The Plot to Kill Hitler
July 20 Assassination Attempt
As I detailed earlier, key high-ranking members of the German military were involved in several conspiracies and direct attempts on Hitler’s life.
According to Moorhouse in “Killing Hitler”, “Of all the disparate resistance groups, the military opposition to Hitler was perhaps the most contradictory. It would be the German army that would supply Hitler with some of his bitterest opponents, and which, in due course, would come closest to removing him altogether.
As a resistance center, the German military also had a number of distinct advantages over its civilian plotters. It was immune to the attention of the Nazi security organizations. The military was the only body capable of removing the party leadership while maintaining order at home and at the front. It could also provide a replacement administration. Most crucially, a few military figures, at the staff level and above, had access to their target. They were also armed and in the business of killing.”
But among the would-be civilian and military conspirators, there was not a consensus on the best course of action. Some wanted Hitler arrested and arraigned for trial. Others knew he had to die.
One conspirator recalled, “The general conviction was that German troops would never be willing to accept a different command as long as Hitler lived. But news of his death would instantly bring about the collapse of the myth surrounding his name. Hence there was no way of gaining the support of large numbers of German troops without eliminating Hitler.”
The assassination attempt that became known as The July 20 Plot had its roots on the Tunisian coast of North Africa. There, a brilliant young officer, Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was strafed by American aircraft while directing a tactical withdrawal. Stauffenberg lost his left eye, most of his right hand, and two fingers of his left. He was also riddled in the back and legs with shrapnel. His doctors did not expect him to survive the day.
In “Killing Hitler”, Moorhouse provides some additional context for Stauffenberg’s motivations. “As with many of his colleagues, the decisive factor in Stauffenberg’s conversion appears to have been the atrocities perpetrated by the SS against enemy civilians, and especially the Jews. In May 1942, he received a graphic eyewitness account of the mass executions in a small Ukrainian town. His immediate reaction was that Hitler had to be overthrown. In time, he came to advocate tyrannicide and even volunteered to carry out the attack himself.”
One of the original assassination conspirators, who worked with Tresckow in his attempts, was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin. There he controlled an independent system of communications to the Replacement Army.
Olbricht, and later Stauffenberg, planned to use the German military’s own plans to ensure the success of their coup. In his book, “Operation Valkyrie”, Pierre Galante states: “Operation Valkyrie had originally been drawn up by the Wehrmacht, with Hitler’s approval, to allow for any contingency that would place the Reich in imminent danger--Hitler’s death, an Allied invasion, or an insurrection.”
Galante goes on: “The conspirators, of course, had introduced certain modifications: The army would seize power in Berlin, and military commanders would take whatever steps were necessary to secure the districts under their command. As soon as word came of Hitler’s death, the conspirators planned to implement Valkyrie, to occupy the key strategic points and communications centers of Berlin, arrest Goebbels, and proclaim General Beck provisional chief of state until a legally constituted civilian government could be installed. The ultimate purpose of the conspiracy was to offer the Western Allies an immediate ceasefire as a prelude to a negotiated peace. The war was irretrievably lost for Germany, and every day, every hour that passed only increased the toll of victims on both sides who had been sacrificed to the bloodlust of a madman.”
On July 1, Stauffenberg was appointed Chief of Staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters in central Berlin. In this role, he would attend many of Hitler’s military conferences in some of the most secure locations in all of Germany. He became convinced that he would be the man to kill Hitler. That moment would be a few weeks later on July 20.
Stauffenberg was asked to attend a conference at Hitler’s Northern Command Post, the Wolfsschanze or “Wolf’s Lair”, in East Prussia. It was fairly close to Berlin, with a flight of just a few hours. The conference would be in a one-story wood hut with a roof of reinforced concrete and brick supports. As before, the assassins would use a timed fuse and two bricks of plastic explosive hidden in a leather briefcase.
Moorhouse in “Killing Hitler” picks up the assassination attempt: “Despite the extreme tension of the moment, most eyewitnesses recalled that Stauffenberg did not betray a trace of nerves. He had, however, committed a grievous error. In his haste, Stauffenberg did not set a fuse in the second slab of explosive. What is more, he had neglected to place the unfused explosive in the briefcase. His bomb, therefore, was only half the bomb it should have been.
At around 12:42 pm, Wolfschanze was shaken by the cacophony of an explosion. In a flash, the map room became a scene of stampede and destruction. There was nothing but wounded men groaning, the acrid smell of burning, and charred fragments of maps and papers fluttering in the wind.”
