Plot That Failed

Germany's Underground (207 pp.)--Allen Welsh Dulles--Macmillan ($3).

Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg had fought with Rommel in Africa, lost his left arm and two fingers of his right hand there. But he could still do staff work. Above all, he could still carry a briefcase. On July 20, 1944, he carried a briefcase into a conference at the Fuehrer's field headquarters in East Prussia. He put it down close to the Fuehrer--with a powerful little bomb inside.

World War II's boldest plot-that-failed has been reported, but never as fully as in Germany's Underground. Its preliminaries, principals and political aims are now described by Manhattan Lawyer Allen W. Dulles (younger brother of State Department Adviser John Foster Dulles), who was the wartime OSS chief in Switzerland. Obviously Dulles thought the assassination plot of great importance; the OSS in Switzerland had learned of it through "secret channels" long before it came off, repeatedly advised Washington of its importance. But Allied headquarters dismissed the plot as trifling and, says Dulles, "the plotters received no encouragement from the West."

The plotters certainly had enough rank to excite an OSS agent: the ringleaders were Colonel General Ludwig Beck, onetime German Chief of Staff, and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, onetime mayor of Leipzig. Among the men indirectly involved were Field Marshal von Kluge, the Western Front army chief, and Field Marshal Rommel. (Says Dulles: Beck, Kluge and Rommel subsequently died violent deaths; the ex-mayor was executed.)

Stauffenberg, the man chosen to do the dirty work, had tried at least twice before to kill Hitler. Other plotters had also tried. In March 1943, one almost succeeded by wrapping up a bomb and planting it in Hitler's airplane. The plane took off with Hitler aboard, but arrived at its destination safely. Reason: the bomb's firing pin had tripped, but the percussion cap was a dud.

The July 20 attempt failed for just as unpredictable reasons. The bomb exploded as planned (it was of the same type as the airplane bomb, timed not by telltale clockwork but by the action of acid on a taut wire). Also as planned, Hitler was in the room. At the moment of the explosion he was leaning on the map table under which the bomb had been planted. A few seconds before, however, someone had slightly shifted Stauffenberg's briefcase, so that, instead of lying practically at Hitler's feet, it lay behind a table leg. The day, moreover, was hot, and the open conference-room windows dissipated the force of the explosion. Even so, four of the 24 men at the conference were killed, and seven severely wounded. Hitler suffered burns, bruises and a partial paralysis of the right arm, but was able to walk to his quarters.

"The attempt of July 20," says Author Dulles, ". . . was not an isolated, spontaneous coup, but part of a planned, desperate last effort to destroy the Nazi tyranny. . . . There was an anti-Nazi underground working in Germany, despite the general impression to the contrary. It developed out of heterogeneous groups . . . and reached into the vitals of the army . . . government, [professions], church and labor."

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