Henning Von Tresckow - Operation Valkyrie

Operation Valkyrie

Eventually, the conspirators came to rely more on the Reserve Army in Berlin and other districts to stage a coup against the German government. Olbricht now put forward a new strategy for staging a coup against Hitler. The Reserve Army had an operational plan called Operation Walküre (Valkyrie), which was to be used in the event that the disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities caused a breakdown in law and order, or an uprising by the millions of slave laborers from occupied countries now being used in German factories. Olbricht suggested that this plan could be used to mobilize the Reserve Army to take control of German cities, disarm the SS and arrest the Nazi leadership once Hitler had been assassinated. During August and September 1943, Tresckow took extended sick leave in Berlin to draft the "revised" Valkyrie plan with fine details and precise timetables. Revised orders and additional proclamations that would pin the blame for the uprising on the Nazi party were typed by Tresckow's wife, Erika, and his secretary, Countess Margarete von Oven, who wore gloves so as not to leave fingerprints. These 1943 papers were recovered by the Soviets after the war and finally published in 2007, showing Tresckow's central role in the conspiracy and the idealistic motivations of the resistance group at that time. Knowledge of the Jewish Holocaust was a major impetus for many officers involved.

But when Tresckow was assigned to command of a battalion on the Eastern Front in October 1943, he was no longer in position to actively plan or effect the coup. Even his promotion a month later to Chief of Staff of the Second Army did not bring him much closer. To gain access to Hitler, he proposed to his old comrade General Rudolf Schmundt, Hitler's chief adjutant and Army personnel chief, to create a new department of psychological and political warfare to evaluate data and make reports directly to the Führer. Schmundt, who was still well disposed toward his old friend but suspected that Tresckow disapproved of the Führer, quietly let the matter drop. Tresckow also applied to become General Adolf Heusinger's delegate in the Army High Command (OKH) during the latter's two-month leave, which would also give him access to Hitler's meetings, but Heusinger, who was earlier approached by conspirators, rejected it apparently for the same reason.

Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who met Tresckow in August 1943 and worked together on revising Operation Valkyrie, took the responsibility for planning and implementing Hitler's assassination. By the time Stauffenberg was appointed Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army and was ready to carry out the assassination attempt, the Allies had already landed in Normandy. When Stauffenberg sent a message to Tresckow through Lehndorff to ask whether there was any point in making the attempt since there was no practical purpose to be served, Tresckow urged him not only to attempt the assassination but to go ahead with the coup in Berlin even if the assassination were to fail. He argued that there must be an overt act of German opposition to Hitler regardless of the consequences. He also told Philipp von Boeselager and Margarete von Oven that 16,000 people were being killed daily not as casualties of war but as result of murders perpetrated by the Germans, and Hitler had to be killed just to put an end to it. A few days before the coup attempt, Tresckow confided to a friend that "in all likelihood everything will go wrong". When asked whether the action was necessary nonetheless, he replied, "Yes, even so."