Operation Valkyrie participant Henning von Tresckow
Operation Valkyrie (German: Unternehmen Walküre) was a German World War II emergency continuity of government operations plan issued to the Territorial Reserve Army of Germany to execute and implement in the event of a general breakdown in civil order of the nation. Failure of the government to maintain control of civil affairs might have been caused by the Allied bombing of German cities, or uprising of the millions of foreign forced labourers working in German factories.
German Army (Heer) officers, General Friedrich Olbricht, Major General Henning von Tresckow and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg modified the plan with the intention of using it to take control of German cities, disarm the SS, and arrest the Nazi leadership once Hitler had been assassinated in the 20 July plot. Hitler's death (as opposed to his arrest) was required to free German soldiers from their oath of loyalty to him (Reichswehreid). After lengthy preparation, the plot was activated in 1944 but failed.In August and September 1943, co-conspirator Major General Henning von Tresckow, finding Olbricht's revision inadequate, greatly expanded the Valkyrie plan by new supplementary orders that undermined the staunchest Nazi institutions by implicating them in Hitler's death. A secret declaration began with the words: "The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of party leaders has attempted to exploit the situation by attacking our embattled soldiers from the rear to seize power for themselves."
With this premise securing the credible motivation for the Reserve Army to seize control of the organs of state, detailed instructions were written for the occupation of government ministries in Berlin, of Himmler's headquarters in East Prussia, of radio stations, of telephone exchanges, of other Nazi infrastructure through military districts and of concentration camps. (Previously, it was believed that Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was mainly responsible for the Valkyrie plan, but documents recovered by the Soviet Union after the war and released in 2007 suggest that a detailed plan was developed by Tresckow in autumn 1943.) All documents were handled by Tresckow's wife, Erika, and by Margarete von Oven, his secretary. Both women wore gloves so as to leave no fingerprints.In essence, the coup plan involved tricking the Reserve Army into the seizure and removal of the civilian government and paramilitary organizations of wartime Germany under the false pretence that the SS had attempted a coup and assassinated Hitler. The conspirators depended on the assumption that the rank-and-file soldiers and junior officers designated to execute Operation Valkyrie would be motivated to do so on the basis of their false belief that the Nazi civilian leadership had behaved with disloyalty and treason against the state and the leader to whom the army has sworn allegiance, and were therefore required to be removed. The conspirators counted on the soldiers to obey their orders so long as they came from a legitimate channel—namely, the Reserve Army High Command—in the emergency situation following Hitler's putative death.
Apart from Hitler, only Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm, as commander of the Reserve Army, could activate Operation Valkyrie. For the planned coup to succeed, therefore, the plotters had either to win Fromm over to the conspiracy or to neutralize him in some way. Fromm, like many senior officers, knew about the military conspiracies against Hitler in general terms, but neither supported them nor reported them to the Gestapo.
The orders, which on July 20 were transmitted but never fully implemented, illustrate the scope and detail of the planning, as well as the dual military and political aims: The disarming of the SS and the SD, as well as the reorientation of governmental and military actions away from what the conspirators considered to be the lawlessness of the Nazi regime.