Free Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member by Philip Freiherr von Boeselager

The only positive result of his energetic complaints was that we no longer heard about Bach-Zelewski. Perhaps he simply stopped reporting his barbaric acts. 3
    This incident changed my view of the war. I was disgusted and afraid. I had already had occasion to wonder about the meaning of this conflict, its strategic pertinence, and the Führer’s tactics. Through friends in my division’s reserve battalion who had been sent to Stargard 4 shortly after the invasion of Poland, I had heard rumors about the crimes committed by the SS in the conquered areas. We were surprised not so much by these rumors—there were so many young men without morals in the SS units—as by the perpetrators’ complete impunity. We told ourselves that this could not go on for long; we considered these atrocities, which were probable but never proven, to be isolated events.
    Henceforth, I had the proof of the abomination before my eyes. It was no longer a matter of isolated acts committed by aberrant individuals. It was a rigorous planthat had been sanctioned by the highest authorities. We had to face the facts: the state, as a whole, was riddled with vice and criminality. And the army, by remaining silent, was making itself the system’s accomplice. This situation now seems to us blindingly clear, yet it was not so clear for contemporaries, who were convinced that Germany was a model of civilization and that it could not be subjected to either a dictatorship or a murderous totalitarianism.
    For several weeks, I remained in a state of deep perplexity. I reported the incident to Tresckow, in whom I liked to confide. But then what should be done? Speak out—to whom? To say what—denounce the perpetrators? Again, to whom? And according to what criteria? The scale of values had been corrupted: Kluge’s altercation with Bach-Zelewski had shown clearly enough how the fruit had already been rotting away from the inside.
    From then on, I paid more attention to conversations among officers and to allusions I could now decode, and I came to notice that people within the staff knew about the execution of Jews. It was mentioned covertly, with repugnance, and the blame was put on foreign recruits in the SS. One fact in particular was evident, since members of the staff of Army Group Center had witnessed it directly. In October 1941, in Borissov, Latvian SS men had executed thousands of Jews and thrown them into a giant ditch. By chance, two superior officers, Carl-Hans von Hardenburg and Heinrich von Lehndorff, had seen themassacre. Because of bad weather, the plane carrying them was flying at low altitude and the two had observed every detail of this nightmare. Hardenberg, who was then the private aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commander in chief of Army Group Center, had appealed to his superior. The local military commandant was immediately summoned. How could he have allowed such crimes to be committed on the territory for which he was responsible? He would have to answer for this massacre of the innocents. The commandant, confronted with his own cowardice and racked with remorse, committed suicide. This affair caused two of the principal officers of the staff, Tresckow and Gersdorff, to join the resistance. Yet in the spring of 1942, I was still unaware of this radicalization among my great friends, their state of mind, and the double game they were playing.
    I soon had another example of how lethal was the effect of prejudices held by the masters of Germany regarding allegedly inferior races. Tresckow had convinced Kluge to send to the Führer a small delegation of Ukrainians who had defected to our side and wanted to set up a buffer state with its own army. Hitler refused to receive them and had the unfortunate delegates immediately shot.

10
An Incident at the Führer’s Headquarters

JULY 1942
    The second incident that contributed to my joining the conspiracy took place at the Führer’s headquarters in Vinnytsya, 1 in Ukraine. For