D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [179]
Unaware that Kluge had already ordered Stülpnagel to release his prisoners, Himmler told the chief directorate of the SS to ring Sepp Dietrich. He was ordered to prepare to march on Paris with the 1st SS Panzer-Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. Himmler seems to have been unaware that the division had just been involved in a major battle and could not possibly abandon the Bourguébus ridge at such a moment. He was also unaware that Hitler’s ‘loyal disciple’, Sepp Dietrich, had in Eberbach’s words, ‘almost turned revolutionary’.48
Back in Berlin, there was chaos in the Bendlerblock. Generaloberst Fromm, in a doomed attempt to save himself from suspicion, ordered the arrest and instant court martial of four of the other officers involved. He allowed Generaloberst Beck to keep his pistol, provided he used it immediately on himself. Presumably because his hand was shaking, Beck shot himself twice in the head. He grazed his scalp the first time, then inflicted a terrible wound with the second shot. An exasperated Fromm ordered a sergeant, some accounts say an officer, to finish him off.
The four, including Stauffenberg, who tried to take all the responsibility for the attempted assassination on himself, were executed in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock by the light of automobile headlights. A detachment of Remer’s men, who had just arrived, provided the firing squad. When it was Stauffenberg’s turn, illuminated by the headlights, he called out, ‘Long live holy Germany!’ Fromm, as desperate as ever to save himself, gave a grotesque speech over their bodies in praise of Hitler and ended with a triple ‘Sieg Heil!’
In France, Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge ordered the arrest of Stülpnagel at 01.25 hours on the morning of 21 July. That afternoon, Stülpnagel was put in a car to be taken back to Berlin for interrogation by the Gestapo. Because of his seniority, his escort had not taken away his pistol. When the car had stopped en route, presumably to give the occupants a chance to relieve themselves, Stülpnagel attempted to commit suicide, but managed only to shoot both his eyes out. He was taken to a hospital in Verdun to be patched up for the journey on to Berlin, where he would be tried and hanged. At 22.15 hours, it was announced that ‘the Military Commander of France, General von Stülpnagel, has been ambushed and wounded by terrorists’.
News of the assassination attempt ‘came like a bomb-shell’, in the words of Generalleutnant Bodo Zimmermann, one of Kluge’s senior staff officers. ‘As in the case of any sudden, unexpected event, a certain paralysis set in at first.’ For most officers the ‘burning question’ was, ‘What are the men at the front saying and doing? Would the front still hold?’ When word of the attempt reached a Kampfgruppe of the 21st Panzer-Division near Troarn, ‘its pread like wild-fire down the column’. Yet ‘the front kept on fighting as though nothing had happened’. The ‘high emotional tension of battle’ meant that the news only touched the average soldier ‘on the fringe of his consciousness . . . the combat soldier was in another world’. General Eberbach, on the other hand, later said he was ‘amazed’ at the ‘indignation and anger’ that the attempted putsch had provoked ‘not only among the SS Divisions but also among some of the infantry Divisions’. Most officers were appalled that the plotters could have broken their oath to the Führer.
Eberhard Beck with the 277th Infanterie-Division, recorded what happened when the news reached his artillery battery. ‘Our signaller heard over the radio that an attempt at assassination had been made against Adolf Hitler. His death could have been a turning point for us and we hoped that this pointless war would find its end.