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| Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz c. 1942 |
A new and very generous friend recently provided me with a wonderful gift - his father's autograph. It fit right into my collection of signatures of Germans who did their best to rid Germany of Hitler and his criminal cronies, starting at a time long before it was evident that Germany would lose the war. Contrary to the common view that the German resistance only took action in late July 1944, once the die was cast after Stalingrad, many members of the resistance were actively plotting against Hitler prior to the outbreak of war. Most of them were driven by Christian values, humanistic morals and/or a sense of personal honour. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz was no exception.
Friedrich Wlihelm Heinz was a major figure in the German Resistance movement that eventually resulted in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. For some reason, Heinz is often overlooked or marginalized in scholarly studies of the anti-Hitler resistance. Most of the attention goes to the headliners such as Ludwig Beck, Claus von Stauffenberg and Henning von Tresckow.
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| Heinz with his wife Hedwig |
Like many of the resisters, Heinz served in the trenches in the Great War, where he was wounded multiple times and well decorated. Post-war, he was a member of various Nationalist groups including the Stahlhelm and the Freikorps Ehrhardt, where he took part in the Kapp Putsch. He was heavily involved in politics as a right-wing monarchist throughout the inter-war years. He was also a poet and author, developing skills that he later directed to the political arena. He was an early National Socialist party member but he soon balked at Hitler's dictatorial style. He instead aligned himself closely with the Strasser wing of the party. There is evidence that Heinz was to be murdered in the Night of the Long Knives.
In the mid-thirties, after he was known to be anti-Hitler, Heinz joined Admiral Wilhelm Canaris' Abwehr intelligence service as a safe haven from the attentions of the Gestapo. He was heavily involved in several of the plots against Hitler. By 1938, Heinz was working actively against Hitler as a member of Hans Oster's group within the Abwehr. Heinz was a key planner in the "Oster Conspiracy" that was planned for September 1938. With others, Heinz planned to forceably arrest Hitler before he could trigger an apocalyptic world war over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. To arrest Hitler, Heinz recruited a band of approximately sixty men from the Abwehr, the Stahlhelm, various universities and socialist organisations. All were issued machine pistols and hand grenades at the HQ of General von Witzleben's Army District III (Berlin). The raiding party, or Stosstruppe, was positioned across the road from Hitler's Chancellory. Foreign service officer Erich Kordt volunteered to open the Chancellory doors to allow the raiders access to Hitler. Minimal resistance was expected as only a few guards from the SS Leibstandarte were posted to protect the Fuehrer at this time.
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| L to R - Admiral Canaris, Heinz & General v. Phulstein |
The official plan was for Hitler to be arrested and put on trial as most of the conspirators had not yet reached a stage of rage and despair where they were willing to adopt gangster methods to fight him. Abwehr officer Hans von Dohnanyi had established a secret archive of evidence chronicling SS and Gestapo crimes that was to be introduced as evidence at Hitler's trial. A professional opinion on Hitler's state of mental health was to be provided by Dietrich Bonhoeffer's father, preeminent psychiatrist Dr. Karl Bonhoeffer. This was a high risk gambit, as taking time for a trial gave time for the SS and party to stage a counter-coup. However, it must be remembered that Hitler was far less popular in 1938 than he had become a year later after the Munich accords.
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| Heinz (L) and Oster (R) mid-war |
Nevertheless, Heinz and Oster thought the risk to be unacceptable. After the last planning session was done and the senior plot leaders had departed, Heinz asked to speak to Oster alone. He forcefully made the case that just arresting Hitler would not do and that he must be killed. Oster agreed and a plot within a plot was designed. Without telling the other members of the Stosstruppe, Heinz and Oster agreed that Hitler's death would be engineered during his arrest.
History tells us that this raid was never launched. Instead, against all expectations, Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich and gave Hitler everything he requested, thus virtually assuring a future world war. Chamberlain also pulled the rug out from under the plotters, who could hardly expect public support for eliminating a leader who had just won such a resounding bloodless victory. The best opportunity to remove Hitler before the outbreak of war disappeared.
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| Heinz supervising MG practice |
During the war, Heinz commanded the first battalion of the Abwehr's Brandenburg commandos and later the fourth regiment of the Brandenburg division. He was wounded multiple times and was eventually invalided home to take command of a watch battalion in Berlin. On July 20, he was present in the Bendlerstrasse for Stauffenberg's famous coup attempt. He left the Bendlerblock building empty handed as orders to the various police and security units were slow in coming. He survived the coup without more than a single Gestapo interrogation.
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| Heinz in his final years post-war |
After the suicide of Heinz's close friend and Abwehr co-member Werner Schrader on July 28, 1944, the Gestapo found Hans von Dohnanyi's detailed archive of regime crimes, as well as prior coup plans in Schrader's safe. In addition, the Gestapo learned that the archive had for a time been kept in Heinz's brother-in-law's bank vault until Schrader and Heinz had moved it to his office at army high command in Zossen. The archive detailed Heinz's personal involvement in the 1938 Oster plot and an arrest warrant was issued. Heinz went to ground in Berlin and, unlike many of the conspirators who went into hiding, managed to stay hidden until war's end.
Post-war, Heinz emerged as leader of the Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz Service, a small independent West German intelligence service directly reporting to the Adenauer's government. The fledgling spy service was technically in breach of the surrender protocols but was tolerated by the western allies who were already realigning to counter the eastern threat. Thus, Heinz can be considered one of the fathers of the German secret service. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz died in 1968.
