Lesley Yarranton, many congratulations on a fascinating story in Saving Munich 1945. What sort of man was Rupprecht Gerngross?
American historian John Toland described him as “scholarly, cultured and good-natured – a most unlikely combination for a revolutionist”. Others, who met him, said he could not look less like the leader of an underground movement. He had striking looks and a suave demeanour. But he also had courage, a conscience and unshakeable convictions. Possibly, a childhood in Shanghai and being raised in three languages, served as early training in ‘compartmentalising’ areas of his mind in a way that enabled him to lead a double life later.
He understood the power of words and information and how travel and an appreciation of foreign cultures could make people more far-sighted. He chose followers, who were travelled linguists, capable of viewing their homeland from an outsider’s perspective, supporters, who would not blindly believe and do everything the National Socialist government ordered them to.
What did he achieve in April 1945?
He saved many thousands of lives. An Allied 500-plane raid of 2,400 bombs destined for Munich was stood down after Gerngross and his men seized two radio stations and began urging the people of the city to rise up against the Nazis. The plan was that he and his men would hold the city long enough for the US Seventh Army to arrive. General George Patton’s tanks had thundered along Hitler’s motorway but been diverted by the horrifying discovery of ‘walking skeletons’ around Dachau. The US soldiers arrived 24 hours later than expected and in that time die-hard Nazis fought ‘until the last gasp’ taking terrible revenge.
How did you discover his story?
I was a young foreign correspondent working in Berlin shortly after the Wall came down. An investigation into Neo-Nazi groups springing up across expanses of the suddenly-defunct East Germany had taken me to Munich. One leader, in particular, stood out. He was a striking figure who dressed in black, his PR was unusually slick and he knew how to serve up a heady cocktail of nostalgia. I tracked him down and during the interview he let slip that Munich, the Führer’s favourite city, had not always been faithful – there had been a last minute uprising at the end of the war. He did not elaborate. I scribbled a note in the margin but could find no evidence when I researched it afterwards. It was only thirty years later, when I opened the biography of former BBC war correspondent Noel Newsome that Gerngross sprang from its pages like a ghost – and I could finally tell the story.
He was a contemporary of Claus von Stauffenberg, the key player of the July ’44 plot. Was this a great ‘what if’ of history, had Stauffenberg listened to Gerngross’ arguments that the briefcase was too risky?
Had Stauffenberg heeded the more cautious advice of Gerngross’s co-conspirators and taken measures to ensure that both of the briefcase bombs had gone off, history would have been very different. Gerngross was wary of many of the plans of the wealthy aristocrats surrounding Stauffenberg, fearing they might prove impractical. For many years Gerngross could only watch, wait and learn lessons. When Georg Elser mistimed his beerhall bomb, Gerngross realised Hitler, always on the alert, often changed plans last-minute; when the White Rose leaders were tracked down through their leaflets and murdered, he and his men vowed never to commit a single word to paper.
Many Germans never even knew Stauffenberg had attempted to assassinate Hitler because men tasked with seizing a radio station to announce it, found they could not operate the equipment. Goebbels acted swiftly to retrieve control of the airways. Gerngross, determined not to make the same mistake, made radio technicians part of his team.
In part, though, Stauffenberg’s death strengthened Gerngross’s resolve. He did not want the July ’44 plotters to have died in vain.
How does a seemingly mild-mannered chap transform a group of bookish army translators into a fearsome fighting force?
That was the key to his success and how his conspiracy remained undetected for so long – no one suspected the bespectacled head of a company of translators, armed with nothing but second-hand rifles and bicycles, could be seeking to topple the Third Reich. When he began setting up assault courses to train his men, telling his superiors he wanted to make sure they were fit enough to be sent to the front line (as translators often were), they dismissed him as an over-enthusiastic eccentric. It was a great disguise!
The uprising you write about took place in April 1945. Was it a little late to rise up against a regime that had caused such mayhem and death since 1933?
There were plans to move earlier and on a larger scale but these were reworked in light of Stauffenberg’s execution and the loss of high-ranking figures they had recruited to their conspiracy. Losing key people to fill the ever-increasing front-line gaps, was a major setback. Once the Americans were only a day’s march away from Munich, two arguments were circulating: one that there was no point in risking their own lives at that point, the other, that this was a chance to act, save the lives of others and show the world that not every German was a Nazi. It is to his credit, I believe, that he chose the latter, saying he wanted to do more than just ‘survive’ the war and could never have lived with his conscience if he had failed to act.
There are many diverse characters in the book: J. D. Salinger, Nazi Paul Giesler, ’44 plotter Axel von dem Bussche among others. Is there something we’re still missing about the German resistance movement?
There are so many lessons to be learned about small acts of resistance that can be made even under a savage, totalitarian regime, such as the Third Reich. But we learn so little about them because they were suppressed. This story is interesting because it was suppressed not only by the disbelieving Americans but was censored by the Times newspaper under instruction from Foreign Office officials, who decided it was not desirable to suggest there had been ‘good Germans’. Finally, many Germans themselves wanted it silenced lest questions be asked as to why they, themselves had not taken part.
What are you working on at the moment?
It’s top secret…….for now.
Lesley Yarranton is a researcher and the author of Saving Munich 1945: The Story of Rupprecht Gerngross.
