“On July twentieth of last year, von Stauffenberg left a bomb in a briefcase under the map table in a small outside building, the Lagebarracke—in other words, not in the Führer Bunker—set the timer, and found an excuse to leave the building.
“He waited until he heard the bomb detonate, then flew to Berlin in a small Heinkel aircraft. He and his adjutant then went to the OKW building on Bendler Strasse, where they learned that while some aspects of the coup had been successful—in Paris, General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, one of the conspirators, had already arrested most SS officers in the city—the most important facet, the death of Hitler, had not been realized.
“General Friedrich Fromm, one of the conspirators, telephoned Wolfsschanze and spoke with Field Marshal Keitel, who told him Hitler was alive. Fromm, thinking to save his own neck, ordered the arrest of fellow conspirators General Friedrich Olbricht and von Stauffenberg. Instead, they arrested him and locked him in his office.
“Himmler, meanwhile, had contacted Major Otto Ernst Remer, who commanded the Wachbataillon Grossdeutschland in Berlin, told him of the failed assassination attempt, told him that he was now a colonel by order of the Führer, and ordered him to, quote, deal with the traitors at Bendler Strasse, end quote.
“Colonel Remer responded to his orders with enthusiasm. He and his men arrived at Bendler Strasse around twenty-two hundred hours and started shooting. Colonel von Stauffenberg was wounded in the left arm. The conspirators had no choice but to surrender and did so.
“General Fromm, still trying to save his own skin, promptly convened a summary court-martial, which promptly found von Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Mertz, Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, and Lieutenant Werner von Haeften guilty of high treason and ordered their execution.
“Shortly after midnight, they were led, one by one, before a stack of sandbags in the parking lot and executed by SS submachine-gun fire. Just before his executioners fired, von Stauffenberg shouted, ‘Long live our holy Germany.’”
“My God!” von Wachtstein said.
“In a sense, Graf von Wachtstein, they were fortunate,” Gehlen said.
Clete noticed that Gehlen had just called von Wachtstein “Graf” and then remembered he had done so before.
“Fortunate?” Delgano asked incredulously.
“The SS immediately began to arrest anyone suspected of being involved,” Gehlen went on. “The total was approximately seven thousand people. They missed some of the guilty—”
“Including General Reinhard Gehlen,” Mattingly interjected dryly.
“—and arrested many people who were completely innocent,” Gehlen went on as if he hadn’t heard Mattingly’s comment. “Accused officers were denied courts-martial and tried before the Volksgerichthof, whose chief judge was a man named Roland Freisler. Freisler permitted the accused no defense, and usually had the accused standing before the court in uniforms stripped of all insignia, buttons, belts, and braces. They had to try to hold their trousers up with their hands. When Freisler screamed at them to stand to attention, the trousers of course fell down and the accused faced the court in their underdrawers. Not a single person brought before the Volksgerichthof—there were two thousand—was acquitted.
“On August 10, 1944, three weeks or so after the bomb failed to eliminate Hitler, Graf von Stauffenberg’s brother, Berthold, Count von Schulenberg, and three others—including Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein—were tried and convicted of high treason and hung with despicable cruelty that afternoon in the execution hut in Berlin-Ploetzensee.”
“What does that mean, General?” Delgano asked. “‘Despicable cruelty’?”
Clete thought: For God’s sake, Gehlen, don’t answer that!
He glanced at Mattingly, whose face showed he was thinking the same thing.
“They were taken to the execution hut in an inner courtyard of the building,” Gehlen went on matter-of-factly, “where they were stripped of the clothing they had been wearing since their arrest. Their hands and feet were bound. Wire—something like piano wire—was looped around their necks, then around hooks—something like the hooks one sees in a butcher’s shop—on the wall.
“They then were strangled by their own weight. They took two or three minutes to lose consciousness, whereupon they were revived and the strangulation process begun again. This was repeated four or five times until death finally occurred.”
Clete looked at Peter’s face. It was white and contorted.
You didn’t have to get into the fucking details, you sonofabitch!
“The hangings—strangulations?—were filmed by SS motion picture photographers at the request of Hitler, who wished to see them. I understand he has watched the films over and over.
“All properties of the conspirators and their relatives were confiscated. Just about everybody in the von Stauffenberg family was immediately arrested,” Gehlen went on. “Von Stauffenberg’s mother, Caroline, was in solitary confinement from July 23, 1944, until the end of the war. Claus von Stauffenberg’s widow, Nina, was held in the Alexanderplatz prison in Berlin. She gave birth there, a daughter named Konstanze, in January 1945—”
“Where is Nina—the countess—now?” von Wachtstein interrupted.
“May I suggest, Graf von Wachtstein, that you hold your questions until I finish?”
“Excuse me,” von Wachtstein said.
“The third brother, Alexander von Stauffenberg, was brought back from Athens to Berlin. Even when it became apparent that he was not involved in the conspiracy, he was nevertheless arrested and held in various concentration camps.
“Von Stauffenberg’s cousin Caesar von Hofacker was condemned to death on August thirtieth but kept alive for interrogation—which was unsuccessful—about Rommel’s and Speidel’s involvement in the conspiracy, after which, on December 20, 1944, he was executed in the manner I described.
“There are other details, but I think I have covered pretty much everything. You had questions, Herr Graf?”