Treason is now available around the world

Last year, during the pandemic, the hard copy of Treason was published here in Australia. 

However, postage costs made it awkward to distribute this internationally. 

This has now been sorted, and Treason is now available internationally through Blurb.

If you live in Australia, the Blurb version will not be cheaper, but anywhere else, it is.

Incidentally, I was very pleased with the endorsements given on the back cover!

The Reichstag Fire

Berliners watch the Reichstag burn

President Hindenburg finally agreed to install Adolf Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933 as part of a coalition – in the hope that Hitler might be able to garner a majority in the fractious and divided Reichstag (parliament). The coalition ministry contained only two other Nazis – Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring.

In response to the appointment, the Nazis staged torchlight processions – trumpeting the dawn of a new age for Germany.

Hitler failed to negotiate parliamentary support. On 1 February Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and ordered elections for 5 March.

On 27 February 1933, the immense Reichstag building, the focal point of Berlin’s imperial district, was set on fire and destroyed. Only the shell remained. It was a shocking act of terrorism.

In the midst of the public alarm that followed, Hitler presented President Hindenburg with an emergency decree, drafted by non-Nazi public servants, ‘for the protection of the people and the state’.

The decree abrogated basic civil rights. Hitler said that with this decree he could ‘try enemies of the state legally and deal with them in a way that will put an end to conspiracies once and for all.’

In the final week of the campaign, the Nazis rode the panic about the fire shamelessly – loudly blaming the Communist Party and whipping up hysteria about the communist menace. Today, there is widespread suspicion that the Nazis burnt the Reichstag.

Hermann Göring was Prussian minister for the interior – giving him control of security for almost two thirds of Germany. Immediately he installed Nazis in key positions. He ordered police not to interfere with Nazi brownshirts (the Sturmabteilung – storm troopers, or SA, which constituted the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party) but to shoot at communists. He also established a force of 50,000 auxiliary police – mostly brawling thugs of the Nazi SA and SS (the Schutzstaffel, or ‘guard detachment’ – or blackshirts – at this stage a small elite force theoretically part of the SA) – who simply pulled a white armband over their brown or black shirts to become the law.

On 5 March, having rigged the result, the Nazis increased their vote to 43.9 per cent (the highest they had ever received). It was still short of a majority, but the Nazis had enough coalition support for Hitler to remain as chancellor. There would be no need for more free elections.

The alleged perpetrators of the Reichstag fire were tried before judges of Germany's highest court - the Reichsgericht. Marinus van der Lubbe was convicted and executed. However, the four co-accused - Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov and Vasil Tanev - all officials of the Communist Party - were acquitted. Those acquittals prompted a furious Adolf Hitler to establish a 'People's Court' which would deal with so-called 'political' crimes.

This is an edited extract from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Plot to Kill Hitler

Hans von Herwarth

Captain Hans-Heinrich (‘Johann’ or ‘Johnny’) Herwarth von Bittenfeld

14 July 1904 – 21 August 1999

Herwarth was a lawyer and economist who entered the German Foreign Office in 1927, and served in several important foreign posts, including the German embassies in Paris and, from 1931 to 1939, Moscow.

He worked actively against the Nazis, and in particular, along with Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg (the German ambassador to Moscow - and not to be confused with conspirator Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg), urged foreign powers in the late 1930s not to give in to Hitler’s territorial demands. He gave important information to foreign diplomats:

• He kept the British informed on the progress of negotiations between the Germans and Soviets in 1939
• On 24 August 1939, the day after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, he gave the full text of its secret protocol, concerning, amongst other things, the division of Poland, to US diplomats
• He warned the Allies of the impending launch of Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union).

He married his wife Elisabeth in 1935 and they had one daughter.

After the war began, he joined the army where he served in staff posts, mostly in the east. He helped convey explosives for the resistance.

His grandmother was Jewish. He was a cousin by marriage of Claus von Stauffenberg, and worked with him compiling reports of Nazi atrocities against Jews in the occupied east.

He survived the war, and was the first West German ambassador to London. He was later ambassador to Rome. He served in a number of prominent positions, including as president of the Goethe Institute from 1971 – 1977.

This is an edited extract from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Plot to Kill Hitler

The Haeften brothers

Hans-Bernd August Gustav von Haeften (at his trial)

Born 18 December 1905

Lawyer

Diplomat

Werner Karl von Haeften

Born 9 October 1908

Claus von Stauffenberg’s aide

The Haeften brothers were nephews of Walther von Brauchitsch, the commander-in-chief of the German army from 4 February 1938 to 10 December 1941.

Hans-Bernd was a lawyer and worked for the Foreign Office. He was deeply religious, belonging to the Confessing Church (established by Karl Barth, Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, amongst others), and associated with the so-called Kreisau Circle – although he rarely attended, as his senior position made this too risky.

Werner was a lawyer who worked for a bank. He joined the army at the outbreak of war. From late 1943, having been wounded twice, he served as adjutant to Claus von Stauffenberg. He held the rank of First Lieutenant. A friend described him as ‘a kind of Siegfried with a sense of humour’.

In early 1944, Stauffenberg asked Werner to consider assassinating Hitler. Werner thought he could shoot Hitler with a pistol.

However, Hans-Bernd refused to have anything to do with killing Hitler. He persuaded his brother not to shoot Hitler as this would break the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (the fifth commandment in the Lutheran division of the Decalogue). Thereafter, Werner remained troubled as to the morality of assassinating Hitler.

The effect of this dissuasion persisted. It is probably the reason that Werner took no part in the complicated process of arming the bomb on 20 July 1944.

However, Hans-Bernd did support overthrowing Hitler, and was ready on the day of the coup to help deliver control of the Foreign Office to the resistance.

Prior to 20 July 1944 Claus von Stauffenberg took the bomb to Hitler on (at least) two

occasions (11 and 15 July), but was prevented from using it. On those days Werner was ill, and Claus took another young officer of the conspiracy with him – Captain Friedrich Klausing.

On 20 July 1944, Werner accompanied Claus to the Wolf’s Lair. At various times that day he carried the plastic explosive.

Werner did not help arm the bomb – which was left to Claus despite the difficulties due to his injuries. As noted, it was probably Werner’s scruples about the assassination which prevented his involvement. The result was that Claus was able to arm only half the explosive before he was interrupted by one of the worst-timed phone calls in history.

After placing the briefcase, Claus joined Werner and two others to watch the explosion. Satisfied that Hitler must be dead, Werner travelled with Claus in their car to the airfield. On the way he threw from the car a parcel containing the unused plastic explosive – an action observed by the driver. When the driver reported what he had seen, the unused explosive was recovered, pointing to the involvement of the two officers in the bombing.

Throughout the afternoon and evening of 20 July, Werner remained with Claus at the Bendlerblock (Home Army headquarters) in Berlin.

Hans-Bernd waited with Adam von Trott and others in the Foreign Office. They expected an armed escort to Broadcasting House, where they would make broadcasts on behalf of the new regime. When they saw the roadblocks being removed as the plot unravelled, a friend described it as a ‘ghastly moment’ and said Hans-Bernd went ‘white as a sheet’.

In the early hours of 21 July 1944, General Fromm summarily sentenced Claus von Stauffenberg, along with Werner, as well as General Olbricht and Colonel Mertz, to death by firing squad – a sentence carried out forthwith.

Werner died when he threw himself in front of the volley meant for Claus.

With his brother Werner so deeply involved in the July plot, Hans-Bernd was an early suspect. 

On 23 July 1944, he was arrested.

On 15 August 1944, he was brought before the Nazi 'People’s Court'. During his trial he described Hitler as ‘the incarnation of evil in history’. 

He was hanged that day in Plötzensee prison.

This is an edited extract from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Plot to Kill Hitler

Hans von Dohnányi

Dr Hans von Dohnányi (or ‘Hans von Dohnanyi’ – he began using the accent in his surname in about 1925) was born on 1 January 1902.

The son of a Hungarian composer and pianist (his son Christoph would become a prominent conductor), Hans von Dohnányi was brought up in Berlin, where he studied law before gaining his doctorate in Hamburg.

He qualified as a lawyer in 1928.

He was a friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer from school days, and in 1925 married Dietrich’s sister Christine. They had three children – Klaus, Christoph and Barbara.

He worked for the Ministry of Justice from 1929 until early 1932 and then from June 1933 to late 1938 he returned to the Ministry. He was personal adviser to Franz Gürtner, the Minister for Justice. Hitler kept Gürtner in office after becoming chancellor. Later Dohnányi headed Gürtner’s ministerial office. In these roles he met senior Nazi leaders.

From 1933 Dohnányi systematically gathered information on Nazi crimes – including in concentration camps. He hoped to place Hitler and other senior Nazis on trial.

From early 1938 he was in contact with opponents of Hitler, and he was a leading figure in plans for a coup in September 1938 at the time of the Sudetenland crisis. He discussed with his father-in-law, Karl Bonhoeffer (a prominent psychiatrist) providing a psychiatric opinion at a trial of Hitler.

In late 1938 the Nazis forced him to resign from the Ministry of Justice, and transferred him to the Supreme Court of the Reich in Leipzig. In late 1939 Hans Oster asked for him to be transferred to the Abwehr (military intelligence - and a centre for the resistance to Nazism).

In 1939 and 1940 he was a key liaison for Josef Müller in his negotiations on behalf of the resistance with the Allies through the Vatican. He also worked to obtain explosives for a bomb to be used against Hitler prior to the attack in the west.

In early 1943 he was involved in Henning von Tresckow’s attempts to assassinate Hitler and stage a coup. He was instrumental in obtaining explosives and he prepared proclamations (approved by General Beck) to be read over the radio in the event the assassination succeeded. Dohnányi and Oster had compiled a fund of information to be used in propaganda.

While at the Abwehr he helped Jews escape by enrolling them as Abwehr agents and sending them to Switzerland.

On 5 April 1943, along with his wife Christine,  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whom he had recruited to the resistance), and Dr Josef Müller, Dohnányi was arrested by the Gestapo, allegedly for breach of foreign currency regulations. They had sent money to support the Jewish ‘agents’ they had sent to Switzerland.

Dohnányi had on his desk a communication to Josef Müller as to the failure of the March 1943 plots against Hitler. It was disguised as intelligence material, so there was no need to hide it. When General Oster tried to conceal the papers, he also fell under suspicion, and was removed from office (an important blow for the German resistance).

Christine was released some weeks later.

  

Dohnányi endured a long imprisonment at the Gestapo headquarters in Prinzalbrechtstrasse in Berlin. He was repeatedly interrogated.

His wife smuggled infected food to him so that he contracted a serious illness and was removed to the police hospital – where it might be easier to escape.

Meanwhile Gestapo investigations following the July plot uncovered evidence of Dohnányi’s activities against the regime.

Learning that Dohnányi was to be transferred to a concentration camp, his doctor gave him drugs to incapacitate him – hoping this would save his life. However, on 6 April 1945 he arrived at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.

That day, semi-conscious and on a stretcher, he was ‘tried’ before Otto Thorbeck, with SS Standartenführer Walter Huppenkothen prosecuting, and sentenced to death.

He was hanged by the SS at Sachsenhausen, probably on 9 April 1945.

This is an edited extract from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Plot to Kill Hitler