70
years ago on this date, July 20, 1944, the last attempt to assassinate Adolf
Hitler failed. I will post information on this historical assassination from
Wikipedia and other links. I will also honor and remember the German Resistance
to Nazism.
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The Wolf's
Lair conference room soon after the explosion
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Belligerents
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Military-led German resistance
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Nazi government
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Commanders
and leaders
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Casualties
and losses
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4 killed
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The
20 July plot refers to the attempt to assassinate Adolf
Hitler, Führer
of the Third
Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East
Prussia, in July 1944. The apparent purpose of the assassination attempt
was to seize political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi
Party (including the SS) in order to obtain peace with the Allies as soon as
possible. The underlying desire of many of the involved high ranking Wehrmacht
officers was apparently to show to the world that not all Germans were like
Hitler and the NSDAP.
The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown, but they
likely would have included demands to accept wide reaching territorial
annexations by Germany in Europe.
The
plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German
Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government. The failure of both
the assassination and the military coup d'état which was planned to
follow it led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo. According
to records of the Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 of these
were executed.
Background
Since
1938, conspiratorial groups planning an overthrow of some kind had existed in
the German
Army (Wehrmacht Heer) and in the German Military Intelligence
Organization (Abwehr). Early leaders of these plots included
Brigadier-General Hans Oster, General Ludwig Beck
and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. Oster was the deputy head
of the Military Intelligence Office. Beck was a former Chief-of-Staff
of the German Army High Command (Oberkommando
des Heeres, OKH). Von Witzleben was the former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command
in the West (Oberbefehlshaber West, or OB West). They soon
established contacts with several prominent civilians, including Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, the former mayor
of Leipzig,
and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, the
great-grandnephew of the hero of the Franco-Prussian War.
Military
conspiratorial groups exchanged ideas with civilian, political and intellectual
resistance groups in the Kreisauer Kreis (which met at the von Moltke estate in Kreisau) and in
other secret circles. Moltke was against killing Hitler; instead, he wanted him
placed on trial. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle
it". Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical. Hitler and
National Socialism had turned "wrong-doing" into a system, something
which the resistance should avoid.
Plans
to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were
developed in 1938 and 1939, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army
Generals Franz Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch, and the failure of
the western powers to oppose Hitler's aggressions until 1939. This first
military resistance group delayed their plans after Hitler's extreme popularity
following the unexpectedly rapid success in the battle
for France.
In
1942, a new conspiratorial group formed, led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of Field
Marshal Fedor von Bock's staff, who commanded Army Group
Centre in Operation Barbarossa. Tresckow systematically
recruited oppositionists to the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of
the Army resistance. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily
guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him.
During
1942, Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective
resistance network. Their most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army
Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an
independent system of communications to reserve units throughout Germany.
Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created
a viable coup apparatus.
In
late 1942, Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and
stage an overthrow during Hitler's visit to the headquarters of Army Group
Centre at Smolensk in March 1943, by placing a bomb on his plane. The bomb failed
to detonate, and a second attempt a week later with Hitler at an exhibition of
captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin also failed. These failures demoralised the
conspirators. During 1943 Tresckow tried without success to recruit senior Army
field commanders such as Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to support a seizure of
power. Tresckow in particular worked on his Commander-in-Chief of Army Group
Centre, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge to persuade him to move against
Hitler and at times succeeded in gaining his consent, only to find him
indecisive at the last minute.
Despite their refusals however, none of the Field Marshals reported their
treasonous activities to the Gestapo or Hitler.
Planning
a coup
Main article: Operation Valkyrie
Stauffenberg
joins the conspirators
By
mid-1943 the tide of war was turning decisively against Germany. The Army
plotters and their civilian allies became convinced that Hitler should be
assassinated, so that a government acceptable to the western Allies could be
formed, and a separate peace negotiated in time to prevent a Soviet invasion of
Germany. In August 1943 Tresckow met, for the first time, a young staff officer
named Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Badly wounded in
North Africa, Count von Stauffenberg was a political conservative, a zealous
German nationalist and a Roman Catholic. From early in 1942, he had come to
share two basic convictions with many military officers: that Germany was being
led to disaster, and that Hitler's removal from power was necessary. After the Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942, despite
his religious scruples, he concluded that the Führer's assassination was a
lesser moral evil than Hitler's remaining in power. Stauffenberg brought a new
tone of decisiveness to the ranks of the resistance movement. When Tresckow was
assigned to the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg took charge of planning and
executing the assassination attempt.
A
new plan
Olbricht
now put forward a new strategy for staging a coup against Hitler. The Reserve
Army (Ersatzheer) had an operational plan called Operation Walküre (Valkyrie),
which was to be used in the event that the disruption caused by the Allied
bombing of German cities caused a breakdown in law and order, or an uprising by
the millions of forced labourers from occupied countries now being used in
German factories. Olbricht suggested that this plan could be used to mobilise
the Reserve Army for the purpose of the coup. In August and September 1943,
Tresckow drafted the "revised" Valkyrie plan and new supplementary
orders. A secret declaration began with these words: "The Führer Adolf
Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of party leaders has attempted to exploit
the situation by attacking our embattled soldiers from the rear in order to
seize power for themselves." Detailed instructions were written for
occupation of government ministries in Berlin, Himmler's headquarters in East
Prussia, radio stations and telephone offices, and other Nazi apparatus through
military districts, and concentration camps. Previously, it was believed that
Stauffenberg was mainly responsible for the Valkyrie plan, but documents
recovered by the Soviet Union after the war and released in 2007 suggest that
the plan was developed by Tresckow by autumn of 1943. All written information
was handled by Tresckow's wife, Erika, and by Margarethe von Oven, his secretary. Both women
wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. Tresckow had tried on at least two
other occasions to assassinate the Fuhrer. The first plan was to shoot him
during dinner at the army base camp, but this plan was aborted because it was
widely believed that Hitler wore a bullet proof vest. The conspirators also
considered poisoning him, but this wasn't possible because his food was
specially prepared and tasted. This left a time bomb as the only option.
Operation Valkyrie could only be put into effect by General Friedrich
Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, so he must either be won over to the
conspiracy or in some way neutralised if the plan was to succeed. Fromm, like
many senior officers, knew in general about the military conspiracies against
Hitler but neither supported them nor reported them to the Gestapo.
Previous
failed attempts
During
1943 and early 1944 there were at least four attempts organised by von Tresckow
and von Stauffenberg, to get one of the military conspirators near enough to
Hitler, for long enough to kill him with hand grenades, bombs or a revolver:
- in March 1943 by Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff
- in late November 1943 by Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst
- in February 1944 by Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin
- on 11 March 1944 by Eberhard Freiherr von Breitenbuch
As
the war situation deteriorated, Hitler no longer appeared in public and rarely
visited Berlin. He spent most of his time at his headquarters at the Wolfsschanze
(Wolf's Lair) near Rastenburg in East Prussia, with occasional breaks at his
Bavarian mountain retreat Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden. In both places he
was heavily guarded and rarely saw people he did not know or trust. Himmler and
the Gestapo were increasingly suspicious of plots against Hitler and rightly
suspected the officers of the General Staff, which was indeed the source of
many conspiracies against Hitler.
Now
or never, "whatever the cost"
By
the summer of 1944, the Gestapo was closing in on the conspirators. There was a
sense that time was running out, both on the battlefield, where the Eastern
front was in full retreat and where the Allies had landed
in France on 6 June, and in Germany, where the resistance's room for
manoeuvre was rapidly contracting. The belief that this was the last chance for
action seized the conspirators. By this time, the core of the conspirators had
begun to think of themselves as doomed men, whose actions were more symbolic
than real. The purpose of the conspiracy came to be seen by some of them as
saving the honour of themselves, their families, the army, and Germany through
a grand, if futile gesture, rather than actually altering the course of
history.
The
conspirators scored a major coup in early July when they managed to initiate Erwin
Rommel, the famed "Desert Fox", into their ranks. Rommel was by
far the most popular officer in Germany and was also the first active-duty
field marshal to lend support to the plot. (Witzleben had been inactive since
1942.) Although Rommel felt he had to, as he put it, "come to the rescue
of Germany," he thought killing Hitler would make him a martyr. Like some
others, he wanted Hitler arrested and hauled before a court-martial for his
many crimes.
When
Stauffenberg sent Tresckow a message through Lieutenant Heinrich Graf von
Lehndorff-Steinort asking whether there was any reason for trying to
assassinate Hitler given that no political purpose would be served, Tresckow's
response was: "The assassination must be attempted, coûte que coûte
[whatever the cost]. Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin. For the
practical purpose no longer matters; what matters now is that the German
resistance movement must take the plunge before the eyes of the world and of
history. Compared to that, nothing else matters."
Himmler
had at least one conversation with a known oppositionist when, in August 1943,
the Prussian Finance Minister Johannes
Popitz, who was involved in Goerdeler's network, came to see him and
offered him the support of the opposition if he would make a move to displace
Hitler and secure a negotiated end to the war. Nothing came of this meeting,
but Popitz was not immediately arrested (although he was later executed towards
the end of the war), and Himmler apparently did nothing to track down the
resistance network which he knew was operating within the state bureaucracy. It
is possible that Himmler, who by late 1943 knew that the war was unwinnable,
allowed the plot to go ahead in the knowledge that if it succeeded he would be
Hitler's successor, and could then bring about a peace settlement.
Popitz
was not alone in seeing in Himmler a potential ally. General von Bock advised
Tresckow to seek his support, but there is no evidence that he did so.
Goerdeler was apparently also in indirect contact with Himmler via a mutual
acquaintance, Carl Langbehn. Wilhelm
Canaris biographer Heinz Höhne suggests that Canaris and Himmler were
working together to bring about a change of regime, but this remains
speculation.
Tresckow
and the inner circle of plotters had no intention of removing Hitler just to
see him replaced by the dreaded and ruthless SS chief, and the plan was to kill
them both if possible – to the extent that Stauffenberg's first attempt on 11
July was aborted because Himmler was not present.
Countdown
to Stauffenberg's attempt
1–6
July
On
Saturday 1 July 1944 Stauffenberg was appointed chief of staff to General Fromm
at the Reserve Army headquarters on Bendlerstraße in central Berlin. This
position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler's military conferences, either
at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia or at Berchtesgaden, and would thus
give him an opportunity, perhaps the last that would present itself, to kill
Hitler with a bomb or a pistol. Meanwhile new key allies had been gained. These
included General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the
German military commander in France, who would take control in Paris when
Hitler was killed and, it was hoped, negotiate an immediate armistice with the
invading Allied armies.
7–14
July
The
plot was now fully prepared. On 7 July 1944 General Stieff
was to kill Hitler at a display of new uniforms at Klessheim
castle near Salzburg. However, Stieff felt unable to kill Hitler.
Stauffenberg now decided to do both: to assassinate Hitler, wherever he was,
and to manage the plot in Berlin. On 15 July Stauffenberg attended Hitler's
conferences carrying a bomb in his briefcase, but because the conspirators had
decided that Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring should be killed simultaneously
if the planned mobilisation of Operation Valkyrie was to have a chance
to succeed, he held back at the last minute because Himmler was not present. In
fact, it was unusual for Himmler to attend military conferences.
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At Rastenburg
on 15 July 1944. Stauffenberg at left, Hitler center, Keitel
on right. The person shaking hands with Hitler is General Karl
Bodenschatz, who was seriously wounded five days later, by Stauffenberg's
bomb.
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15
July: Aborted attempt
By
15 July, when Stauffenberg again flew to the Wolfsschanze, this
condition had been dropped. The plan was for Stauffenberg to plant the
briefcase with the bomb in Hitler's conference room with a timer running,
excuse himself from the meeting, wait for the explosion, then fly back to
Berlin and join the other plotters at the Bendlerblock. Operation Valkyrie
would be mobilised, the Reserve Army would take control of Germany and the
other Nazi leaders would be arrested. Beck would be appointed provisional head
of state, Goerdeler would be chancellor, and Witzleben would be
commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Again
on 15 July the attempt was called off at the last minute. Himmler and Göring
were present, but Hitler was called out of the room at the last moment.
Stauffenberg was able to intercept the bomb and prevent its discovery.
17
July: Erwin Rommel strafed
On
17 July, Erwin Rommel's staffcar was strafed by a Spitfire in
France. The Field Marshal was hospitalized with major head injuries.
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The conference room after the bomb exploded
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20
July
Operation
Valkyrie initiated
On
18 July rumours reached Stauffenberg that the Gestapo had wind of the
conspiracy and that he might be arrested at any time—this was apparently not
true, but there was a sense that the net was closing in and that the next
opportunity to kill Hitler must be taken because there might not be another. At
10:00 on 20 July Stauffenberg flew back to the Wolfsschanze for another
Hitler military conference, once again with a bomb in his briefcase.
The
conference took place in the main room of Wolf's Lair instead of the
underground bunker due to weather.
At
around 12:30 as the conference began, Stauffenberg made an excuse to use a
washroom in Wilhelm Keitel's office where he used pliers to crush the end of a
pencil detonator inserted into a 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) block of plastic
explosive wrapped in brown paper, that was prepared by Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven. The
detonator consisted of a thin copper tube containing copper chloride that would
take about ten minutes to silently eat through wire holding back the firing pin
from the percussion cap. He then placed the primed bomb quickly inside his
briefcase, having been told his presence was required. A second block of
explosive was retained by the pair rather than put into the suitcase. He entered
the conference room and with the unwitting assistance of Major Ernst John von Freyend placed his briefcase
under the table around which Hitler and more than 20 officers had gathered.
After a few minutes, Stauffenberg received a planned telephone call and left
the room. It is presumed that Colonel Heinz
Brandt, who was standing next to Hitler, used his foot to move the
briefcase aside by pushing it behind the leg of the conference table, thus
unwittingly deflecting the blast from Hitler but causing his own death with the
loss of one of his legs when the bomb detonated. Between 12:40 and 12:50 the
bomb detonated,
demolishing the conference room. Three officers and the stenographer were
seriously injured and died soon after. Hitler survived, as did everyone else who
was shielded from the blast by the conference table leg. Hitler's trousers were
singed and tattered (see photograph below) and he suffered from a perforated eardrum, as did most of the other 24
people in the room. Had the second block of explosive been used, it is probable
that everyone present would have been killed.
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A soldier holding the
trousers Hitler wore during the failed assassination attempt.
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Escape
from the Wolf's Lair and flight to Berlin
Stauffenberg,
hearing the explosion and seeing the smoke issuing from the broken windows of
the concrete dispatch barracks, assumed that Hitler was dead, climbed into his
staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften and managed to bluff his way
past three checkpoints to exit the Wolfsschanze complex. Werner von
Haeften then tossed the second unprimed bomb into the forest as they made a
dash for Rastenburg airfield, reaching it before it could be realised that
Stauffenberg could be responsible for the explosion. By 13:00 he was airborne
in a Heinkel He 111 arranged by General Eduard
Wagner.
By
the time Stauffenberg's aircraft reached Berlin about 16:00, General Erich
Fellgiebel, an officer at the Wolfsschanze who was in on the plot,
had phoned the Bendlerblock and told the plotters that Hitler had survived the
explosion. As a result, the Berlin cohort to mobilise Operation Valkyrie
would have no chance of succeeding once the officers of the Reserve Army knew
that Hitler was alive. There was more confusion when Stauffenberg's aircraft
landed and he phoned from the airport to say that Hitler was in fact dead. The
Bendlerblock plotters did not know whom to believe. Finally at 16:00 Olbricht
issued the orders for Operation Valkyrie to be mobilised. The
vacillating General Fromm, however, phoned Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at the
Wolf's Lair and was assured that Hitler was alive. Keitel demanded to know
Stauffenberg's whereabouts. This told Fromm that the plot had been traced to
his headquarters, and that he was in mortal danger. Fromm replied that he
thought Stauffenberg was with Hitler.
Meanwhile,
Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, military
governor of occupied France, managed to disarm the SD
and SS, and captured most of their leadership. He travelled to Günther von
Kluge's headquarters and asked him to contact the Allies, only to be informed
that Hitler was alive. At 16:40 Stauffenberg and Haeften arrived at the
Bendlerblock. Fromm, presumably to protect himself, changed sides and attempted
to have Stauffenberg arrested. Olbricht and Stauffenberg restrained him at
gunpoint and Olbricht then appointed General Erich
Hoepner to take over his duties. By this time Himmler had taken charge of
the situation and had issued orders countermanding Olbricht's mobilisation of
Operation Valkyrie. In many places the coup was going ahead, led by
officers who believed that Hitler was dead. City Commandant, and conspirator, General
Paul von Hase ordered the Wachbataillon Großdeutschland,
under the command of Major Otto Ernst Remer, to secure the Wilhelmstraße
and arrest Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In Vienna, Prague, and many
other places troops occupied Nazi Party offices and arrested Gauleiters
and SS officers.
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Soldiers and Waffen SS at the Bendlerblock
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The
coup fails
At
around 18:00 the commander of Military District (Wehrkreis) III (Berlin)
General Joachim von Kortzfleisch was summoned to
the Bendlerblock; he angrily refused Olbricht's orders, kept shouting "the
Führer is alive", was arrested and held under guard. General Karl Freiherr von Thüngen was appointed
in his place, but proved to be of little help. General Fritz
Lindemann, who was supposed to make a proclamation to the German people
over the radio, failed to appear and as he held the only copy, Beck had to work
on a new one.
The
decisive moment came at 19:00, when Hitler was sufficiently recovered to make
phone calls. He called Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels arranged
for Hitler to speak to Major Remer, commander of the troops surrounding the
Ministry. After assuring him that he was still alive, Hitler ordered Remer to
regain control of the situation in Berlin. Major Remer ordered his troops to
surround and seal off the Bendlerblock, but not to enter the buildings. At
20:00 a furious Witzleben arrived at the Bendlerblock and had a bitter argument
with Stauffenberg, who was still insisting that the coup could go ahead.
Witzleben left shortly afterwards. At around this time the planned seizure of
power in Paris was aborted when Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, who had
recently been appointed commander-in-chief in the west, learned that Hitler was
alive.
As
Remer regained control of the city and word spread that Hitler was still alive,
the less resolute members of the conspiracy in Berlin began to change sides.
Fighting broke out in the Bendlerblock between officers supporting and opposing
the coup, and Stauffenberg was wounded. By 23:00 Fromm had regained control,
hoping by a show of zealous loyalty to save himself. Beck, realising the
situation was hopeless, shot himself—the first of many suicides in the coming
days. Although at first Beck only just managed to seriously wound himself, he
was shot in the neck by soldiers. Fromm convened an impromptu court martial
consisting of himself, and sentenced Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and
another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, to
death. At 00:10 on 21 July they were executed in the courtyard outside,
possibly to prevent them from revealing Fromm's involvement. Others would have
been executed as well, but at 00:30 SS personnel led by Otto
Skorzeny arrived and further executions were forbidden.
Alternative
possibilities
In
2005, the Military Channel's show Unsolved History aired an episode
titled Killing Hitler in which each scenario was re-created using live
explosives and test dummies. The results supported the conclusion that Hitler
would have been killed had any of the three other scenarios occurred:
- both bombs detonated;
- the meeting was held inside Hitler's bunker;
- the briefcase was not moved.
Had
Hitler in fact been killed by the plotters, some historians argue that the plot
would have unfolded (and failed) in relatively the same fashion, but with
Hermann Göring taking Hitler's place, and in turn ordering Major Remer to
switch sides and arrest the plotters. A Nazi State under Göring would have been
more receptive to peace with the allies and might also have "cleaned house"
of several fanatical Nazis, including many senior SS and Nazi Party leaders.
Participants
at the meeting
1. Slightly
injured
2. Killed
3.
Seriously injured
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All
at the meeting except Keitel suffered perforated eardrums and Hitler had 200
wood splinters removed from his legs; his hair was singed and his uniform torn
to ribbons.
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Approximate positions of the participants at
the meeting in relation to the briefcase bomb when it exploded.
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The courtyard at the Bendlerblock, where
Stauffenberg, Olbricht and others were executed
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Aftermath
Over
the following weeks Himmler's Gestapo, driven by a furious Hitler, rounded up
nearly everyone who had the remotest connection with the plot. The discovery of
letters and diaries in the homes and offices of those arrested revealed the
plots of 1938, 1939, and 1943, and this led to further rounds of arrests,
including that of Franz Halder, who finished the war in a concentration
camp. Under Himmler's new Sippenhaft (blood guilt) laws, all the relatives of the
principal plotters were also arrested.
More
than 7,000 people were arrested and 4,980 were executed. Not all of them were
connected with the plot, since the Gestapo used the occasion to settle scores
with many other people suspected of opposition sympathies. Alfons Heck, former
Hitler Youth member and later historian, describes the reaction many Germans
felt to the punishments imposed onto the conspirators:
When I heard that German officers had tried to kill Adolf Hitler ... I was enraged. I fully concurred with the sentences imposed onto to them, strangling I felt was too good for them; this was the time, precisely, when we were at a very ... precarious military situation. And the only man who could possibly stave of disaster ... was Adolf Hitler. That opinion was shared by many Germans, Germans who did not adore Hitler, who did not belong to the [Nazi] Party.— Alfons Heck
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Hitler visits Admiral Karl-Jesco von Puttkamer in the
hospital
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| Funeral of General Günther Korten at the Tannenberg Memorial |
The
British radio also named possible suspects who had not yet been implicated but
then were arrested.
Very
few of the plotters tried to escape or to deny their guilt when arrested. Those
who survived interrogation were given perfunctory trials before the People's
Court (Volksgerichtshof), a kangaroo court that always decided in favour
of the prosecution. The court's president, Roland Freisler, was a fanatical
Nazi seen shouting furiously and insulting the accused in the trial, which was
filmed for propaganda purposes. The officers involved in the plot were
"tried" before the Court of Military Honour, a drumhead court-martial
that merely considered the evidence furnished to it by the Gestapo before
expelling the accused from the Army in disgrace and handing them over to the
People's Court.
The
first trials were held on 7 and 8 August 1944. Hitler had ordered that those
found guilty should be "hanged like cattle". Many people took their
own lives prior to either their trial or their execution, including Kluge, who
was accused of having knowledge of the plot beforehand and not revealing it to
Hitler. Stülpnagel also tried to commit suicide, but survived and was hanged.
While
Stülpnagel was being treated, he blurted out Rommel's name. A few days later,
Stülpnagel's personal adviser, Caesar von Hofacker, admitted under gruesome
torture that Rommel was an active member of the conspiracy. The extent to which
Rommel had been involved has been debated, but many historians have concluded
that he at least knew of the plot even if he wasn't involved directly. Hitler,
however, knew it would cause a major scandal to have the popular Rommel branded
as a traitor. With this in mind, he opted to give Rommel the option of suicide
via cyanide or a public trial by Freisler's People's Court. Had Rommel chosen
to stand trial, his family would have been severely punished even before the
all-but-certain conviction, and they would have been executed along with his
staff. Knowing that being hauled before the People's Court was tantamount to a
death sentence, Rommel committed suicide on 14 October 1944. He was buried with
full military honours; his role in the conspiracy didn't come to light until
after the war.
Tresckow
also killed himself the day after the failed plot by use of a hand grenade in
no man's land between Russian and German lines. Before his death, Tresckow said
to Fabian von Schlabrendorff:
The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours' time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. None of us can bewail his own death; those who consented to join our circle put on the robe of Nessus. A human being's moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.
Fromm's
attempt to win favour by executing Stauffenberg and others on the night of 20
July had merely exposed his own previous lack of action and apparent failure to
report the plot. Having been arrested on 21 July, Fromm was later convicted and
sentenced to death by the People's Court. Despite his involvement in the
conspiracy, his formal sentence charged him with poor performance in his
duties. He was executed in Brandenburg an der Havel. Hitler
personally commuted his death sentence from hanging to the "more
honourable" firing squad. Erwin
Planck, the son of the famous physicist Max Planck,
was executed for his involvement.
The
Kaltenbrunner Report to Adolf Hitler dated 29 November 1944 on the background
of the plot, states that the Pope was somehow a conspirator, specifically
naming Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, as being a party in the attempt.
Evidence indicates that 20 July plotters Colonel Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven,
Colonel Erwin von Lahousen and Admiral Wilhelm
Canaris were involved in the foiling of Hitler's alleged plot to kidnap or
murder Pope Pius XII in 1943, when Canaris reported the plot to Italian counterintelligence officer General Cesare Amè, who passed on the
information.
Arthur Nebe
was implicated in the plot due to his anti-Nazi feelings, even though he was a
full member of the SS and had even commanded an Einsatzgruppe.
Nebe's "fall from grace" was considered due to his many years as a
civilian police detective and how he saw most SS security police as
incompetent. Nebe himself was quoted, upon investigating the death of Reinhard Heydrich, that the Gestapo seemed more concerned with reprisals than actually
investigating the crime.
A
member of the SA convicted of participating in the plot was
Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, who was the Orpo Police Chief of Berlin and had
been in contact with members of the resistance since before the war.
Collaborating closely with Nebe, he was supposed to direct all police forces in
Berlin to stand down and not interfere in the military actions to seize the
government. However, his actions on 20 July had not much influence on the
events. For his involvement in the conspiracy, he was later arrested, convicted
of treason and executed.
After
3 February 1945, when Freisler was killed in an American air raid, there were
no more formal trials, but as late as April, with the war weeks away from its
end, Canaris' diary was found, and many more people were implicated. Executions
continued to the last days of the war.
Hitler
took his survival to be a "divine moment in history", and
commissioned a special decoration to be made. The result was the Wound Badge of
20 July 1944, which Hitler awarded to those who were with him in the conference
room at the time. This badge was struck in three values; Gold, Silver and
Black, a total of 100 badges, and 47 are believed to have been awarded, along
with an ornate award document for each recipient personally signed by Hitler,
making them among the rarest decorations to have been awarded by the Third
Reich.
For
his role in stopping the coup, Major Remer was promoted to Colonel and ended
the war as a Major General. After the war he co-founded the Socialist Reich Party and remained a
prominent Neo-Nazi
and advocate of Holocaust Denial until his death in 1997.
Philipp von Boeselager, the German officer
who provided the plastic explosives used in the bomb, escaped detection and
survived the war. He was the second to last survivor of those involved in the
plot and died on 1 May 2008 aged 90. The last survivor of the 20 July Plot was Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin,
the thwarted plotter of just a few months before. He died on 8 March 2013 aged
90.
As
a result of the failed coup, every member of the Wehrmacht was
required to reswear his loyalty oath, by name, to Hitler and, on 24 July 1944,
the military salute was replaced throughout the armed forces with the Hitler
Salute in which the arm was outstretched and the salutation Heil Hitler
was given.
 |
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Tombstone/Rememberance stone for the 20th
July victims. Memorial at the cemetery (Alter St.-Matthäus Kirchhof, Berlin)
where the corpses were buried but afterwards removed to an unknown place.
|
Planned
government
The
conspirators were earlier designated positions in secret to form a government
that would take office after the assassination of Hitler were it to prove
successful. Because of the plot's failure, such a government never rose to
power and most of its members were executed. The following were slated for
these roles as of July 1944:
- Generaloberst Ludwig Beck (Army) – President
- Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (DNVP) – Chancellor
- Wilhelm Leuschner (SPD) – Vice-Chancellor
- Paul Löbe (SPD) – President of the Reichstag
- Julius Leber (SPD) or Eugen Bolz (Centre Party) – Minister of the Interior
- Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg or Ulrich von Hassell (DNVP) – Foreign Minister
- Ewald Loeser (DNVP) – Minister of Finance
- Friedrich Olbricht (Army) – Minister of War
- Generalfeldmarschall Erwin von Witzleben (Army) – Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht
- Hans Oster (Army) – President of the Reichskriegsgericht (military supreme court)
- Hans Koch (Confessing Church) – President of the Reichsgericht (supreme court)
- Bernhard Letterhaus (Catholic trade unionist) – Reconstruction Minister (Minister without portfolio if not appointed)
- Karl Blessing – Minister of Economics or President of the Reichsbank
- Paul Lejeune-Jung (DNVP) – Minister of Economics
- Andreas Hermes (Centre Party) – Minister of Agriculture
- Josef Wirmer (Centre Party) – Minister of Justice
- Henning von Tresckow (Army) – Chief of Police
Note: Party allegiances
as shown here indicate party membership before the dissolution of all political
parties apart from the NSDAP.
Albert
Speer was listed in several notes of the conspirators as a possible
Minister of Armaments; however, most of these notes stated Speer should not be
approached until after Hitler was dead and one conjectural government chart had
a question mark beside Speer's name. This most likely saved Speer from arrest
by the SS in addition to Speer being one of Hitler's closest and most trusted
friends.
Films
and television
- 1951: The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel, with James Mason as Rommel
- 1955: Es geschah am 20. Juli, a docudrama, with Bernhard Wicki as Stauffenberg
- 1955: The Plot to Assassinate Hitler, with Wolfgang Preiss as Stauffenberg
- 1964: The Wednesday Play: The July Plot, directed by Rudolph Cartier, with John Carson as Stauffenberg, and Joseph Furst as Fromm.
- 1967: The Night of the Generals, directed by Anatole Litvak
- 1970: Claus Graf Stauffenberg, German TV docudrama
- 1988: War and Remembrance, Part 10, a television version of the novel by Herman Wouk
- 1990: Stauffenberg – Verschwörung gegen Hitler
- 1990: The Plot to Kill Hitler, with Brad Davis as Stauffenberg
- 1992: The Restless Conscience
- 2004: Die Stunde der Offiziere, a semi-documentary movie
- 2004: Stauffenberg, by Jo Baier, with Sebastian Koch as Stauffenberg
- 2004: Days That Shook the World – Conspiracy to kill (Season 2, Episode 5), a BBC2 documentary
- 2004: Heroes of World War II – The Man Who Stood Up To Hitler, a documentary, narrated by Robert Powell
- 2007: Ruins of the Reich (DVD), 4-part series directed by R.J. Adams (attempted assassination and ruins of Wolfsschanze)
- 2008: Valkyrie, with Tom Cruise as Stauffenberg
- 2008: Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot to Kill Hitler, a video documentary
- 2009: Stauffenberg - Die wahre Geschichte, German TV docudrama
- 2010: Mythbusters-Operation Valkyrie
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