© Eichborn Verlag
The Decision to Lead a Double Life
((pages 151 to 162))
Of the critical moment when Heinrich von Lehndorff made up his mind once and for all in favor of the assassination, Gottliebe writes: “One day, when Heini had come home for a few days from the Eastern Front, I sensed that something extraordinary must have happened. Since we couldn’t talk at home, we rode into the forest. ‘Listen, I desperately need to tell you something,’ Heini said to me. ‘I had a horrific experience. An SS man grabbed a child and flung it against a tree until it was dead. So I've decided to join the resistance now, once and for all. There's a whole group of us gathered around Bock. We've got Tresckow, Schlabrendorff, and Hardenberg. All of them want to see Hitler eliminated.’ And with that, the die was cast."
[marginal note p. 151:
From the first draft of Gottliebe von Lehndorff's
Erinnerungen an Steinort (Recollections of Steinort),
the Lehndorff Family Archive. Gottliebe wrote this in the 1960s;
the term "resistance" was only coined during the postwar years.]
This conversation must have taken place very close in time to the massacre of 7,000 Jews by an SS unit in Borissow, which Hardenberg and perhaps also Lehndorff witnessed in person and which resulted in an absolute uproar in Henning von Tresckow’s circle. The garrison commander at the time was driven to suicide by shame and by the protests of his colleagues. Yet von Bock once again neglected to intervene personally with Hitler, notwithstanding fierce pressure from Tresckow, Hardenberg, and Lehndorff. The massacre occurred in October 1941 in immediate proximity to the Central Command Headquarters of the Army Group Center. In this same Borissow, Stauffenberg and Tresckow had met for the first time only a few months before, in June 1941.
[photo caption page 152: manuscript page from Gottliebe's memoirs]
Heinrich's sister, Karin von Lehndorff, also refers to the massacre at Borissow in a conversation with her grandchild, mentioning that it was the event her brother cited as his ultimate reason for entering the innermost circle of conspirators. His father and mother, his sister, his intimate childhood friend Marion Dönhoff, and his cousin Hans von Lehndorff were aware of the step he had taken and his justification for doing so. Naturally, his relatives received no detailed information. Lehndorff was too cautious and tight-lipped for that. Still, on occasion his kin would be of service by relaying his desire to speak with someone. As an example, his sister passed a message to Fritz-Dietloff von der Schulenburg encouraging him to contact Lehndorff at his earliest convenience: there was something they needed to coordinate. The meeting took place at the end of May 1944 when Schulenburg was in East Prussia to discuss final arrangements. Sometimes Marion Dönhoff would also help when a meeting had to be scheduled with co-conspirators from the Kreisau Circle, whom she knew well. At the beginning of May 1944, there was a meeting near Königsberg involving Count Peter Yorck and his wife, Marion, Lehndorff, and Dohna. "Of the evening at Dohna’s home in Tolksdorf, Marion Yorck reported that Dohna, Lehndorff, and her husband withdrew together after dinner as was the custom. One can imagine the subject of the discussion."
[marginal note p. 153:
Detlev Graf von Schwerin, "Dann sind’s die besten Köpfe, die man henkt"
(Then It's the Best Minds They're Hanging), p. 376.]
Shortly thereafter, in June 1944, Heinrich, Gottliebe, and Hans von Lehndorff, who was a staunch member of the Confessing Church, attended a church service in Insterburg and later had supper together. Their formerly fun-loving and so ebullient cousin Hans seemed very grave that day. Afterwards, when the two of them were taking a walk together, Heinrich asked the young doctor whether his family and co-conspirators could, in the event, also rely on him. Hans assented, while knowing in his heart that his own Christian convictions would make him try his utmost to prevent a murder from becoming necessary.
[marginal note p. 153:
Hans Graf Lehndorff, Die Insterburger Jahre
(The Years in Insterburg), p. 86-88.]
After his personal experiences of earlier Nazi crimes, Heinrich had reached the point from which he could not, and did not want to, return. This is also borne out by his 1942 meeting in Stettin with Swedish consul Karl Ingve Vendel, whom Saul Friedländer discusses: "In reality, Vendel was a Swedish abwehr agent. Under cover of his consular activity, he was observing German troop movements and therefore also maintained clandestine contacts with several members of the German military resistance against the regime. After visiting a friend at an estate in East Prussia, Vendel filed a detailed report dated August 9, 1942, that outlined conditions in the so-called Generalgouvernement[1] and also contained a section on the extermination of the Jews:
‘In one town, all of the Jews were assembled for an activity that was officially billed as ‘delousing.’ They were forced to remove their clothing at the entrance, but the delousing process consisted of gassing them and then heaving them all into a mass grave . . . The source from which I received all this information on the Generalgouvernement is of the kind that allows not even the slightest doubt as to the veracity of my informant's accounts.’
According to research conducted by historian Jozef Lewandowski, Vendel received the intelligence from his friend, Count Heinrich von Lehndorff, a reserve lieutenant in the Army Group Center, and from a guest who joined them at Gut Gross Steinort, Lehndorff's estate in East Prussia. In all likelihood, the guest was a man we have already encountered, namely, Lieutenant Colonel Henning von Tresckow, the most active organizer behind the military conspiracy against Hitler. Vendel’s report was also not forwarded to the Allies."[2]
[marginal note p. 154:
Saul Friedländer, Die Jahre der Vernichtung 1939-1945
(The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945), p. 488.]
Apart from the (futile) attempts to inform foreign countries, and the equally failed attempts to win von Bock over to the conspirators' side, Lehndorff's main responsibility within the inner circle around Henning von Tresckow was to persuade the hesitant and doubting to participate, and to make inconspicuous meetings possible at his castle, Steinort. Not only was Steinort now located in the immediate proximity of Mauerwald, the Supreme Command of the Army, beginning in 1941 it became the permanent residence of Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. In itself, this proximity was fatal, but at the same time it served as perfect camouflage for the double life the family now began to lead. Initially, no one could have reason to harbor suspicion when ranking officers from Mauerwald visited the house where the Foreign Minister himself was living. As a result, the list of visitors at Steinort reads like a Who's Who of the July 20 conspirators. Naturally, a list such as that didn't really exist in written form; no guest book was kept, and for good reason. The ever-courted yet ever-reluctant General Field Marshal Kluge spent a number of days there as a guest on repeated occasions, as did Tresckow, Schlabrendorff, Stieff, Fellgiebel, Hahn, and Thiele, as well as Wagner, Fritzi Schulenburg, Axel von dem Bussche, von der Groeben, von Uexküll, and even Helmuth James von Moltke. It goes without saying that they all assumed that the house was bugged and that everyone was being watched. The forest was vast, however, and the estate sprawling; what harm could there be in officers riding on horseback, or in a sleigh or carriage ride? Routinely, Tresckow and Schlabrendorff would always arrive after nightfall.
[photo caption p. 155: General Field Marshal von Kluge visiting the Lehndorffs at Steinort.
Conspiratorial discussions took place during cross-country drives in the carriage.]
Within the framework of recruiting new supporters, Lehndorff had the task and the opportunity to throw his prestigious family name into the balance as a means of opening initial lines of communication with potential conspirators and making discreet contacts. By pointing to his own risk in a castle that was besieged by the SS, he was convincingly able to underscore the seriousness and gravity of the risky venture.
[photo caption p. 156: Taking coffee in the garden with officers from Mauerwald.]
To that end he visited numerous East Prussian officers and aristocrats at their estates, cautiously probing whether he might be able to enlist their participation. As well, meetings at family gatherings and hunting events, at cattle markets and racetracks were opportune occasions for planning initial contacts or arranging for discussions to take place. When Axel von dem Bussche, a still thoroughly unseasoned officer at the time, witnessed a massacre of Jews on October 5, 1942, at the airport in Dubno, Ukraine, he subsequently remarked to his friend Karl Konrad von der Groeben that something had to be done about getting rid of this criminal Hitler; he himself would even be willing to handle it. Von der Groeben passed the information to his wife's cousin, Heinrich von Lehndorff, and Lehndorff invited Axel von dem Bussche to Steinort. Lehndorff spoke very little with the young officer during the meeting, but he listened to him, observed him, and then contacted Schulenburg and Stauffenberg in Berlin. Two days later, he returned with the news that Schulenburg would introduce Axel von dem Bussche to Stauffenberg. And that resulted in concrete planning for the assassination, which was set for November of 1943 but ultimately had to be abandoned. Von dem Bussche waited for three days near Wolfsschanze under enormous emotional strain (perhaps even visiting Steinort during that time) for an opportunity to carry out the assassination. In vain. He subsequently had to return to the front line and was seriously wounded in one of the first operations. He still had the explosives with him in the field hospital. His friend von der Groeben came to visit him and disposed of the satchel in a lake.
[marginal note p. 157:
This information stems from a conversation with
Ria von der Groeben in May 2009.]
The transcript of the People's Court trial under presiding judge Freisler against Count Dohna contains an annotation that the plan for the July 20 coup d'état (code-named Walküre) designated Dohna as the chief political officer for East Prussia, and that he had accepted the position in a conversation with Heinrich von Lehndorff. At that point, Lehndorff had already been executed, hence it is also possible that Dohna named him as a go-between because he could no longer jeopardize him. In as much as one of Lehndorff's key functions was to enlist supporters for the resistance, we can assume that he actually conducted the decisive negotiations himself.
We also have a prominent witness to substantiate this. In a letter to his wife, Freya, dated August 19, 1943, Helmuth James von Moltke writes: "In the evening, a Count von Lehndorff from East Prussia was here, very clever and pleasant, and gave quite an interesting account of sentiments and positions in East Prussia. Apparently, people there are already very concerned about their further destiny. It seemed to me that L. represents important progress for us in East Prussia, and in the week ahead he will try
to make an another appearance with the man in question (Dohna). I'm anxious to see whether it will work out…"
[marginal note p. 158:
H. J. von Moltke, Briefe an Freya 1939-1945
(Letters to Freya, 1939-1945), p. 526.]
At Tresckow’s behest, Lehndorff also used every opportunity to gather intelligence about the political and military thinking in von Ribbentrop's circles. His double life at Steinort included participating in any of the Foreign Minister's briefings that took place at the castle. He was shocked at the way the military and political situations were viewed: "Naturally, Heini had very detailed information about the situation on the front, about everything, they had the briefings with General Field Marshal Bock, too, of Army Group Center, and knew exactly where things were happening and how. And Heini often received furloughs because of his enormous farming operations, so he would always attend whenever Ribbentrop held a briefing in our castle. As Foreign Minister, you have just as much information about the state of the war. And Heini said it was completely incredible; what was being presented to the Foreign Minister never lined up with what was actually going on.”
[marginal note p. 158:
Gottliebe in the interview with Vera.]
One particularly dangerous move was Lehndorff's attempt in 1943 to recruit Karl Wolff, a high-ranking SS functionary, for the resistance.
[marginal note p. 158:
For a character study of this colorfully
opportunistic personality at the interface
between Hitler and Himmler,
see Jochen von Lang,
Der Adjutant (The Adjutant).]
"And it always entailed having to put oneself at their mercy. And, remarkably, they didn’t inform against him, not even the people who participated, and afterwards hadn't participated after all. And by that I mean a certain Obersturmführer or Obersturmbannführer[3] Wolf(f), that was his name, I knew him, too, very good-looking, and he was also a guest of ours once . . . And Heini solicited him as well, and Wolff never denounced him … There were a number of them who said, if you’re successful … But they never gave him away, otherwise he would have been arrested beforehand."
[marginal note p. 158:
Gottliebe speaking with Vera.]
Wolff was Himmler's personal adjutant, his "eyes and ears" with Hitler at Wolfschanze. He was a slick-mannered upstart and parlor fascist who held the same political rank as SS-Führer Heydrich or Kaltenbrunner and was known as a thoroughly unscrupulous and opportunistic power seeker. On July 26, 1944, shortly after the assassination attempt, he was actually promoted again and rose to the positions of Supreme SS and Police Leader as well as Official Representative of the German Army in Italy. On the afternoon of July 20, he accompanied Mussolini (arriving from Italy) on his visit to Wolfsschanze, which went forward pointedly in spite of the assassination attempt. For that reason he was one of the first to be informed when Lehndorff was arrested the following day.
[photo caption p. 159: Wolff (top, at far right – below, at far left) shadowing Hitler and Himmler.)
Absurd as it may seem, Wolff was not the only SS man to consider switching sides when he encountered difficulties with Himmler. As early as 1942, Henning von Tresckow recruited the shady SS Leader Nebe for the resistance. Such risky attempts to enlist even high-ranking SS officers for the coup d'état were based on a sober and realistic assessment of the provisions that would be necessary if the plan were actually to succeed. To illustrate, in numerous discussions with his adjutants Hardenberg and Lehndorff, General Field Marshal von Bock insisted that, if at all, a coup d'état had the potential to succeed only if key, top-echelon members of the SS had been recruited by the opposition beforehand. When they had accomplished that, they would be welcome to approach him on the topic again.
When Heinrich Lehndorff came home after such difficult and risky forays into the innermost circles of SS leadership, he occasionally intimated that his wife Gottliebe should reckon with the possibility of his exposure even before the assassination was staged. Discussing this with Vera, Gottliebe described the situation in the following way: "One time he told me, ‘My position is such that it could be that I don't come back again. That wouldn’t mean that I'm dead yet, but that I've been arrested. And then somehow, through Schlabrendorff or heaven only knows who, you'll find out where and how and what. But that could happen.’ And so that put me under enormous stress every time he left, he was always away, almost always away, and he always came back. But he never told me whom he had seen, so he wouldn’t incriminate me . . . We had to work hard on ourselves, the two of us, when he came back, so that we didn’t touch on the subject too much in the first place, because that weakens you. The last three years, we really had to make an effort, because, he told me, all of that weakens a person, we mustn't allow it to weaken us, because then fear takes hold of you and then you're finished."
"So you didn't discuss the subject at all?"
"Oh yes, we did discuss it, but that was relatively rare, actually. He only needed to say a few words: ‘Things went well,’ or ‘It was very tough again this time,’ no more than that, really….”
[marginal note p. 161:
Gottliebe speaking with her daughter Vera.]
Sometimes, as Gottliebe's cousin Ria von der Groeben reports, a great unspoken sense of tension hung over Steinort; after all, von Ribbentrop and his staff occupied the entire left wing of the castle for over three years. Looks often spoke more than words. The Gestapo agents were always an invisible presence.
In the end, however, Heinrich von Lehndorff's most important role was to function as a liaison officer between the two centers of resistance. Until the final days, he acted as a courier, relaying plans and intelligence back and forth between the top resistance echelons in Berlin surrounding General Olbricht and Colonel Count von Stauffenberg, and Henning von Tresckow at his remote post on the Eastern Front. Schlabrendorff was also frequently engaged in this activity.
Begun in 1941 in Borissow, relations between Tresckow and Stauffenberg intensified considerably late in the summer of 1943 when Stauffenberg and he collaborated with Olbricht to develop plans for the coup d'état in concrete detail. Tresckow was actually on rest leave but remained in Berlin. These two highly determined personalities and strategists of military resistance were very close in their shared convictions. They constantly needed to exchange secret plans and information, but were often posted in locations that separated them by thousands of kilometers. Contact between the conspirators never occurred in writing or by telephone; Lehndorff memorized each of the messages and transmitted them orally. Gottliebe recalls that from time to time he would write telephone numbers on the bathroom mirror, impressing them on his memory repeatedly before wiping them off. On July 11th, the first opportunity for Stauffenberg to attempt the assassination, we find Lehndorff in Bendlerblock[4] where he met with Mertz von Quirnheim as well as General Fritz Lindemann. This can be taken as evidence of the enormous degree to which Lehndorff was privy to the final decisions leading up to July 20th. The meeting was noticed and later surfaced during interrogations. He also conveyed Henning von Tresckow’s advice to Stauffenberg early in June 1944, when Stauffenberg asked whether the whole assassination still made any sense at all given the Allied invasion on the Western Front. Henning von Tresckow conveyed the following message via Heinrich von Lehndorff to the still-determined assassin Stauffenberg: "Hitler’s assassination must be carried out regardless of cost."
[marginal note p. 161:
Schlabrendorff: Offiziere gegen Hitler
(They Almost Killed Hitler), p. 109.]
[1] Areas of Poland that were under German military occupation from 1935-1945.
[2] Friedländer’s book was translated into English and published by HarperCollins. In the event that Vollmer’s “Doppelleben” is published in English, the translator of the current sample text has recommended quoting the Friedländer passage from the existing translation.
[3] Senior Assault (or Storm) Leader, a rank used in the SA and the SS.
[4] A military administrative building in Berlin that served as headquarters of the conspirators.
The Decision to Lead a Double Life
((pages 151 to 162))
Of the critical moment when Heinrich von Lehndorff made up his mind once and for all in favor of the assassination, Gottliebe writes: “One day, when Heini had come home for a few days from the Eastern Front, I sensed that something extraordinary must have happened. Since we couldn’t talk at home, we rode into the forest. ‘Listen, I desperately need to tell you something,’ Heini said to me. ‘I had a horrific experience. An SS man grabbed a child and flung it against a tree until it was dead. So I've decided to join the resistance now, once and for all. There's a whole group of us gathered around Bock. We've got Tresckow, Schlabrendorff, and Hardenberg. All of them want to see Hitler eliminated.’ And with that, the die was cast."
[marginal note p. 151:
From the first draft of Gottliebe von Lehndorff's
Erinnerungen an Steinort (Recollections of Steinort),
the Lehndorff Family Archive. Gottliebe wrote this in the 1960s;
the term "resistance" was only coined during the postwar years.]
This conversation must have taken place very close in time to the massacre of 7,000 Jews by an SS unit in Borissow, which Hardenberg and perhaps also Lehndorff witnessed in person and which resulted in an absolute uproar in Henning von Tresckow’s circle. The garrison commander at the time was driven to suicide by shame and by the protests of his colleagues. Yet von Bock once again neglected to intervene personally with Hitler, notwithstanding fierce pressure from Tresckow, Hardenberg, and Lehndorff. The massacre occurred in October 1941 in immediate proximity to the Central Command Headquarters of the Army Group Center. In this same Borissow, Stauffenberg and Tresckow had met for the first time only a few months before, in June 1941.
[photo caption page 152: manuscript page from Gottliebe's memoirs]
Heinrich's sister, Karin von Lehndorff, also refers to the massacre at Borissow in a conversation with her grandchild, mentioning that it was the event her brother cited as his ultimate reason for entering the innermost circle of conspirators. His father and mother, his sister, his intimate childhood friend Marion Dönhoff, and his cousin Hans von Lehndorff were aware of the step he had taken and his justification for doing so. Naturally, his relatives received no detailed information. Lehndorff was too cautious and tight-lipped for that. Still, on occasion his kin would be of service by relaying his desire to speak with someone. As an example, his sister passed a message to Fritz-Dietloff von der Schulenburg encouraging him to contact Lehndorff at his earliest convenience: there was something they needed to coordinate. The meeting took place at the end of May 1944 when Schulenburg was in East Prussia to discuss final arrangements. Sometimes Marion Dönhoff would also help when a meeting had to be scheduled with co-conspirators from the Kreisau Circle, whom she knew well. At the beginning of May 1944, there was a meeting near Königsberg involving Count Peter Yorck and his wife, Marion, Lehndorff, and Dohna. "Of the evening at Dohna’s home in Tolksdorf, Marion Yorck reported that Dohna, Lehndorff, and her husband withdrew together after dinner as was the custom. One can imagine the subject of the discussion."
[marginal note p. 153:
Detlev Graf von Schwerin, "Dann sind’s die besten Köpfe, die man henkt"
(Then It's the Best Minds They're Hanging), p. 376.]
Shortly thereafter, in June 1944, Heinrich, Gottliebe, and Hans von Lehndorff, who was a staunch member of the Confessing Church, attended a church service in Insterburg and later had supper together. Their formerly fun-loving and so ebullient cousin Hans seemed very grave that day. Afterwards, when the two of them were taking a walk together, Heinrich asked the young doctor whether his family and co-conspirators could, in the event, also rely on him. Hans assented, while knowing in his heart that his own Christian convictions would make him try his utmost to prevent a murder from becoming necessary.
[marginal note p. 153:
Hans Graf Lehndorff, Die Insterburger Jahre
(The Years in Insterburg), p. 86-88.]
After his personal experiences of earlier Nazi crimes, Heinrich had reached the point from which he could not, and did not want to, return. This is also borne out by his 1942 meeting in Stettin with Swedish consul Karl Ingve Vendel, whom Saul Friedländer discusses: "In reality, Vendel was a Swedish abwehr agent. Under cover of his consular activity, he was observing German troop movements and therefore also maintained clandestine contacts with several members of the German military resistance against the regime. After visiting a friend at an estate in East Prussia, Vendel filed a detailed report dated August 9, 1942, that outlined conditions in the so-called Generalgouvernement[1] and also contained a section on the extermination of the Jews:
‘In one town, all of the Jews were assembled for an activity that was officially billed as ‘delousing.’ They were forced to remove their clothing at the entrance, but the delousing process consisted of gassing them and then heaving them all into a mass grave . . . The source from which I received all this information on the Generalgouvernement is of the kind that allows not even the slightest doubt as to the veracity of my informant's accounts.’
According to research conducted by historian Jozef Lewandowski, Vendel received the intelligence from his friend, Count Heinrich von Lehndorff, a reserve lieutenant in the Army Group Center, and from a guest who joined them at Gut Gross Steinort, Lehndorff's estate in East Prussia. In all likelihood, the guest was a man we have already encountered, namely, Lieutenant Colonel Henning von Tresckow, the most active organizer behind the military conspiracy against Hitler. Vendel’s report was also not forwarded to the Allies."[2]
[marginal note p. 154:
Saul Friedländer, Die Jahre der Vernichtung 1939-1945
(The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945), p. 488.]
Apart from the (futile) attempts to inform foreign countries, and the equally failed attempts to win von Bock over to the conspirators' side, Lehndorff's main responsibility within the inner circle around Henning von Tresckow was to persuade the hesitant and doubting to participate, and to make inconspicuous meetings possible at his castle, Steinort. Not only was Steinort now located in the immediate proximity of Mauerwald, the Supreme Command of the Army, beginning in 1941 it became the permanent residence of Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. In itself, this proximity was fatal, but at the same time it served as perfect camouflage for the double life the family now began to lead. Initially, no one could have reason to harbor suspicion when ranking officers from Mauerwald visited the house where the Foreign Minister himself was living. As a result, the list of visitors at Steinort reads like a Who's Who of the July 20 conspirators. Naturally, a list such as that didn't really exist in written form; no guest book was kept, and for good reason. The ever-courted yet ever-reluctant General Field Marshal Kluge spent a number of days there as a guest on repeated occasions, as did Tresckow, Schlabrendorff, Stieff, Fellgiebel, Hahn, and Thiele, as well as Wagner, Fritzi Schulenburg, Axel von dem Bussche, von der Groeben, von Uexküll, and even Helmuth James von Moltke. It goes without saying that they all assumed that the house was bugged and that everyone was being watched. The forest was vast, however, and the estate sprawling; what harm could there be in officers riding on horseback, or in a sleigh or carriage ride? Routinely, Tresckow and Schlabrendorff would always arrive after nightfall.
[photo caption p. 155: General Field Marshal von Kluge visiting the Lehndorffs at Steinort.
Conspiratorial discussions took place during cross-country drives in the carriage.]
Within the framework of recruiting new supporters, Lehndorff had the task and the opportunity to throw his prestigious family name into the balance as a means of opening initial lines of communication with potential conspirators and making discreet contacts. By pointing to his own risk in a castle that was besieged by the SS, he was convincingly able to underscore the seriousness and gravity of the risky venture.
[photo caption p. 156: Taking coffee in the garden with officers from Mauerwald.]
To that end he visited numerous East Prussian officers and aristocrats at their estates, cautiously probing whether he might be able to enlist their participation. As well, meetings at family gatherings and hunting events, at cattle markets and racetracks were opportune occasions for planning initial contacts or arranging for discussions to take place. When Axel von dem Bussche, a still thoroughly unseasoned officer at the time, witnessed a massacre of Jews on October 5, 1942, at the airport in Dubno, Ukraine, he subsequently remarked to his friend Karl Konrad von der Groeben that something had to be done about getting rid of this criminal Hitler; he himself would even be willing to handle it. Von der Groeben passed the information to his wife's cousin, Heinrich von Lehndorff, and Lehndorff invited Axel von dem Bussche to Steinort. Lehndorff spoke very little with the young officer during the meeting, but he listened to him, observed him, and then contacted Schulenburg and Stauffenberg in Berlin. Two days later, he returned with the news that Schulenburg would introduce Axel von dem Bussche to Stauffenberg. And that resulted in concrete planning for the assassination, which was set for November of 1943 but ultimately had to be abandoned. Von dem Bussche waited for three days near Wolfsschanze under enormous emotional strain (perhaps even visiting Steinort during that time) for an opportunity to carry out the assassination. In vain. He subsequently had to return to the front line and was seriously wounded in one of the first operations. He still had the explosives with him in the field hospital. His friend von der Groeben came to visit him and disposed of the satchel in a lake.
[marginal note p. 157:
This information stems from a conversation with
Ria von der Groeben in May 2009.]
The transcript of the People's Court trial under presiding judge Freisler against Count Dohna contains an annotation that the plan for the July 20 coup d'état (code-named Walküre) designated Dohna as the chief political officer for East Prussia, and that he had accepted the position in a conversation with Heinrich von Lehndorff. At that point, Lehndorff had already been executed, hence it is also possible that Dohna named him as a go-between because he could no longer jeopardize him. In as much as one of Lehndorff's key functions was to enlist supporters for the resistance, we can assume that he actually conducted the decisive negotiations himself.
We also have a prominent witness to substantiate this. In a letter to his wife, Freya, dated August 19, 1943, Helmuth James von Moltke writes: "In the evening, a Count von Lehndorff from East Prussia was here, very clever and pleasant, and gave quite an interesting account of sentiments and positions in East Prussia. Apparently, people there are already very concerned about their further destiny. It seemed to me that L. represents important progress for us in East Prussia, and in the week ahead he will try
to make an another appearance with the man in question (Dohna). I'm anxious to see whether it will work out…"
[marginal note p. 158:
H. J. von Moltke, Briefe an Freya 1939-1945
(Letters to Freya, 1939-1945), p. 526.]
At Tresckow’s behest, Lehndorff also used every opportunity to gather intelligence about the political and military thinking in von Ribbentrop's circles. His double life at Steinort included participating in any of the Foreign Minister's briefings that took place at the castle. He was shocked at the way the military and political situations were viewed: "Naturally, Heini had very detailed information about the situation on the front, about everything, they had the briefings with General Field Marshal Bock, too, of Army Group Center, and knew exactly where things were happening and how. And Heini often received furloughs because of his enormous farming operations, so he would always attend whenever Ribbentrop held a briefing in our castle. As Foreign Minister, you have just as much information about the state of the war. And Heini said it was completely incredible; what was being presented to the Foreign Minister never lined up with what was actually going on.”
[marginal note p. 158:
Gottliebe in the interview with Vera.]
One particularly dangerous move was Lehndorff's attempt in 1943 to recruit Karl Wolff, a high-ranking SS functionary, for the resistance.
[marginal note p. 158:
For a character study of this colorfully
opportunistic personality at the interface
between Hitler and Himmler,
see Jochen von Lang,
Der Adjutant (The Adjutant).]
"And it always entailed having to put oneself at their mercy. And, remarkably, they didn’t inform against him, not even the people who participated, and afterwards hadn't participated after all. And by that I mean a certain Obersturmführer or Obersturmbannführer[3] Wolf(f), that was his name, I knew him, too, very good-looking, and he was also a guest of ours once . . . And Heini solicited him as well, and Wolff never denounced him … There were a number of them who said, if you’re successful … But they never gave him away, otherwise he would have been arrested beforehand."
[marginal note p. 158:
Gottliebe speaking with Vera.]
Wolff was Himmler's personal adjutant, his "eyes and ears" with Hitler at Wolfschanze. He was a slick-mannered upstart and parlor fascist who held the same political rank as SS-Führer Heydrich or Kaltenbrunner and was known as a thoroughly unscrupulous and opportunistic power seeker. On July 26, 1944, shortly after the assassination attempt, he was actually promoted again and rose to the positions of Supreme SS and Police Leader as well as Official Representative of the German Army in Italy. On the afternoon of July 20, he accompanied Mussolini (arriving from Italy) on his visit to Wolfsschanze, which went forward pointedly in spite of the assassination attempt. For that reason he was one of the first to be informed when Lehndorff was arrested the following day.
[photo caption p. 159: Wolff (top, at far right – below, at far left) shadowing Hitler and Himmler.)
Absurd as it may seem, Wolff was not the only SS man to consider switching sides when he encountered difficulties with Himmler. As early as 1942, Henning von Tresckow recruited the shady SS Leader Nebe for the resistance. Such risky attempts to enlist even high-ranking SS officers for the coup d'état were based on a sober and realistic assessment of the provisions that would be necessary if the plan were actually to succeed. To illustrate, in numerous discussions with his adjutants Hardenberg and Lehndorff, General Field Marshal von Bock insisted that, if at all, a coup d'état had the potential to succeed only if key, top-echelon members of the SS had been recruited by the opposition beforehand. When they had accomplished that, they would be welcome to approach him on the topic again.
When Heinrich Lehndorff came home after such difficult and risky forays into the innermost circles of SS leadership, he occasionally intimated that his wife Gottliebe should reckon with the possibility of his exposure even before the assassination was staged. Discussing this with Vera, Gottliebe described the situation in the following way: "One time he told me, ‘My position is such that it could be that I don't come back again. That wouldn’t mean that I'm dead yet, but that I've been arrested. And then somehow, through Schlabrendorff or heaven only knows who, you'll find out where and how and what. But that could happen.’ And so that put me under enormous stress every time he left, he was always away, almost always away, and he always came back. But he never told me whom he had seen, so he wouldn’t incriminate me . . . We had to work hard on ourselves, the two of us, when he came back, so that we didn’t touch on the subject too much in the first place, because that weakens you. The last three years, we really had to make an effort, because, he told me, all of that weakens a person, we mustn't allow it to weaken us, because then fear takes hold of you and then you're finished."
"So you didn't discuss the subject at all?"
"Oh yes, we did discuss it, but that was relatively rare, actually. He only needed to say a few words: ‘Things went well,’ or ‘It was very tough again this time,’ no more than that, really….”
[marginal note p. 161:
Gottliebe speaking with her daughter Vera.]
Sometimes, as Gottliebe's cousin Ria von der Groeben reports, a great unspoken sense of tension hung over Steinort; after all, von Ribbentrop and his staff occupied the entire left wing of the castle for over three years. Looks often spoke more than words. The Gestapo agents were always an invisible presence.
In the end, however, Heinrich von Lehndorff's most important role was to function as a liaison officer between the two centers of resistance. Until the final days, he acted as a courier, relaying plans and intelligence back and forth between the top resistance echelons in Berlin surrounding General Olbricht and Colonel Count von Stauffenberg, and Henning von Tresckow at his remote post on the Eastern Front. Schlabrendorff was also frequently engaged in this activity.
Begun in 1941 in Borissow, relations between Tresckow and Stauffenberg intensified considerably late in the summer of 1943 when Stauffenberg and he collaborated with Olbricht to develop plans for the coup d'état in concrete detail. Tresckow was actually on rest leave but remained in Berlin. These two highly determined personalities and strategists of military resistance were very close in their shared convictions. They constantly needed to exchange secret plans and information, but were often posted in locations that separated them by thousands of kilometers. Contact between the conspirators never occurred in writing or by telephone; Lehndorff memorized each of the messages and transmitted them orally. Gottliebe recalls that from time to time he would write telephone numbers on the bathroom mirror, impressing them on his memory repeatedly before wiping them off. On July 11th, the first opportunity for Stauffenberg to attempt the assassination, we find Lehndorff in Bendlerblock[4] where he met with Mertz von Quirnheim as well as General Fritz Lindemann. This can be taken as evidence of the enormous degree to which Lehndorff was privy to the final decisions leading up to July 20th. The meeting was noticed and later surfaced during interrogations. He also conveyed Henning von Tresckow’s advice to Stauffenberg early in June 1944, when Stauffenberg asked whether the whole assassination still made any sense at all given the Allied invasion on the Western Front. Henning von Tresckow conveyed the following message via Heinrich von Lehndorff to the still-determined assassin Stauffenberg: "Hitler’s assassination must be carried out regardless of cost."
[marginal note p. 161:
Schlabrendorff: Offiziere gegen Hitler
(They Almost Killed Hitler), p. 109.]
[1] Areas of Poland that were under German military occupation from 1935-1945.
[2] Friedländer’s book was translated into English and published by HarperCollins. In the event that Vollmer’s “Doppelleben” is published in English, the translator of the current sample text has recommended quoting the Friedländer passage from the existing translation.
[3] Senior Assault (or Storm) Leader, a rank used in the SA and the SS.
[4] A military administrative building in Berlin that served as headquarters of the conspirators.