According to the military archives of the German intelligence services, attempts were made on Hitler's life approximately 20 times. According to the writer Will Berthold, who worked as a reporter during the Nuremberg trials, there were more than 40 such attempts. However, according to new data, they tried to take the Fuhrer’s life at least 50 times.
During his lifetime, attempts were made on the life of the “great German leader” a large number of times. After his death, the number of participants in the assassination attempts increased so much that researchers did not know who to believe.
Yes, this is, in general, understandable. Modern Germany in every possible way rejects the fact that the country's population ardently supported the Fuhrer. To prove her words, she needs to provide anti-Hitler heroes. Moreover, there were a lot of them.
The very history of Adolf Hitler's rise to power contains many moments when he could have been eliminated without any problems. However, this had to be done no later than the summer of 1934.
It was during this time that the Fuhrer removed his most real competitors - Ernst Rehm and Gregor Strasser. The third competitor, Otto Strasser, managed to flee outside the state.
It can be assumed that if Hitler had been killed then, and one of these three had come to power, the situation would have turned out completely differently. If the reins of government had gone to the Strasser brothers, it is quite possible that there would have been no war, and Rem would have completely turned into an obedient pawn of the USSR, since there was plenty of dirt on him.
However, Hitler remained alive, even though the chances of destroying him were very high. Firstly, he could have been shot by the police, who repeatedly dispersed National Socialist rallies using firearms. And, as everyone knows, Hitler was always in the forefront. He was clearly not a coward. Evidence of this is the large number of awards he received during the First World War, as well as the stories of his colleagues. They say that after the first assassination attempt, Hitler was in great emotional shock and even told the officers that he could be killed by some idiot at any moment.
Hitler visits one of the officers, like himself, who suffered from an unsuccessful attempt on his life on July 20, 1944. After the assassination attempt, Hitler was unable to stand on his feet all day, since many fragments were removed from his legs (according to some sources, more than 100). In addition, he had a dislocated right hand (the picture clearly shows how he is holding it), the hair on the back of his head was singed and his eardrums were damaged. I became temporarily deaf in my right ear. He ordered the execution of the conspirators to be turned into humiliating torture, filmed and photographed. Subsequently, I personally watched this film. By his order, this film was shown to the highest echelon of the Reich.
Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Reich Minister of the Imperial Air Ministry Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler and Head of the NSDAP Party Chancellery, Hitler's closest ally Martin Bormann. The photograph was taken after the most famous assassination attempt on Hitler - he is rubbing his hand, which was damaged in the explosion.
German communist Georg Elser (Johann Georg Elser, 1903-1945) testifies to a Gestapo investigator about the location of an explosive device in the Munich beer hall "Bürgerbräukeller", which was intended to assassinate Hitler.
One of the most famous assassination attempts on Hitler was carried out by a lone individual - the German communist Georg Elser - on November 8, 1939, on the day of the celebration of the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. More than a month before the assassination attempt, Elser came every day to the Bürgerbräukler beer hall and stayed there overnight, hiding in the toilet. After the establishment was empty, he hollowed out the column near which Hitler usually spoke in order to plant an improvised explosive device with a clock mechanism.
Elser knew that traditionally Hitler's speech began at 21:00 and lasted about an hour. So he set his explosive device for 21:20. But Hitler limited himself to a brief greeting and left the hall 7 minutes before the explosion, which killed 7 people and injured 64.
Elser was arrested by the Gestapo on November 10, 1939. During a search, they found a postcard with a picture of the Bürgerbräukeller, containing a mark on the column in which he had placed explosives. After several interrogations, Elser confessed to the assassination attempt.
Elser was placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then transferred to Dachau. On April 9, 1945, when the Allies were already close to the concentration camp, Elser was shot by order of Himmler.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (left), together with Adolf Hitler and a group of officers, inspect the consequences of the explosion at the Fuhrer's headquarters "Wolfsschanze" (Wolf's Lair), carried out during an attempt on the life of the leader of Nazi Germany. On the right is a German diplomat and translator, SS Oberführer Paul Schmidt.
A very good moment for an assassination was missed in the fall of 1938, when the Swiss Maurice Bavo wanted to shoot Hitler with a pistol during the Beer Hall Putsch. He knew that the Fuhrer was always among the first. The Swiss not only took out a pistol, but also practiced shooting, after which on the appointed day he took his place among the spectators. But when the column approached the place where the terrorist was, the spectators raised their hands in greeting, thus completely blocking the view. The assassination attempt failed. The Swiss was soon arrested and sentenced to death.
Another assassination attempt took place in November 1939, when Munich carpenter Elser Johann Georg decided to plant a bomb to kill Hitler during one of his long speeches. But even then it went wrong. The Fuhrer changed his habit of speaking for three hours, and managed it in an hour, leaving the podium 10 minutes before the explosion.
Oddly enough, Stalin’s guards also paid attention to the assassination attempts. They were able to see how easy it was to organize an assassination attempt on a leader. As a result, they began to check with particular care everyone who came to see the “Father of Nations,” even carrying out searches of briefcases and bags.
But as for the guards of the German leader, for some reason they did not draw any conclusions, so attempts on the life of the leader continued with no less intensity.
A natural question arises: how did he manage to stay alive? After all, there are a large number of surefire ways - for example, mixing him with a slow-acting poison, the properties of which have been known since the century before last, moreover, considering that the Fuhrer’s personal confectioner was kept by the British intelligence services...
A striking example is 1944, when foreign intelligence agencies united in a joint hunt for Hitler's life. However, this also had no result. The most famous episode is the attempt to kill the Nazi leader during his flight from Prussia to Berlin. One of the officers accompanying the leader was given two bottles of explosives under the guise of cognac. The explosion was supposed to take place 20 minutes after takeoff. But at the most crucial moment, for some reason this mixture did not work and the plane landed safely in Berlin.
There were also cases when there were volunteers who were ready to destroy the Fuhrer at the cost of their own lives. A notable incident is an assassination attempt during Hitler's visit to an exhibition of captured Soviet weapons. The leader's guide was Baron von Gersdorff, who had a bomb in his pocket. It was planned that it should work in 10 minutes. But Hitler didn’t stay there even three minutes, but immediately went to the site where the tanks were...
Once again, the chief of staff of the reserve, Claus von Staufferberg, tried to kill Hitler, who wanted to commit an assassination attempt right during the meeting. At the end of July 1944, he came to a meeting with a briefcase containing a bomb. The colonel left him not far from Hitler, and he himself left the building. After the explosion, he immediately flew to Berlin to inform his accomplices about the death of the Fuhrer. However, he was wrong. During the meeting, someone pushed the briefcase, which was in everyone's way, under the table, so the table cover actually saved his life. During the explosion, Hitler suffered a concussion and minor injuries. And this while 4 officers present at the meeting were killed, and another 18 were seriously injured.
The conspiracy was suppressed, the perpetrators were punished...
Further attempts were either thwarted or postponed for certain reasons. This, for example, happened with the attempts of Soviet intelligence to kill Hitler, using the Fuhrer’s close friend Olga Chekhova for this. She, together with her good friend Prince Radziwill, was supposed to provide access to the killers to the German leader. Theoretically, the operation could have been carried out, but Stalin personally issued a ban on its implementation.
Circular letter from Martin Bormann about the assassination attempt on Hitler
"Wolf's Lair"
WITH Hitler's headquarters from June 1941 to November 1944 was located in the Mauerwald forest near Rastenburg in East Prussia (now the Polish city of Kętrzyn). The place was called "The Wolf's Lair." From here the Fuhrer directed military operations, discussed the situation at the fronts with a narrow circle of close associates, and received state guests.
It was impossible for outsiders to get there: the “Lair” was heavily guarded. And the entire surrounding territory was in a special position: just a kilometer away was the headquarters of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces. To be invited to Headquarters, a recommendation from a person close to the Fuhrer was needed. The summons to the meeting of Colonel Klaus Schenck von Stauffenberg was endorsed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel himself, head of the Wehrmacht High Command and Hitler's chief adviser on military issues.
In the early morning of July 20, 1944, Count von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff of the Army Reserve Forces, flew from Berlin's Rangsdorf airfield to Rastenburg to assassinate Hitler. This was the forty-second serious attempt to assassinate the Fuhrer. All the previous ones failed - the Fuhrer seemed to sense the danger and miraculously remained intact.
Left opposition
Hitler's popularity among the German people was great, but by no means unanimous. Many Germans hated the Nazis, many took part in the Resistance, but the forces were unequal. The brutality of the regime proved irresistible to its enemies within the country.
Threats to physically eliminate Hitler appeared immediately after the transfer of power to the Nazis. Almost every week the police received information about an impending assassination attempt on the new chancellor. From March to December 1933 alone, at least ten cases posed, in the opinion of the Gestapo, a danger to the head of government. True, it was rarely possible to find specific conspirators and bring the case to trial.
The courts were obedient to the authorities. But sometimes surprises happened. Ship carpenter from Koenigsberg Kurt Lutter, who with his like-minded people in March 1933 prepared an explosion at one of the election rallies where the dictator was supposed to speak, was acquitted due to insufficient evidence.
This case was an exception to the rule. The Nazi regime was ruthless and merciless. In just six months, from January to July 1933, 26 thousand dissidents, mostly socialists and communists, were thrown into camps and prisons, and hundreds of political opponents of the regime were executed. Often suspicion was enough to convict a person.
But even under these conditions, the left opposition did not stop political resistance. The leaders of the left did not call for an uprising; they relied on agitation, explanation and persuasion. “Propaganda as a weapon” was one of the slogans of the German communists of those years.
In November 1938, leaflets protesting against the first All-German Jewish pogrom, later called Kristallnacht, were distributed throughout Germany. Throughout the twelve years of Hitler's rule, the police were looking for the authors of anti-Hitler inscriptions and posters on the walls of houses. Individual strikes and rallies did not stop at factories. The authorities were suspicious of workers' political activity. The Nazis considered any act of sabotage as a protest against the regime. During the war, the Gestapo recorded more than five thousand cases of such “betrayal of workers” in the Krupp factories alone.
Hitler did not have 100% support among the workers. Trade unions in Germany were crushed by the Nazis on May 2, 1933. Eight days later, the German Workers' Front (NRF) was organized, a kind of “school of National Socialism” for millions of Germans - workers, employees, artisans and entrepreneurs. In the first and only elections to the governing bodies of the NRF, the candidates proposed by the Nazis failed miserably. At pre-election meetings, workers pointedly did not raise their hands in the Hitler salute. Based on reports and reports from the security services, the famous historian Ian Kershaw came to the conclusion that the majority of workers in the Third Reich retained a hostile attitude towards the Nazis.
On the left, only individuals tried to eliminate the dictator. In the thirties, four serious attempts were made to assassinate Hitler, in two cases the attackers were Jews. On November 9, 1939, former communist Georg Elser detonated a homemade bomb in the famous Munich beer hall, where Hitler was speaking on the occasion of the anniversary of the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The explosion killed eight Nazis and more than sixty people were seriously injured. But the goal of the assassination attempt was not achieved: Hitler finished his speech earlier than usual and left a few minutes before the explosion. The assassination attempt added to Hitler's popularity. In all the newspapers and at numerous rallies, people swore allegiance to the Fuhrer and cursed his enemies.
From the mid-30s, the left no longer posed a serious threat to Hitler: many socialist and communist leaders were killed, and those remaining in Germany were imprisoned in camps and prisons. The surviving resistance groups were scattered and small in number.
And although the struggle of communists and socialists against Nazism was generally unsuccessful, yet by the very fact of its existence the left opposition refutes the widespread thesis about the “collective guilt” of the German people.
Danger to the right
After the so-called “Röhm Putsch” in the summer of 1934, when, on Hitler’s orders, his former party comrades were destroyed, the Fuhrer began to face danger, first of all, from adherents of Otto Strasser’s “Black Front”. This organization was created in August 1931 and united the far right and far left national revolutionaries, dissatisfied with the overly liberal, in their opinion, economic course proposed by Hitler. Already in February 1933, immediately after the Fuhrer came to power, the Black Front was banned, and Otto Strasser fled to Prague.
One of the notable actions of the Black Front was the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1936. Strasser persuaded Helmut Hirsch, a Jewish student who emigrated to Prague from Stuttgart, to return to his homeland and try to kill one of the Nazi leaders. Hirsch wanted to take revenge for the growing persecution of German Jews. In addition to Hitler, he wanted to settle accounts with the rabid anti-Semite Julius Streicher, a person close to the Fuhrer, editor of the notorious newspaper Stürmer. The explosion was supposed to take place in Nuremberg, during the next party congress. But Hirsch did not even have time to receive the explosives - he was betrayed by one of the participants in the conspiracy and captured by the Gestapo. The court sentenced him to death, the execution took place on July 4, 1937 in the Berlin prison of Plötzensee, where the lives of many fighters against the Hitler regime ended.
The “Black Front” tried to organize assassination attempts on Hitler in the following years, but things did not go further than plans. Maurice Bavo, an anti-communist theology student from Lausanne, who was not associated with any opposition organizations, turned out to be more decisive. He planned to shoot Hitler, but did not really understand how this could be done. At first, Bavo wanted to kill the Fuhrer in Munich on November 9, 1938. But the unlucky student was unable to get past the police barriers and get to the place where the dictator was supposed to speak on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. The next day, the student decided to sneak into Hitler’s residence in Obersalzburg and fulfill his plan there. He announced at the entrance to the “Brown House” that he had to give the Fuhrer a letter, but the security of the residence suspected something was wrong and arrested Maurice. On December 16, the court sentenced Bavo to death, and in May 1941 he was executed.
Officers against Hitler
Hitler made the military an obedient instrument to achieve his goals. During the oath, every soldier and officer swore before God to give his life for Hitler. But this was not enough for the dictator. In 1938, he appointed himself Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, and from January 1, 1942, also commander of the ground forces.
Not all military men were meekly obedient; some saw where the Fuhrer’s aggressive course was leading Germany. They understood that the world war, towards which Hitler was consistently and steadily moving, would turn out to be a disaster, first of all, for the Germans themselves.
Around the former mayor of Leipzig, Goerdeler, a small circle of generals and senior officers formed who dreamed of a different fate for their homeland. Karl Goerdeler was a prominent lawyer and politician, held high government positions both before and after Hitler came to power, but in the mid-30s he changed his views and went into opposition. In April 1937, he resigned from the post of mayor. The reason for leaving was the following incident: on the night of November 9-10, 1936, when the mayor was on official business in Finland, the monument to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in front of the famous Leipzig concert hall “Gewandhaus” was demolished. From 1835 until the end of his life, the composer was a conductor and leader of the orchestra here, which brought world fame to the hall. The monument was demolished on the orders of the deputy burgomaster, who held an important post in the Nazi party. All Goerdeler's efforts to return the monument to its place were in vain.
Chief of the General Staff Ludwig Beck became a notable figure in Goerdeler's circle. He believed that Hitler's plans to annex the Czech Sudetenland by force to Germany would inevitably lead to war. General Beck tried to find support from Great Britain, sent his emissaries there, and at his request, Karl Goerdeler himself went to London. But the British government did not make contact with the conspirators, but relied on “appeasing” the Fuhrer. In September 1939, British Prime Minister Chamberlain visited Hitler in Obersalzburg and attempted to resolve the Sudetenland crisis peacefully. Hitler, however, did not make concessions. “This is my last demand for Europe,” he said that same month during a speech at the Berlin Sports Palace, “but I will not give up on this demand.”
Ludwig Beck retired from the post of Chief of the General Staff in August 1938 with the rank of Colonel General. In order to prevent Germany from being drawn into a hopeless war, he planned the forcible removal of Hitler from power and prepared for this a special assault group of officers loyal to him. Beck was joined by the commander of the Berlin district, Major General (since 1940, Field Marshal General) Erwin von Witzleben, who was highly respected by the military. The assault group included military intelligence officers (Abwehr) led by the chief of staff of the foreign intelligence department, Colonel Hans Oster and Major Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz.
In those years, Beck and Witzleben did not intend to kill Hitler; their task was limited only to arresting him and removing him from power. But they did not know that the assault group had its own internal conspiracy: Oster and Heinz were going to shoot the Fuhrer during the capture. They were convinced that only the death of the dictator could ensure the success of their cause.
The conspirators had everything ready, they were only waiting for the last signal. This was supposed to be Hitler's order to start a war for the Sudetenland. But the order did not follow: England and France yielded to the demands of the aggressor and signed a shameful treaty with Germany and Italy on September 29 in Munich. The Sudetenland was given to the Germans, Hitler temporarily satisfied his appetites, the war was postponed, the assassination attempt on the dictator did not take place.
In wartime conditions
The Munich Agreement gave the dictator a free hand: on September 1, 1939, German troops attacked Poland, two days later England, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany.
Members of Hölderer's circle, among whom it is worth mentioning the new Chief of the General Staff Halder, who replaced Colonel General Beck in this post, did not abandon attempts to end the war, which they considered a disaster for Germany. Foreign Ministry adviser Erich Kordt was assigned to prepare an explosion that would destroy Hitler. But after the November assassination attempt in a Munich beer hall by Georg Elser, government security services became suspicious, and the conspirators were unable to obtain the necessary explosives in time. Another attempt to remove the dictator failed. Military resistance subsided for a while.
Hitler did not intend to limit himself to Poland. The next step was to take over Western Europe. Bad autumn weather prevented this from being done in 1939. The Fuhrer postponed the start of the invasion of Denmark and Norway (codenamed Operation Exercise Weser) until the following spring.
Hans Oster and some other Abwehr leaders (including Admiral Wilhelm Canaris himself) tried to resist these plans. Six days before the start of Exercise Weser, on April 3, 1940, Colonel Oster met with the military attaché of the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, Jacobus Gijsbertus Szasz, and informed him of the exact date of the invasion.
Major Szasz was supposed to convey this warning to the governments of Norway, Denmark and Great Britain, but he informed only the Danish government. Denmark, with its weak army, was unable to resist the superior forces of the Wehrmacht; Hans Oster's attempt remained unsuccessful.
Another Abwehr department head, Hans von Dohnanyi, who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and executed in April 1945 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, was close to Colonel Oster. The same fate awaited Admiral Canaris: he was arrested in 1944 and executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1945. Hans Oster, who was captured the day after the assassination attempt on Stauffenberg in July 1944, was shot along with him.
Military operations in the West developed very successfully for Hitler: in six weeks Holland, Belgium, and most of France found themselves under German occupation. The victory of “the greatest commander of all time,” as Goebbels’s propaganda called the Fuhrer, turned out to be a defeat for the German Resistance: the people did not understand and would not support the conspirators who raised their hands against the winner.
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Genning von Treskow |
Only such irreconcilable fighters against the Nazi regime as Genning von Treskow did not stop trying to free Germany from the dictator. Skeptical about the ideals of the Weimar Republic, Treskov welcomed the transfer of power to the Nazis in 1933, but after the “Röhm Putsch” he changed his views and became a consistent opponent of the Fuhrer. After Kristallnacht, he felt that he could no longer serve the Nazis. In November 1938, Treskov came to Erwin von Witzleben with a request for resignation, but the general persuaded him to stay in the army: such people were needed for the impending coup d'etat. Even before the start of the war, Treskov told his nephew Schlabrendorff that only the death of Hitler could save Germany.
On the Eastern Front, Colonel Treskov planned several assassination attempts on the Fuhrer, but each time something got in the way. In March 1943, Hitler visited the troops of Group Center. On the plane on which the dictator was returning from Smolensk to Berlin, Treskov planted a bomb disguised as a gift, but the fuse did not go off.
Eight days later, Treskov’s colleague at the headquarters of the Center group, Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff, tried to blow himself up along with Hitler at a Berlin exhibition of captured weapons. The Fuhrer had to stay there for an hour. When the dictator appeared at the arsenal, Gersdorff set the fuse for 20 minutes, but after a quarter of an hour Hitler unexpectedly left. With great difficulty, the colonel managed to prevent the explosion.
Captain Axel von dem Busche and Lieutenant Edward von Kleist were also ready to sacrifice themselves. Independently of each other, they wanted to kill Hitler during a demonstration of the new army uniform in early 1944. But for some reason he did not show up for this “military fashion” show.
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Joachim Kuhn |
Captain Eberhard von Breitenbuch, Field Marshal Bush's orderly, wanted to shoot the dictator on March 11, 1944 at the Berghof residence. But that day the orderly was not allowed to attend the Fuhrer’s conversation with the Field Marshal.
The last hope of the military opposition was Colonel Klaus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who, since the spring of 1944, had been planning, together with a small circle of like-minded people, an assassination attempt on Hitler. Of all the conspirators, only Count Stauffenberg had the opportunity to get close to the Fuhrer. Major General Genning von Treskow and his subordinate Major Joachim Kuhn, a military engineer by training, prepared homemade charges for the assassination attempt. On July 20, Count Stauffenberg and his orderly, Senior Lieutenant Werner von Heften, arrived at Headquarters “Wolf’s Lair” with two explosive packages in their suitcases.
"The time will come when I will save Germany"
It is difficult to find a person less suitable in terms of physical characteristics for the assassination attempt on Hitler than Count von Stauffenberg. In April 1943, in Tunisia, during a raid by British attack aircraft, he was seriously shell-shocked, lost an eye and his right arm. There were only three fingers left on his left hand. But the conspirators had no choice. For health reasons, Colonel Stauffenberg was transferred from the front to the headquarters of the ground forces of the reserve. The count had plenty of determination and courage - back in 1943 he wrote to his wife: “The time will come when I will save Germany.”
This time came in July 1944. It was impossible to postpone the assassination any further, the situation in Germany was becoming critical: from the beginning of June, the Americans and the British landed in Normandy and opened the Second Front, Soviet troops were moving west through Poland, and the inevitable defeat of the Nazis became obvious.
Stauffenberg had previously had meetings with the Fuhrer: the colonel was called to report at the Berghof residence on July 6, 11 and 15, but then they decided to postpone the explosion: Himmler and Goering were not at those meetings, and the conspirators were going to finish off the Nazi leadership with one blow. But time was running out, and although Hitler’s closest associates were not expected in the “Wolf’s Lair” on July 20, they decided to carry out the explosion on that day.
Before leaving for Rastenburg, Claus von Stauffenberg met with his brother Berthold and told him the words that he wrote in his diary: “Whoever finds the courage to do this will go down in history as a traitor, but if he refuses to do this, he will be a traitor to his own people.” conscience."
In the Wolf's Lair, Stauffenberg reported his arrival to Field Marshal Keitel, who reported the unpleasant news: due to the heat, the meeting would not take place in the bunker, as planned, but on the surface, in a light wooden barracks. An explosion in a closed room would have been much more effective, but there was no time to change the plan: the meeting was to begin in an hour, at half past one.
Stauffenberg asked permission to change his shirt after the journey, and Keitel's adjutant Ernst von Friend led him to the sleeping quarters. There the colonel began to urgently prepare chemical fuses. It was not easy to do this with a left hand with three fingers. He only managed to set up and put one explosive device in his briefcase when Friend burst into the room and said that he needed to hurry. The second bomb was left without a fuse - instead of two kilograms of explosives, the colonel had only one at his disposal. The explosion was supposed to occur in 15 minutes.
When Keitel and Stauffenberg entered the barracks, the meeting had already begun. There were 23 people present, most seated at a massive oak table. The Colonel got a place to the right of the Fuhrer. While there was a report on the situation on the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg placed the briefcase with the bomb on the table closer to Hitler and left the room five minutes before the explosion.
Many people who analyzed this situation years later reproached Claus von Stauffenberg for not remaining in the meeting room until the end, but running for his life. These reproaches are unfair - the count should have supported the next steps of the conspirators, without him the coup plan would have been doomed from the beginning. Klaus was sure that the dictator could not be saved; now it was important to get out of the “Wolf’s Lair” before the alarm was announced.
Chance saved the tyrant this time too. For one of the meeting participants, Stauffenberg's briefcase covered the map, and he placed it under the table. Between Hitler and the bomb was a thick oak table leg. At 12:42 a powerful explosion blew the barracks to pieces. The blast wave threw everyone present to the floor, many were injured, and four people were killed. Hitler escaped with a slight scratch and torn trousers.
Stauffenberg and Geften managed to pass the checkpoint and saw the explosion already behind the fence of Headquarters. Both were confident that they had completed their task. With this conviction, they reached Rastenburg at 13:15 and flew to Berlin. Two and a half hours later, the officers landed at Rangsdorf airport, where, despite the agreement, no one met them. The colonel called Army headquarters on Bandler Street and learned that the conspirators waiting there had not yet done anything. He informed the head of the general department, Friedrich Olbricht, that Hitler was dead.
Only then did Olbricht go to Colonel General Friedrich Fromm to sign with him the special “Valkyrie” plan provided for the state of emergency. The commander of the ground forces of the reserve decided to verify the death of the Fuhrer himself and called Headquarters. Having learned from Field Marshal Keitel that the assassination attempt had failed, Fromm refused to participate in the conspiracy.
At this time, Stauffenberg and Heften arrived at the building on Bandler Street. It was 16:30, almost four hours had passed since the explosion, and the Valkyrie plan had not yet begun. All participants in the conspiracy were indecisive, and then Count Stauffenberg again took the initiative.
Valkyrie plan failed
When the smoke cleared from the explosion and it turned out that Hitler was not injured, they began to look in the Wolf's Lair for whoever planted the bomb. The search quickly yielded results. The driver taking Stauffenberg and his orderly to the airfield noticed that the colonel had thrown a package out the window and reported this to the security service. The package was found; it turned out to be the second explosive package, which Stauffenberg failed to equip with a fuse. Hitler and his henchmen now knew the name of their main enemy.
And at this time, at the headquarters of the ground forces on Bandler Street, events began to unfold rapidly. Stauffenberg and Heften, along with Colonel General Beck and other conspirators, went to Fromm and demanded that he sign the Valkyrie plan. Fromm, who already knew about the failed attempt, again refused, then he was arrested and locked in the next room. The place of commander was taken by one of the conspirators, Colonel General Hoepner, who was dismissed by Hitler from the army in 1942 for refusing to carry out an order that the general considered incorrect.
Stauffenberg did not leave the phone, convincing the commanders of units and formations that the Fuhrer was dead, and calling on them to carry out the orders of the new leadership - Colonel General Beck and Field Marshal Witzleben. Corresponding dispatches were also sent to troops abroad. In Vienna and Prague they immediately began to implement the Valkyrie plan. In Paris, the instructions from Berlin were taken especially seriously: about 1,200 SS men and members of other security services were arrested there.
However, this was the last success of the conspirators; they failed to achieve anything else: they acted too uncertainly and chaotically. Much of what was planned was simply forgotten in a hurry. Government buildings in Berlin were not taken under control, primarily the Ministry of Propaganda, the Reich Chancellery, and the Main Directorate of Reich Security. The radio station remained unoccupied. It was planned that General Lindemann was to read out on the radio the rebels' appeal to the German people. But in the turmoil that reigned in the building on Bandler Street, no one thought to give him the prearranged signal to start transmitting.
Many military commanders were in no hurry to implement the Valkyrie plan, trying to first contact Hitler's Headquarters. This was achieved, for example, by the commander of Group B in France, Field Marshal General Hans Gunther von Kluge, who demanded that his subordinates not obey orders from Berlin. However, it was not easy to stop the arrests that had begun, and the detained SS men remained in custody until late at night.
At about six in the evening, the military commandant of Berlin Gase, having received Stauffenberg's telephone message, summoned the commander of the guard battalion, Major Remer, informed him of the death of the Fuhrer and ordered him to keep the battalion in combat readiness. A party functionary who happened to be present during the conversation convinced Roemer to contact the Gauleiter of Berlin, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels, and coordinate the received order with him. Joseph Goebbels managed to establish contact with Hitler, and he conveyed his order: Roemer was promoted to colonel and was tasked with suppressing the rebellion at any cost.
At eight o'clock in the evening, Roemer's battalion already controlled the main buildings in the center of Berlin. At 22:40, a company of military school cadets, called by the conspirators to guard the headquarters on Bandler Street, was disarmed, and the newly promoted colonel, at the head of his squad, burst into the building. Count von Stauffenberg managed to call Paris and report that it was all over, the coup attempt had failed.
Five minutes later, officers loyal to Hitler arrested Claus von Stauffenberg, his brother Berthold, Werner von Heften, Ludwig von Beck, Erich Hoepner and other conspirators. Colonel-General Fromm, released from arrest, immediately began to act: “Gentlemen,” he said, “now I will do to you what you wanted to do to me today.”
"Like cattle in a slaughterhouse..."
Fromm announced a military court hearing and immediately sentenced five people to death. Convicts were allowed to write a short note to relatives before execution. Fromm made the only exception for Colonel General Beck - he was allowed to commit suicide. He shot himself twice in the temple, but not a single bullet was fatal. Then the sergeant major from Remer’s detachment saved the general from further suffering with his shot. The four conspirators - General Olbricht, Lieutenant Heften, Claus von Stauffenberg and Colonel Merz von Quirnheim, head of the general department of the ground forces headquarters, were taken one at a time into the headquarters courtyard and shot near a pile of sand. Before the last salvo, Stauffenberg managed to shout: “Long live Holy Germany!” Those shot were buried immediately. The rest of those arrested were handed over to the Gestapo.
Immediately after the explosion, Hitler's behavior was surprisingly calm. Within an hour after the assassination attempt, he met Benito Mussolini, the head of the Salo Republic, recently formed by the fascists in northern Italy, at the Rastenburg station. They returned together to the Wolf's Lair, where they examined everything that remained of the blown up barracks. But when both dictators sat down to tea, Hitler seemed to burst. Foaming at the mouth, he shouted that he would destroy not only the conspirators, but also everyone who was associated with them, including family members. He craved not just execution, but excruciating torture; his enemies should “hang on hooks like cattle in a slaughterhouse.”
The Fuhrer’s desire was law: the day after the suppression of the rebellion, Himmler created a special commission of 400 senior SS officials to investigate the “conspiracy of July 20”, and arrests, torture, executions began throughout Germany... Under torture, people handed over more and more new participants, their circle expanded , blood flowed like a river. In total, more than seven thousand people were arrested in connection with the assassination attempt on July 20, and about two hundred were executed. Among the repressed opponents of the regime there were also members of surviving communist resistance groups.
But before taking revenge on the living, the Nazis decided to settle scores with the dead. By order of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, the corpses of those executed in the courtyard of the headquarters on Bandler Street were dug up, burned, and the ashes were scattered to the wind.
None of the participants in the conspiracy prepared a refuge for themselves in case the uprising failed. Few of them tried to escape, and almost all of them were betrayed by paid and voluntary informants. This is how Karl Goerdeler fell into the hands of the Gestapo, leaving Leipzig for a small town in East Prussia two days before the explosion at the Wolf’s Lair. They promised a million Reichsmarks for the head of the former mayor. On August 12, Goerdeler was given away by a friend.
The officers and generals who participated in the conspiracy were confident that the court of officer's honor would sentence them to death, and saw their duty as dying with dignity. They had no idea what fate awaited them. The president of the “people's court,” Roland Fraser, did everything to ensure that the defendants were humiliated and disgraced during the trial. The executions were carried out in a room specially equipped for this purpose in the Berlin Plötzensee prison. The torment of the victims suspended on huge hooks was filmed, and the Fuhrer often enjoyed the spectacle of bloody revenge.
Those who were familiar with Nazi investigative methods tried not to fall into the hands of the Gestapo alive. The morning after the explosion, Genning von Treskow, one of Hitler's most consistent opponents, left with Major Kuhn for the Eastern Front in his 28th Jäger Division. Leaving Joachim Kuhn in the unit, General Treskov went into the nearest forest and shot himself. Kuhn managed to present the case in such a way that the authorities did not initially suspect a connection between this suicide and the events of July 20. Treskov was buried on his estate in Wartenberg, and only a few days later the SS men who came to their senses dug up and burned the corpse, and scattered the ashes.
Then Major Kun decided to save his life: on July 27, he voluntarily surrendered to the advancing troops of the Red Army near Bialystok. The famous writer, at that time an officer in the political department of the front, Lev Kopelev, gave Kuhn a certificate that he was a prisoner of “special importance.” Kun's defection to the enemy's side was noticed by the Nazi authorities: the major was sentenced to death in absentia both for participation in the July 20 plot and for treason. But even in Soviet captivity, Kuhn had to endure hard times: despite collaborating with the Soviet military counterintelligence service Smersh, in 1951 he was sentenced to 25 years in the camps. In total, he served 11 years, including five years in the Alexander Central convict prison near Irkutsk, and was handed over to the German authorities in 1956.
A lonely and sick old man who avoided all contact with his compatriots, the forgotten Kuhn died in the town of Bad Bocklet, not far from Kissingen. Nobody considered him a hero of the Resistance; in the eyes of the Germans, he was a double traitor.
Thanks to Joachim Kuhn, historians have obtained unique materials about conspiracies against Hitler. In February 1945, when Soviet troops had already occupied East Prussia, Kuhn led Smersh employees to a hiding place in the Mauerwald forest, not far from Hitler's former Headquarters. The Nazi intelligence services did not find the cache, although they searched for it for a long time and carefully. Secret documents drawn up by officers of Treskov’s group who were preparing the assassination attempts were hidden in two jars, glass and tin.
Every year on July 20, wreaths are laid in Berlin in honor of the participants in the conspiracy against Hitler executed by the Nazis. On this day in 1944, an explosion occurred at Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. This was not the first, but the most serious attempt on the life of the “Führer”, the result of a conspiracy against him and his accomplices. But Hitler survived. Hundreds of participants in the conspiracy (primarily military personnel from noble German families) were executed.
The memory of these people, who, like other heroes of the Resistance, saved the honor of the Germans, is highly revered in today's Germany. The most famous of the participants in the July 20 conspiracy, in fact its leader, who carried the explosive device into Hitler's headquarters, is Colonel, Count Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.
Officers and aristocrats
He was 36 years old. An officer and an aristocrat, after the Kristallnacht of the Jewish pogroms of 1938 and the mockery of the civilian population of occupied Poland a year later, he became convinced that the Nazis were bringing misfortune to his homeland. But the war was going on, and the career military man hesitated: the murder or removal of the charismatic leader of the nation would weaken Germany. Many future conspirators from the officer corps thought so then. Military officers despised the “butchers” from the SS and considered it shameful to wage war against the civilian population and shoot prisoners, no matter who they were.
Nevertheless, Stauffenberg, like many of his like-minded officers, believed that the war must first be won, and only then, as he then told his brother Berthold, “get rid of the brown evil spirits.” But in 1942-1943, the mood in opposition circles changed. One of the reasons is the turn in the course of the war, large losses in people and equipment. After Stalingrad, there was no doubt left for Stauffenberg: the war was lost. It was at this time that a positive response came to the report he had submitted long ago about his transfer from the General Staff, where he was then serving, to the front. Not to the Eastern Front, but to Africa.
But here, too, things were bad for the Germans. Just three months after Stalingrad, the Western Allies captured about 200 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and officers in North Africa. Stauffenberg was not among them: a few days before the defeat he was seriously wounded and was transported to Germany. He lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left hand.
Failed assassination attempts
Meanwhile, the conspirators tried to organize more and more attempts on Hitler's life. On March 13, 1943, they managed to smuggle an explosive device disguised as a bottle of cognac into the plane on which the Fuhrer was flying, but it did not go off. Other attempts, for example, by Hauptmann Axel von dem Bussche, also failed. The "Fuhrer" expressed a desire to get acquainted with the new uniforms for officers and non-commissioned officers of the Wehrmacht. He wished that an experienced front-line commander be present at this “presentation” as an expert. The conspirators managed to arrange for Hauptmann Bussche to become this commander. He had to blow himself up along with Hitler. But the train, which contained samples of the new uniforms, was bombed on the way to East Prussia, and the “presentation” did not take place.
However, the perseverance of the conspirators was eventually rewarded: in May 1944, the commander of the Wehrmacht reserve, who sympathized with the conspirators, appointed Stauffenberg as his chief of staff. Thus, the colonel was among those who were invited to meetings at headquarters. The assassination attempt on Hitler became a reality. Moreover, it was necessary to hurry: clouds began to gather over the conspirators. Too many people already knew about the coup plans, and information about the plot began to flow to the Gestapo. It was decided not to wait for any more major meetings at headquarters, at which Himmler and Goering would also be present along with Hitler, but to send the Fuhrer to the next world alone, at the first opportunity. She introduced herself on July 20th.
A rebellion cannot end in success...
The night before, Claus von Stauffenberg had placed plastic explosives in his briefcase and tested the fuse. Both bags of explosives weighed about two kilograms: too heavy for Stauffenberg's only crippled hand. Maybe that’s why he was already at headquarters, having gone through all the cordons, left one of the packages with explosives with the adjutant and took only one with him to the hall where the meeting was taking place. However, this amount would have been quite enough: as it turned out later, the ceiling collapsed from the explosion and the hall turned into a pile of ruins, 17 people were injured, four died.
Hitler survived due to chance. The briefcase should have been placed closer to the place where the “Führer” was sitting, but one of the meeting participants mechanically pushed the briefcase containing the explosives further under the table: it was in his way. This saved Hitler.
When the explosion was heard, Stauffenberg, who had left the hall under a plausible pretext, was already leaving the headquarters. He hurried to the airfield. He had no doubt that the “Führer” was dead, so he hurried to Berlin: now everything was decided there.
But the conspirators acted too slowly, unforgivably slowly. The military failed to isolate SS units and Gestapo headquarters during Operation Valkyrie. Military units received orders both from the conspirators and directly opposite orders from Himmler. When Colonel Stauffenberg arrived at the War Ministry, he began to act more decisively, but it was too late. In the end, several people, along with Stauffenberg, were arrested right in the War Ministry building. They were shot that same day.
Later, the Nazis dealt with everyone who even knew about the conspiracy with terrible cruelty. Hundreds of people were executed. The Gestapo also arrested all of Claus von Stauffenberg's close relatives, including his wife and mother. The children had their last names changed and were sent to a special orphanage, forbidden to tell who they were. Fortunately, there were only a few months left until the end of the war...
Groups of conspirators planning an anti-Nazi coup existed in the Wehrmacht and military intelligence (Abwehr) since 1938 and had as their goal the abandonment of Germany's aggressive foreign policy and the prevention of a future war, for which most of the conspirators believed Germany was not ready. In addition, many military personnel perceived the strengthening of the SS and the Fritsch-Blomberg affair that happened in 1938 as a humiliation of the Wehrmacht. The conspirators planned to remove Hitler after he ordered an attack on Czechoslovakia, create a provisional government, and subsequently hold democratic elections. The dissatisfied included Colonel General Ludwig Beck, who resigned from the post of Chief of Staff of the Army on August 18, 1938 as a sign of disagreement with Hitler's policies, the new Chief of Staff Franz Halder, future Field Marshals Erwin von Witzleben and Walter von Brauchitsch, Generals Erich Hoepner and Walter von Brockdorff-Alefeld, Abwehr head Wilhelm Franz Canaris, Abwehr Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster, as well as Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz, banker Hjalmar Schacht, former Leipzig mayor Karl Goerdeler and diplomat Ulrich von Hassell. Goerdeler regularly traveled throughout Europe, meeting with prominent politicians. On behalf of Oster, one of the conspirators, Ewald von Kleist-Schmentzin, flew to London on August 18, at the height of the crisis, to warn British politicians of Hitler's aggressive intentions. The coup was planned for the last days of September 1938, but on the morning of September 28, the plans of the conspirators were confused by the message that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had agreed to come to Germany and negotiate with Hitler, and Great Britain would not declare war on Germany. The subsequent signing of the Munich Agreement made the main goal of the coup - preventing an armed conflict - fulfilled.
Plans to remove Hitler continued to exist, but due to the indecisiveness of the conspirators (primarily Brauchitsch and Halder), none of them were implemented. With the outbreak of the war, the military, especially on the eastern front, were also forced to turn a blind eye to atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war (the activities of the Einsatzgruppen, the “Commissar Decree”, etc.), and in some cases, to independently carry out certain measures . Since 1941, a group of conspirators led by Colonel Henning von Treskow, nephew of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, operated at the headquarters of Army Group Center on the Eastern Front. Treskov was a staunch opponent of the Nazi regime and consistently appointed people to his headquarters who shared his views. Among them were Colonel Baron Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, reserve lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, who became Treskow's adjutant, and brothers Georg and Philipp von Boeselager. Von Bock was also dissatisfied with Hitler's policies, but refused to support the conspiracy in any form. After the defeat in the Battle of Moscow, Brauchitsch and von Bock were dismissed, and Hans Gunther von Kluge was appointed commander of the Center. The Resistance group created by Treskov was preserved at the headquarters of the “Center” in Smolensk. Through Schlabrendorff she maintained contacts with Beck, Goerdeler and Oster. Goerdeler and Treskow also tried to bring von Kluge into the conspiracy and believed that he was on their side.
In the fall of 1942, Halder was removed from his post, which deprived the conspirators of contact with the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces. However, Oster was soon able to attract the head of the Combined Arms Directorate of the High Command of the Ground Forces and the deputy commander of the reserve army, General Friedrich Olbricht. The Reserve Army was a combat-ready unit intended, in particular, to suppress unrest within Germany. During 1942, the plot evolved into a two-stage operation, including the assassination of Hitler by the conspirators and the capture of main communications and suppression of SS resistance by the reserve army.
Numerous attempts by the Treskow group to kill Hitler were unsuccessful. On March 13, 1943, during Hitler's visit to Smolensk, Treskov and his adjutant, von Schlabrendorff, planted a bomb on his plane, in which the explosive device did not go off. Eight days later, von Gersdorff wanted to blow himself up along with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet equipment in a workshop in Berlin, but he left the exhibition prematurely, and von Gersdorff barely managed to deactivate the detonator.
Valkyrie Plan
Since the winter of 1941-1942, Olbricht had been working on the Valkyrie plan, designed to deal with emergencies and internal unrest. According to this plan, the reserve army was subject to mobilization in the event of mass acts of sabotage, uprising of prisoners of war and in similar situations. The plan was approved by Hitler. Later, Olbricht secretly changed the Valkyrie plan with the expectation that in the event of a coup attempt, the reserve army would become a tool in the hands of the conspirators. After the assassination of Hitler, she was supposed to occupy key targets in Berlin, disarm the SS and arrest other Nazi leadership. It was assumed that the commander of the reserve army, Colonel General Friedrich Fromm, would join the conspiracy or be removed, in which case Hoepner would take command. Fromm was aware of the existence of the conspiracy, but took a wait-and-see attitude. Simultaneously with the deployment of the reserve army, the head of the Wehrmacht communications service, Erich Felgiebel, who was part of the conspiracy, together with some trusted subordinates, had to ensure the blocking of a number of government communication lines, while simultaneously supporting those that were used by the conspirators.
Goerdeler advocated saving Hitler's life. Various options for such a scenario were discussed (in particular, taking Hitler hostage or cutting off communication lines and isolating Hitler from the outside world for the duration of the coup), but in the spring of 1943 the conspirators came to the conclusion that all of them were impractical. After the assassination of Hitler, it was planned to form a provisional government: Beck was to become the head of state (president or monarch), Goerdeler - the chancellor, Witzleben - the supreme commander. The tasks of the new government were to conclude peace with the Western powers and continue the war against the USSR, as well as to hold democratic elections within Germany. Goerdeler and Beck developed a more detailed project for the structure of post-Nazi Germany, based on their conservative monarchical views. In particular, they believed that popular representation should be limited (the lower house of parliament would be formed as a result of indirect elections, and the upper house, which would include representatives of the lands, would not have elections at all), and the head of state should be the monarch.
In August 1943, Treskov met Lieutenant Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who was destined to become the most famous participant in the conspiracy (and the direct perpetrator of the assassination attempt on Hitler). Stauffenberg served in North Africa in Rommel's troops, was seriously wounded there, and had nationalist-conservative views. By 1942, Stauffenberg had become disillusioned with Nazism and was convinced that Hitler was leading Germany to disaster. However, due to religious convictions, he initially did not believe that the Fuhrer should be killed. After the Battle of Stalingrad, he changed his mind and decided that leaving Hitler alive would be a greater evil. Treskov wrote to Stauffenberg: “The assassination attempt must take place at any cost (fr. cote que cote); even if we fail, we must act. After all, the practical side of the matter no longer means anything; the only thing is that the German resistance took a decisive step before the eyes of the world and history. Compared to this, nothing else matters.”
Assassination attempts in the first half of July
In June 1944, Stauffenberg was appointed chief of staff of the Army Reserve, which was located on Bendlerstrasse in Berlin (the so-called Bendlerblock; now the street is named Stauffenbergstrasse). In this capacity, he could attend military meetings both at Hitler's Wolfschanze headquarters in East Prussia and at the Berghof residence near Berchtesgaden. On July 1, he was also awarded the rank of colonel. At the same time, the conspirators came into contact with the commander of the occupation forces in France, General Stülpnagel, who was supposed to take power in France into his own hands after the assassination of Hitler and begin negotiations with the allies. On July 3, Generals Wagner, Lindemann, Stiff and Felgiebel held a meeting at the Berchtesgadener Hof Hotel. In particular, the procedure for shutting down government communication lines by Felgibel after the explosion was discussed.
On July 6, Stauffenberg delivered a bomb to the Berghof, but the assassination attempt did not take place. Stiff later testified during interrogation that he dissuaded Stauffenberg from attempting to kill Hitler at that time. According to other sources, Stiff was supposed to detonate the bomb himself the next day at an arms exhibition at Klessheim Castle near Salzburg. On July 11, Stauffenberg attended a meeting at the Berghof with a British-made bomb, but did not activate it. Previously, the conspirators had decided that, together with Hitler, it was necessary to eliminate Goering, Hitler's official successor, and Himmler, the head of the SS, and both of them were not present at the meeting. In the evening, Stauffenberg met with Beck and Olbricht and convinced them that the next time the assassination attempt should be carried out regardless of whether Goering and Himmler were present.
On July 15, Stauffenberg gave a report on the state of reserves at a meeting at Wolfschanz. Two hours before the start of the meeting, Olbricht gave the order to launch Operation Valkyrie and move the reserve army towards the government quarter on Wilhelmstrasse. Stauffenberg made a report and went out to talk on the phone with Olbricht. When he returned, Hitler had already left the meeting. Stauffenberg notified Olbricht of the failure, who canceled the order and returned the troops to the barracks.
Events of July 20
AssassinationOn July 20, at about 7:00, Stauffenberg, together with his adjutant Oberleutnant Werner von Heften and Major General Helmut Stiff, flew from the airfield in Rangsdorf to Hitler's headquarters on a Junkers Ju 52 courier plane. In one briefcase they had papers for a report on the creation of two new divisions of reservists that were needed on the Eastern Front, and in the other - two packages of explosives and three chemical detonators. In order for the bomb to explode, it was necessary to break the glass ampoule, then the acid in it would corrode the wire that released the firing pin within ten minutes. After this, the detonator went off.
The plane landed at 10:15 at the airfield in Rastenburg (East Prussia). Stiff, Stauffenberg and von Heften went by car to the Fuhrer's headquarters. Upon arrival, Stauffenberg had breakfast with staff officers and spoke with several military personnel. At the beginning of the first, Keitel announced that, due to Mussolini's visit, the meeting was postponed from 13:00 to 12:30, and Stauffenberg's report was shortened. In addition, the meeting was moved from an underground bunker, where the destructive force of the explosion would have been much greater, to a wooden barracks room. Before the meeting, Stauffenberg, together with Heften, asked to go to the reception room and crushed the ampoule with pliers, activating the detonator. One of the officers hurried Stauffenberg, so he did not have time to activate the second bomb and von Heften took its components with him.
When Stauffenberg entered, he asked Adjutant Keitel von Freyend to give him a seat at the table closer to Hitler. He stood next to Colonel Brandt and placed the briefcase under the table a couple of meters from Hitler, leaning it against the massive wooden cabinet that supported the table. After this, under the pretext of a telephone conversation, Stauffenberg left. Brandt moved closer to Hitler and moved the briefcase that was in his way to the other side of the cabinet, which now protected Hitler. Before leaving, while Stauffenberg was looking for the car, he went to Felgiebel and they watched the explosion together. Then Stauffenberg, confident that Hitler was dead, left. He managed to leave the cordoned off area before it was completely closed. At the last checkpoint, Stauffenberg was detained by an officer, but after receiving confirmation from the commandant’s adjutant, he was allowed to go.
The explosion occurred at 12:42. Of the 24 people present at the meeting, four - Generals Schmundt and Korten, Colonel Brandt and stenographer Berger - died, and the rest were injured of varying degrees of severity. Hitler received numerous shrapnel wounds, burns to his legs and damaged eardrums, was shell-shocked and temporarily deaf, and his right arm was temporarily paralyzed. His hair was singed and his trousers were torn to shreds.
At about 13:00 Stauffenberg and Heften left the Wolfschanze. On the way to the airfield, Heften threw out a second package of explosives, which was later discovered by the Gestapo. At 13:15 the plane took off for Rangsdorf. Felgiebel sent a message to his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Fritz Tille in Berlin: “Something terrible has happened. The Fuhrer is alive." Presumably, the message was composed in such a way that the role of Felgiebel and the recipients of the message was not revealed: the communication lines could be tapped. At the same time, another conspirator, General Eduard Wagner, notified Paris of the assassination attempt. Then an information blockade of Wolfschanze was organized. However, the communication lines reserved for the SS remained intact, and already at this time the Minister of Propaganda Goebbels became aware of the attempt to assassinate Hitler.
At about 15:00, Tille informed the conspirators in Bendlerblock about conflicting information from the Fuhrer's headquarters. Meanwhile, having flown to Rangsdorf, Stauffenberg called Olbricht and Colonel Hofacker from Stülpnagel's headquarters and told them that he had killed Hitler. Olbricht did not know who to believe. At that moment, the information blockade was lifted from the Wolfschanze, and the investigation into the assassination attempt on Hitler was already in full swing.
At 16:00, Olbricht, having overcome doubts, nevertheless gave the order to mobilize in accordance with the Valkyrie plan. However, Colonel General Fromm called Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at headquarters, who assured him that everything was fine with Hitler and asked where Stauffenberg was. Fromm realized that Wolfschanz already knew where the tracks led, and he would have to answer for the actions of his subordinates.
Conspiracy failure
At 16:30 Stauffenberg and Heften finally arrived at Bendlerblock. Olbricht, Quirnheim and Stauffenberg immediately went to Colonel General Fromm, who was to sign the orders issued under the Valkyrie plan. Fromm already knew that Hitler was alive, he tried to arrest them and was himself put under arrest. At this moment, the first orders were sent to the troops, which Hitler’s Wolfschanze headquarters also received by mistake. At the Berlin city commandant's office, the city commandant, Lieutenant General Paul von Hase, held an operational meeting.
At 17:00 the commander of the security battalion "Großdeutschland" Major Otto-Ernst Roemer, returning from the commandant's office, set the task for the personnel, who, in accordance with the Valkyrie plan, were to cordon off the government quarter. Shortly after 17:00, the first message about the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler was broadcast on the radio (the next message went around the world at 18:28).
Units of the infantry school in Döberitz near Berlin were put on full combat readiness, tactics teacher Major Jacob was ordered to occupy the Radio House with his company.
At 17:30, Goebbels announced the alarm in the training unit of the 1st Leibstandarte-SS Division "Adolf Hitler", which was put on high alert. However, the Minister of Propaganda wanted to avoid an armed conflict between the SS and Wehrmacht units at all costs.
Then at 17:30, SS Oberführer, Police Colonel Humbert Ahamer-Pifrader, appeared at the headquarters of the conspirators, accompanied by four SS men. He stated that, on the personal instructions of the head of the Main Directorate of Reich Security, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, he should find out from Stauffenberg the reasons for his hasty return to Berlin from Hitler’s headquarters. Instead of explanations, Stauffenberg arrested Achamer-Pifrader along with those accompanying him and put him under lock and key in the same room with Colonel General Fromm and General Kortsfleisch, who had already been arrested by the conspirators.
At about 18:00, Major Jacob's company occupied the Radio House, which nevertheless continued to broadcast.
Between 18:35 and 19:00, after cordoning off the government quarter, Major Roemer went to the Propaganda Ministry to see Goebbels, whom he was supposed to arrest. But he had doubts. At about 19:00, Goebbels asked to be put in touch with Hitler and handed the phone to Major Roemer so that he could make sure that the Fuhrer was alive. Hitler ordered Roemer to take control of the situation in Berlin. After a conversation with Hitler, Roemer set up a command post in Goebbels’s office apartment and attracted additional units to his side. The training tank units that left Krampnitz to support the conspirators were ordered to suppress the rebellion of the generals. At 19:30, Field Marshal Witzleben arrived from Zossen to Bendlerblock and reprimanded Olbricht and Stauffenberg for their uncertain actions and missed opportunities.
Fromm, transferred to his private office, was allowed to receive three officers from his headquarters in the absence of security. Fromm led the officers through the back exit and ordered them to bring backup. Meanwhile, units under the command of Remer began to gain the upper hand over the reserve army units loyal to the conspirators. When Olbricht began preparing Bendleblock for defense, several officers led by Colonel Franz Gerber demanded an explanation from Olbricht. After Olbricht's evasive answer, they returned armed and arrested him. Olbricht's assistant called Stauffenberg and Heften to understand the situation, a shootout began and Stauffenberg was wounded in the left arm. Within ten minutes, Gerber detained all the conspirators and released Fromm from custody.
At about 23:30 (according to other sources, at the beginning of ten) Fromm announced that the conspirators were under arrest. Beck, with Fromm's permission, tried to shoot himself, but only inflicted a slight wound on himself. Fromm announced that he had sentenced Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Quirnheim and Heften to death by a military tribunal. At the beginning of the first hour, all four were shot in the Bedlerblock courtyard. At the same time, Beck fired a second shot, remained alive again and, on Fromm’s orders, was shot by one of the guards. At 00:21 Fromm sent a telegram to Hitler informing him that he had suppressed the putsch. By shooting the conspirators, Fromm allegedly sought to demonstrate loyalty to Hitler and at the same time destroy witnesses. Skorzeny, who arrived later, ordered a halt to further executions.
At the same time in the evening, the commander of the troops in occupied France, General Stülpnagel, ordered the arrest of representatives of the SS, SD and Gestapo in Paris. It turned out to be the most successful operation of July 20: by 10:30 p.m., 1,200 people had been arrested without firing a shot, including the head of the SS in Paris, SS Major General Karl Oberg. The conspirators gathered at headquarters at the Raphael Hotel, and Stülpnagel went to the suburb of La Roche-Guion, where von Kluge was, and unsuccessfully tried to convince him to come over to their side. At the eleventh hour, Stauffenberg called Paris and reported that the uprising in Berlin had ended in failure. At night, Stülpnagel received notification that he had been removed from command, and Admiral Kranke, loyal to Hitler, was ready to send sailors to suppress the putsch, and gave the order to release the SS men. Soon, the military and SS men began to fraternize together at Rafael, drinking champagne.
The decisive role in the failure was played not only by the incident that saved Hitler, but also by a number of serious miscalculations and half-hearted measures of the conspirators, as well as the wait-and-see attitude of many of them.
Repressions, executions
The night after the plot, Hitler addressed the nation on the radio, promising to severely punish all participants in the rebellion. In the coming weeks, the Gestapo conducted a detailed investigation into the case. Everyone who had even the slightest connection with the main participants in the events of July 20 was arrested or interrogated. During the searches, diaries and correspondence of the participants in the conspiracy were discovered, previous plans for a coup and the assassination of the Fuhrer were revealed; new arrests of the persons mentioned there began. However, not everyone had anything to do with the case on July 20 - the Gestapo often settled old scores. Hitler personally instructed the chairman of the People's Court, Roland Freisler, that the trial should be speedy and the defendants should be hanged "like cattle in a slaughterhouse."
By order of Hitler, most of the convicts were executed not by guillotine, like civilian criminals, and not by firing squad, like military ones - they were hanged from piano wires attached to a butcher's hook on the ceiling in Plötzensee prison. Unlike ordinary hanging, death did not occur from a broken neck during a fall or from relatively rapid suffocation, but from stretching of the neck and slow suffocation. Hitler ordered that the trial of the conspirators and execution be turned into humiliating torture, filmed and photographed. These executions were filmed under spotlights. Subsequently, he personally watched this film, and also ordered it to be shown to soldiers to raise morale. According to Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant von Below, Hitler did not give the order to film and looked at the photographs of the executed, which were brought to him by the SS adjutant Fegelein, with reluctance. Unlike film footage of show trials, footage of executions has not survived.
On July 21, Treskov committed suicide by simulating death in battle: he blew himself up with a grenade on the Polish front near Bialystok and was buried as a dead officer in his homeland (then his body was dug out of the grave and burned). The first trial of Witzleben, Hoepner and six other participants in the conspiracy took place on August 7-8. On August 8, everyone was hanged. In total, up to 200 people were sentenced to death by the verdict of the People's Chamber. William Shirer gives total figures of 4,980 executed and 7,000 arrested. In accordance with the “ancient German” blood guilt laws (Sippenhaft), relatives of the conspirators were also subjected to repression: many were arrested and sent to concentration camps, and the Nazis placed children under new names in an orphanage (most of the repressed family members of the conspirators survived the war and were able to reunite with selected children).
Colonel General Franz Halder was arrested, one of the few who were lucky enough to survive (albeit in a concentration camp) the end of the war and be released. Field Marshal von Kluge poisoned himself on 19 August near Metz, fearing the fate of Witzleben after Hitler recalled him from the front. In October, Erwin Rommel, Stauffenberg's commander in Africa, on whom the conspirators were counting, but whose actual connection with them is unclear, committed suicide and was solemnly buried. Another field marshal indirectly involved in the conspiracy, Fedor von Bock, escaped prosecution, but survived Hitler by only four days: he died on May 4, 1945, after his car came under fire from an English attack aircraft. On August 30, Stülpnagel, who tried to shoot himself, was hanged, and on September 4, Lehndorff-Steinort and Felgiebel. On September 9, Goerdeler, who tried to escape and was betrayed by the hotel owner, was sentenced to death, but his execution was postponed, presumably because his political weight and authority in the eyes of the West could be useful to Himmler in the event of peace negotiations. On February 2 he was hanged, on the same day Popitz was hanged in Plötzensee prison.
The consequence of the discovery of the plot was the increased vigilance of the Nazis towards the Wehrmacht: the armed forces were deprived of the relative autonomy from the party and the SS that they had previously enjoyed. On July 24, the army made the Nazi salute mandatory instead of the traditional military salute. Among the 200 executed were 1 field marshal (Witzleben), 19 generals, 26 colonels, 2 ambassadors, 7 diplomats at other levels, 1 minister, 3 secretaries of state and the head of the Reich criminal police (SS Gruppenführer and Police Lieutenant General Arthur Nebe). More and more trials and executions took place almost non-stop from August 1944 to February 1945. On February 3, 1945, the day after the execution of Goerdeler and Popitz, an American bomb hit the People's Court building during a meeting, and a beam that fell from the ceiling killed Freisler. After the death of the judge, the processes were suspended (on March 12, Friedrich Fromm was executed, whose treason only delayed the execution). However, the discovery in March of Canaris's diaries with details of the Abwehr plot led him, Oster and their several comrades, against whom there had previously been no direct evidence, to the gallows; On April 8, they were executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, just 22 days before Hitler's death.
Grade
The participants in the July 20th conspiracy are considered in modern Germany to be national heroes who gave their lives in the name of freedom; Streets are named after them, monuments erected to them. On memorable dates associated with the assassination attempt, ceremonies are held with the participation of senior officials of the state. In modern German historiography, the July 20th plot is considered the most important event of the German Resistance.
At the same time, many participants in the conspiracy did not share modern ideals of democracy, but represented traditional Prussian nationalist conservatism and were critical of the Weimar Republic. Thus, Stauffenberg supported Hitler in 1933 and even in his family was considered a staunch National Socialist, Beck and Goerdeler were monarchists, and the latter also advocated the preservation of pre-war territorial acquisitions.
Army against Hitler.
The idea of carrying out a military coup never left the minds of the military after Hitler came to power. The generals were irritated by the upstart - a plebeian who imagined himself to be a great strategist. A coup d'etat was very real during the Sudetenland crisis, but the leaders of England and France, showing simply incredible political myopia, agreed to the Munich Agreement with Hitler and thereby plunged their people into great trouble. At this time, German generals were ready to overthrow the possessed Fuhrer. England and France just had to take a tough position and declare mobilization. And already in 1938, Hitler would have gone to jail for a long time if he had survived.
Hitler's stunning foreign policy and then simply incredible military successes added many new sympathizers to the Fuhrer of the German people in military circles and reduced the number of opponents. The Germans' love and trust for Hitler exceeded even the current rating of Russian President Putin. But easy victories soon ceased, losses both at the front and in the rear began to quickly increase, and the military realized that a terrible defeat was just around the corner. The development of plans for a military coup has entered the practical stage.
The Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944 spurred the organizers of the anti-Nazi resistance. The conspirators did not expect the landing of Anglo-American troops in 1944. We thought that such an attempt would happen much later. The “premature” invasion was initially received quite positively by the conspirators. It was believed that the Allies would not be able to gain a foothold in France, there would be heavy losses, and this would give additional trump cards in negotiations with America and England.
However, the landing was successful. And the conspirators scheduled a performance for the month of July. The main striking force of the planned coup was the Reserve Army, whose chief of staff was Colonel Stauffenberg. This man, despite his disability (in 1943 he lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left), was ideally suited to eliminate Hitler. He was unusually cold-blooded.
Germany strained all its strength in an unequal struggle and its armed forces were on fronts that were still outside its own territory. Therefore, the Reserve Army, preparing new divisions to replace those destroyed, was the only force located throughout the country. The second largest force was the air defense troops, subordinate directly to Goering and armed with excellent anti-aircraft guns. Air defense forces covered the largest cities and main industrial areas. SS security units were located in Berlin and several other key places, although the bulk of them fought at the front.
Noble conspiracy.
The conspirators had to solve difficult problems. While the German army was winning stunning victories, there was no chance of involving authoritative generals in the conspiracy. The people of Germany had unconditional faith in the Fuhrer. Most Germans believed that it was not Hitler who started the war, but England. Hitler, in their opinion, sought universal peace, but without discrimination against Germany. Hitler's seizure of the territories of the Czech Republic and Poland was regarded by the German people as “restoration of historical justice.” In the Sudetenland and Pomerania, Germans were indeed the ethnic majority. But the fate of the Czechs and Poles did not bother them.
As the situation on the fronts worsened, more and more officers and generals, mostly of noble origin, came to the idea of removing Hitler from power, who was going to fight to the last German. However, most of the military were ready to act only after the death of the Fuhrer. Quite a lot of officers and generals were fans of Hitler and would not oppose him under any pretext. The conspirators were going to use ordinary soldiers in the dark.
Conspiracy on the Eastern Front. Operation Flash.
The conspiracy against Hitler first took shape on the Eastern Front. It was led by General Henig von Treskow, Chief of Staff of Army Group Center. Von Treskow and Friedrich Olbrecht, head of the Army Directorate, developed Operation Outbreak. The conspirators convinced Hitler to visit the army group headquarters in Smolensk on March 13, 1943. The commander of the security unit at the headquarters, Colonel von Beselager, was ready to shoot Hitler and his guards right at the airfield. He only needed the order of Field Marshal Kluge. But he hesitated, although he gave his consent in principle to participate in the rebellion in the event of a successful assassination attempt.
Henig von Treskow. Shot himself on the Eastern Front on July 21, 1944. Relatives were subjected to repression.
Then the conspirators decided to blow up Hitler, either at a meeting or in the officers' mess. But in this case, Kluge, who was ready to support the rebellion with his authority, would also die. The best solution turned out to be the decision to blow up the plane with the Fuhrer on the way to Berlin. The bomb, disguised as a parcel of cognac for a general in Berlin, was handed to Colonel Brandt from the General Staff. However, the bomb did not explode. Now it was necessary to urgently fly to Berlin and remove the bomb. Chief Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorf, who was sent to the capital, took the bomb from Brandt under a plausible pretext. Having disassembled it, they discovered the reason - the acid from the crushed ampoule corroded the wire, the firing pin pierced the primer, but the detonator did not ignite.
Georg von Boeselager. I was ready to finish off Hitler back in 1943. Killed in action on August 27, 1944.
"Overcoat" attempts.
The next chance came on March 21st. Hitler, together with his immediate circle, was supposed to visit an exhibition of captured Soviet equipment. The head of intelligence at Kluge's headquarters, Colonel von Gersdorff, put two bombs in his overcoat pockets, set to a minimum time of 10 minutes. In this case, the Fuhrer’s closest associates would also be destroyed. But von Gersdorff would also have to give his life, to which the courageous officer agreed. At the last moment it was announced that the inspection would last 8 minutes and the assassination attempt had to be postponed.
Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff. One of the few surviving members of the conspiracy.
Between September 1943 and January 1944, 6 more attempts to destroy Hitler failed. In September they were going to blow up Hitler at his headquarters in Rastenburg (Prussia). But General Stiff, who was sent “cognac” through Brandt, chickened out at the last moment. In November, at a demonstration to the Fuhrer of a new overcoat, the “model” infantry captain Axel von dem Bussche, with bombs in his pockets, was supposed to grab Hitler and fly into the air with him. However, the day before, during the bombing of Berlin, all samples of the new uniform were destroyed.
The new “fashion show” was supposed to take place in December, but the Fuhrer unexpectedly left to celebrate Christmas in Berchtesgaden. On February 11, instead of Busche, who was wounded at the front, another young officer, Heinrich von Kleist, came to demonstrate his overcoat. However, the Fuhrer did not arrive.
Hitler's tactics.
Hitler understood perfectly well that they would definitely try to eliminate him. A shorthand recording of his statements on March 3, 1942 has been preserved: “I am aware of why 90% of historical assassination attempts were successful. The only preventive measure that should be taken is not to observe regularity in your life - in walks, trips, travel. It is better to do all this at different times and unexpectedly. As far as possible, when going somewhere by car, I leave unexpectedly without alerting the police.”
Hitler's tactics of constantly changing his schedule required the conspirators to change their plans. They came to the conclusion that they could realistically count on meeting the Fuhrer only during meetings held twice a day. On December 29, 1943, a young officer, Claus von Stauffenberg, arrived at a meeting at the Fuhrer's headquarters in Rastenburg with a time bomb in his briefcase. But the meeting was cancelled, the Fuhrer left to celebrate Christmas.
Operation Valkyrie.
The coup plan was called "Valkyrie". Valkyries, beautiful but terrifying maidens from German-Scandinavian mythology, hover over the battlefield and select fighters who are destined to die. The plan was developed by General von Treskow and finalized by Colonel von Stauffenberg. Instructions were also prepared for commanders of military districts, declarations and appeals to the German people and armed forces.
For better secrecy, the cunning Canaris suggested that Hitler develop an action plan in case of an uprising of millions of foreign slaves brought to work in German factories. Such an uprising was unlikely, but a suspicious Hitler agreed to develop a plan to suppress the uprising. The same Canaris “suggested” to the Fuhrer the name of the plan - “Valkyrie”. Thus, the conspirators in the army could work almost openly on a plan to seize power. One of the Abwehr employees, Hans Oster, was among the leaders of the conspiracy.
Colonel General Beck was to become the new head of state. Field Marshal von Witzleben was slated for the role of commander-in-chief, and the former mayor of Leipzig Goerdeler, the ideologist of the coup, was given the post of chancellor. The great success of the conspirators was to attract Field Commander Rommel into their ranks, although he objected to the murder of Hitler. Time was running out. In addition, Beck, Goerdeler, Hassel, Witzleben and some other conspirators were under vigilant surveillance by the Gestapo.
July 1944. Three tries.
On the eve of the attempt to eliminate Hitler on July 11, the conspirators considered that it was necessary to eliminate Himmler and Goering along with Hitler, especially since they usually attended the meetings. But on July 11, Himmler was absent. Stauffenberg, leaving the meeting for a minute, called General Olbricht in Berlin and he persuaded him to wait for the next meeting, when all three would gather.
That same evening, returning to Berlin, Stauffenberg talked with Beck and Olbricht and decided that next time they would not wait for the whole trio. On July 15, the conspirators were so confident in success that at 11.00, two hours before the start of the meeting, Olbricht gave the order “Valkyrie 1” and the troops began to move out. Stauffenberg left the meeting and reported to Olbricht that Hitler was in place and he was starting the task. But when Stauffenberg re-entered the meeting room, Hitler was no longer there. I had to urgently run to the phone and inform Olbricht.
The general, in a rage, canceled the alarm and the troops tried to return to the barracks as quickly and unnoticed as possible. But rumors have already spread throughout Berlin that the Fuhrer’s headquarters will soon be blown up and the military will take power into their own hands.
Field Marshal Rommel. Forced to commit suicide on October 14, 1944. Buried as a national hero. The Nazis could not announce to the country that the most popular military man among the people was involved in a conspiracy against Hitler.
On July 17, the conspirators suffered a severe blow - an American fighter shot down the headquarters vehicle and Field Marshal Rommel was seriously wounded. The most energetic and capable leader of the rebellion was lost. Now an unbearable burden rested on Stauffenberg's shoulders. He himself needed to eliminate Hitler and lead the uprising.
The fate of Colonel Brandt.
Stauffenberg and Keitel were a little late for the meeting. General Heusinger made a report on the situation on the Eastern Front. Four minutes have passed since the ampoule was crushed. Stauffenberg put the briefcase with the bomb under the table, whispered to Colonel Brandt to keep an eye on it and went out supposedly to call Berlin for up-to-date information. This was exactly the Brandt who carried the bomb on the Fuhrer’s plane under the guise of a parcel of cognac.
Above is a diagram of the location of meeting participants. The briefcase with the bomb, placed by Stauffenberg to the left of the cabinet, was moved by Brandt to the right side of the cabinet.
Brandt's briefcase was in the way under his feet, so he moved it a little further, behind a massive cabinet. In this way he saved Hitler and ensured his certain death. Stauffenberg quickly walked out of the room. At 12.42 a bomb exploded. The bodies of several people were thrown out of the windows by an air wave, and debris flew. Stauffenberg decided that everyone in the conference room was dead.
General Felgiebel, chief of communications for the Wehrmacht, disrupted the connection between Hitler's headquarters and the country after the assassination attempt. Executed on September 4, 1944.
Werner von Heften, Stauffenberg's adjutant. Participated in the assassination attempt on Hitler. Executed on July 20, 1944, along with his boss.
Goering inspects the consequences of the explosion.
Hitler was saved by the hot weather. The meeting was moved from the stuffy bunker to the summer pavilion and all the windows in the conference room were opened, which significantly reduced the impact of the blast wave. If the meeting had taken place in a bunker, then nothing would have saved the Fuhrer.
Conspiracy failure.
Rommel’s injury and the unsuccessful “rehearsal” for the July 15 mutiny, when it was difficult to justify himself due to the appearance of troops with tanks in Berlin, seemed to paralyze the conspirators. And when Stauffenberg arrived in the capital three hours later, he saw with horror that no one had done anything. A German general, even if he is a conspirator, needs an order to begin vigorous action. In addition, many officers and generals were not privy to the plans of the conspirators. And many still had unlimited trust in Hitler. After all, as of July 1944, a foreign soldier had not yet set foot on German territory. In the east, all of Poland was occupied by the Wehrmacht, and in the west, almost all of France.
Karl Goerdeler. Should have become chancellor if the coup was successful. Executed on February 2, 1945.
General Wagner. Provided the aircraft to Claus von Stauffenberg. He committed suicide on July 23, 1944.
It was only around six in the evening that Hitler and the Nazi leadership began to realize that, in addition to the assassination attempt, which they initially perceived as an individual terrorist attack, something was happening in the country. The telephone connection was disrupted. One small fry, who happened to be in Berlin at the moment, hurried to Goebbels, who at first did not want to listen to him. Then he asked the propaganda chief to go to the window, look at the movements of military units and see for himself what was happening.
Merz von Quirnheim. An active participant in the conspiracy. shot along with Stauffenberg, Heften and Olbricht. These four got an easy death.
The commander of the Reserve Army, Fromm, was not privy to the conspiracy, although all orders for the Reserve Army were prepared by the conspirators on his behalf. They hoped to win him over to their side after the assassination of Hitler. Fromm was at first furious at the use of his name, was put under arrest in his own office, then began to hesitate, but in the end, when it became known that Hitler had survived, he decided to cover his tracks. After the failure of the coup attempt became obvious, Fromm ordered the shooting of people who could testify about his hesitations, i.e. Stauffenberg and Olbricht. Quirnheim and Heften were included in the company.
General Fromm. Shot a group of conspirators on the night of July 20-21. But that didn't help him. He was shot on March 12, 1945.
Unfortunately, the conspirators in Berlin did not have enough strength and skill to carry out a coup. Although if Hitler had died, everything could have turned out differently. In Paris, the rebellion was carried out successfully - General Stülpnagel arrested all 1,200 SS officers and soldiers. But in Berlin by evening the conspiracy was suppressed. Hitler executed 5,000 people during 1944-45. The Nazis were simply shocked that they had missed such a vast conspiracy under their noses.
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