Resistance Activities
Through his acquaintance with Colonel General Ludwig Beck, his superior, and then Beck's successor, Colonel-General Franz Halder, Fellgiebel contacted the anti-Nazi resistance group in the Wehrmacht.
In the 1938 conspiracy, he was supposed to cut communications throughout Germany while Field Marshal von Witzleben would occupy Berlin.
Fellgiebel was involved in the preparations for Operation Valkyrie and during the attempt on the Führer's life (20 July 1944) Fellgiebel tried to cut Hitler's headquarters off from all telecommunication connections, which he only partly succeeded in doing. When it became clear that the attempt had failed, Fellgiebel had to override the communications black-out he had set up.
Fellgiebel's most famous act that day was his telephone report to his co-conspirators after he was informed that Hitler was still alive: "Etwas schreckliches ist passiert! Der Führer lebt!" ("Something awful has happened! The Führer lives!").
Read more about this topic: Erich Fellgiebel
Famous quotes containing the words resistance and/or activities:
“It is not the first duty of the novelist to provide blueprints for insurrection, or uplifting tales of successful resistance for the benefit of the opposition. The naming of what is there is what is important.”
—Ian McEwan (b. 1938)
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)