supported them nor
reported them to the Gestapo.
The key role in its actual implementation was played by
Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, after his
assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944.
Stauffenberg also further improved the Valkyrie plan and
made changes to address changing situations. Stauffenberg's
position as Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army gave him
access to Hitler for reports and at the same time required
his presence at headquarters for implementation of Valkyrie.
At first, Tresckow and Stauffenberg sought out other
officers with access to Hitler who could carry out the
assassination. General Helmuth Stieff, Chief of Organization
in Army High Command, volunteered to be the assassin but
later backed down. Tresckow attempted several times to be
assigned to Hitler's headquarters without success. Finally,
Stauffenberg decided to carry out both the assassination
attempt and the Valkyrie operation, which greatly reduced
the chance of success. After two abortive attempts,
Stauffenberg placed the bomb on 20 July and hurried back to
Berlin to assume his pivotal role.
Discovering that the bomb had not killed Hitler, Fromm
ordered the executions of General Friedrich Olbricht, his
chief of staff Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, Colonel
Claus von Stauffenberg, and his adjutant Lieutenant Werner
von Haeften. Shortly after midnight, the condemned men were
led to a mound of earth back-lit by idling vehicles where
each was executed by firing squad in the courtyard of
Bendlerstrasse headquarters. |
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