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Stauffenberg was still an officer cadet when he met his future wife--Nina Freiin von Lerchenfeld. He was different than most of the other cadets. He was not particularly interested in womanizing nor carousing. Instead he began studying Russian during his training. At a dancing lesson he met a lady that would prove to be the mother of his future wife. She raved about the young officer she met to her daughter, when Nina came home from boarding school. Nina had been born in Lithuania to am ethnic German family. Her mother introduced the two and there was an immediate chemistry. They were engaged in her parents' home in Bamberg (1930). Stauffenberg married Nina (1933). Stauffenberg wore his uniform and a steel helmet. "To wed is to be on duty," he told his new wife. Their first son Berthold was born (1934). They have three sons (Berthold Maria, Franz Ludwig, and Heimeran). Their daughter Valérie was born in custody (midNovember 1940), A fith child, Konstanze, was born after their father's execution. Berthold after the war became a General in the new West German Army.
Elisabeth Magdalena (Nina) Schenk Gräfin was born in Kowno (1913). At the time this was part of the Tsarist Empire. Today it is Kaunas in Lithuania. Her father was a diplomat, General Consul Gustav Freiherr von Lerchenfeld (1871–1944). Her mother was the Baltic-German noblewoman Anna Freiin von Stackelberg (1880–1945). Nina attended a girls' boarding school in Wieblingen near Heidelberg.
Stauffenberg was still an officer cadet when he met his future wife--Nina Freiin von Lerchenfeld. He was different than most of the other cadets. He was not particularly interested in womanizing nor carousing. Instead he began studying Russian during his training. At a dancing lesson he met a lady that would prove to be the mother of his future wife. She raved about the young officer she met to her daughter, when Nina came home from boarding school. Her mother introduced the two and there was an immediate chemistry. They were engaged in her parents' home in Bamberg (1930).
Stauffenberg married Nina Freiin (1933). He wore his Heer uniform with a steel helmet for the wedding ceremony. This tells you how devoted he was to the military. To wed is to be on duty," he told his new wife. It was by all accounts a sucessful marriage with the two deeply devoted to each other. They seem to have been a loving family. The children were well cared for and very close to both parents.
The children came quickly after marriage. They hade three sons in quick sucession. Their first son Berthold Maria was born (1934). Heimeran (1936) and Franz Ludwig (1938) followed in due course. Their daughter Valérie (1940) was born after the start of the War. Their fith and last child, Konstanze, arrived later (1945). He was born after their father's execution while Nina was in NAZI custody. The Stauffenberg's were a stanchly Catholic family so the children were raised Catholics, even though Nina and Staffenberg's mother were Lutherns. The children absolutely adored their father, although with the advent of the War he was gone a great deal, like many German fathers at the front. Their mother lavished affection on them and there were other family members to take acre of them. The boys were smartly dressed as would be expected from a well-to-do aristocratic family. They had Dutch bangs when younger and wore velbet suits with wide white collars. We also notice rompers, Bavarian jackets, and Lederhosen. A reader writes, "I think the outfits reflect that whole area and I believe they were connected to Bavarian royalty being born in Stutgart." Berthold turned 10 years old in 1944, but I don't think he was 10 when boys were inducted into the Hitler Youth on Hitler's birthday--April 20). By that time Hitler Youth membership was mandatory. The younger boys were too young to be Hitler Youth members. He would have had to join and in all probability was looking forward to it. Most boys that age were, although by 1944 the Hitler Youth program was beginning to break down, at least for the younger boys.
Berhold tells us, "We were not brought up to be out-and-out Nazis, but we encountered it in our surroundings. As I said, my parents did not make critical remarks, but they also didn't express any enthusiasm either. But there was Nazi indoctrination in the school." [B. Stauffenberg, int 1] This presumably was for security reasons. The two oldest boys were in school. And they could have easily repeated comments that could have then been reported. We are not sure to what extent thus happened during the NAZI era. We have never noted an author attempting to quantify this or for that matter if it is even possible. But individuals active in the resistance would have had to been particularly careful. Only in private could Claus talk to Nina frankly. But even here he needed to be careful as knowledge of what was happening put her life in danger.
Stauffenberg attempted to shield his wife and children by keeping her totally out of the plot and not holding meetings with conspirators in the family home. Berthold looking back as an adult tells us, " I didn't know anything naturally. Everything had to be kept secret. If children find out about something like that there is always the danger that they're going to spill the beans. My mother knew something about it and also approved, but we didn't get wind of any of that. She noticed there was something going on relatively early and brought it up with my father. I don't know how much he told her. She knew that he was going to do something. What she didn't know was that he was going to plant the bomb himself." [B. Stauffenberg, int 1] There is an exchange in one of the films. "If I fail, they will come for you. All of you." Nina replies. "I know." We do not know if these words were actually spoken.
Stauffenberg was promoted to Colonel and appointed Chief of Staff to Home Army Commander General Friedrich Fromm (June 1944). This was the posuition that gave him direct access to Hitler's briefing sessions. The overall plot was much more involved including a range of Wehrmacht officers including General Erwin Rommel. The attemp became known as the July Bomb Plot. The plan was to assasinate the key NAZI leaders (Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler), then use loyal troops to seize control of Berlin and the major government buildings. This would include the important communication facilities in Berlin: telephone and signal centers and radio broadcasting stations. The key target of course was the Führer himself. Several attempts were made on Hitler's life. At least six attempts had to be aborted. Stauffenberg decided he could kill Hitler during a military conference at the Führer Wolf's Lair headquarters (July 20, 1944). The idea was to kill Göering and Himmler with the same bomb. They were not at the conference. Despite orders to abort the bombing, Staufenberg decided to go ahead. Stauffenberg had never previously met Hitler. He carried the bomb in a briefcase and placed it on the floor next to where Hitler was standing. He then left to make a pre-arranged telephone call. The bomb exploded and Staufenberg thought he had suceeded. Hitler had, however, moved the brief case to the other side of a oak beam supporting the briefing table. Four men were killed. Hitler was badly shaken and his right arm injured, but he was not killed. After Hitler's assasintion, Ludwig Beck, Erwin von Witzleben and Erich Fromm were to take command of the Wehrmacht. This effort was abandoned when it became clear that Hitler had survived.
Nina and the four children had been spending their summer holidays at the family's country house--Schloss Lautlingen, located in the Swabian hills. The day after the bomb attack, Berthold and his 8-year-old brother, Heimaren, heard a radio broadcast denouncing a 'criminal attack' on the Führer, a man they had been taught to revere at school. Berthold explains how he learned about the bombing and that his father was involved. "I heard in the radio that there had been an assassination attempt." The adults shooed the curious boys away and evaded their questions. "My mother's uncle Nikolaus, Count Uxkull - our "Uncle Nux" - was deputed to take us children on a long walk,' he recalls, sitting in his modest 1960s villa in the village of Oppenweiler, north-east of Stuttgart. 'He told us stories about his time as a big-game hunter in Africa to distract us. At that time, of course, none of us knew that he, too, was a member of the conspiracy. I often wonder today what thoughts were going through his head on that walk." [B. Stauffenberg, int 2] Berthold continues, "But it was not until the following day that my mother told me and my next-youngest brother that our father had carried it out. It was a big shock for us. After this lengthy conversation, she was picked up at night. We didn't see her again until June '45. .... People today might not be able to believe it, but death was nothing unusual at that time. A third of my classmates had lost their fathers and the threat was always there. You could also be killed in different ways as a result of bombing raids and so on. It was, of course, the fact that he had committed this act against the head of state." The boys were absolutely thunderstruck. Berthold told an interviewer, "Our world broke apart in an instant." He simply could not connect the two poles of his existence: the father he loved and admired and the Führer along with the NAZI system he had been taught to revere unquestioningly at school. "I was a conformist and well on the way to becoming a little Nazi. My dearest wish, which my mother fortunately prevented, was to march through our home town, Bamberg, carrying a flag at the head of the junior branch of the Hitler Youth." [B. Stauffenberg, int 2] In another interview, he expalins, "That didn't fit into our world view. We asked how he could do something like that to the Führer." Our mother told us that he believed that he had to do it for Germany." [B. Stauffenberg, int 1] Berthold explains, "This was so shattering for me that I don't think I was able to think clearly again for the rest of the war. We children loved our always-cheerful father above all things; he was our absolute authority - although he was often absent fighting the war - and now this! And then the blows fell thick and fast." [B. Stauffenberg, int 2]
Nina was in Lautlingen with their children, mother-in-law, and uncle-in-law (July 20). It was there she and the family learned that her husband had been shot during the night as the leader of the plot to kill Hitler (July 21). Nina at this time told the boys that it was their father who had tried to kill Hitler. They of course did not understand. Berthold was about 10 years old. He recalls as an adult that he was totally confused. He says he did not doubt his father, but had no idea why he would have attempted to kill the Führer. He recalls that he and his brothers were little NAZIs. Apparently their father was careful what he said in front of the children, presumably for security reasons and to protect them. The Gestapo arrested Nina and Uncle Nux sometime during the next night (July 22/23). Even Nina's elderly mother waas arrested. This was part of the NAZI policy of arresting the families of those who opposed Hitler (klan arrest/Sippenhaft). It was an older law that had been reintroduced by the NAZIs. Himmler, as security supremo, directed that all of Stauffenberg's relatives, from his infant children to distant cousins be arrested and their property confiscated. The Gestapo also arrested her mother, uncle, uncle-in-law, Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband. He was executed for his part in the plot a few weeks later. Himmler reportedly decided, "This man has committed treason; his blood is bad; there is traitor's blood in him; that must be wiped out. And in the blood feud the entire clan was wiped out down to the last member. And so, too, will Count Stauffenberg's family be wiped out down to the last member."
At first the children were left in the care of their nanny, their grandmother's housekeeper, and two Gestapo agents. The chikdren were thus left to await their fate, isolated from their family amd even friends in the village. They feared for their mother and other family members. Berthold recalls, "On the radio and in the newspapers there were daily hate-filled reports about the conspiracy. We - myself and my brothers aged eight and six, and my three-year-old sister - suddenly felt that we were alone. Outcasts. I will never forget that feeling." [B. Berthold, int 2] The Gestapo finally took the children away (August 17).
The children were given a new surname, Meister, and transported by train to a children's home Bad Sachsa, near Nordhausen in the Harz mountains.. This must have been a huge shock. The one minute they were living a privlidged life with a war hero father. And then all of sudden they not only found their father was a 'traitor' but then separated from their mother abd put in a spartan, highly regimented children's home with new names. Berthold says that the home was "cleared out". [B. Berthold, int 1] This meant that the former inhabitants weree relocated. The hime was just for the children of comspirators. Younger children whose parents were arrested for political crimes were commonly turned over to good NAZI families for adoption. The colapse of NAZI Germany prevented this fate from becoming permanent. The children were separated in chalets according to age and gender. The children of other conspirators began arriving. The director of the home, Frau Kohler, was a Nazi party member and both 'strict and authoritarian'. Berthod recalls, however, that other staff members were 'outstandingly friendly'. "They never gave us the feeling that we were shunned by society." Bad Sachsa was, howver, to be only a temporary stop. The Gestapo was planning their future. Hitler had ordered that the name Stauffenberg would be eliminated. They were going to be adopted by SS or other loyal NAZI families. But for some reason before this was accomplisdhed, the children were to be sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Perhaps this was to desguise their origins. Berthold explains what happened next. "At Easter 1945, my siblings and I, together with other conspirators' children, were put into an army truck and driven towards Nordhausen station, where we were to be put on the train for Buchenwald. But, just as we reached the town's suburbs, a fearful Allied air raid began which totally destroyed that quarter of the town, including the station. I heard later that a Nazi official who tried to restore order after the raid was lynched by the enraged townspeople. The war was nearing its end by then, and the party's authority was breaking down." The Gestapo agents thus had no other option but to drive the children back to Bad Sachsa. A few days later, the American Army reached them (April 12). "We had a grandstand view of the fighting as American planes - Mustangs and Lightnings - roared overhead. Once the war came uncomfortably close when the strawberry patch outside our chalet was shot up." The children stayed put as the War ground to a halt. Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker (Aopril 30). And Germany capitulated (May 7). The children were cared for by two kindergarten nurses who had not fled with the rest of the staff when the Americans approached. It was their great-aunt Alexandrine,
who first reached them (June 11). She worked for the Red Cross and managed to procure a bus. She drove them home to Lautlingen in what had become the French occupation zone. Berthold remembers driving 'through a devastated Germany'. [Jones]
The Gestapo held Nina in several different facilities. We have only sketchy details at this time on where she was held and the conditions. Nina who was heavily pregnant, was at first interrogated and imprisoned in Berlin. While there she comforted the wife of Ernst Thalmann, the German Communist leader, who had just learned that her husband had been executed. Nina gave birth to her fifth child while in custody. Konstanze was born in a NAZI prison maternity center in Frankfurt an der Oder (January 1945). She was held for at time at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp with her mother. She was then moved to Italy (Bolzano-Bozen). This was the Italian province of South Tyrol with a largely ethnic German popuilation. She was held there by the NAZIs as hostage for the redemption of Reich property.
Some sources suggest that the separated Stauffenberg family was aided by the efforts of her sister-in-law, Melitta. She was the wife of Berthold's twin brother, Alexander, who had also been interned by NAZI authorities. She was a Polish Jew, but amazingly she had some influence with government officials because she had worked on designing dive-bombers. In the final phase of the War, she was fatally wounded when her aircraft was hit. She was returning from a visit with her nephews and niece.
The Americans liberated the area (April 1945). The guards had orders to shoot her, but did not do so. Apparently it took Nina a few months longer to get back to Lautlingen. We note a different account of Nina's recue. Fleeing westwards from the advancing Red Army. Nina amnd her baby were both infected by a bug on a chaotic Grrman hospital train. They were brought, under Gestapo guard, to a Catholic hospital in Potsdam near Berlin. After recovering, they were turned over to a policeman who was ordered to take them to Schönberg, where other 'Sippenhaft' prisoners were under custody. Nina later told Berthod, that the policeman saw such a 'political' assugnment as beneath him. "The war was ending and he just wanted to go home. So he simply abandoned my mother and her baby in a village - but not before getting her to write him a certificate stating that he had carried out his orders - very German! Here, they were found by the advancing Americans and thus she became the first 'Sippenhaft' captive to be freed - although no one in conquered Germany really felt free." She rejoined her children at the Stauffenberg family home in Lautlingen. Her mother Anna had died in a Soviet camp (1945). The Soviets apparently had arrested her as the wife of a wealthy industrialist. Another repot suggests she died from typhus in a SS camp.
We do not yet know much about the children's adult life. We have no information about how the German public viewed them in the immediate post-War years. Berthold after the war became a General in the new West German Army. He reports that as a young officer that other officers were unsure about his loyalty and suitability to be a German officer. We also note that he was highly critical of the filns made about his father.
Jones, Nigel. "Claus von Stauffenberg: the true story behind the film Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise," The Telegraph (August 17, 2008).
Stauffenberg, Berthod. Interview 1 in "If you feel a sense of moral duty, you have to act upon it" DW-WORLD.DE (July 20, 2007).
Stauffenberg, Berthod. Interview 2 in Nigel Jones, "Claus von Stauffenberg: the true story behind the film Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise," The Telegraph (August 17, 2008).
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