On 20 July 1944,
Claus von Stauffenberg
Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (; 15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
Despite ...
and other conspirators attempted to assassinate
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...
,
Führer
( ; , spelled or ''Fuhrer'' when the umlaut is not available) is a German word meaning "leader" or " guide". As a political title, it is strongly associated with the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
Nazi Germany cultivated the ("leader princip ...
of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, inside his
Wolf's Lair
The ''Wolf's Lair'' (german: Wolfsschanze; pl, Wilczy Szaniec) served as Adolf Hitler's first Eastern Front military headquarters in World War II.
The headquarters was located in the Masurian woods, near the small village of Görlitz in Ost ...
field headquarters near
Rastenburg,
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label= Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
, now
Kętrzyn
Kętrzyn (, until 1946 ''Rastembork''; german: link=yes, Rastenburg ) is a town in northeastern Poland with 27,478 inhabitants (2019). Situated in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship (since 1999), Kętrzyn was previously in Olsztyn Voivodeship (197 ...
, in present-day
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
. The name "Operation Valkyrie"—originally referring to part of the conspiracy—has become associated with the entire event.
The apparent aim of the assassination attempt was to wrest political control of Germany and its armed forces from the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
(including the
SS) and to make peace with the Western
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
as soon as possible. The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown, but they would have included unrealistic demands for the confirmation of Germany's extensive annexations of European territory.
The plot was the culmination of efforts by several groups in the
German resistance to overthrow the Nazi German government. The failure of the assassination attempt and the intended military , or putsch,
that was to follow led the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
to arrest more than 7,000 people, 4,980 of whom were executed.
[According to Shirer, ''Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs'', 1960, p. 1393.]
Background
![1944-07-15GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/1944-07-15GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg)
Since 1938, there had been groups plotting an overthrow of some kind within the
German Army
The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...
and in the German
Military Intelligence Organization.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger (11 November 1929 – 24 November 2022) was a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Andreas Thalmayr, Elisabeth Ambras, Linda Quilt and Giorgio Pellizzi. Enzensberger was regarde ...
: ''Hammerstein oder Der Eigensinn. Eine deutsche Geschichte.'' Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 2008, Early leaders of these plots included Major General
Hans Oster
Hans Paul Oster (9 August 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a general in the ''Wehrmacht'' and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the ''Abwehr'' (German military inte ...
, Colonel General
Ludwig Beck
Ludwig August Theodor Beck (; 29 June 1880 – 20 July 1944) was a German general and Chief of the German General Staff during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany before World War II. Although Beck never became a member of the Na ...
and Field Marshal
Erwin von Witzleben
Job Wilhelm Georg Erdmann Erwin von Witzleben (4 December 1881 – 8 August 1944) was a German field marshal in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. A leading conspirator in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was designated to ...
. Oster was the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office. Beck was a former Chief of Staff of the
German Army High Command
The (; abbreviated OKH) was the high command of the Army of Nazi Germany. It was founded in 1935 as part of Adolf Hitler's rearmament of Germany. OKH was ''de facto'' the most important unit within the German war planning until the defeat at ...
(OKH). Von Witzleben was the former commander of the
German 1st Army The 1st Army (german: 1. Armee) was a World War II field army. Combat chronicle
1939
The 1st Army was activated on 26 August 1939, in Wehrkreis XII with General Erwin von Witzleben in command. Its primary mission was to take defensive position ...
and the former
Commander-in-Chief of the
German Army Command in the West. They soon established contacts with several prominent civilians, including
Carl Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (; 31 July 1884 – 2 February 1945) was a monarchist conservative German politician, executive, economist, civil servant and opponent of the Nazi regime. He opposed some anti-Jewish policies while he held office and was ...
, the former mayor of
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
, and
Helmuth James von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (11 March 1907 – 23 January 1945) was a German jurist who, as a draftee in the German Abwehr, acted to subvert German human-rights abuses of people in territories occupied by Germany during World War II. He w ...
, the great-grandnephew of
Moltke the Elder
The House of Moltke is the name of an old German noble family. The family was originally from Mecklenburg, but apart from Germany, some of the family branches also resided throughout Scandinavia. Members of the family have been noted as pigfa ...
, hero of the
Franco-Prussian War.
Groups of military plotters exchanged ideas with civilian, political, and intellectual resistance groups in the
Kreisauer Kreis
The Kreisau Circle (German: ''Kreisauer Kreis'', ) (1940–1944) was a group of about twenty-five German dissidents in Nazi Germany led by Helmuth James von Moltke, who met at his estate in the rural town of Kreisau, Silesia. The circle was com ...
(which met at the
von Moltke estate in Kreisau) and in other secret circles. Moltke was against killing Hitler; instead, he wanted him placed on trial. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle it". Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical: Hitler and National Socialism had turned wrongdoing into a system, something which the resistance should avoid.
Plans to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 1938 and 1939, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army General
Franz Halder and Field Marshal
Walther von Brauchitsch
Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch (4 October 1881 – 18 October 1948) was a German field marshal and the Commander-in-Chief (''Oberbefehlshaber'') of the German Army during World War II. Born into an aristocratic military family, ...
, and the failure of the Western powers to oppose Hitler's aggression until 1939.
In 1942, a new conspiratorial group formed, led by Colonel
Henning von Tresckow
Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow (; 10 January 1901 – 21 July 1944) was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassina ...
, a member of Field Marshal
Fedor von Bock
Moritz Albrecht Franz Friedrich Fedor von Bock (3 December 1880 – 4 May 1945) was a German who served in the German Army during the Second World War. Bock served as the commander of Army Group North during the Invasion of Poland ...
's staff, who commanded Army Group Centre in
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
. Tresckow systematically recruited oppositionists into the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of the army resistance. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him.
During 1942, Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective resistance network. Their most important recruit was General
Friedrich Olbricht
Friedrich Olbricht (4 October 1888 – 21 July 1944) was a German general during World War II and one of the plotters involved in the 20 July Plot, an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. He was a senior staff officer, with the rank of ...
, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the
Bendlerblock
The Bendlerblock is a building complex in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße (formerly named ''Bendlerstraße''). Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine'') ...
in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units throughout Germany. Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created a viable coup apparatus.
In late 1942, Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and stage an overthrow during Hitler's visit to the headquarters of Army Group Centre at
Smolensk
Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest ...
in March 1943, by placing a bomb on his plane (
Operation Spark). The bomb failed to detonate, and a second attempt a week later with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin also failed. These failures demoralised the conspirators. During 1943 Tresckow tried without success to recruit senior army field commanders such as Field Marshal
Erich von Manstein
Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein (born Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Lewinski; 24 November 1887 – 9 June 1973) was a German Field Marshal of the ''Wehrmacht'' during the Second World War, who was subsequently convicted of war crimes and ...
and Field Marshal
Gerd von Rundstedt
Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt (12 December 1875 – 24 February 1953) was a German field marshal in the '' Heer'' (Army) of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Born into a Prussian family with a long military tradition, Rundstedt entered th ...
, to support a seizure of power. Tresckow, in particular, worked on his Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal
Günther von Kluge
Günther Adolf Ferdinand von Kluge (30 October 1882 – 19 August 1944) was a German field marshal during World War II who held commands on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. He commanded the 4th Army of the Wehrmacht during the invasio ...
, to persuade him to move against Hitler and at times succeeded in gaining his consent, only to find him indecisive at the last minute. However, despite their refusals, none of the Field Marshals reported their treasonous activities to the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
or Hitler.
Motivation and goals
Opposition to Hitler and to Nazi policies
While the main goal of the plotters was to remove Hitler from power, they did so for various reasons. The majority of the group behind the 20 July plot were conservative nationalists—idealists, but not necessarily of a democratic stripe. Martin Borschat portrays their motivations as a matter of aristocratic resentment, writing that the plot was mainly carried out by conservative elites who were initially integrated by the Nazi government but during the war lost their influence and were concerned about regaining it. However, at least in Stauffenberg's case, the conviction that Nazi Germany's atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war were a dishonour to the nation and its military was likely a major motivating factor. Historian Judith Michel assesses the circle around the 20 July Group as a diverse and heterogeneous group that included liberal democrats, conservatives, social democrats, authoritarian aristocrats, and even communists. The common goal was to overthrow Hitler's regime and bring the war to a swift end. There is evidence of the plot encompassing a broad spectrum of plotters which included Communists in that in April, prior to the attempted coup, Stauffenberg agreed to cooperate with the Operational Leadership of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) remaining in Germany. Contacts were established through the Social Democrats Adolf Reichwein and Julius Leber.
Territorial demands
Among demands initially countenanced by the plotters for issue towards the Allies were such points as re-establishment of Germany's 1914 boundaries with
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
and
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
and no reparations. Plotters' demands meant a return to pre-1939 German borders; it seems highly unlikely that the Allies would have accepted such enormous demands. Like most of the rest of German resistance, the 20 July plotters believed in the idea of
Greater Germany
Pan-Germanism (german: Pangermanismus or '), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism, is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also Germanic-speaking ...
and as a condition for peace demanded that the western allies recognize as a minimum the incorporation of
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
,
Alsace-Lorraine,
Sudetenland, and the annexation of Polish-inhabited territories that Germany ceded to Poland after 1918, with the restoration of some of the overseas colonies. They believed that Europe should be controlled under German hegemony.
The overall goals towards Poland were mixed within the plotters. Most of the plotters found it desirable to restore the old German borders of 1914, while others pointed out that the demands were unrealistic and amendments had to be made. Some like Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg even wanted all of Poland annexed to Germany.
To Poland, which was fighting against Nazi Germany with both its army and government in exile, the territorial demands and traditional nationalistic visions of resistance were not much different from the racist policies of Hitler. Stauffenberg, as one of the leaders of the plot, stated five years before the coup in 1939 during the
Poland campaign: "It is essential that we begin a systemic colonisation in Poland. But I have no fear that this will not occur."
Political vision of post-Hitler Germany
Many members of the plot had helped the Nazis gain power and shared revisionist foreign policy goals pursued by Hitler, and even at the time of the plot were anti-democratic, hoping to replace Hitler with a conservative-authoritarian government involving aristocratic rule. They opposed popular legitimation or mass participation in governance of the state.
Planning a coup
Von Stauffenberg joins
By mid-1943, the tide of war was turning decisively against Germany. The army plotters and their civilian allies became convinced that Hitler should be assassinated, so that a government acceptable to the western Allies could be formed, and a separate peace negotiated in time to prevent a Soviet invasion of Germany. In August 1943, Tresckow met, for the first time, a young staff officer named Lieutenant Colonel
Claus von Stauffenberg
Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (; 15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
Despite ...
. Severely wounded in North Africa, Claus von Stauffenberg was a political conservative and zealous German nationalist.
From early 1942, he had come to share two basic convictions with many military officers: that Germany was being led to disaster and that Hitler's removal from power was necessary. After the
Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942, despite his religious scruples, he concluded that the Führer's assassination was a lesser moral evil than Hitler's remaining in power. Stauffenberg brought a new tone of decisiveness to the ranks of the resistance movement. When Tresckow was assigned to the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg took charge of planning and executing the assassination attempt.
New plan
Olbricht now put forward a new strategy for staging a coup against Hitler. The
Replacement Army
The Replacement Army () was part of the Imperial German Army during World War I and part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. It was based within Germany proper and included command and administrative units as well as training and guard troops. It ...
(''Ersatzheer'') had an operational plan called
Operation Valkyrie, which was to be used in the event that the disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities would cause a breakdown in law and order, or an uprising by the millions of
forced labourers from occupied countries now being used in German factories. Olbricht suggested that this plan could be used to mobilise the Reserve Army for the purpose of the coup.
In August and September 1943, Tresckow drafted the "revised" Valkyrie plan and new supplementary orders. A secret declaration began with these 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 in order to seize power for themselves." Detailed instructions were written for occupation of government ministries in Berlin,
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
's headquarters in East Prussia, radio stations and telephone offices, and other Nazi apparatus through military districts, and concentration camps.
Previously, it was believed that Stauffenberg was mainly responsible for the Valkyrie plan, but documents recovered by the Soviet Union after the war and released in 2007 suggest that the plan was developed by Tresckow by autumn of 1943. All written information was handled by Tresckow's wife, Erika, and by
Margarethe von Oven, his secretary. Both women wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. On at least two other occasions Tresckow had tried to assassinate the Führer. The first plan was to shoot him during dinner at the army base camp, but this plan was aborted because it was widely believed that Hitler wore a bullet-proof vest. The conspirators also considered poisoning him, but this was not possible because his food was specially prepared and tasted. They concluded that a time bomb was the only option.
Operation Valkyrie could only be put into effect by General
Friedrich Fromm
Friedrich Wilhelm Waldemar Fromm (8 October 1888 – 12 March 1945) was a German Army officer. In World War II, Fromm was Commander in Chief of the Replacement Army (''Ersatzheer''), in charge of training and personnel replacement for combat divi ...
, commander of the Reserve Army, so he had to be either won over to the conspiracy or in some way neutralised if the plan was to succeed.
Previous failed attempts
During 1943 and early 1944 von Tresckow and von Stauffenberg organised at least five attempts to get one of the military conspirators near enough to Hitler, for long enough to kill him with hand grenades, bombs, or a revolver:
* 13 March 1943 by
von Tresckow
* 21 March 1943 by
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff
* late November 1943 by
Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst
Axel Ernst-August Clamor Franz Albrecht Erich Leo Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst (; 24 April 1919 – 26 January 1993) was a German officer during World War II and was a member of the German Resistance. He planned to assassinate Adolf Hit ...
* February 1944 by
Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin
* 11 March 1944 by
Eberhard Freiherr von Breitenbuch
As the war situation deteriorated, Hitler no longer appeared in public and rarely visited Berlin. He spent most of his time at his headquarters at the near
Rastenburg in
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label= Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
, with occasional breaks at his
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
n mountain retreat
Obersalzberg
Obersalzberg is a mountainside retreat situated above the market town of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, Germany. Located about south-east of Munich, close to the border with Austria, it is best known as the site of Adolf Hitler's former mountain resi ...
near
Berchtesgaden. In both places, he was heavily guarded and rarely saw people he did not know or trust.
Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
and the Gestapo were increasingly suspicious of plots against Hitler and rightly suspected the officers of the General Staff, which was indeed the source of many conspiracies against him.
Preparations
By the summer of 1944, the Gestapo was closing in on the conspirators. When Stauffenberg sent Tresckow a message through Lieutenant
Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort
Heinrich Ahasverus Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort (22 June 1909 – 4 September 1944) was an East Prussian junker and aristocrat who became a member of the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Biography
Heinrich von Lehndorff was born ...
asking whether there was any reason for trying to assassinate Hitler given that no political purpose would be served, Tresckow's response was: "The assassination must be attempted, ''coûte que coûte''
hatever the cost Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin , for the practical purpose no longer matters; what matters now is that the German resistance movement must take the plunge before the eyes of the world and of history. Compared to that, nothing else matters."
Himmler had at least one conversation with a known oppositionist when, in August 1943, the
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
n Finance Minister
Johannes Popitz, who was involved in Goerdeler's network, came to see him and offered him the support of the opposition if he would make a move to displace Hitler and secure a negotiated end to the war. Nothing came of this meeting, but Popitz was not immediately arrested (although he was later executed towards the end of the war), and Himmler apparently did nothing to track down the resistance network which he knew was operating within the state bureaucracy. It is possible that Himmler, who by late 1943 knew that the war was unwinnable, allowed the plot to go ahead in the belief that if it succeeded he would be Hitler's successor, and could then bring about a peace settlement.
Popitz was not alone in seeing Himmler as a potential ally. General von Bock advised Tresckow to seek his support, but there is no evidence that he did so. Goerdeler was apparently also in indirect contact with Himmler via a mutual acquaintance,
Carl Langbehn.
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi re ...
biographer
Heinz Höhne
Heinz Höhne (1926 Berlin, Germany - 27 March 2010 in Großhansdorf) was a German journalist who specialized in Nazi and intelligence history.
Biography
Born in Berlin in 1926, Höhne was educated there until he was called to fight during the ...
suggests that Canaris and Himmler were working together to bring about a change of regime, but this remains speculation.
Tresckow and the inner circle of plotters had no intention of removing Hitler just to see him replaced by the dreaded and ruthless SS chief, and the plan was to kill them both if possible—to the extent that Stauffenberg's first attempt on 11 July was aborted because Himmler was not present.
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2004-0007, Hans Oster.jpg, Hans Oster
Hans Paul Oster (9 August 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a general in the ''Wehrmacht'' and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the ''Abwehr'' (German military inte ...
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1980-033-04, Ludwig Beck.jpg, Ludwig Beck
Ludwig August Theodor Beck (; 29 June 1880 – 20 July 1944) was a German general and Chief of the German General Staff during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany before World War II. Although Beck never became a member of the Na ...
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1978-043-13, Erwin v. Witzleben.jpg, Erwin von Witzleben
Job Wilhelm Georg Erdmann Erwin von Witzleben (4 December 1881 – 8 August 1944) was a German field marshal in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. A leading conspirator in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was designated to ...
File:Carl Goerdeler.jpg, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (; 31 July 1884 – 2 February 1945) was a monarchist conservative German politician, executive, economist, civil servant and opponent of the Nazi regime. He opposed some anti-Jewish policies while he held office and was ...
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1976-130-53, Henning v. Tresckow.jpg, Henning von Tresckow
Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow (; 10 January 1901 – 21 July 1944) was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassina ...
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1981-072-61, Friedrich Olbricht.jpg, Friedrich Olbricht
Friedrich Olbricht (4 October 1888 – 21 July 1944) was a German general during World War II and one of the plotters involved in the 20 July Plot, an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. He was a senior staff officer, with the rank of ...
File:Erich_Fellgiebel.jpg, Erich Fellgiebel
Fritz Erich Fellgiebel (4 October 1886 – 4 September 1944) was a German Army general of signals and resistance fighter in the 20 July plot to assassinate Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. In 1929, Fellgiebel became head of the cipher bureau (german: C ...
File:Claus von Stauffenberg (1907-1944).jpg, Claus von Stauffenberg
Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (; 15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
Despite ...
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146III-347, Werner Karl v. Haeften.jpg, Werner von Haeften
Countdown to Stauffenberg's attempt
First week of July
On Saturday, 1 July 1944 Stauffenberg was appointed Chief of Staff to General
Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters on Bendlerstraße in central Berlin. This position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler's military conferences, either at the ''
Wolfsschanze
The ''Wolf's Lair'' (german: Wolfsschanze; pl, Wilczy Szaniec) served as Adolf Hitler's first Eastern Front military headquarters in World War II.
The headquarters was located in the Masurian woods, near the small village of Görlitz in Ost ...
'' in
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label= Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
or at
Berchtesgaden, and would thus give him an opportunity, perhaps the last that would present itself, to kill Hitler with a bomb or a pistol. Meanwhile, new key allies had been gained. These included General
Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the German military commander in France, who would take control in Paris when Hitler was killed, and it was hoped, negotiate an immediate armistice with the invading Allied armies.
Aborted attempts
The plot was now fully prepared. On 7 July 1944 General
Helmuth Stieff
Hellmuth Stieff (6 June 1901 – 8 August 1944) was a German general and a member of the OKH (German Army Headquarters) during World War II. He took part in attempts by the German resistance to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 7 and 20 July 1944.
C ...
was to kill Hitler at a display of new uniforms at
Klessheim castle near
Salzburg
Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label= Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...
. However, Stieff felt unable to kill Hitler. Stauffenberg now decided to do both, assassinate Hitler and to manage the plot in Berlin.
On 14 July Stauffenberg attended Hitler's conferences carrying a bomb in his briefcase, but because the conspirators had decided that
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
and
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...
should be killed simultaneously if the planned mobilisation of Operation Valkyrie was to have a chance to succeed, he held back at the last minute because Himmler was not present. In fact, it was unusual for Himmler to attend military conferences.
By 15 July, when Stauffenberg again flew to the , this condition had been dropped. The plan was for Stauffenberg to plant the briefcase with the bomb in Hitler's conference room with a timer running, excuse himself from the meeting, wait for the explosion, then fly back to Berlin and join the other plotters at the
Bendlerblock
The Bendlerblock is a building complex in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße (formerly named ''Bendlerstraße''). Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine'') ...
. Operation Valkyrie would be mobilised, the Reserve Army would take control of Germany and the other Nazi leaders would be arrested. Beck would be appointed provisional head of state, Goerdeler would be chancellor, and Witzleben would be commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Again on 15 July, the attempt was called off at the last minute. Himmler and Göring were present, but Hitler was called out of the room at the last moment. Stauffenberg was able to intercept the bomb and prevent its discovery.
20 July 1944
Operation Valkyrie
![Grafik - Lagebesprechung Wolfsschanze, 20](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Grafik_-_Lagebesprechung_Wolfsschanze%2C_20._Juli_1944.png)
On 18 July rumours reached Stauffenberg that the Gestapo had knowledge of the conspiracy and that he might be arrested at any time—this was apparently not true, but there was a sense that the net was closing in and that the next opportunity to kill Hitler must be taken because there might not be another. On the morning of Thursday, 20 July Stauffenberg flew back to the ''Wolfsschanze'' for another Hitler military conference, once again with a bomb in his briefcase.
At around 12:30 pm as the conference began, Stauffenberg asked to use a washroom in
Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (; 22 September 188216 October 1946) was a German field marshal and war criminal who held office as chief of the '' Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' (OKW), the high command of Nazi Germany's Armed Forces, duri ...
's office, saying that he had to change his shirt, which indeed was soaked through with sweat, it being a very hot day. There, assisted by von Haeften, he used pliers to crush the end of a
pencil detonator
A pencil detonator or time pencil is a time fuze designed to be connected to a detonator or short length of safety fuse. They are about the same size and shape as a pencil, hence the name. They were introduced during World War II and developed at ...
inserted into a block of
plastic explosive
Plastic explosive is a soft and hand-moldable solid form of explosive material. Within the field of explosives engineering, plastic explosives are also known as putty explosives
or blastics.
Plastic explosives are especially suited for explo ...
wrapped in brown paper, that was prepared by
Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven. The pencil detonator consisted of a thin copper tube containing
cupric chloride
Copper(II) chloride is the chemical compound with the chemical formula CuCl2. The anhydrous form is yellowish brown but slowly absorbs moisture to form a blue-green dihydrate.
Both the anhydrous and the dihydrate forms occur naturally as the ver ...
that would take about ten minutes to silently eat through wire holding back the
firing pin
A firing pin or striker is a part of the firing mechanism of a firearm that impacts the primer in the base of a cartridge and causes it to fire. In firearms terminology, a striker is a particular type of firing pin where a compressed spring ...
from the
percussion cap
The percussion cap or percussion primer, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. This crucial invention gave rise ...
. It was slow going due to war wounds that had cost Stauffenberg an eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand. Interrupted by a guard knocking on the door advising him that the meeting was about to begin, he was not able to prime the second bomb, which he gave to his ,
Werner von Haeften.
Stauffenberg placed the single primed bomb inside his briefcase and, with the unwitting assistance of Major
Ernst John von Freyend, entered the conference room containing Hitler and 20 officers, positioning the briefcase under the table near Hitler.
After a few minutes, Stauffenberg received a planned telephone call and left the room. It is presumed that Colonel
Heinz Brandt
Heinz Brandt (11 March 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German officer. During World War II he served as an aide to General Adolf Heusinger, the head of the operations unit of the General Staff. He may have inadvertently saved Adolf Hitler's life, ...
, who was standing next to Hitler, used his foot to move the briefcase aside by pushing it behind the leg of the conference table,
[ thus unwittingly deflecting the blast from Hitler but causing the loss of one of his legs and his own demise when the bomb detonated.]
At 12:42 the bomb detonated, demolishing the conference room and killing a stenographer instantly. More than 20 people in the room were injured with three officers later perishing. Hitler survived, as did everyone else who was shielded from the blast by the conference table leg. His trousers were singed and tattered (see photograph below) and he suffered from a perforated eardrum, as did most of the other 24 people in the room.[
]
Escape from the Wolf's Lair and flight to Berlin
Stauffenberg was seen leaving the conference building by Kurt Salterberg, a soldier on guard duty who did not consider this out of the ordinary as attendees sometimes left to collect documents. He then saw a "massive" cloud of smoke, wood splinters and paper and men being hurled through a window and door.[Germany remembers the plot to kill hitler at dw]
Retrieved 22 July 2015 Stauffenberg, upon witnessing the explosion and smoke, erroneously assumed that Hitler was dead. He then climbed into a staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften and managed to bluff his way past three checkpoints to exit the complex. Werner von Haeften then tossed the second unprimed bomb into the forest as they made a dash for Rastenburg airfield, reaching it before it could be realised that Stauffenberg could be responsible for the explosion. By 13:00 he was airborne in a Heinkel He 111 arranged by General Eduard Wagner
Eduard Wagner (1 April 1894 – 23 July 1944) was a general in the Army of Nazi Germany who served as quartermaster-general in World War II. He had the overall responsibility for security in the Army Group Rear Areas, and thus bore responsibil ...
.
By the time Stauffenberg's aircraft reached Berlin about 16:00, General Erich Fellgiebel
Fritz Erich Fellgiebel (4 October 1886 – 4 September 1944) was a German Army general of signals and resistance fighter in the 20 July plot to assassinate Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. In 1929, Fellgiebel became head of the cipher bureau (german: C ...
, an officer at the who was in on the plot, had phoned the Bendlerblock
The Bendlerblock is a building complex in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße (formerly named ''Bendlerstraße''). Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine'') ...
and told the plotters that Hitler had survived the explosion. As a result, the plot to mobilise Operation Valkyrie would have no chance of succeeding once the officers of the Reserve Army knew that Hitler was alive. There was more confusion when Stauffenberg's aircraft landed and he phoned from the airport to say that Hitler was in fact dead. The Bendlerblock plotters did not know whom to believe.
Finally, at 16:00 Olbricht issued the orders for Operation Valkyrie to be mobilised. The vacillating General Fromm, however, phoned Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (; 22 September 188216 October 1946) was a German field marshal and war criminal who held office as chief of the '' Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' (OKW), the high command of Nazi Germany's Armed Forces, duri ...
at the Wolf's Lair and was assured that Hitler was alive. Keitel demanded to know Stauffenberg's whereabouts. This told Fromm that the plot had been traced to his headquarters and that he was in mortal danger. Fromm replied that he thought Stauffenberg was with Hitler.
Meanwhile, Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, military governor of occupied France
The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...
, managed to disarm the SD and SS and captured most of their leadership. He travelled to Günther von Kluge
Günther Adolf Ferdinand von Kluge (30 October 1882 – 19 August 1944) was a German field marshal during World War II who held commands on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. He commanded the 4th Army of the Wehrmacht during the invasio ...
's headquarters and asked him to contact the Allies, only to be informed that Hitler was alive. At 16:40 Stauffenberg and Haeften arrived at the Bendlerblock. Fromm, presumably to protect himself, changed sides and attempted to have Stauffenberg arrested. Olbricht and Stauffenberg restrained him at gunpoint and Olbricht then appointed General Erich Hoepner
Erich Kurt Richard Hoepner (14 September 1886 – 8 August 1944) was a German general during World War II. An early proponent of mechanisation and armoured warfare, he was a Wehrmacht army corps commander at the beginning of the war, leading hi ...
to take over his duties.
By this time Himmler had taken charge of the situation and had issued orders countermanding Olbricht's mobilisation of Operation Valkyrie. In many places the coup was going ahead, led by officers who believed that Hitler was dead. City Commandant, and conspirator, General Paul von Hase ordered the , under the command of Major Otto Ernst Remer, to secure the Wilhelmstraße
Wilhelmstrasse (german: Wilhelmstraße, see ß) is a major thoroughfare in the central Mitte and Kreuzberg districts of Berlin, Germany. Until 1945, it was recognised as the centre of the government, first of the Kingdom of Prussia, later of t ...
and arrest Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, Prague, and many other places troops occupied Nazi Party offices and arrested Gauleiter
A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a '' Gau'' or '' Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to '' Reichsleiter'' and to ...
s and SS officers.
Failure of the coup
At around 18:10, the commander of Military District III (Berlin), General Joachim von Kortzfleisch, was summoned to the Bendlerblock
The Bendlerblock is a building complex in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße (formerly named ''Bendlerstraße''). Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine'') ...
; he angrily refused Olbricht's orders, kept shouting "the Führer is alive", was arrested, and held under guard. General Karl Freiherr von Thüngen was appointed in his place but proved to be of almost no help. General Fritz Lindemann, who was supposed to make a proclamation to the German people over the radio, failed to appear and as he held the only copy, Beck had to work on a new one.
At 19:00, Hitler was sufficiently recovered to make phone calls. He called Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels arranged for Hitler to speak to Major Remer, commander of the troops surrounding the Ministry. After assuring him that he was still alive, Hitler ordered Remer to regain control of the situation in Berlin. Major Remer ordered his troops to surround and seal off the Bendlerblock, but not to enter the buildings. At 20:00 a furious Witzleben arrived at the Bendlerblock and had a bitter argument with Stauffenberg, who was still insisting that the coup could go ahead. Witzleben left shortly afterwards. At around this time the planned seizure of power in Paris was aborted when Field Marshal Günther von Kluge
Günther Adolf Ferdinand von Kluge (30 October 1882 – 19 August 1944) was a German field marshal during World War II who held commands on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. He commanded the 4th Army of the Wehrmacht during the invasio ...
, who had recently been appointed commander-in-chief in the west, learned that Hitler was alive.
As Remer regained control of the city and word spread that Hitler was still alive, the less resolute members of the conspiracy in Berlin began to change sides. Fromm was freed from his room and fighting broke out in the Bendlerblock between officers supporting and opposing the coup; Stauffenberg was wounded after a shootout. As the fighting was still ongoing, Remer and his forces arrived at the Bendlerblock and the conspirators were overwhelmed and arrested; by 23:00 Fromm and Remer had regained control of the building.
Perhaps hoping that a show of zealous loyalty would save him, Fromm convened an impromptu court martial
A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...
consisting of himself, and sentenced Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim
Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim (25 March 1905 – 21 July 1944) was a German Army colonel and a resistance fighter in Nazi Germany involved in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler.
Early life
Quirnheim was born in Munich, the son of Herma ...
, to death, while putting Beck under arrest; Beck, realising the situation was hopeless, asked for a pistol and shot himself—the first of many attempted suicides in the coming days. At first Beck only seriously wounded himself—he was then shot in the neck and killed by soldiers. Despite protests from Remer (who had been ordered by Hitler to arrest the conspirators), at 00:10 on 21 July the four officers were executed in the courtyard outside, possibly to prevent them from revealing Fromm's involvement. Others would have been executed as well, but at 00:30 Waffen-SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
personnel led by ''Obersturmbannführer
__NOTOC__
''Obersturmbannführer'' (Senior Assault-unit Leader; ; short: ''Ostubaf'') was a paramilitary rank in the German Nazi Party (NSDAP) which was used by the SA ('' Sturmabteilung'') and the SS (''Schutzstaffel''). The rank of ''Oberstu ...
'' Otto Skorzeny
Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German SS-''Obersturmbannführer'' (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including th ...
arrived and further executions were forbidden.
Aftermath
Over the following weeks, Himmler's Gestapo, driven by a furious Hitler, rounded up nearly everyone who had the remotest connection with the plot. The discovery of letters and diaries in the homes and offices of those arrested revealed the plots of 1938, 1939, and 1943, and this led to further rounds of arrests, including that of colonel general Franz Halder, who finished the war in a concentration camp. Under Himmler's new (blood guilt) laws, many relatives of the principal plotters were also arrested in the immediate aftermath of the failed plot.
More than 7,000 people were arrested and 4,980 were executed. Not all of them were connected with the plot, since the Gestapo used the occasion to settle scores with many other people suspected of opposition sympathies. Alfons Heck
Alfons Heck (3 November 1928 – 11 April 2005) was a Hitler Youth member who eventually became a Hitler Youth Officer and a fanatical adherent of Nazism during the Third Reich.
In the 1970s, decades after he immigrated to the United States via C ...
, former Hitler Youth member and later a historian, describes the reaction many Germans felt to the punishments of the conspirators:
Allied radio stations also speculated on who the possible remaining suspects could be, many of whom were eventually implicated in the plot.
Very few of the plotters tried to escape or to deny their guilt when arrested. Those who survived interrogation were given perfunctory trials before the People's Court, a kangaroo court
A kangaroo court is a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides, and is typically convened ad hoc. A kangaroo court may ignore due process and come ...
that always decided in favour of the prosecution. The court's president, Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945), a German Nazi jurist, judge, and politician, served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1934 to 1942 and as President of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945.
As ...
, was a fanatical Nazi seen shouting furiously and insulting the accused in the trial, which was filmed for propaganda purposes. The plotters were stripped of their uniforms and given old, shabby clothing to humiliate them for the cameras.[See Shirer 1070–1071.] The officers involved in the plot were "tried" before the Court of Military Honour, a drumhead court-martial
A drumhead court-martial is a court-martial held in the field to hear urgent charges of offences committed in action. The term sometimes has connotations of summary offence, summary justice.
The term is said to originate from the use of a drum as ...
that merely considered the evidence furnished to it by the Gestapo before expelling the accused from the Army in disgrace and handing them over to the People's Court.[William Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'' (Touchstone Edition) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990)]
The first trials were held on 7 and 8 August 1944. Hitler had ordered that those found guilty should be "hanged like cattle". Many people took their own lives prior to either their trial or their execution, including Kluge, who was accused of having knowledge of the plot beforehand and not revealing it to Hitler. Stülpnagel tried to commit suicide, but survived and was hanged.
Tresckow killed himself the day after the failed plot by use of a hand grenade in no man's land between Russian and German lines.
Fabian von Schlabrendorff remembers Tresckow saying the following before his death:
Fromm's attempt to win favour by executing Stauffenberg and others on the night of 20 July had merely exposed his own previous lack of action and apparent failure to report the plot. Having been arrested on 21 July, Fromm was later convicted and sentenced to death by the People's Court. Despite his knowledge of the conspiracy, his formal sentence charged him with poor performance in his duties. He was executed in Brandenburg an der Havel
Brandenburg an der Havel () is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, which served as the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg until it was replaced by Berlin in 1417.
With a population of 72,040 (as of 2020), it is located on the banks of the ...
. Hitler personally commuted his death sentence from hanging to the "more honourable" firing squad. Erwin Planck
Erwin Planck (12 March 1893 – 23 January 1945) was a German politician, and a resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.
Biography
Born in Charlottenburg (today part of Berlin), Erwin Planck was the fourth child of Nobel Prize-winning physici ...
, the son of the famous physicist Max Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...
, was executed for his involvement.
The Kaltenbrunner Report to Adolf Hitler dated 29 November 1944 on the background of the plot, states that the Pope was somehow a conspirator, specifically naming Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, as being a party in the attempt. Evidence indicates that 20 July plotters Colonel Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven, Colonel Erwin von Lahousen
Generalmajor Erwin Heinrich René Lahousen, Edler von Vivremont (25 October 1897 – 24 February 1955) was a high-ranking Abwehr official during the Second World War, as well as a member of the German Resistance and a key player in attempts to a ...
, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi re ...
were involved in the foiling of Hitler's alleged plot to kidnap or murder Pope Pius XII in 1943, when Canaris reported the plot to Italian counterintelligence officer General Cesare Amè, who passed on the information.
A member of the SA convicted of participating in the plot was ''Obergruppenführer'' Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, who was the Police Chief of Berlin and had been in contact with members of the resistance since before the war. Collaborating closely with Arthur Nebe
Arthur Nebe (; 13 November 1894 – 21 March 1945) was a German SS functionary who was key in the security and police apparatus of Nazi Germany and from 1941, a major perpetrator of the Holocaust.
Nebe rose through the ranks of the Prussia ...
, he was supposed to direct all police forces in Berlin to stand down and not interfere in the military actions to seize the government. However, his actions on 20 July had minimal influence on the events. For his involvement in the conspiracy, he was later arrested, convicted of treason and executed.
After 3 February 1945, when Freisler was killed in an American air raid, there were no more formal trials, but as late as April, with the war weeks away from its end, Canaris' diary was found, and many more people were implicated. Hans Von Dohnanyi
Hans von Dohnanyi (; originally ''Johann von Dohnányi'' ; 1 January 1902 – 8 or 9 April 1945) was a German jurist. He used his position in the Abwehr to help Jews escape Germany, worked with German resistance against the Nazi régime, a ...
was accused of being the "spiritual leader" of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and executed 6 April 1945. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have ...
, whom Von Dohnanyi had recruited into the Abwehr, was executed 9 April 1945 along with Canaris, Oster, and 4 others. Executions continued to the last days of the war.
Hitler took his survival to be a "divine moment in history", and commissioned a special decoration to be made for each person wounded or killed in the blast. The result was the Wound Badge
The Wound Badge (german: Verwundetenabzeichen) was a German military decoration first promulgated by Wilhelm II, German Emperor on 3 March 1918, which was first awarded to soldiers of the German Army who were wounded during World War I. Between ...
of 20 July 1944. The badges were struck in three values: gold, silver, and black (the colours denoted the severity of the wounds received by each recipient). A total of 100 badges were manufactured, and 47 are believed to have actually been awarded. Each badge was accompanied by an ornate award document personally signed by Hitler. The badges themselves bore a facsimile of his signature, making them among the rarest decorations to have been awarded by Nazi Germany.
For his role in stopping the coup Major Remer was promoted to colonel and ended the war as a major general. After the war he co-founded the Socialist Reich Party
The Socialist Reich Party (german: Sozialistische Reichspartei Deutschlands) was a West German political party founded in the aftermath of World War II in 1949 as an openly neo-Nazi-oriented splinter from the national conservative German Right ...
and remained a prominent Neo-Nazi and advocate of Holocaust Denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: ...
until his death in 1997.
Philipp von Boeselager
Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager (6 September 1917 – 1 May 2008) was the second-last surviving member of the 20 July Plot, a conspiracy of Wehrmacht officers to assassinate the German dictator Adolf Hitler in 1944.
Early life
Born at Burg Hei ...
, the German officer who provided the plastic explosives used in the bomb, escaped detection and survived the war. He was the second-to-last survivor of those involved in the plot and died on 1 May 2008, aged 90. The last survivor of the 20 July Plot was Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, the thwarted plotter of just a few months before. He died on 8 March 2013, aged 90.
As a result of the failed coup, every member of the was required to reswear his loyalty oath, by name, to Hitler and on 24 July 1944 the military salute was replaced throughout the armed forces with the Hitler Salute
The Nazi salute, also known as the Hitler salute (german: link=no, Hitlergruß, , Hitler greeting, ; also called by the Nazi Party , 'German greeting', ), or the ''Sieg Heil'' salute, is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. T ...
in which the arm was outstretched and the salutation was given.
Planned government
The conspirators had earlier designated positions in secret to form a government that would take office after the assassination of Hitler were it to prove successful. Because of the plot's failure, such a government never rose to power and most of its members were executed.
The following were slated for these roles as of July 1944:
* Ludwig Beck
Ludwig August Theodor Beck (; 29 June 1880 – 20 July 1944) was a German general and Chief of the German General Staff during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany before World War II. Although Beck never became a member of the Na ...
– President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
* Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (; 31 July 1884 – 2 February 1945) was a monarchist conservative German politician, executive, economist, civil servant and opponent of the Nazi regime. He opposed some anti-Jewish policies while he held office and was ...
– Chancellor
* Wilhelm Leuschner
Wilhelm Leuschner (15 June 1890, in Bayreuth, Bavaria – 29 September 1944, in Berlin-Plötzensee) was a trade unionist and Social Democratic Party of Germany, Social Democratic politician. An early opponent of Nazism, he organized underground ...
– Vice-Chancellor
A chancellor is a leader of a college or university, usually either the executive or ceremonial head of the university or of a university campus within a university system.
In most Commonwealth and former Commonwealth nations, the chancellor ...
* Paul Löbe
Paul Gustav Emil Löbe (14 December 1875 – 3 August 1967) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a member and president of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic, and member of the Bundestag of West Germany. He ...
– President of the ''Reichstag''
* Claus von Stauffenberg
Colonel Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (; 15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
Despite ...
– State Secretary
* Julius Leber – Minister of the Interior
An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...
(considered)
* Eugen Bolz – Minister of the Interior (considered)
* Friedrich von der Schulenburg – Foreign Minister (considered)
* Ulrich von Hassell – Foreign Minister (considered)
* Ewald Löser – Minister of Finance
* Friedrich Olbricht
Friedrich Olbricht (4 October 1888 – 21 July 1944) was a German general during World War II and one of the plotters involved in the 20 July Plot, an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. He was a senior staff officer, with the rank of ...
– Minister of War
* Erwin von Witzleben
Job Wilhelm Georg Erdmann Erwin von Witzleben (4 December 1881 – 8 August 1944) was a German field marshal in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. A leading conspirator in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was designated to ...
– Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht
* Hans Oster
Hans Paul Oster (9 August 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a general in the ''Wehrmacht'' and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the ''Abwehr'' (German military inte ...
– President of the ''Reichskriegsgericht
The Reichskriegsgericht (RKG; en, Reich Court-Martial) was the highest military court in Germany between 1900 and 1945.
Legal basics and responsibilities
After the Prussian-led Unification of Germany, the German Empire with effect from 1 Octobe ...
''
* Hans Koch – President of the '' Reichsgericht''
* Karl Blessing – President of the ''Reichsbank
The ''Reichsbank'' (; 'Bank of the Reich, Bank of the Realm') was the central bank of the German Reich from 1876 until 1945.
History until 1933
The Reichsbank was founded on 1 January 1876, shortly after the establishment of the German Empi ...
'' (or Minister of Economics)
* Paul Lejeune-Jung – Minister of Economics
* Andreas Hermes
Andreas Hermes (16 July 1878 – 4 January 1964) was a German agricultural scientist and politician. In the Weimar Republic, he was a member of several governments, serving as minister of food/nutrition and minister of finance for the Catholic ...
– Minister of Agriculture
* Josef Wirmer – Minister of Justice
* Bernhard Letterhaus – Reconstruction Minister
* Henning von Tresckow
Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow (; 10 January 1901 – 21 July 1944) was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassina ...
– Chief of Police
* Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg – Prime Minister of Berlin and Brandenburg
Albert Speer was listed in several notes of the conspirators as a possible Minister of Armaments; however, most of these notes stated Speer should not be approached until after Hitler was dead and one conjectural government chart had a question mark beside Speer's name. This most likely saved Speer from arrest by the SS in addition to Speer being one of Hitler's closest and most trusted friends.
Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Germany
Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, Crown Prince of Prussia (Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst; 6 May 1882 – 20 July 1951) was the eldest child of the last '' Kaiser'', the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, and his consort Augusta Victoria of Schl ...
was also under suspicion as he was touted to be head of state after Hitler.
Erwin Rommel's involvement
The extent of Generalfeldmarschall
''Generalfeldmarschall'' (from Old High German ''marahscalc'', "marshal, stable master, groom"; en, general field marshal, field marshal general, or field marshal; ; often abbreviated to ''Feldmarschall'') was a rank in the armies of several ...
Erwin Rommel's involvement in the military's resistance against Hitler or the 20 July plot is difficult to ascertain, as most of the leaders who were directly involved did not survive and limited documentation on the conspirators' plans and preparations exists. Historians' opinions on this matter vary greatly. According to Peter Hoffmann, he had turned into Hitler's resolute opponent and in the end supported the coup (though not the assassination itself). He was even the natural leader of the opposition in France to some extent, considering the fact he had drawn a lot of military and political personnel into his orbit in preparation of a "Western solution". Ralf Georg Reuth thinks that the conspirators perhaps mistook Rommel's ambiguous attitude for approval of the assassination, considering: the conspirators normally did not explicitly mention the assassination; Rommel was very naive and attached to Hitler (who was the personification of National Socialism, which had provided Rommel with a great career) and thus even if Hofacker had mentioned a violent upheaval in Berlin, he would not have interpreted it as an assassination. Thus, Rommel's participation remains ambiguous and the perception of it largely has its source in the subsequent events (especially Rommel's forced suicide) and the accounts by surviving participants.
According to a post-war account by Karl Strölin, the of Stuttgart at that time, he and two other conspirators, Alexander von Falkenhausen
Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann Freiherr von Falkenhausen (29 October 187831 July 1966) was a German general and military advisor to Chiang Kai-shek. He was an important figure during the Sino-German cooperation to reform the Chinese Army. In 19 ...
and Carl Heinrich von Stülpnagel began efforts to bring Rommel into the anti-Hitler conspiracy in early 1944. On 15 April 1944 Rommel's new chief of staff, Hans Speidel
Hans Speidel (28 October 1897 – 28 November 1984) was a German general, who was one of the major military leaders of West Germany during the early Cold War. The first full General in West Germany, he was a principal founder of the ''Bundeswehr ...
, arrived in Normandy and reintroduced Rommel to Stülpnagel. Speidel had previously been connected to Carl Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (; 31 July 1884 – 2 February 1945) was a monarchist conservative German politician, executive, economist, civil servant and opponent of the Nazi regime. He opposed some anti-Jewish policies while he held office and was ...
, the civilian leader of the resistance, but not to the plotters led by Stauffenberg, and only came to the attention of Stauffenberg due to his appointment to Rommel's headquarters. The conspirators felt they needed the support of a field marshal on active duty. Witzleben was a field marshal, but had not been on active duty since 1942. The conspirators gave instructions to Speidel to bring Rommel into their circle.
Speidel met with former foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath and Strölin on 27 May in Germany, ostensibly at Rommel's request, although the latter was not present. Neurath and Strölin suggested opening immediate surrender negotiations in the West, and, according to Speidel, Rommel agreed to further discussions and preparations. Around the same timeframe, however, the plotters in Berlin were not aware that Rommel had reportedly decided to take part in the conspiracy. On 16 May, they informed Allen Dulles, through whom they hoped to negotiate with the Western Allies, that Rommel could not be counted on for support. Three days before the assassination attempt, on 17 July, Rommel's staff car was strafed by an Allied aircraft in France; he was hospitalised with major injuries and incapacitated on 20 July.
Rommel opposed assassinating Hitler. After the war, his widow maintained that he believed an assassination attempt would spark a civil war. According to journalist and author William L. Shirer
William Lawrence Shirer (; February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly w ...
, Rommel knew about the conspiracy and advocated that Hitler be arrested and placed on trial. The historian Ian Becket argues that "there is no credible evidence that Rommel had more than limited and superficial knowledge of the plot" and concludes that he would not have acted to aid the plotters in the aftermath of the attempt on 20 July, while the historian Ralf Georg Reuth contends that "there was no indication of any active participation of Rommel in the conspiracy." Historian Richard J. Evans
Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
concluded that he knew of a plot, but was not involved.
What is not debated are the results of the failed bomb plot of 20 July. Many conspirators were arrested and the dragnet expanded to thousands. Consequently, it did not take long for Rommel to come under suspicion. He was primarily implicated through his connection to Kluge. Rommel's name also came up in confessions made under torture by Stülpnagel and Hofacker, and was included in Goerdeler's papers on a list of potential supporters. Hofacker confessed that Rommel had agreed to demand for Hitler to step down, and if he refused, Rommel would join the other conspirators in deposing Hitler. Rommel was also planned to become a member of the post-Hitler government in papers drawn up by Goerdeler.
Hitler knew it would cause a major scandal on the home front to have the popular Rommel publicly branded as a traitor. With this in mind, he opted to give Rommel the option of suicide via cyanide or a public trial by Freisler's People's Court. Rommel was well aware that being hauled before the People's Court was tantamount to a death sentence. He also knew that if he chose to stand trial, his family would have been severely punished even before the all-but-certain conviction and execution. With this in mind, he committed suicide on 14 October 1944. He was buried with full military honours and his family was spared from persecution; his cause of death did not come to light until after the war.
Criticism
Involvement in war crimes and atrocities
Involvement of the plotters in war crimes and atrocities has been studied by historians such as Christian Gerlach Hans Christian Gerlach is professor of Modern History at the University of Bern. Gerlach is also Associate Editor of the ''Journal of Genocide Research'' and author of multiple books dealing with the Hunger Plan, the Holocaust, and genocide.
Wri ...
. Gerlach proved that plotters such as Tresckow and Gersdorff were aware of mass murder happening in the East from at least 1941. He writes: "Especially with reference to the murder of the Jews, t is said that'the SS' had deceived the officers by killing in secret, filing incomplete reports or none at all; if general staff officers protested, the SS threatened them." Gerlach concludes: "This is, of course, nonsense."
Tresckow also "signed orders for the deportation of thousands of orphaned children for forced labor in the Reich"—the so-called . Such actions lead historians to question the motives of the plotters, which seemed more concerned with the military situation than with Nazi atrocities and German war crimes. However some others assert that, in such actions, Tresckow had to act out of principle to continue with his coup plans.
Gerlach pointed out that the plotters had "selective moral criteria" and while they were concerned about Jews being exterminated in the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, they were far less disturbed about mass murder of civilians in the East.[Christianity and Resistance in the 20th Century: From Kaj Munk and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Desmond Tutu (International Studies in Religion and Society Series) pp. 134–135, 2008] To Gerlach, the primary motivation of the plotters was to ensure German victory in the war or at least prevent defeat. Gerlach's arguments were later supported by historian Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen (5 November 1930 – 5 November 2015) was a German historian, known for his studies in German social history, and for his functionalist interpretation of the Third Reich, especially for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a weak dictator. ...
, who stated that the plotters were interested above all in military victory. But Gerlach's arguments were also criticized by some scholars, among them Peter Hoffmann from McGill University
McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous ...
and from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
The Konrad Adenauer Foundation (german: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, KAS) is a German political party foundation associated with but independent of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The foundation's headquarters are located in Sank ...
. While acknowledging that Tresckow and other 20 July conspirators had been involved in war crimes, Arnold writes that Gerlach's argument is oversimplified. In 2011, Danny Orbach, a Harvard-based historian, wrote that Gerlach's reading of the sources is highly skewed, and, at times, diametrically opposed to what they actually say. In one case, according to Orbach, Gerlach had falsely paraphrased the memoir of the resistance fighter Colonel Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, and in another case, quoted misleadingly from an SS document. Hence, Orbach concludes that Gerlach's thesis on the German resistance is highly unreliable.
Commemoration and collective memory
A 1951 survey by the Allensbach Institute revealed that "Only a third of respondents had a positive opinion about the men and women who had tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the Nazi regime."
The "first official memorial service for the resistance fighters of 20 July" was held on the tenth anniversary in 1954. In his speech at the event, Theodor Heuss
Theodor Heuss (; 31 January 1884 – 12 December 1963) was a German liberal politician who served as the first president of West Germany from 1949 to 1959. His cordial nature – something of a contrast to the stern character of chancellor K ...
, the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany
The president of Germany, officially the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: link=no, Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international corres ...
, said that "harsh words" were necessary, and that "There have been cases of refusal to carry out orders that have achieved historic greatness." After this speech, public opinion in Germany began to shift.
Nonetheless, a 1956 proposal to name a school after Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was opposed by a majority of citizens, and, according to Deutsche Welle,
The first all-German commemoration of the event did not take place until 1990. In 2013, the last surviving member of the plot, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, died in Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
. , the resistance fighters are generally considered heroes in Germany, according to Deutsche Welle.
File:Bendler Block Memorial Crop.jpg, Memorial at the Bendlerblock
The Bendlerblock is a building complex in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße (formerly named ''Bendlerstraße''). Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine'') ...
: "Here died for Germany on 20 July 1944" (followed by the names of the principal conspirators)
File:Stauffenberg-tomb.JPG, Memorial at the cemetery (Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof
Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof (Alter Sankt-Matthäus-Kirchhof or Old St. Matthew's Churchyard) is a cemetery in Schöneberg, Berlin, Germany. It was established in 1856 by the Protestant parish of St. Matthew. It is known for its interment of the ...
, Berlin) where the corpses were buried but afterwards removed to an unknown place
File:Bendlerblock gdw1.jpg, Memorial statue at the Bendlerblock by Richard Scheibe
Richard Scheibe (19 April 1879, Chemnitz – 6 October 1964, Berlin) was a German artist primarily remembered as a sculptor. He trained as a painter, and taught himself to sculpt beginning in 1906. From 1925-1933 he taught at the Städelsches K ...
See also
* Assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler
This is an incomplete list of documented attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler.Christian Zentner, Friedemann Bedürftig (1991). ''The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'', pp. 47–48. Macmillan, New York.
All attempts occurred in the German Reich, ...
* Conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler's death
Conspiracy theories about the death of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, contradict the accepted fact that he committed suicide in the ''Führerbunker'' on 30 April 1945. Stemming from a campaign of Soviet disinformation, mo ...
* ''The Desert Fox '' (film)
* Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot to Kill Hitler
* Stauffenberg (film) (2004)
* Treason (1959 film)
* ''Valkyrie'' (2008 film)
* Walter Gramsch
Walter Gramsch (born 15 January 1897, date of death unknown) worked in a high position for the State Railways in Nazi Germany, and was involved in the 20 July plot against Hitler. Gramsch later became a high ranking transportation official in the ...
* ''Black Orchestra'' (boardgame)
References
Notes
Bibliography
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* Carsten, F. L. "The German Generals and Hitler" ''History Today'' (Aug 1958) 8#8 pp 556–564.
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External links
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German Opposition to Hitler and the Assassination Attempt of July 20, 1944
Operation Valkyrie: the Stauffenberg Plot to Kill Hitler (80 min. documentary)
{{Authority control
1940s coups d'état and coup attempts
1944 in Germany
Attempted coups in Germany
Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany
Conflicts in 1944
Conspiracies
German resistance to Nazism
July 1944 events
People condemned by Nazi courts
Improvised explosive device bombings in Europe
Building bombings in Germany
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...