July 20 Plot: Assassination Attempt on Hitler (1944)
On July 20, 1944, a coalition of senior German military officers attempted to kill Adolf Hitler, seize control of the government, and negotiate peace with the Allies. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg placed a bomb under Hitler's conference table at the Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia. Hitler survived. The conspirators did not.
The German Resistance
By 1943, a significant network of Wehrmacht officers and civilian officials had concluded that Germany was heading toward catastrophic defeat and that Hitler had to be removed to prevent it. This was not a group of pacifists or idealists: most were conservative nationalists who had supported German expansion but had turned against Hitler for pragmatic military reasons, moral revulsion at SS atrocities, or both. Key figures included General Ludwig Beck, former Chief of the General Staff; Hans Oster of the Abwehr (military intelligence); and Carl Goerdeler, a former mayor of Leipzig who expected to lead a post-Hitler government. The conspirators' plan — code-named Operation Valkyrie — would use the existing army reserve mobilization plan to seize control of Berlin, Paris, and Vienna within hours of Hitler's death. What they lacked for years was someone who could get close enough to Hitler with a bomb. They found that man in Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
Did You Know?
Stauffenberg had been severely wounded in Tunisia in 1943, losing his right hand, two fingers of his left hand, and his left eye. He had to arm the bomb's detonator with his remaining three fingers, under time pressure, in a bathroom at the Wolf's Lair headquarters — and only managed to prime one of the two bombs he had brought.
The Bomb and the Mistake
On the morning of July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg flew to the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's eastern headquarters in the forests of East Prussia. He was attending a midday briefing and placed his briefcase — containing the armed bomb — under the large oak conference table, close to Hitler. He was then called out of the room on a pretext to make a phone call. In his absence, another officer inadvertently moved the briefcase to the other side of a thick table leg — away from Hitler. When the bomb exploded at 12:42 PM, the heavy leg absorbed much of the blast. Hitler suffered burst eardrums, singed hair, and minor burns to his arms and legs. He was shaken but alive. Four others in the room were killed. Stauffenberg, watching from outside and seeing the explosion, assumed Hitler was dead and flew back to Berlin to begin the coup.
Collapse and Reprisals
In Berlin, the conspirators hesitated fatally. Word reached them that Hitler had survived, and support for the coup collapsed within hours. Stauffenberg, Beck, and other ringleaders in Berlin were arrested by loyalist officers, and Stauffenberg was shot by firing squad in a Berlin courtyard just after midnight on July 21. Hitler personally oversaw the subsequent repression. An estimated 7,000 people were arrested; nearly 5,000 were executed, including many who had no direct role in the plot. Several — including Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who had peripheral knowledge of the conspiracy — were given the option of suicide to spare their families. The conspirators' memory was long suppressed in West Germany but was gradually rehabilitated; Stauffenberg's family home in Berlin is now a memorial and museum honoring the German resistance.