Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow (; 10 January 1901 – 21 July 1944) was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassinate Hitler on 13 March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government. He was described by the Gestapo as the "prime mover" behind the plot of 20 July 1944 to assassinate Hitler.Fest 1997, p. 236. He committed suicide at Królowy Most on the Eastern Front upon learning of the plot's failure.
Early life Tresckow was born in Magdeburg into a noble family from the Brandenburg region of Prussia with 300 years of military tradition that provided the Prussian Army with 21 generals.Balfour 1988, pg. 124. His father, Leopold Hans Heinrich Eugen Hermann von Tresckow, later a cavalry general, had been present at Kaiser Wilhelm I's coronation as the emperor of new German Empire at Versailles in 1871. His mother, Marie-Agnes, was the youngest daughter of Count Robert von Zedlitz-Trützschler, a Prussian Minister of Education.
He received most of his early education from tutors on his family's remote rural estate; from 1913 to 1917, he was a student at the gymnasium in the town of Goslar. He joined the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards as an officer cadet aged 16 and became the youngest lieutenant in the Army in June 1918. In the Second Battle of the Marne, he earned the Iron Cross 2nd class for outstanding courage and independent action against the enemy. At that time Count Siegfried von Eulenberg, the commander of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards, predicted that "You, Tresckow, will either become chief of the General Staff or die on the scaffold as a rebel."Profile, offizierschule-des-heeres.de; accessed 16 March 2017.
Career
After World War I, Tresckow stayed with the famed Infantry Regiment 9 Potsdam and took part in the suppression of the Spartacist movement in January 1919, but resigned from the Weimar Republic Reichswehr Army in 1920 in order to study law and economics. He worked in a banking house and embarked on a world journey visiting Britain, France, Brazil and the eastern United States in 1924 before he had to abandon it to take care of family possessions back home. Like members of many prominent Prussian families, Tresckow married into another family with long-standing military traditions. In 1926, he married Erika von Falkenhayn, only daughter of Erich von Falkenhayn, the chief of the General Staff from 1914 to 1916, and returned to military service, being sponsored by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. Nevertheless, he was not a typical Prussian officer. He wore his uniform only when it was absolutely required and disliked the regimentation of army life.Michael C. Thomsett, The German Opposition to Hitler, pg. 163 He liked to recite Rainer Maria Rilke, and spoke several languages, including English and French.Frankfurter Allgemine Zeitung, Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager interview, 1 May 2008.
In 1934, Tresckow began General Staff training at the War Academy and graduated as the best of the class of 1936. He was assigned to the General Staff's 1st Department (Operations), where he worked in close contact with Generals Ludwig Beck, Werner von Fritsch, Adolf Heusinger and Erich von Manstein.
Later in 1939 and into 1940, he served as the second general staff officer of Army Group A under Gerd von Rundstedt and Erich von Manstein, culminating in the invasion of France in the spring of 1940. Tresckow played a role in the adoption of the Manstein Plan, which proved to be successful in the French campaign. Tresckow's former regimental comrade Rudolf Schmundt was Hitler's chief military aide, and it was through the Tresckow-Schmundt channel that Manstein's plan, after being rejected by Army High Command, was brought to Hitler's attention.Fest 1997, pp. 289–290. He is also said to have worked on developing the Manstein Plan itself as Günther Blumentritt's deputy.Barnett 2003, pg. 187. After the fall of France, he did not share the euphoria that swept Germany and brought Hitler to the peak of his popularity. In October, he said in Paris to a secretary (the future wife of Alfred Jodl), "If Churchill can induce America to join in the war, we shall slowly but surely be crushed by material superiority. The most that will be left to us then will be the Electorate of Brandenburg, and I'll be chief of the palace guard."Balfour 1988, pg. 126.
From 1941 to 1943, he served under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, his wife's cousin, and later Field Marshal Günther von Kluge as chief operations officer of the German Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Subsequently, in October and November 1943, he served in combat as the commanding officer of Grenadier Regiment 442, defending the western bank of the Dnieper River in Ukraine. From December 1943 until his death in 1944, he served as Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army.
Heuaktion
As Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army, Tresckow signed an order on 28 June 1944 carrying out a plan originally conceived by Himmler, to abduct supposedly unaccompanied Belarusian, Polish, and Ukrainian children in the so-called Heuaktion (Hay Action). Between 40,000 and 50,000 children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped for Nazi Germany's forced labour programme.Men of 20 July and the War in the Soviet Union Christian Gerlach in War Of Extermination: The German Military In World War II, pg. 139 The order read in part "In operations against gangs, any boys and girls taken between ages 10 and 13 who are physically healthy, and whose parents either cannot be located or who, as persons unable to work, are to be sent to the area earmarked for remaining families (the dregs are to be sent to the Reich)."Gerlach pg. 139
The kidnapped children were used as forced workers in the Todt Organisation, Junkers factories and in German handicrafts as part of an operation to "lower biological strength" of the enemies of Nazi Germany.
Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany has been classified by the Nuremberg Tribunal as part of a systematic programme of genocide. Alfred Rosenberg, who also signed the documents for Heuaktion, was found guilty by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and his signing of the document was mentioned in the final verdict.
Opposition to Adolf Hitler Although initially supportive of Hitler because of his own opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, Tresckow was quickly disillusioned by 1934 by the events of the Night of the Long Knives (30 June to 2 July 1934) as well as its violence against the Jewish population.
In 1938, the Blomberg–Fritsch affair further strengthened his antipathy to the Nazis. He regarded the Kristallnacht, a state-sanctioned, nationwide pogrom of Jews, as personal humiliation and degradation of civilization.Scheurig 2004, pg. 77.
He therefore sought out civilians and officers who opposed Hitler, such as Erwin von Witzleben, who dissuaded Tresckow from resigning from the Army, arguing that they would be needed when the day of reckoning came.Barnett 2003, pg. 47. By the summer of 1939, he told Fabian von Schlabrendorff that "both duty and honor demand from us that we should do our best to bring about the downfall of Hitler and National Socialism to save Germany and Europe from barbarism."Hoffmann 1996, pg. 265. In the campaign against the Soviet Union, Tresckow resumed his resistance activities with renewed urgency. He was appalled by the Commissar Order, of which he said: Remember this moment. If we don't convince the field marshal (Fedor von Bock) to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders (Commissar Order) canceled, the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years. This guilt will fall not only on Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and their comrades but on you and me, your wife and mine, your children and mine, that woman crossing the street, and those children over there playing ball.Kane 2008, pg. 163. He was likewise incensed by the treatment of Russian prisoners of war, and in particular by the mass shootings of Jewish women and children by the Einsatzgruppen behind the lines.Fest 1997, p. 175Kane 2008, p.163 When Tresckow learned about the massacre of thousands of Jews at Borisov, he appealed passionately to Field Marshal Fedor von Bock: "Never may such a thing happen again! And so we must act now. We have the power in Russia!"Scheurig 2004, pg. 126.
Army Group Centre staff included Lieutenant Colonel Georg Schulze-Büttger, Colonel Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, Major Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg, Lieutenant Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort, Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Lieutenant Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager and his brother Georg Freiherr von Boeselager, Lieutenant Colonel Hans-Alexander von Voss and Lieutenant Colonel Berndt von Kleist among others, many of them from Tresckow's old Infantry Regiment 9. The headquarters of Army Group Centre thus emerged as the new nerve center of Army resistance.Hoffmann 1996, pp. 265–266.
At the end of September 1941, Tresckow sent his special operations officer Schlabrendorff to Berlin to contact opposition groups and declare that the staff of Army Group Centre was "prepared to do anything." This approach, made at the height of German expansion and the nadir of anti-Hitler opposition, represented the first initiative to come from the front and from the Army, as Ulrich von Hassell noted in his diary.Hoffmann 1996, pg. 269. Schlabrendorff continued to serve as liaison between Army Group Centre and opposition circle around General Ludwig Beck, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Colonel Hans Oster, the deputy head of Abwehr (German military intelligence) who was involved in a 1938 coup attempt against Hitler (Oster Conspiracy). Oster's recruitment of General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters, in 1942 linked this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre, creating a viable coup apparatus.Fest 1997, pg. 188.
Plots against Hitler
It was decided that Tresckow's group would assassinate Hitler and thereby provide the 'spark' for the coup, which Olbricht would direct from Berlin. In late 1942, Olbricht indicated that he still needed about eight weeks to complete preparations for the coup. Shortly thereafter, Tresckow traveled to Berlin to discuss the few remaining questions and emphasize that time was running short.Fest 1997, p. 192. In the winter of 1943, Olbricht declared: "We are ready. The spark can now be set off."Von Schlabrendorff 1994, p. 227. Tresckow assured the conspirators that he would take action at the first available opportunity.
It came on 13 March 1943, when Hitler finally visited troops on the Eastern Front at Smolensk after a few cancellations and postponements. Under the initial plan, a group of officers were to shoot Hitler collectively at a signal in the officers' mess during lunch but Kluge, commander of Army Group Centre, who had been informed about the plot, urged Tresckow not to carry it out saying, "For heaven's sake, don't do anything today! It's still too soon for that!"Fest 1997, p. 193. He argued that the German army and people were not ready to accept the coup and would not understand such an act. He also feared a civil war between the Army and SS, since Heinrich Himmler had canceled his visit and could not be killed at the same time.Philipp von Boeselager, Daily Telegraph book review of Valkyrie: the Plot to Kill Hitler by Philipp von Boeselager, 5 February 2008.