Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member Read Online Free PDF Page A

to attack Prez.
    “Impossible, Colonel,” I replied. “We have an agreement with the French. They’ve asked for a cease-fire.” I explained the situation. The lieutenant colonel didn’t want to hear about it, either because he wished to distinguish himself by some new feat, or because he didn’t have much confidence in what I said.
    “Sorry to displease you,” he said, “but I’m going to give the order to attack.”
    I could see that he was determined, and that his foolishness was probably going to cost dozens of lives in both camps. I decided to pull out all the stops. As calmly as possible, and fully aware of the disciplinary consequences that might result, I drew my pistol and pointed it at the colonel.
    “It is I who am sorry, but if you give this order I will have to shoot you,” I said, very carefully.
    The lieutenant colonel exploded with anger. But seeing the pistol pointed at him, and seeing that I looked as though I was actually prepared to shoot him, he yielded. The French battalion was saved. Everything went as planned, without drop of blood being shed. Few people knew what had happened, and we tried to keep it quiet. But we were unable to keep the news from circulating among the staffs. The story became almost a legend—in some versions, I actually fired. Fortunately, as the anecdote spread and became distorted, the names of the two people involved were forgotten. In any case, until the end of the war Doege and I took care to avoid each other.

6
A Lightning Campaign

JUNE-NOVEMBER 1941
    The end of the campaign in France inaugurated a peaceful time of almost nine months. We took advantage of this relative calm to train men and horses, and especially to hunt. Fate had been good to me: I was based south of Orléans, in the middle of Sologne, a hunter’s paradise. There I lived in a house deserted by wealthy Parisians who had fled to the South. I still have very pleasant memories of those few months when the German occupation was, obviously, still not too painful for the French, or at least did not yet elicit hostile reactions.
    My brother Georg was less fortunate. During the summer his squadron was located in Chauny, on the road from Poitiers to Angoulême. Chauny was almost in the South, in that part of Vienne close to the Charente. The sparsely wooded countryside, rather poorly maintained,was hardly suitable for hunting, and poachers seemed already to have skimmed off the area’s limited supply of game: there remained neither big game, nor tracking, nor even battues; there were no wild ducks or partridges. Cats (which Georg abhorred), dogs, and sparrows were the only wild animals to be found. No matter! On July 23, a few days after they had established themselves in Chauny, Georg organized his first hunt and invited the head of the battalion.
    Georg’s superior was cantoned some fifteen kilometers away, and the division was scattered over the whole department of Vienne. Lodged in a mansion that looked out on the main square, my brother reigned over his village and commanded his 250 men as he wished. They were, however, not entirely idle; during the summer, his squadron had to deal with the flow of tens of thousands of French who had headed south with the exodus, and were now slowly returning north along National Highway 10. The long line of automobiles loaded with mattresses, bicycles, cooking utensils, and packages of various kinds stretched as far as one could see, and the heat was merciless—as high as 50°C (122°F) in the sun. In addition, Georg and his men had to cope with the angry outbursts of an exasperated population. But it was not yet time for revolt. The French still didn’t feel that sensation of being crushed that would lead them to realize that they had been completely and lastingly defeated.They did not yet bend under the weight of the foreign occupation. The infernal cycle of acts of resistance and repressions, and especially the cycle of persecutions and deportations, had not