(2 of 3)
¶ Executed were: 1) bomb-tossing Colonel Graf Claus von Stauffenberg, member of Hitler's own personal staff since he lost his right arm and eye in Tunisia; 2) Colonel General Ludwig Beck, onetime Chief of Staff, who fought Hitler's intuition in 1938, had since been in retirement. D.N.B. reported: "He is no longer among living beings."
¶ The bomb killed three of the men around Hitler. They were: Hitler's alleged double Heinrich Bergner, General Günther Korten, Chief of Air Force General Staff, Major General Heinz Brandt.
¶ The military salute was abolished. All soldiers were ordered to use the up-armed Heil Hitler.
¶ Over. the radio Dr. Robert Ley, brutal tosspot chief of the Nazi Labor Front, screamed: "Blue-blooded swine, lunatics, idiots, criminals, murderers, reactionaries!"
Twilight Rumors. From the cavernous stage of Hitler's Europe, from behind the censor's hastily lowered asbestos curtain, came a confused welter of noises: hoarse shouts, the sound of running footsteps, the sudden stutter of machine guns. It was like the opening scene of a tragic and savage Twilight of the Gods. Rumor cried:
Hitler had been forewarned at Berchtesgaden by the Gestapo, had sent his double, Heinrich Bergner, into the big map room, where a dozen generals and their adjutants were waiting for afternoon conference. Von Stauffenberg mistook Bergner for Hitler. In the same motion with which he gave the Nazi salute, he tossed a hand grenade. There were flames and an explosion. Bergner fell dead.
No, Hitler had been present, and when the grenade—or was it a Teller mine?—exploded under the table, the explosion tore the pants off everyone present. When Benito Mussolini arrived a short time later, Hitler held up the ragged remnants to show that nothing worse had happened to him. Hitler was verging on a nervous breakdown, terrified of further attempts on his life, had -deserted Berchtesgaden for a heavily guarded Rhineland estate.
Rumors about the purge were the most bloodcurdling:
¶ Some 6,000 persons had already been arrested, some of them shot. Some 10,000 had gone into hiding.
¶ Himmler's strong-arm squads were arresting civilians as well as army officers. Among civilians jailed, perhaps shot: former Nazi Minister for Economics Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, former Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath.
¶ In one south Bavarian concentration camp the Gestapo had shot a thousand German officers.
¶ Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commander in Italy, and Colonel General Sachs, head of the Army's counter-espionage department, had been arrested.
¶ Baldurvon Schirach, Gauleiter of Vienna and a leading Nazi, had fled from Vienna.
¶ General Fritz Fromm, whose job as head of the Home Army was taken over by Himmler, had been shot.
¶ Four hundred German officers had committed suicide.
¶ A naval revolt had broken out at the Kiel naval base.
¶ In France SS Guards were fighting pitched battles with the Army.