In Memoriam - Remembering General Friederick Olbricht and the Coup against Hitler
This entry is off topic. It is not about aviation. Yet it is the 78th anniversary of an attempt to end the Second World War. Had the coup attempt of 20 July 1944 succeeded, only half as many people would have been killed in the death camps and on the battlefields of WWII. It is worth remembering one of those who gave his life in that attempt to end the insanity that was Nazi Germany.
On this day, 78 years ago, Olbricht was the first of literally thousands of Germans to fall victim to the National Socialist purge that followed the failed coup of 20 July 1944. It is fitting that he should die first because, with the exception of Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, who died almost simultaneously, no other figure in the German Resistance to Hitler had been such a consistent and effective opponent of the regime.
Olbricht was an opponent of Hitler before the Nazi Party came to power. This was on one hand because he recognized Hitler's demonic and dangerous character, and on the other, because Olbricht had been one of the few Reichswehr officers who served the Weimarer Republic with conviction and loyalty. Because Olbricht did not view the Republic as a disgrace and long for some kind of national "renewal," he never allowed himself to believe that Hitler and his movement might be a positive force for the restoration of German "honour" and power. Furthermore, because Olbricht recognized the legitimacy of the Republic, he discerned the illegal nature of the Nazi regime from the very start. Nor was he enchanted by Hitler's early successes.
By 1938, Olbricht's opposition to the increasingly dangerous and lawless Nazi regime had reached a point where he was prepared to consider a coup d'etat against the government. He had already experienced intense disappointment at the lack of moral courage on the part of the Reichswehr leadership in the aftermath of the state murders carried out on 30 June 1934, and knew that no official Reichswehr protests would be forthcoming against new Nazi outrages. He recognized, too, that there were no longer any legal means left for opposing Hitler. Thus, when Goerdeler suggested a coup in response to the smear campaign against Generaloberst Fritsch, Olbricht agreed in principle; he objected only to the lack of political preparation.
Because Olbricht's opposition was motivated by moral outrage at the policies and methods of the Nazis, his attitude towards the Nazi regime never softened or was it tempered by internal or international successes. Olbricht's motives for advocating a coup against Hitler were the restoration of the rule of law and the end of irrational and immoral domestic and international policies. No Munich Agreement, no military victory over Poland or France -- much less an invasion of the Soviet Union -- could restore justice, legality and rationality to German policy. Hence, Olbricht's opposition to the Nazi regime remained inflexible and undiminished throughout the years of Hitler's greatest triumphs.
From 1940 onwards, Olbricht belonged to the inner core of the conspiracy centered around Generaloberst Beck, which actively sought to bring down the Nazi regime. Starting in early 1942, he developed the clever tactic of using a legitimate General Staff plan, "Valkyrie," as the basis for a coup against the government. By then he as, as the would-be assassin Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche worded it, "grimly determined to bring down the regime at the first possible opportunity." [Axel Frhr. v.d. Bussche, in an personal interview with the author 26 November 1986] By the end of that same year, according to the Gestapo summary of interrogations, he argued "with increasing urgency that the military must act regardless of how difficult the coup might be, and that it was wrong to keep putting it of." [Gestapo report to Hitler dated 21 August 1944]
After a key counter-intelligence operative in the conspiracy, Hans Oster, was suspended from duty and following Oberst Henning von Tresckow's two failed assassination attempts in March 1943, Olbricht assumed responsibility for planning the assassination as well as the coup. In the summer of 1943, he recruited Claus Graf Stauffenberg for the Resistance. On 15 July 1944, he issued the Valkyrie orders two hours in advance of the first possible opportunity for the assassination. On 20 July itself, Olbricht waited only for confirmation that an "incident" had occurred before again setting the coup in motion. Thereafter he was by all first-hand accounts, consistently energetic and forceful in trying to drive the coup to success. If one gives credence to the reports of eyewitnesses -- rather than the post-mortem commentary of those absent -- at no time on 20 July did Olbricht hesitate or lose heart.
But precisely because Olbricht had opposed Hitler for so long, he had also experienced disappointments and failure. He was not prone to excessive optimism -- which may explain why he selected as his chief of staff a young officer with an excess of burning passion: Claus Graf Stauffenberg. It is important to remember, however, that all Stauffenberg's energy and desire to 'save Germany' would have served him little if his next military assignment after being wounded in North Africa had been, say, with Military District XVII in Vienna, or -- as a former cavalry officer -- as coordinator of resupply mounts for the increasingly horse-dependent Wehrmacht. In other words, Claus von Stauffenberg would not have entered history at all except for the fact that General Olbricht picked him out of the pool of hundreds of qualified general staff lieutenant colonels to be his chief of staff in both military and conspiracy matters.
Olbricht chose Stauffenberg -- and with good reason. Many witnesses testify to the fact that Olbricht and Stauffenberg were an excellent team that worked together easily, happily and even brilliantly. They worked well together in large part because they complemented one another. Olbricht was disciplined and mature, but he was also discouraged because he'd seen multiple assassination and coup attempts fail already. Equally damaging to his emotional state, he had lost his son in a war he had tried to prevent and viewed as criminal. Yet he was still the canny, experienced, and highly effective mastermind behind Valkyrie. Stauffenberg, in contrast, was passionate and flamboyant, even undisciplined, but highly creative and motivated by the need to make up for lost time.
Yet not one person who personally knew the two men at this time can remember them bickering, squabbling or complaining about one another. The secretaries who worked in the small room between their respective offices, Anni Lerche and Delia Ziegler, both remembered how much the two men joked with one another. Delia Ziegler said of Olbricht and Stauffenberg: "When the two of them are together, you hear so much laughter, just laughter." [Delia Ziegler, quoted by Olbricht's widow Eva in an interview with East German TV on 29 April 1987.] Ultimately, Olbricht and Stauffenberg went to their deaths together without either of them blaming the other for the failure of the assassination or the coup. This is why postwar recriminations against Olbricht are particularly sad. Olbricht and Stauffenberg saw themselves as a team, as comrades, working together toward the same goal. Neither of them would have wanted to gain fame and honor at the expense of the other.
Olbricht died as a direct result of the failure of Valkyrie. It was a fitting end, because no other conspirator was as closely linked to Valkyrie as he. It was to Olbricht's credit that a plan for the suppression of "internal unrest" was approved by Hitler. It was Olbricht's idea to use such a plan as the cover for a coup to bring down the very regime it was allegedly designed to protect. It was his caution and competence that enabled him to develop this plan over more than two years without ever arousing the suspicions of his Nazi superiors. It was certainly thanks to his competence and high standing that he was able to preserve this plan for its illicit purposes even after the fiasco of 15 July 1944. And it speaks volumes for his intelligence and skill as a chief of staff that the plan worked well until it ran up against the reality of Hitler's survival.
Olbricht was not to blame for the failure of Valkyrie. It was not his fault that the assassination failed, so that officers were not freed of their oath. Nor was it Olbricht's fault that the Wolfschanze was not incommunicado and the counter-orders could be issued. But it is Olbricht's tragedy that his role in the German Resistance has been overshadowed by others and his contributions underestimated, demeaned and forgotten.
General Olbricht was the subject of the dissertation with which I earned a PhD cum Laude from the University of Hamburg.
Find out more about General Olbricht and his role in the anti-Nazi conspiracy in: Codename Valkyrie: General Friedrich Olbricht and the Plot against Hitler
In addition, based on my research for my dissertation, I also wrote a novel that attempted to encompass the complexity of German society in the Nazi era and the many faces of resistance. This book was re-released last year:
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