Killing Hitler (20 page)

The provision of an effective communications and supply network was the responsibility of two remarkable groups of people. The first of these was the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, formed by Churchill in 1940 with the remit to “set Europe ablaze” through subversion and sabotage.
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Though established to aid all European resisters, SOE had especially close contacts with the Poles. Its first parachute drop was into Poland, and its chief, Major Colin Gubbins, was a fluent Polish-speaker who had been head of the prewar British military mission to Warsaw. Over the course of the war, SOE would fly over three hundred agents into occupied Poland and successfully carry out 485 airdrops delivering 600 tons of vital matériel.
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In many cases, SOE supplied the hardware, weaponry, and training, and the Polish underground supplied the naked courage and determination. It was to be a most fruitful relationship.

The second was the élite group of AK couriers, who secretly traveled across Europe entirely dependent on their wits and their immaculately forged papers, and seemingly oblivious to the war raging around them. They helped to maintain the link between the Polish government in exile and military command in London and the underground at home. Their feats quickly passed into legend. One Polish courier shuttled between Warsaw and Paris, traveling first-class dressed as a German general. He would bring the first grim news of the Holocaust to the outside world.
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One vital aspect of any self-respecting resistance organization was sabotage and diversionary activity. Right from the very beginning of the occupation, possible targets for sabotage were listed, including “railway transports, supplies of fuel and cereals, any arms and food factories, arms and fuel dumps.”
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By the spring of 1940 a dedicated unit had been formed to mastermind such attacks: the
Zw
ia
zek Odwetu
, or Retribution Union, under the command of Major Franciszek Niepokólczycki, code-named “Theodore.” It, and its successors, would prove remarkably effective. While some units specialized in freeing prisoners from jails and labor camps, robbing banks, stealing official documents, and raiding stores, most concerned themselves with the simple destruction of the German infrastructure. A later summary of their activities listed nearly twenty thousand damaged locomotives, more than four thousand disabled army vehicles, and twenty-five thousand sundry sabotage actions.
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One attack was particularly impressive. During the night of 7–8 October 1942, all rail links around Warsaw were simultaneously cut.
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Not only was rail traffic seriously disrupted, but the underground had demonstrated itself to be more than just a nuisance.

The Poles even established a number of cells to carry out diversionary attacks abroad. The most successful, code-named
“Za-gralin,”
operated on German territory and in the spring of 1943 successfully bombed targets in Breslau and Berlin, including the Friedrichstrasse and Schlesischer railway stations in the capital.
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At the same time, the underground in Warsaw was preparing an audacious “diversion” of its own. That spring, a number of suspicious parcels were intercepted in Berlin, addressed to numerous German government agencies including the Reich Chancellery. The packages measured around 20 by 10 by 10 centimeters and had been posted as registered deliveries in Warsaw. Each contained explosives set to detonate by electronic ignition when opened.
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The bombs were successfully dealt with and safely defused, but they provoked alarm throughout the German security network.

With Polish forced laborers making up a large proportion of the German workforce, industrial sabotage was another favorite.
Alongside the time-honored tactics of passive resistance, other, more active measures could be undertaken: machinery could be tampered with, sensitive settings could be changed. In this way, countless relatively minor (but nonetheless courageous) actions could bring impressive results. It was later claimed, perhaps optimistically, that such activity resulted in the production of 92,000 unusable artillery shells, 4,710 defective aircraft engines, and 570,000 faulty condensers.
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But, though successful, sabotage was only a part of the underground’s activity. In early 1943, a new organization, the Directorate of Diversion (or
Kedyw)
, was established to supervise the sabotage campaign, absorbing the Retribution Union in the process. But the
Kedyw
also widened its remit to include the elimination of traitors to the Polish cause and the targeted assassination of selected German functionaries.

The campaign against traitors and collaborators had already begun prior to 1943. Two years earlier, for example, a Warsaw actor and director, Igo Sym, had been assassinated after betraying Polish artistes at the Warsaw City Theater to the Germans.
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But, under the
Kedyw
, the process was formalized. Legal procedures were strictly adhered to, and collaborators were usually given ample warning that their misdeeds had been noticed. The underground court would intimidate its defendant by keeping him fully apprised of the progress of his case. First, he would receive a warning, giving his number on the “Index of Suspect Persons” and informing him that he was under observation. Then, assuming that the defendant did not desist from his activities, he would receive notice that his case would be brought before the Special Court. Next, he would be informed of the verdict and the sentence imposed (usually death), and warned that the principle of collective responsibility would be applied should he choose to flee. Finally, the convict would receive a reminder of his verdict and a final notice that the sentence was soon to be carried out.
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Not all such cases ended with an execution, however. In some instances, the pressure of being under sentence of death from an unseen enemy was sufficient to force a miscreant to improve his behavior. As a senior AK commander recalled:

This method turned out to be the most effective we had yet tried. Poles noticed a marked change in the behaviour of many German officials. For instance, a certain German county-lieutenant…after receiving his indictment at once retired to bed and called in the local Polish doctor. He proposed to arrange for the immediate release of all Polish political prisoners in the county and offered to moderate greatly his policy towards Poles if the findings of the court investigation were quashed.
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Despite these minor successes, many German personnel proved more resistant to change, and so the targeting of individuals for assassination also gathered speed. In the first four months of 1943, for example, more than five hundred separate attacks were carried out on the German administration and its terror apparatus.
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The German police were especially targeted. In 1943, one policeman was killed in Warsaw, on average, every day. By the following year, that figure had risen tenfold.
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In addition, more than 750 Gestapo agents were murdered in the first half of 1944,
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while occupation forces as a whole lost over a thousand killed and injured every month.
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Soon, a number of prominent Germans were also targeted for assassination. One by one, senior German officials, prison staff, and SS men were faced with teams of well-organized and well-armed attackers. In all, more than five thousand such assassinations were planned.
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The AK assassins, for their part, had a well-rehearsed procedure. Each target was methodically researched. He would be watched day and night, to build up details of his routine and his personal profile. His addresses, guards, drivers, and vehicles would all be logged and often photographed.
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Finally, armed with this information, a plan of attack would be devised. Most often, the attacks took place in broad daylight, usually in the early morning, with vehicles providing both an element of surprise and a swift escape. The assassination team would generally consist of around ten individuals, including perhaps three or four lookouts and two groups of three gunmen, each in a car, armed with Sten guns, pistols, and grenades. One group would aim to eliminate the target,
while the other would provide support and engage the bodyguards and police. If they were to escape with their lives, they had to hit their target and flee within no more than a couple of minutes.

With the Polish underground increasing its attacks and scoring such public successes, the Germans were in desperate need of an enforcer to restore order and bring the Poles to heel once and for all. That man was to be SS
Brigadeführer
Franz Kutschera, an Austrian and one of the rising stars of the SS. A Nazi Party member since 1930, Kutschera had already been appointed
Gauleiter
of Carinthia and become a member of the Reichstag at the tender age of thirty-four. After active service in the French campaign, he had then held a number of prominent positions in the administration of occupied Russia, prior to his appointment as SS and police chief of Warsaw in September 1943. Especially close to Himmler (whose sister was his mistress), he was considered to have the connections, ruthlessness, and brutal determination necessary to tackle the Polish underground head-on.

He began his term in Warsaw in impressive style. His security regime was formidable. He was driven everywhere with a large corps of bodyguards—even the 150 meters or so from his residence to SS headquarters. He also opted not to be named, signing himself merely as “SS and Police Chief—Warsaw.” Undoubtedly, this was partly out of concern for his own safety, but it was also to lend his office an increased air of mystery and menace. With the permission of Governor Frank, he then introduced public executions. Every few days, a dozen or so Poles would be rounded up and shot for any misdemeanor or for no reason at all. In two weeks of October 1943, for example, 177 Poles were publicly executed in Warsaw alone.
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The lists of those killed would be printed on bright purple posters and distributed around the city. One, from December 1943, was typical:

On 2.12.1943…in Warsaw, another surprise attack was carried out on a
Schutzpolizei
unit, in which 5 policemen and 1 member of the
Waffen-SS
were killed and numerous other officers injured…. It is clear that the attack was executed by a terror group of the resistance.

In retribution for this, I have had the following 100 criminals…publicly executed.

The SS and Police Chief—Warsaw District
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Rather than allow themselves to be intimidated, however, the AK responded in kind. They did not shrink from targeting the highest Nazis in the land, and drew up a so-called head list of potential victims. In addition, a blanket order was given that effectively declared open season on all servants of the occupation.
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Thereafter, unsuccessful or aborted assassinations were attempted on a host of senior German officials, including the governor of Warsaw, Ludwig Fischer; the
Gauleiter
of Danzig, Albert Forster;
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and SS General Wilhelm Koppe, who was one of those responsible for the establishment of the extermination camp at Chelmno.

One attempt demonstrated the assassins’ technique especially well. SS General Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger was in charge of security in the entire General Government. In February 1943, after publishing a list of seventy civilians executed in Warsaw, he was sentenced to death (in absentia, of course) by the Polish underground. Two months later, on the morning of Hitler’s birthday, 20 April, he was ambushed on the street in Kraków and two hand grenades were detonated beneath his car. Though one AK memoir recalls that Krüger thereafter “disappeared from the scene and was never heard of again,” he did in fact survive the attack with only minor injuries.
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In response, Himmler wrote to Bormann the day after the attempt to request that an armored limousine be placed at Krüger’s disposal.
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According to a Polish report, Krüger was then targeted again in May, when he was shot at by four assailants brandishing machine guns.
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That report concluded that the target had been killed, but Krüger appears to have survived and is thought to have committed suicide at the end of the war.

Many more high-profile targets were successfully eliminated, however. Eight were assassinated in Warsaw alone, including Franz Bürckl, the deputy commandant of the Pawiak prison, and August Kretschmann, the commandant of the city’s Geçsiówka concentration camp. The functionaries of the city’s civilian
administration were also liquidated, including Emil Braun, the head of the Warsaw housing department; Kurt Hoffmann, head of the Labor Office; and the latter’s deputy, Hugo Dietz.
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The underground’s communiqués to London were short and to the point: “October 11, 1943…On October 1, 12.05 hours, in Warsaw, killed by shooting, SS-Sturmmann, Ernst Weffels, the cruel oppressor and executioner in the Women’s Prison in Pawiak.”
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