White Knights in the Black Orchestra by Tom Dunkel

Author:Tom Dunkel [DUNKEL, TOM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

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Orchestrated Espionage

BONHOEFFER’S LOVE LIFE was frozen in place, but the war raged on. The Operation 7 Jews made it safely out of Germany, but in October 1942 one of Helmuth von Moltke’s government sources, who just returned from Poland, told him the extermination camp at Treblinka had greatly expanded its capacity for gassing prisoners. Six thousand Jews were now being “processed” every day. During the summer the German army had regained momentum in Russia. Stalingrad seemed on the verge of surrendering, but Hitler again blundered by spreading his forces too thin. General Franz Halder, chief of the Army High Command and an on-again, off-again conspirator, became a convenient scapegoat: in September Hitler had booted him into the Army Reserves. The Russians counterattacked in November, separating Germany’s 6th Army from its 4th Panzer Division, both of which were now surrounded by enemy troops slowly closing in on them.

Looking to exploit sinking morale in the military and to stir the pot for a coup, Carl Goerdeler made a secret visit to Russia, traveling on documents supplied by Hans Oster and his team of Abwehr forgers.1 He met with Field Marshal Günther von Kluge and Colonel Henning von Tresckow from Army Group Center, which at that time occupied Smolensk. They vowed to arrest Hitler on his next visit to the front. A few weeks later Kluge changed his mind without explanation. Word soon trickled out that Hitler was paying bonuses to top officers to ensure their loyalty. Kluge reportedly had received a check for 250,000 reichsmarks on his sixtieth birthday in October.2

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