July 20 – survivor Fabian von Schlabrendorff
July 20th is the anniversary of the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944. The assassination attempt failed, but the legacy of duty and responsibility that July 20th left behind is an important part of the moral foundation of the new Germany, the Federal Republic. The day will again be celebrated this year with a ceremony in the Bendlerblock, Berlin, where the state vault was brought down and where some of the most prominent representatives were executed. Among them was Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the man who carried out the assassination attempt on Hitler at his headquarters in East Prussia.
Stauffenberg was by no means alone. During the course of the war, more and more officers had come to realize the true nature of the regime. A series of events had opened the eyes of many. On the Eastern Front, the ruthless terror against the civilian population had become apparent. Those in the rear units had experienced or learned of the mass murders of Jews. A particularly notable measure was the so-called commissar order. Every Russian officer in a leading position had at his side a representative of the Communist Party, a commissar, who confirmed or canceled every order. These commissars existed at all levels. They were in reality civilian, political representatives, but they were engaged in a military context, and according to the rules of international law they had the right to be treated as prisoners of war as men of war. At the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler issued the so-called commissar order, which meant that captured commissars were to be immediately executed. The order aroused great opposition and could only be partially implemented, but a large number of captured commissars were nevertheless executed. This was a crime under international law that awakened many to the true nature of the regime. The question of the commissar order also followed a July 20 man, namely General Erich Hoepner. He had been executed in 1944, a school in Berlin had been named after him in 1956, but in 2008 his name was removed from the school, among other things because he had implemented the commissar order.
The resistance to Hitler was strong on the Eastern Front and especially in Army Group Centre, where General Henning von Tresckow was Chief of Staff. His adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Fabian von Schlabrendorff, was the only survivor among the inner circle of the 20 July Circle. He had come close to succeeding in an assassination attempt as early as 1943. He then managed to smuggle a bomb onto Hitler's plane. The bomb was disguised as a cognac bottle, which he asked an officer he knew to take to an acquaintance in Berlin. The bomb was equipped with a timed igniter of English manufacture, which he had received through the Abwehr, the intelligence service. There was also resistance to Hitler there. The resistance members awaited the results with great excitement. But Hitler's plane landed without anything having happened. However, Schlabrendorff managed to arrange so that the bottle with the bomb was not revealed.
After the failure of the July 20th assassination attempt, von Schlabrendorff was arrested and subjected to brutal torture. One of the methods used was that he was strapped to a bed-like position with his head down. A kind of tube with sharp thorns on the inside was threaded onto his legs and pulled tighter and tighter. Another method was that he was tied in a crouching position with his hands tied and then thrown over and over again. Despite extensive torture, he did not reveal anything.
Several of the July 20th men had been sentenced to death by the so-called People's Court. This court did not judge according to any law but according to the "German people's sense of justice", i.e. according to solidarity with the Aryan race. The background to this view lay in Nazism's further development of Darwin's view of humanity, as it appears, for example, in Descent of man. The idea was that development takes place in the races, and between the races there is a constant struggle for a place in the sun. The basis of law and morality thus lay in loyalty to the struggle of the Aryan race, and this race was also the spearhead of development. The president of the court was the notorious Roland Freisler. His scandalous behavior with attacks and mockery of the accused was unprecedented. Everything was filmed and is still preserved. The purpose was that the films would be used in the flagship of Nazi propaganda, Deutsche Wochenschau, which was shown in all cinemas before the evening's feature film. However, Freisler's behavior was so scandalous that even the Nazi propagandists did not want to use the films.
On February 3, 1945, von Schlabrendorff's case was to be heard in the People's Court. While he was waiting to be brought into the courtroom, an American bombing raid began on Berlin, and the courthouse took a direct hit. Freisler was crushed under a falling beam. In his hand, he still held a folder with the documents for the trial of Fabian von Schlabrendorff in his deathbed. That day, what one of the accused and convicted, Caesar von Hofacker, had said to the roaring judge came true: "Now I speak, Mr. President. Now it is about my life. Within a year it is about your life."
Freisler was succeeded by his deputy Wilhelm Crone. On March 16, the cases against von Schlabrendorff were resumed. He was a civil lawyer and now argued his own case. He did so with such energy that Crone was speechless. Among other things, he was able to point out that torture was prohibited by German law, and here, before a sitting court, he was able to show signs of torture on his own body. The trial ended in a completely unique way for a People's Court. Fabian von Schlabrendorff was acquitted! However, this did not mean that he was set free.
In his book For the sake of honor Marion Gräfin Dönhoff tells about the friends in the July 20th circle that she has the strongest memories of. One of them is Fabian von Schlabrendorff. He was, she writes, a recklessly brave man. The title of the book is important. It was “for the sake of honor” that the July 20th men did what they did. They understood honor as responsibility towards past and future generations, a responsibility that applied to the entire people and could not be limited to their own people or the military. For many of them, it was about an ultimate responsibility. General Hans Oster, who had planned an attack as early as 1938, said: “We fear nothing but the wrath of God.” The grand old man of the German army, Colonel General Ludvig Beck, had impressed upon him: “The officer who sees only a military responsibility has not reached sufficient maturity.”
The sense of responsibility or honor also explains why the Gestapo never succeeded in infiltrating the military resistance. Nor was there any denunciation. If the men of July 20 had been asked what their goal was, they would have answered: The restoration of the rule of law. A rule of law cannot be based on what is politically useful or possible at the moment. A rule of law is based on firm principles, not on something that is agreed upon. These are principles that are as immutable as the laws of nature and thus transcend time and space. The Romans summed them up in the words suum cuique – “to each his due”. To the thief punishment, to the robbed redress. There is therefore a fundamental responsibility and a fundamental right for every individual. And justice is blind in the sense that it does not take into account the person. It does not matter whether the person is a billionaire or a vagrant, the only decisive thing is that everyone has the same responsibility and the same right. In German, this is summed up in the word Menschenwürde, human dignity.
Where human dignity is restored, every dictatorship – even of thought – is impossible. This is what July 20 wanted to restore. This is what Fabian von Schlabrendorff fought for in the People's Court. Roland Freisler and the People's Court were characterized by the opposite view of law. Freisler expressed it this way: “The decisive factor is the totalitarian state's demands on the citizen, who is forced to abandon his moral and religious obligations to God.” The state is thus the highest and there is nothing above the state.
How did Fabian von Schlabrendorff fare? He remained imprisoned and, together with other important prisoners, was taken to southern Germany, but unlike many of the others, he was not executed during the last days of the war. The Allies freed him. After the war, he became a judge in the new Federal Republic's Supreme Court. He has honored his comrades in the July 20th Circle with the book Officers against Hitler.