Avenue of Spies by Alex Kershaw

Author:Alex Kershaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2015-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

THE COUP: JULY 20, 1944

KLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, a tall and handsome thirty-seven-year-old German colonel, stood alone in a bathroom inside Adolf Hitler’s Prussian headquarters—the so-called Wolf’s Lair. It was 12:26 p.m. on July 20, 1944. Von Stauffenberg activated a bomb inside a briefcase, left the bathroom, and then walked down a long corridor and into a conference room. Hitler sat behind a table, toying with a powerful magnifying glass, his spectacles lying on a map. Stauffenberg placed his brown leather briefcase under the table, a mere six feet from Hitler, then excused himself, mumbling that he had to take an urgent phone call. He slipped out of the room and hurried down a corridor to make his escape.

At 12:42 p.m. there was a massive explosion. Smoke filled the room as splinters and plaster flew everywhere. Stauffenberg heard the explosion as he made his way through a security perimeter. Surely, this time it was all over. By later that afternoon he was in Berlin, where he set about ordering his fellow conspirators to secure the city. At 5:00 p.m. he called fifty-eight-year-old General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel in Paris and told him that he had assassinated Hitler. Stülpnagel went to work carrying out his crucial role in the conspiracy, quickly ordering the 1,200 SS and Gestapo men in Paris to be arrested. The likes of Knochen were, it was assumed, prepared to support Hitler to the last breath. They had, after all, sworn “absolute allegiance” to him. Their motto was “Unsere Ehre heisst Treue” (“Our honor is loyalty”). This “blood oath” was engraved on Knochen’s dress dagger and his uniform’s belt buckles.

All along the Avenue Foch, Major General Walther Brehmer’s men of the 1st Guards Regiment surrounded buildings and hid in bushes in gardens. There was the shrill of a whistle. Trucks and cars moved into position, then another whistle. Hundreds of troops quickly overwhelmed sentries, some of them having fallen asleep that humid evening, and then stormed the Gestapo’s headquarters. In his office, a shirt-sleeved SS general Karl Oberg, Helmut Knochen’s immediate superior, was talking on the telephone with Otto Abetz, when his adjutant burst in. The adjutant said the commandant of the Paris Security Division, Major General Brehmer, was in the reception room nearby. He was very agitated and demanding to see Oberg.

Oberg carried on his phone conversation. Seconds later two doors into his office burst open. Brehmer stepped over to Oberg’s desk and placed his hand on the cradle of the telephone, ending the conversation with Abetz.

Oberg put the receiver down. “What’s this about, Mr. Brehmer?” “Acting on orders of the Military Commander, I am here to place you under arrest.”

There was no sign of Knochen at number 72. He had gone to have dinner at the German embassy with an old friend, Karl-Theodor Zeitschel, a specialist in Freemasonry and Jewish affairs in the embassy’s political section. As the pair ate, one of Knochen’s aides interrupted and told him he was required to return as soon as possible to 72, Avenue Foch.

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