HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

Valkyrie’s End

Just after midnight on July 21, 1944, the two men who had carried bombs to assassinate Adolf Hitler at Wolfsschanze--Claus von Stauffenberg and Hans-Bernd Haeften--the man who triggered orders for the army coup in Berlin--Mertz von Quirheim—and the man who helped plan Operation Valkyrie from its early days--Friedrich Olbricht—were gunned down by firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, the building where conspirators had directed coup operations. The retired general who had been slated to serve as head of state after the coup—Ludwig Beck—unconscious and bleeding from self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head, was shot to death by an NCO.

All five bodies were thrown onto the back of a truck, carried to St. Matthias cemetery in the Berlin suburb of Schoneberg, and buried until the following day when they were exhumed and cremated.

That same day others involved in the failed coup took matters into their own hands. Gen. Henning von Tresckow, the man who had set the plan in motion and recruited Stauffenberg, took his own life. Learning of the coup’s failure by his adjutant Fabian Schlabrendorff in the early morning hours of the 21st, Tresckow moved quickly. Sure that the German high command would soon learn his name and worried that he would be tortured to reveal the names of fellow conspirators, he was resolute. He urged Schlabrendorff to stay alive as long as possible and reaffirmed their decision to oppose Hitler and his regime:

“I am convinced, now as much as ever, that we have done the right thing. I believe that Hitler is the arch-enemy, not only of Germany, but of the entire world. In a few hours’ time, I shall stand before God and answer both for my actions and the things I neglected to do. I think I can with a clear conscience stand by all I have done in the battle against Hitler…A man’s moral worth is established only at the point when he is prepared to give his life for his convictions.” (Nigel Jones, Countdown to Valkyrie, p 242)

Tresckow drove to Ostrow near Bialystock where he was stationed on the Russian Front. He walked past the 28th Rifle Division placement and made his way onto No Man’s Land. He carried two pistols and fired them as if in a duel. Then, he placed a rifle grenade on his chest, removed the pin, and blew off his head.

At first, Tresckow’s death was blamed on Russian partisans, so his body was taken back to Germany and buried near his parents’ graves. Later, when his role in the coup attempt became clear, Tresckow’s body was disinterred, transported to Sachsenhausen, and cremated while Schlabrendorff was forced to watch.

Others also took their lives. Col. Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, who had supplied the explosives for the bombs; Gen. Eduard Wagner, who had supplied the plane that carried Stauffenberg to and from Wolfsschanze, and Maj. Hans-Ulrich von Oertzen, who had transmitted coup orders from Bendlerblock to operatives in the field. (Countdown, p 245)

Trials

Ten days after the attempted assassination, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS and leader of the investigation into the attack on Hitler and the coup plot, and Chief of the German Armed Forces Command Wilhelm Keitel created a trial court of honor. Composed of army generals and field marshals, the court discharged 55 army officers from the Wehrmacht as well as 29 others so they would not fall under the jurisdiction of the Reich Military Court; they would be tried in the People’s Court. (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ldquo-people-rsquo-s-court-rdquo)

The Berlin People’s Court was created in 1934 to prosecute cases of treason and other so-called political cases. (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/law-and-justice-in-the-third-reich) Only two of the court’s five members were lawyers; the other two were chosen by Hitler because they “had special experience in fighting off attacks against the State.” \(https://time.com/archive/6753325/germany-peoples-court/)

Every ruling from the People’s Court was final: appeals were not allowed. And the verdict was predetermined: “Death for all seeking to overthrow the Government, or the Constitution, by force or threats of force. Death for all who attempt forcibly to detach any part of the Reich territory or deliver it to any foreign power. Death for all who attempt to hinder the President, the Chancellor or any member of the Reich government from exercising his proper authority. Death for all who try to obtain a State Secret, publish it, sell or attempt to sell it to a foreign power. Death (or hard labor up to ten years) for all attempting to hamper the army or the police in doing their duty, or to influence them to this end through writings, pictures, radio messages or phonograph records.” (https://time.com/archive/6753325/germany-peoples-court/)

The first proceeding against eight Operation Valkyrie plotters, including Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, the man who had fumed about the “fine mess” and stalked out of Bendlerblock before 8:oo pm on the 20th, was held on August 7 and 8, 1944. All eight were found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed the same day at Plötzensee prison.

The second trial two days later resulted in death sentences for five perpetrators, including Erich Fellgiebel, the signal corpsman at Wolfsschanze who had frantically tried to inform conspirators that the bomb had not killed Hitler, and Claus von Stauffenberg’s brother Berthold.

More trials and death sentences followed. “Between August 8, 1944, and April 9, 1945, a total of 90 people were murdered in Plötzensee who were either thought to belong to the resistance circles involved in the attempted coup of July 20, 1944, or who had supported them.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ldquo-people-rsquo-s-court-rdquo

In addition to the trials of military leaders, the court also tried, convicted, and executed civilians associated with the coup plot, such as Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig and candidate for chancellor in the coup government. (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ldquo-people-rsquo-s-court-rdquo)

(Reports about the barbarity of the executions have been discounted. Although Hitler may have called the conspirators “the basest creatures imaginable” (Countdown, p 146) and called for them to be treated like animals, there is no truth to the stories that the conspirators were hanged from meat hooks by piano strings and left to anguish for nearly half an hour. The chamber in which the men were hanged was fitted with a heavy rail bearing eight to ten iron hooks bearing short, thin cords. Death for most occurred in a few minutes. (https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles/7146/Execution-of-the-conspirators-of-July-20-1944.htm)

Men who had tried to stop the coup from moving forward were not spared. Gen. Friedrich Fromm was Commander in Chief of the Reserve Home Army whose leaders spearheaded coup planning. He not only was aware that his Chief of Staff, Claus von Stauffenberg, was planning an attack on Hitler’s life, he agreed to help coup plotters as long as he would be given a top official position in the new government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Fromm

He refused to sign his name to order Operation Valkyrie to go forward on July 20, however, and turned on the conspirators, arresting the principal operatives in the Bendlerblock, holding courts martial, and summarily executing them. Joseph Goebbels did not accept Fromm’s claim that he was instrumental in suppressing the coup, noting: "You have been in a damn hurry to get your witnesses below ground." https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/friedrich-fromm

Fromm was arrested on July 22 and court-martialed for cowardice and dereliction of duty. He was executed by firing squad on March 12, 1945. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/friedrich-fromm

Field Marshal Günther Kluge had known about Operation Valkyrie for years, having served with Tresckow in Russia in 1941. Urged to join the coup by Gen. Beck on July 20, Kluge dithered, refusing to commit unless he knew Hitler was dead. Despite his unwillingness to be pulled into the plot, he was relieved of command and recalled to Germany under investigation. On his way to Germany, he stopped at the site of the WW I battle of Verdun, bit into a cyanide capsule, and killed himself. (Countdown)

For some of the conspirators, retribution was delayed. Gen. Karl-Heinrich Stülpnagel led the coup efforts in Paris, ordering the arrests of SS and SD men as soon as he heard a bomb had gone off in Wolfsschanze. He was suspended from duty but given a reprieve by Günther Kluge: “get changed into civilian clothes and disappear until this has blown over,” Kluge told him. (Countdown, p 222) He nonetheless was summoned by Keitel to return to Germany and explain his actions. Near Verdun, Stulpnagel left his driver in the auto so he could take a walk in the woods, he said. While hidden among the trees, Stulpnagel shot himself in the right temple, blinding himself. He stood trial and was executed on August 30. (Countdown)

Stulpnagel’s aide Col. Casar von Hofacker went into hiding after the coup failed. But he was found, arrested, tried by the People’s Court, and hanged on December 30. (Countdown)

A few men escaped execution. Hans Bernd Gisevius was a long-time member of the German Resistance, participating in Gen. Hans Oster’s 1938 coup attempt (see the previous Historka post) and was at Bendlerblock on July 20. He fled the building before being found, disguised himself, went underground, and ended up in Switzerland. He died in 1974.

Fabian Schlabrendorff, adjutant and witness to Tresckow’s final words as well as the cremation of his body in Sachsenhausen, was being prosecuted in the People’s Court when an air raid killed the presiding judge. The next judge hearing the case acquitted him because he had been subjected to torture. Schlabrendorff was arrested after the acquittal and held in a concentration camp until the end of the war. He served as a judge in West Germany from 1967 to 1975 and died in 1980. (Countdown)

Sources:

Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008.

Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1963.

 (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ldquo-people-rsquo-s-court-rdquo)

 https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/law-and-justice-in-the-third-reich)

 (https://time.com/archive/6753325/germany-peoples-court/)

(https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles/7146/Execution-of-the-conspirators-of-July-20-1944.htm)

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Fromm

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/friedrich-fromm

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

July 20, 1944, Paris

While Operation Valkyrie sputtered and died in Berlin, its first steps went smoothly in Paris.

Conspirators learned on July 19th that another assassination attempt would be made the following day. The code “Exercise” delivered to two different conspirators at the same time on the morning of the 20th confirmed that Claus von Stauffenberg was moving forward with the plan at Wolfsschanze. The code “Finished,” delivered at 2:30 pm, confirmed that the mission had been accomplished, Hitler was dead, and the Paris Wehrmacht prepared to launch the coup.

At 3:00 pm, Gen. Karl-Heinrich Stülpnagel, leader of the conspiracy in Paris, made an announcement to his staff and French officials who had gathered for a meeting about housing refugees from Normandy, telling them the Valkyrie Operation cover story: “There has been a Gestapo putsch—an attempt on the Führer’s life. All the SS and SD men here in Paris must be arrested. Do not hesitate to use force if there is any resistance. They all must be rounded up.” (Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, p 204-2050)

At 6:00 pm, Stülpnagel received a call from Col. Gen. Ludwig Beck himself. “Are you aware of what’s happened in the last few hours?” the general asked.

“Yes,” Stülpnagel answered.

“In that case, I must ask if you are still with us?”

“General, I only await the opportunity.”

Aware that some conspirators were having second thoughts about moving ahead without clear confirmation of Hitler’s death, Beck probed: “The blow has been struck,” he acknowledged, “but we still don’t have any exact information on the outcome…are you with us, no matter what happens?”

“Yes. I’ve ordered the arrest of all the SS and SD men in Paris. We can rely on our troops here—as well as their commanding officers,” Stülpnagel responded.

“In any event,” Beck noted, “the die is cast. It’s impossible to turn back now.” (Countdown to Valkyrie, p 217)

By that time, the 1st Guards Regiment was ready to start arresting SS and SD men across the city. The arrests were delayed til nightfall, however, so “we won’t gratify the Parisians with the spectacle of Germans arresting their fellow countrymen,” the regiment commander reported. (Countdown to Valkyrie, p 218)

Once Lt. Col. Caesar von Hofacker heard from Stauffenberg that Hitler could no longer be alive, “The way to action [was] open.” (Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, p 322)

Hofacker, Stülpnagel, and Col. Otfried Linstow set other aspects of Operation Valkyrie in motion:

Senior German signals officer in France, Gen. Oberhauser, was told to cut all radio and telephone communications between France and Germany (except for messages from Valkyrie Operation headquarters at Bendlerblock).

The Paris City Commandant and his chief of staff were told to arrest senior SS leaders and SD men in Paris and other French cities.

Col. Eberhard Finckh announced that a new German government had been formed under martial law and it was being led by Valkyrie operatives and leaders of the German military resistance: Col. Gen. Ludwig Beck and former German city mayor Carl Friedrich Goerdeler.

Other actors had to wait for orders from Field Marshal Günther von Kluge.

But Kluge was not sure about ordering other actions, particularly a general military revolt. He wanted to be absolutely convinced that Hitler was dead, but he kept getting mixed messages. While speaking to Beck, Kluge unfolded a piece of paper recapping the gist of a radio broadcast reporting that the assassination attempt on Hitler’s life had failed and insisted he be told exactly what had happened and what headquarters were doing about it. Yet Beck could not confirm one way or another.

Kluge received the first general order to proceed with the coup, supposedly from the new martial law government, at 7:30, stating: “The Führer is dead. All measures ordered are to be carried out with maximum speed.” (Flame, p 325) So he prepared to work directly with Allies on an armistice. Yet less than 30 minutes later, Kluge a message from the German High Command that countermanded all such orders and affirmed that the Führer was still alive.

Both Stülpnagel and Hofacker urged Kluge to pursue the coup. “Hitler did not matter anymore, only Germany,” said Stülpnagel.  Hofacker pleaded to Kluge: “Your word and your honour are at stake. The fate of millions of Germans, the honour of the Army lies in your hands.” (Flame, p 328) But Kluge refused their entreaties.

Nevertheless, by that time, troops had gathered under the trees of the Bois de Boulogne, driven to SS and Gestapo headquarters at 82-86 Avenue Foch near the Arc d Triomphe, formed ranks in front of the building, and entered, leveling their weapons. The head of the SS in Paris, Obergruppenführer Carl-Albrecht Oberg, speaking to the German Ambassador to France on the telephone in his office on the Boulevard Lannes, had dropped the receiver, jumped up from his desk, and demanded to know why a German soldier was brandishing a weapon in his face before acquiescing. When told there had been a putsch in Berlin, Oberg had surrendered, assuming there had been a misunderstanding.

The head of the SD in Paris, Standartenführer Helmut Knochen, called back to his office from a nightclub, had been arrested and confined to a suite with Oberg at the Hotel Continental.

By midnight on July 20, 1944, 1200 Gestapo, SD, and SS men were locked in the jail of the military fort at St. Denis, sandbags were being piled up along the outer walls, and firing squads were being assembled. (Countdown)

Meanwhile, coup leaders in Paris were finding out about their compatriots in Berlin. Before 11:00 pm, Linstow reported what he had learned from Stauffenberg himself that “all is lost. Stauffenberg…gave the terrible news himself. His murderers were already raging around the corridors outside his room.” (Flame of Freedom, p 330)

At 1:00 am, just after Hitler’s speech was broadcast, units from the German Naval Group HQ West were freeing Gestapo, SD, and SS from detention, the Garrison Regiment that had arrested them was disarmed and the men taken into custody. By 2:00 am, all detainees had been released.

Though the immediate threat to the German rule in Paris and France had been dispelled, the actions taken on July 20 sparked fury against the army. The German ambassador to France Otto Abetz moved quickly to intercede, saying: “No matter what happened in Berlin today, here in France, with the battle for Normandy raging on our doorsteps, we Germans must stand shoulder to shoulder.” (Countdown, p 239)

Abetz mollified Oberg by explaining he had been arrested based on information that had been obtained in good faith and that had led Stülpnagel to believe the SS had been behind the attack on Hitler.

In the end, the army and the SS decided to cover up the entire affair. Noting that few French people were even aware of the arrests in the first place, the operation could for the most part be ignored. If any questions arose, the explanation was a simple one: simply a wartime exercise. (Flame of Freedom, p 332, Countdown, p 238)

Sources:

Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008.

Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1963

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

July 20, 1944, Berlin

Desperate to notify fellow conspirators that the bomb planted by Claus von Stauffenberg in the conference room at Wolfsschanze had not taken the life of Adolf Hitler, Gen. Erich Fellgiebel made a call as soon as he could. At 1:30 pm on July 20, 1944, minutes after Stauffenberg and his aide had flown away from the complex, Fellgiebel reported: “Something terrible has happened.” And he stressed: “The Führer is alive.”

But conspirators were already taking action in Berlin. After hearing that the bomb had exploded, Col. Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim released the orders that would trigger the coup. At 1:50 pm, he ordered a colleague to send armored vehicles to the SS barracks and then into the city’s center. Ten minutes later, Mertz informed officers of the Army General Staff that Hitler had been assassinated and the army was taking control of the government.

The Coup

Commanders were informed; Guard Battalion members, prison garrison guards, and weapons training units were alerted and awaiting instructions. Armed guards were posted at the conspirators’ Bendlerblock headquarters to protect entrances and exits, stop traffic, and use force if confronted by SS. (Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom) And at 4:00 pm, Mertz initiated the second stage of the coup—the imposition of martial law. 

https://war-documentary.info/bendlerblock-memorial-in-berlin-july-20-1944/ Bendlerblock, where the German Army Resistance Movement directed actions after the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944.

 A full-scale launch of the coup faltered, however, when Col. Gen. Friedrich Fromm, Commander in Chief of the Reserve Army, refused to put his name to the Valkyrie Operation alert until he was personally satisfied that Hitler was dead. Then he and Gen. Friedrich Olbricht learned the truth. On a phone call with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Fromm asked: “What’s happening at [Wolfsschanze]? There are the wildest rumors circulating here.”

“Nothing at all,” said Keitel. “Everything normal here.”

“I’ve just had a report that the Führer’s been assassinated.”

“Rubbish,” Keitel replied. An attempt had been made on Hitler’s life, Keitel acknowledged, but “fortunately, it failed,” he said. “The Führer is alive and only slightly injured.” (Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, p 199)

Olbricht was losing heart. At 4:30 Col. Rolf Kratzer assembled vehicles to occupy Berlin radio transmitters and waited for confirmation to move ahead, but Olbricht declined to give the go-ahead because the situation was still unclear. (Peter Hoffman: Stauffenberg)

Fifteen minutes later, Fromm and Olbricht heard directly from Stauffenberg: “Keitel is lying as usual. I know that [Hitler] is dead because I placed the bomb myself.” (Countdown, p 209)

As conspirators gathered in Bendlerblock, including Col. Gen. Ludwig Beck, former chief of the German General Staff, they worried about next steps. Though police were on alert and ready to enforce a state of siege, Beck held the President of the Police back. Insisting the conspirators must be unified, he called for resolute action regardless of whether Hitler was dead or alive. “It would take hours to secure incontrovertible evidence from HQ that Hitler—and not his double—was alive. By then the coup in Berlin would have to be concluded.” Beck urged wholehearted support for Stauffenberg, who declared: “there was only one thing they could do now; use every minute and act.” (The Flame of Freedom, p 307)

Operation Valkyrie nevertheless soon fractured. Olbricht reported that the code signal notified military district commanders there was internal unrest and they needed to take swift action even though he had no direct confirmation of Hitler’s death. Fromm immediately exploded, claiming “this is rank insubordination.” Fromm accused Stauffenberg of murder and high treason and bellowed that he, Olbricht, and other conspirators were under arrest. Stauffenberg calmly claimed the opposite: Fromm was the one who had let the country down and he was placed under arrest, escorted to a nearby office and locked inside.

The situation outside Bendlerblock was treacherous. Orders to Valkyrie operatives in the field were countermanded from Wolfsschanze, whose switchboard was bombarding phone lines with the message that Hitler was indeed alive. SS chief Heinrich Himmler was made leader of the Home Reserve Army (“Only his orders are valid,” troops were told), and Himmler’s investigation into the perpetrators of the attack on Hitler moved quickly away from construction workers at the Wolfsschanze complex and turned toward a prime Valkyrie mover—Claus von Stauffenberg. (And the SS was closing in on the conspirators. Just before 5:00 pm, an SS officer entered Olbricht’s office and demanded to see Stauffenberg, interrogate him about his hasty return from Wolfsschanze, and place him under arrest. The officer, an adjutant, as well as men waiting for word in an automobile outside the building were put under guard by conspirators.) Meanwhile, several conspiracy leaders were balking. The general in command of Berlin, for one, refused to declare a state of siege within the city.

By 5:00 pm, unit leaders had received their orders and directives, detachments had been alerted, and signals were being sent to commanders-in-chief and military district commanders regularly. At 6:30, the government quarter was sealed off, and no one was allowed to cross the barrier.

But actions could not be coordinated. A broadcast to counteract misleading reports from German high command headquarters could not be made because radio transmitters still had not been secured. Commanding officers questioned the orders they were being sent, sat on their hands, or waited for clear confirmation. Operating bases for controlling the SS had been set up at two locations, but the full contingent of troops and tanks did not arrive until 7:30 pm. Field Marshal von Witzleben, the most senior officer in authority and a man conspirators looked to for clarification, criticized operations, gave the impression that the enterprise had failed, and left Bendlerblock at 8:15 pm. At the same time, conspirators were informed that one of their operatives, Major Remer, had not only failed to fulfill his orders, he was meeting with Josef Goebbels, the man charged with putting down the insurrection and wreaking retribution.

Stauffenberg nevertheless persisted. From 6:00 to 10:00 pm, he made telephone call after telephone call to district commanders involved in the coup plot, at first trying to counteract messages from the Wolfsschanze command: “The wireless communique is incorrect. The Führer is dead. Previous orders are to be carried out with all possible speed.” (Countdown, p 226)

Later on, he admitted to listeners that Hitler was not dead after all, but he insisted that the coup was still possible, things were moving ahead, it was too soon to give up hope. 

At 9:00 pm, however, Deutschland sender announced that the Führer would soon be making a nationwide broadcast, Heinrich Himmler had been made Commander in Charge of the Reserve Army and district commanders could accept orders only from him, conspirators who had been protecting the Bendlerblock withdrew, and SS units as well as troops lined up to storm the building.

The Response

The German High Command was slow to respond after the assassination attempt at Wolfsschanze early in the afternoon of July 20. For one thing, Hitler and other leaders did not want to delay their scheduled meeting with Italian leader Benito Mussolini who arrived at the complex by train at 4:00 pm.

For another, leaders assumed the bombing had been an isolated attack, an assassination attempt planned and executed by a single person.

But by 4:20 pm, army commanders in the field began telephoning headquarters, asking whether the Führer had been killed. Even more chilling for the Nazi high command, the commanders asked whether they should be taking emergency measures as directed from Bendlerblock.

A little over an hour later, Hitler ordered Josef Goebbels to send out a broadcast about the failed attack, his limited injuries, and his ongoing meeting with the Duce. But the announcement did little to tamp down the revolt. An army reserve guard battalion had surrounded the Reichschancellery and was trying to occupy it.

As Himmler was preparing to assume the role of Commander in Charge of the Reserve Army, Hitler reportedly told him: “Shoot anyone who resists, no matter who it is. The fate of the nation is at stake. Be ruthless.” (The Flame of Freedom, p 339)

At 10:50 pm, the last orders were issued from Bendlerblock. A half-dozen or more non-commissioned officers with hand grenades, pistols, and tommy guns broke into Gen. Olbricht’s office, fired shots, one of which wounded Stauffenberg. Taken to Fromm’s office, the conspirators were disarmed and arrested. Gen. Beck tried to shoot and kill himself but failed; he was killed later by a sergeant.

Between 11:00 and 11:15 pm, sentries surrounded the building, secured the entrances, and occupied the signals bunker. Gen. Fromm then announced summary courts martial and death sentences for four principal coup conspirators.

The four coup leaders were taken to a courtyard, and each was led to a pile of sand that had been prepared as protection during air raids. Headlights from army trucks illuminated the scene while ten NCOs fired tommy guns. A few minutes after midnight, Olbricht, Merz, Stauffenberg and his aide Werner von Haeften were dead.

 Sources:

 John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

Peter Hoffman: Stauffenberg, Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008

Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1963.

The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

July 20, 1944, Wolfsschanze

Operation Valkyrie conspirators were running out of time. If they hoped to assassinate Hitler and mount a military coup, they had to act quickly.

Despite fierce fighting, Allied troops continued to gain ground in the summer of 1944. On the Eastern Front, Soviet Army tanks crossed the Bug River and entered Poland. British and Canadian forces launched Operation Goodwood, demolished the Germans’ 352 Division, and drove the Wehrmacht out of south Caen, France. Then, on July 17, an American fighter strafed the car carrying “Desert Fox” Erwin Rommel and sent him to the hospital with a head wound.

On the home front, the German Resistance was collapsing. Berlin police issued a warrant for the arrest of one of the top organizers of Operation Valkyrie—Carl Goerdeler—and rumors were swirling about the overall plan itself: Claus von Stauffenberg heard from a German naval officer that people were telegraphing details about an assault on the Führer, saying openly that an attack at Hitler’s headquarters in Wolfsschanze was imminent. (Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008)

Stauffenbeg and others decided they had to make their move. They decided to take the final, definitive steps of their plan on July 20 at a hastily called conference by the German High Command to discuss the critical situation on the Eastern Front.

https://gazettereview.com/five-human-skeletons-found-outside-home-of-nazi-leader-hermann-goring/

Stauffenberg, fellow conspirator and Reserve Army officer Werner von Haeften, explosives expert Hellmuth Stieff, and an aide flew to Wolfsschanze early that morning. At 11:30 am, Stauffenberg and Haeften were driven through the security zones on the outskirts of the complex into the highly fortified and guarded inner zone, Sperrkreis 1, each cradling a briefcase with two pounds of plastic hexite explosives imbedded with 30-minute fuses. 

When the meeting was delayed a half hour to prepare to host Benito Mussolini, Stauffenberg took advantage of the opportunity to work with Haeften, check on the explosives, and trigger the timers so he asked to be taken to a room where he could freshen up and change his shirt.

As soon as they were behind a closed door, Stauffenberg and Haeften set about arming the explosives. From his uniform pocket, Stauffenberg removed a specially prepared pair of pliers (one of the handles had been bent so Stauffenberg could manipulate it with his remaining three fingers). He removed the fuses from one of the bombs and squeezed the copper casings to break the glass vials and release acid into the cotton that surrounded the wiring. He looked through an inspection hole to be sure the spring of the striker pin was intact, removed a safety bolt, and reinserted the fuses. Before he had a chance to arm the second explosive device, the door to the room opened. One man, sent to urge Stauffenberg to hurry along to the conference, called from the doorway: “Stauffenberg, do come along.” Another stood in the doorway, watching the two men as they hurriedly snapped the flaps of their briefcases closed, turned, rushed into the hallway, and went separate ways.

Carrying the briefcase with the unarmed explosive, Haeften left the building so he could be sure a car was waiting to take him and Stauffenberg to the airfield as soon as the trap was set.

Struggling with the weight of the other, armed briefcase under his arm, Stauffenberg started walking to the conference room. When an aide offered to carry the briefcase and placed his hand on the handle, Stauffenberg yanked it away from him. Worried his action appeared to be suspicious, Stauffenberg quickly relented, let the aide carry the briefcase, and asked the man to be sure to place it on the floor under the conference table where he would be standing—as close as possible to Hitler so his impaired hearing would not interfere and he would hear everything the Führer had to say.

The Conference Room

Stauffenberg and the aide entered the conference room at about 12:35 pm. By then, 25 men were standing around a heavy wooden conference table, listening to Major-General Heusinger, acting Chief of the German Army General Staff, provide an update on the Soviet Army’s progress along the Eastern Front and trace troop movements across a map of Russia, Poland, and Germany.

After he was introduced to the group, Stauffenberg approached the right side and corner of the table, just to the side of the trestle that supported it. He then moved close to Hitler so he could shake his hand as the aide placed the briefcase on the floor in front of him.

While Heusinger was detailing the desperate position of German troops near Lemberg, Ukraine, Stauffenberg stepped back from the table, whispered to Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel standing to Hitler’s left that he had to make an urgent call to Berlin to find out the latest information about the Army Reserve units that might be deployed to the Russian campaign.

In the briefing hut moments later, Stauffenberg asked to be connected to the Chief Signal Officer of the Army High Command (and a fellow conspirator), and waited, holding the telephone receiver, until the escort left. As soon as he was alone, he exited the building, and hurried to meet two associates. While the three men were talking, they heard a deafening roar, saw a cloud of smoke and dust rising from the hut, and watched as a body bearing the Führer’s cloak was carried from the building.

Stauffenberg and Haeften climbed into their automobile and drove to the first checkpoint, arriving and passing through the guarded gate at 12:44 pm, about a minute after the explosion. They were stopped at the second checkpoint when an alarm sounded throughout the complex. Stalled behind a barrier and the anti-tank guns and barbed-wire surrounding the airfield, Stauffenberg told guards they must let him and his aide through: he had come directly from the Führer, he said, and had to fly to Berlin at once where a high-level army officer was waiting to meet him. But the sergeant in command refused.

Stauffenberg insisted that the sergeant call Wolfsschanze headquarters so he could speak with an adjutant, Cpt. Leonhard von Mollendorf. Stauffenberg insisted to Mollendorf that the Wolfsschanze commander had given him permission to leave the complex immediately. Although Mollendorf could not verify Stauffenberg’s story, he nevertheless allowed passage, reasoning that Stauffenberg was a valued intelligence officer. He had been to Wolfsschanze many times before and had been honored as a severely injured war veteran.

Thus, the barrier was raised, and the car was allowed to pass. As soon as the auto was far enough away from the barrier, Haeften pulled apart the elements of the second bomb and threw them into the woods. The two men boarded the aircraft and took off at 1:15 pm.

The Explosion

After Stauffenberg left the conference room, one of the officers moved closer to Hitler so he could get a better view of the map and kicked over Stauffenberg’s briefcase. When he bent down to right it, he pushed it further under the table and next to the heavy wooden table support.

As Heusinger was describing the progress of the Russian forces north toward Dvinsk, Adolf Hitler leaned over the table to find the locale on the map. All of a sudden, he was blinded by an intense flash of light and deafened by a heavy, deep roar, then “bluish-yellow flame shot out of the windows, hurling with it glass and splinters, and a cloud of choking black smoke.” (John Grehan: The Hitler Assassinations, p. 188).

One of the generals later reported: “In a flash the map room became a scene of stampede and destruction. At one moment…a set of men…a focal point of world events; at the next there was nothing but wounded men groaning, the acrid smell of burning; and charred fragments of maps and papers fluttering in the wind….” (Countdown, p 192)

Another: “…I saw around me a ruin of wood and glass…At the door a terrible scene greeted me. Severely injured officers lay around on the floor, others were reeling around and falling over.” (The Hitler Assassinations, p 189)

https://www.dhm.de/veranstaltung/zu-spaet-das-attentat-vom-20-juli-1944-auf-adolf-hitler-1/

The heavy 30-foot-long conference table had been blown into three pieces. Pieces of the concrete-reinforced roof had crashed to the floor. Men stood with clothes shredded or burned into their bodies.

And the Führer? “His hair had been set alight; right arm and leg burned and partially paralysed through shock; his black trousers were trailing around his blooded, splinter-flecked legs in tattered ribbons; and both his ear-drums had burst. His buttocks, as he ruefully jested later, had been bruised ‘as blue as a baboon’s behind’ by the impact of him being flung headlong on the floor by the blast.’ (Countdown, p 193)

The body that Stauffenberg and Haeften had seen after the explosion? He was convinced, and he continued telling fellow conspirators as many as five hours later, that Hitler was most assuredly dead, that he had seen Hitler’s dead body. But at the time of the blast, he most likely was too far away to have seen anyone clearly.

Sources

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

Peter Hoffman: Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944, University of Cambridge Press, 1992.

Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008.

Anthony Shaw: World War II Day by Day, Chartwell Books, 2011.

Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1963.

The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

Operation Valkyrie

The four necessary elements for an assassination attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler appeared to be in place. In early 1944, conspirators had decided on the method--a bomb; the place—Wolfsschanze; the assassin—Claus von Stauffenberg; and the timing—soon.

But then the Allies invaded.

https://www.goodfreephotos.com/historical-battles/world-war-ii/american-troops-approaching-omaha-beach-on-normandy-beach-d-day-world-war-ii.jpg.php

 The largest air and amphibious invasion in history mobilized more than 24,000 paratroopers, 150,000 soldiers, and nearly 200,000 naval personnel; sent more than 2000 bombers to attack targets along the Normandy coast as well as 9000 other aircraft; deployed minesweepers, battleships, cruisers, merchant ships, destroyers, and landing craft as well as tanks and teams of engineers and demolition men. The result: D-Day opened up a heavily manned second front against the German Army that almost certainly assured defeat of the Wehrmacht and the dismantling of the Third Reich.

With D-Day came despair among leaders of Operation Valkyrie as their wish that the assassination and military coup would bring a quick end to the war disappeared. “There was now no chance whatsoever that the Allies would agree to a negotiated peace, the war would be fought to the bitter end and millions more lives would be lost.”  Their hope to show Allies that they were willing to take the drastic step of removing the leaders of what they considered to be a despotic government—gone. “A putsch against the Nazis—even in the unlikely event of it succeeding—would be a futile gesture at best, since any post-Hitler government would be faced with equally unpalatable options of unconditional surrender or fighting a hopeless war to its inevitable conclusion.” (Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008, p 171.)

But Henning von Tresckow would not be deterred. He was adamant: “The assassination must be attempted, come what may. Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin [to launch a coup]. For the practical purpose no longer matters; all that counts 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.” (Countdown, p. 171)

Run Up to the July 20

Pressures on the conspirators to take action intensified in the days and weeks after D-Day as losses on both the Eastern and Western Fronts mounted.

On June 23, the Soviet Union’s Red Army attacked the German Army Group Centre on four fronts equipped with four times more aircraft and tanks.

Less than a week later, British forces advanced west of Caen, France, and the US Army occupied Cherbourg.

On July 4, the Red Army led a three-fronted assault on German-occupied Baltic States, sources of food and routes of major supply lines between Germany and Finland and Sweden.

The German Army’s Group Centre on the Eastern Front collapsed on July 8, Minsk fell on July 11, and Russian troops were expected to cross the Vistula River, barrel across German territory, and be on the outskirts of Berlin within ten days.

On July 14, Erwin Rommel drafted a letter that warned Adolf Hitler the Allies would soon completely break through German defenses and definitively decide the course of war. Four days later, US forces began to erode and eventually destroy the German 352nd Division at St. Lô, then continued their drive to the east and the steady erosion of German armored divisions.   (Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1963, p 295)

In addition to losses on the battlefield, the German Resistance movement was fracturing.

Julius Leber, the former Reichstag deputy and spokesperson for the Socialist Democratic Party, met with other planners of the post-Nazi, coup government on June 21 to discuss whether members of the Communist underground should be included. The next day, he and associate Adolf Reichwein met with two Communist functionaries as well as a mysterious third man who knew and, against underground meeting protocols, addressed Leber by name. At the next scheduled meeting on July 4, Reichwein was arrested; Leber was apprehended the following morning.

Whether the arrests came because the Gestapo had infiltrated the secretive group or because a conspirator in their ranks had betrayed them, leaders of Operation Valkyrie realized they had to act asap.

Early Steps

By early July, Stauffenberg was regularly carrying the briefcase hiding “the whole bag of tricks.” (Countdown, p 176) Though Stauffenberg met with Hitler a number of times, he didn’t pull the pin. 

On July 6 and 8, Stauffenberg met with Hitler at the Berghof ironically to fine-tune the original plans for Valkyrie. Since the Allied invasion, the German High Command looked for ways to counteract other attacks, notably against the largely unprotected German coastline to the north. Stauffenberg had been asked to adjust the Valkyrie response to attacks or insurrections at home by planning to move German soldiers home on leave (a total of 300,000 at any given time) into “shell detachments” and give their military commanders emergency executive powers to oversee all government and military operations, including the work of the Nazi Party, Gestapo, and SS, in response. For whatever reason, Stauffenberg did not arm or explode the bomb at either meeting. (Countdown)

On July 11, Stauffenberg again carried the briefcase and bomb to a meeting with Hitler at the Berghof, but again, he did not trigger it because neither Heinrich Himmler nor Hermann Goering had been present. The conspirators had planned to assassinate not only Hitler but also remove the two top leaders of the Nazi regime and assure that neither man could assume control after Hitler’s death. The assassination attempt was not made, therefore. (John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022)

On July 15 at what conspirators considered to be the best location for assassination—Wolfsschanze—Stauffenberg came closer to the assassination than he had before. He and others entered the briefing hut—a one-story wood building with a concrete ceiling, brick supports, and windows with steel shutters—at 1:00 pm. A few minutes after the start of the meeting, Stauffenberg left to make a phone call, allegedly to his chief of staff.

During the call, he acknowledged to Operation Valkyrie leaders that again, Himmler and Goering were absent. This time, though, he received the go-ahead. “Do it,” Oberst Mertz von Quirnheim, chief of the strategic planning arm of the German Army Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) and coup leader, told him. The attempt nevertheless failed. When Stauffenberg returned to the conference, his briefcase was missing. (Stauffenberg’s associate and supplier of the bomb and its detonator Generalmajor Helmuth Stieff had taken the briefcase while Stauffenberg was out of the room.) By this time, the meeting was winding down. There was not enough time for Stauffenberg to excuse himself and leave again, find a safe place to open the briefcase and set the fuse. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

The Debate

By this time, leaders of Operation Valkyrie were torn. They wanted to rid themselves and their country from Hitler and the Nazi regime but wanted Germany to remain a military and political power. To some, Hitler’s assassination had to be accompanied by a coup that established a new government so an Allied victory would not abandon German soldiers, impose rule by invading armies, and perhaps unleash a civil war.

Hitler still had power over the German people and most of the troops on the front lines. By eliminating him and his government, Operation Valkyrie could end up enshrining him as a martyr and blame coup leaders for another “stab in the back” of the country and its people.

“But there were compelling reasons for action…Something had to be done to establish a responsible government which could not be ignored by the Allies. And action had to be taken if the German people were to be given the chance of changing their ways and showing repentance, through their own efforts and not under foreign compulsion.” (Flame of Freedom, p 206)

A friend and associate of Stauffenberg, Rudolf Fahrner, recalled a conversation the two men had on July 4 about whether there was any point to the assassination and coup if the country would soon be occupied. The men agreed Operation Valkyrie could not only save lives and property, it could open the door to a new political life for the German people. “The whole affair was not a matter of outward success. It was a command of moral purification and honour that had to be obeyed.” (Flame of Freedom, p 289)

Stauffenberg and the coup plotters would try one more time—on July 20, 1944.

Sources:

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022

Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008

Anthony Shaw: World War II, Day by Day, Chartwell Books                                      

Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1963

The Other Stories: People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Third and Fourth Lessons: Where and How?

As noted in previous Historka posts, German General Henning von Tresckow had learned four important lessons from previous failed assassination attempts. The first lesson—When?  Operation Valkyrie and the assassination of Adolf Hitler could not go forward until the German Armed Forces were clearly losing World War II. After D-Day on June 6, 1944, and heavy losses on the Eastern Front, timing of the Valkyrie assassination attempt became clear. It would need to happen in the summer of 1944 (see Historka, July, 2025).

The second lesson--Who? To help ensure success of the operation, the right man had to be chosen for the assassination job. Because of his regular access to Hitler in military briefings, his status as a wounded German military leader, his leadership within the Resistance and familiarity with Valkyrie, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg was the obvious choice as assassin. (See Historka, September, 2025)

Two lessons remained: Where? The actual site of the assassination attempt. And How? The method of attack.

Where? Wolf’s Lair

Wolf’s Lair or Wolfsschanze became Hitler’s base of operations for leading the war against the Soviet Union in 1941. The secretive and heavily fortified military headquarters was located in the countryside in East Prussia near the Soviet border. It was surrounded by the dense Masurian woods and edged by lakes and swampy areas. In territory that had been German before World War I, the site was close enough to the Eastern Front to direct military operations, but it was remote enough to escape detection by Soviet or Allied aircraft.

 Over the next three years, nearly 200 buildings and facilities were constructed over an area of 6.5 kilometers, including an airstrip and railway platform, power plant, water processing plant, sewer system, and heating plant plus a communications bunker, mess hall, cinema, sauna, tea house, and sick bay as well as 50 reinforced bunkers, shelters, and work rooms.  

https://wolfsschanze.pl/en/wolfs-lair-historical-photos/

Buildings were hidden under the forest canopy, covered by camouflage netting, and heavily fortified. As described by John Grehan: “Constructed of reinforced concrete, [bunkers]  generally consisted of an inner core measuring around 6 metres in height containing a narrow corridor, off which a handful of small rooms could be accessed.  Around that core, a massive concrete outer shell was added taking to total height up to 12 metres, with walls 6 metres thick and an additional 7 metres of foundations below ground.”  (Hitler's Wolfsschanze: The Wolf's Lair Headquarters on the Eastern Front – An Illustrated Guide, Frontline Books, 2023: https://www.amazon.com/Wolfs-Lair-Hitlers-Headquarters-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B098PGM64N)

 Thirty meter-long briefing rooms were made of solid brick, and living quarters were layered to protect against aerial bombing. The ceiling of Hitler’s bunker itself had an external five meter-thick shell and an internal two meter-thick lining. Gravel filled the space between the layers to cushion and protect the inner lining.

 In his book, Grehan quoted German General Walter Warlimont: “’over the course of three years ‘Wolfsschanze’ was turned into a fortress; the barbed-wire fences and the minefields became thicker and the concrete blocks stuck up like the superstructures of old-style cruisers.’  In fact, through the period of its occupation, the site consumed nearly 175,000 cubic metres of concrete; mixed, poured and shaped by a permanent workforce of around 4,600 labourers.” (Hitler's Wolfsschanze: The Wolf's Lair Headquarters on the Eastern Front – An Illustrated Guide)

Security

Wolf’s Lair was divided into three security zones: The most interior Sperrkreis I housed Hitler’s own bunker and living quarters for some close aides, like Martin Bormann. Sperrkreis II included barracks for communications staff, SS, and Wehrmacht officers as well as flak batteries, watch towers, and antitank gun emplacements. The outermost Sperrkreis III provided heavy protection. Within five meter-wide rows of barbed-wire fencing were minefields, antiaircraft batteries, and antitank bunkers.  

Camouflage was used widely. Artificial trees and netting hid roads and pathways within the complex. Moss and other plantings were added to the roofs of larger bunkers, and Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft regularly flew over the area to make sure none of the buildings could be seen from the air.

Maskowanie-bun kra-w-wilczym-sz ancu https://wolfsschanze.pl/en/wolfs-lair-historical-photos/

Firepower fluctuated over time but remained formidable: antiaircraft guns numbered between 30 and 31. At any given time, light machine guns of various types ranged in number from 32 to 110. There were also tank guns, heavy machine guns, antitank rifles, and long-barreled tank guns. Troops grew in number from nearly 1300 to more than 1500 in 1941.

Like other German Army HQ, Wolf’s Lair was integrated into the Air Fleet Reich early warning system and housed land troops as part of its defensive planning. The site had even more air defense. An Air Intelligence Detachment manned observation posts to watch for nearby airplanes as well as a signal corps to activate air alerts and a brigade of ground troops.

SS and Hitler’s personal security team policed the inner circle of the complex, supervising the changing of the guard and patrols, equipping the men who served on guard duty, and changing passwords. Permanent guards were posted at or patrolled Hitler’s bunker day and night, monitoring entrances to the bunker itself as well as the coal storage room, restricting unauthorized personnel and supervising repairmen or craftsmen, challenging unauthorized personnel for their papers and escorting them to the leader of the duty. If found on the grounds without a pass or the proper password, a laborer or even a guard could be shot.

Routine

Wolf’s Lair was the site where many of the major later decisions about the war were made, such as orders for the siege of Leningrad and the ill-fated move against Stalingrad, during noon briefings usually held in bunkers used by Wilhelm Keitel or Alfred Jodl. 

https://wolfsschanze.pl/en/wolfs-lair-historical-photos/

 It was also Hitler’s main residence from 1941 to 1944. While living at the complex for nearly 800 days, Hitler kept to a regular schedule: A walk with his dog at 9:00 or 10:00 am, a review of the day’s mail at 10:30, a two-hour military operations briefing beginning at noon, lunch at 2:00 pm, and meetings about non-military matters until coffee at 5:00 pm. After a follow-up military briefing at 6:00 pm, dinner began at 7:30; afterward, films were shown in the cinema, and Hitler retired to his living quarters. 

Despite the heavy security and nearly impenetrable fortifications, Wolf’s Lair was chosen as the site for Operation Valkyrie’s first step: the assassination of Adolf Hitler. Unlike the sites of previous failed assassination attempts, Hitler’s attendance at meetings and events was not happenstance; he adhered to a clear and regular schedule. His movements were not helter-skelter nor motivated by suspicion or paranoia; he felt protected, secure, and relaxed. The assigned assassin need not worry about gaining access; Stauffenberg was invited to share information at the military briefings as chief of staff of the Reserve Army. All he needed was the modus operandi—a specially designed explosive device.

How? A Bomb

Assassination by firearm was ruled out. The heavy security at Wolf’s Lair, plus the frequent and close inspections of visitors most likely would find any weapon carried on the grounds and disarm the bearer. Even if he could somehow smuggle a weapon past guards, Stauffenberg could not easily aim or shoot a firearm. Following the strafing attack in Tunisia in April, 1943, Stauffenberg’s left eye was removed, his right hand and two fingers from his left hand were surgically removed.

The modus operandi for the most recent assassination attempts on Hitler’s life was a grenade (see Historka, September 2025). Once again, Stauffenberg’s injuries precluded that choice. He could not quickly remove a grenade from a hiding spot or pull the pin while it remained hidden in his clothing.

The method of attack for Operation Valkyrie was an explosive device that could be hidden in a briefcase, carried by Stauffenberg into a military briefing, triggered to explode within minutes, and placed under a table close to where Hitler was standing.

The device actually included two time bombs that had been assembled from German-made plastic explosive. Both had two packs of the explosive material plus a detonator and a fuse within a capsule of acid. The fuse was timed to trigger explosion 10 minutes after the acid capsule was broken.

The bombs were placed in a briefcase Stauffenberg would carry to a briefing at Wolf’s Lair. Minutes before the planned explosion, he had to activate at least one of the devices by crushing the glass capsule and releasing the acid.  

Plans were ready for Operation Valkyrie

 Sources:

Margaritoff, Marco. "Go Inside The Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s Massive Command Center On The Eastern Front." AllThatsInteresting.com, first published on August 25, 2021, updated on December 2, 2022. https://allthatsinteresting.com/the-wolfs-lair. Accessed October 30, 2025.

 https://allthatsinteresting.com/the-wolfs-lair

Wolf's Lair: Hitler's secret reinforced bunker where he planned the greatest evils of WWII

Wolf's Lair 033. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poland._K%C4%99trzyn._Gier%C5%82o%C5%BC._Wolf%27s_Lair_033.JPG

https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/year-10/hitler-s-wolf-s-lair/

John Grehan: Hitler's Wolfsschanze: The Wolf's Lair Headquarters on the Eastern Front – An Illustrated Guide, Frontline Books, 2023: https://www.amazon.com/Wolfs-Lair-Hitlers-Headquarters-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B098PGM64N

Peter Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security, Da Capo Press, 2000.

 K. Macindoe: The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht in the July 20 Plot to Assassinate Hitler, University of Washington Eagle Scholar, 29 April 2016

 Roger Moorhouse: The Wolf's Lair: Inside Hitler's Germany Paperback – September 5, 2018 https://www.amazon.com/Wolfs-Lair-Inside-Hitlers-Germany/dp/172004791X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1FLOFNUIYD2OT&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.G67-vRFizrAk9EsITwTyYpwm4VdhRQTPnrYmfHoUGr_GjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.66t0ra8B2usLnTpM8xQ8YTRz5CBMVh4JMFNr2vPYZjU&dib_tag=se&keywords=roger+moorhouse+wolf%27s+lair&qid=1762186667&s=books&sprefix=roger+moorhouse+wolf%27s+lair%2Cstripbooks%2C763&sr=1-1

Cambridge University Library |

https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/germanic-collections/about-collections/spotlight-archive/operation-valkyrie

 Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › 20_July_plot

 Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008.

The Other Stories: People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

Lesson Two: Who?

Before the German military Resistance could trigger Operation Valkyrie, assassinate Adolf Hitler, and mount a coup, they had to find the right man for the job. Their search intensified in 1943-44, when several possible candidates tried and failed to kill the Führer.

https://alchetron.com/Axel-Freiherr-von-dem-Bussche-Streithorst

Captain Axel von dem Bussche-Streithorst. Bussche joined the military Resistance in 1942 after he could do nothing to stop SS and Einsatzgruppen from killing 5000 Jewish residents of the Dubno Polish ghetto in a single day. After Ukrainian militia had already executed 10,000 ghetto residents in daily mass shootings, letting the bodies fall into mass graves on the outskirts of town, SS and Einsatzgruppen were ordered to finish off the rest expeditiously. Jewish men, women, and children were stripped of their clothing, led to one of three pits along the perimeter of an abandoned airfield, and shot to death. (Countdown to Valkyrie)

Little more than a year later, Bussche agreed to carry a bomb hidden in the pocket of a new greatcoat uniform and detonate the device while Hitler inspected the garment that had been designed to withstand the cold of the Russian winter. But he never got the chance to meet with Hitler. The inspection was rescheduled time after time, and it was called off entirely when the supply of greatcoats was destroyed in an Allied bombing run. (Countdown, Plotting Hitler’s Death)

Lt. Ewald Heinrich von Kleist. After new greatcoats became available in January, 1944, Kleist was enlisted to take Bussche’s place as model of the uniform and bomb carrier. Kleist was the son of a conservative German political leader who had tried to get England’s support for the Oster coup plan in 1938 (see the Oster Conspiracy in Historka,) and urged his son to take on the mission, saying: “You have to do it. Anyone who falters at such a moment will never feel at one with himself again.” The plan to tape plastic explosives to his waist and trigger a hand grenade was called off at the last minute, however, because SS leader Heinrich Himmler would not also be present at the inspection. (Countdown, p 166)   

https://infostation.synagoge-stadthagen.de/biografien/biografie-details/eberhard-breitenbuch.html

 Captain Eberhard von Breitenbuch. Opposed to the National Socialists since they had come to power, Breitenbuch had been aware of assassination plans since August, 1943. He was eager to participate the following year when he was scheduled to attend a military briefing on March 11. He planned to carry a rifle grenade under his clothing and detonate it when Hitler was close by. An added and opportune turn of events--Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, and Josef Goebbels would also be at the briefing. Breitenbuch was denied entry at the door to the briefing, however, when an SS officer pulled him away and told him no one from his unit of the special missions group was permitted.  (Stauffenberg)

The Resistance then turned to one in their midst, a principal planner of Operation Valkyrie itself and a man who had been vetting assassin candidates himself—Lt. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. 

https://www.pinterest.com/pamelalizlee/claus-von-stauffenberg-biography/

 Stauffenberg originally supported Hitler over von Hindenburg (whom he considered to be “a reactionary favoured by the narrow-minded middle classes”) in 1932 and Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor the following year. He agreed with Hitler’s plans for rearmament, the acquisition of heavy weapons, and expansion of the army as well as the reunification of all Germans living in other countries, eg, Austria and Czechoslovakia, within the country’s borders. (Stauffenberg)

Stauffenberg’s views soured, however, when he realized the Hitler regime did not value the military or wish to govern alongside it. (Hitler went ahead with his plans to acquire Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938 despite lack of support from military leaders, for example.) Stauffenberg echoed other military leaders who believed the “Army was Germany’s right hand and…the Chief of the Army must be consulted on all major internal and foreign policy decisions that might affect the Army.” His position intensified over time, until he actively supported overthrowing the Third Reich, noting: “We are the leadership of the Army and also of the nation and we shall take control of that leadership.” (Stauffenberg, p 110)

Though involved primarily with military operations, Stauffenberg over time also learned about crimes committed by SS and Einsatzgruppen units behind the lines in Russia after ordering an aide to gather reports of any activity involving the SS in 1941, and he was told about the mass murders of Jews in Poland and Russia in 1942. From that point on, he quietly insisted that the “foolish and criminal” Adolf Hitler must be overthrown. (Stauffenberg, p 133) He still did not consider joining the military Resistance officially until 1943 when he was approached by Henning von Tresckow while recovering from grievous war wounds.  

Believing the Allies most assuredly would win the war, Henning von Tresckow accelerated plans to remove Hitler from power, telling a friend in the summer of 1943, “everything…must be done to end [hostilities] soon,” meaning “the leadership would have to go.” (Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 214) He began working closely with Stauffenberg six months after a strafing had seriously injured the colonel.

On April 7, 1943, Stauffenberg was being driven from one armored unit to another while fighter-bombers swooped down on vehicles of the 10th Panzer Division as they attempted to retreat over the narrow Chabita-Khetati Pass in Tunisia. Planes strafed burning vehicles, igniting ammunition, disabling lorries, leading men and their machinery to fling themselves away from the trajectory, and spraying Stauffenberg with bullets after he threw himself from his automobile to the ground. In the field hospital near Sfax, Stauffenberg was treated for his injuries—the little and ring fingers on his left hand and his right hand above the wrist were amputated, and his left eye was removed.

One month after being introduced to one another in August, Tresckow and Stauffenberg set about revising plans for the Operation Valkyrie coup, including orders for mobilization and deployment of military units and rapid formation of combat-ready regiments. Under the guise of bolstering the regime’s response if civil unrest or Allied gains threatened Berlin or other municipalities on the home front, Stauffenberg even met with Hitler and gained his approval for rapid-mobilization measures that would bolster the coup by conferring power over the SS, the Nazi Party, and the government of the Third Reich to military commanders-in-chief as soon as Hitler was assassinated and Operation Valkyrie was set in motion.

In early July, 1944, Stauffenberg was promoted to full colonel and confirmed as the Chief of Staff to the commander of the Reserve Army, a position that brought him in direct contact with Hitler at military briefings. And, thus, he became the ideal assassin—the man who had regular access to Hitler, was respected by the leaders of the German military and Third Reich, and would not be suspected.

To that end, Stauffenberg began carrying a bomb in his briefcase on July 8, 1944. Although he was in close proximity to Hitler on several occasions in the early days of July, he did not activate the device: On July 11, he refrained because Göring and Himmler were not present at the briefing. It’s not clear why he deferred on July 15. He may not have been able to prime the bomb beforehand. A coconspirator may have removed the bomb from the Stauffenberg’s briefcase for fear that he would act regardless of whether Himmler was present or not. Or the conference may have ended unexpectedly.

The need to act and act quickly intensified in the next few days. There were major setbacks on both the Eastern and Western fronts of the war, rumors that the Gestapo was zeroing in on at least one of the major coup plotters (a warrant had been issued for the man who had been selected by the conspirators to serve as leader of the military coup government), and suspicions that coup plans were being leaked. (Countdown)

The day for launching Operation Valkyrie then became clear: The military coup and the assassination of Adolf Hitler would take place on July 20, 1944.

Sources:

Peter Hoffman: Stauffenberg, A Family History, 1905-1944, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, The July Plot to Assassinate Hitler, Frontline Books, 2008.

Joachim Fest: Plotting Hitler’s Death, Metropolitan Books, 1996.

The Other Stories: People, Places, and Events behind the Headlines in History

Valkyrie

The July 20, 1944, plot to kill Adolf Hitler introduced to moviegoers by the 2008 Tom Cruise film Valkyrie, was a sophisticated plan for a military coup that capitalized on and modified actions that could be taken in a state of emergency to mobilize Reserve Army forces at a moment’s notice, institute martial law, and put down internal unrest.

https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/valkyrie https://www.filmelier.com/movies/19438/valkyrie

 The German Resistance plan for a coup following Hitler’s assassination was based on a comprehensive set of emergency directives that actually had been established by the German Army and approved by Hitler himself. Called Operation Valkyrie, the plan was formulated by Friedrich Olbricht, Chief of the General Army Office, in 1941-42.  There were two phases to the plan. Valkyrie I was created after the German Army’s catastrophic losses on the Russian front in 1941 and was designed to develop and mobilize reserve army units to the front lines. (Peter Hoffman: Stauffenberg, Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Valkyrie II prepared combat-ready units to operate in the home land or in occupied areas as internal threats to the stability of the Third Reich grew: The number of prisoners of war and foreign workers in defense industries was higher than 4 million in 1941 and expected to more than double by 1944. (Stauffenberg; Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1964.) As the war intensified, the General Army Office also expected more intensive Allied bombing campaigns.

Central to Operation Valkyrie was the Ersatzheer, the Replacement or Reserve Army, which was stationed within Germany and responsible for training and guard duties. With Operation Valkyrie, the Reserve Army would “take control of infrastructure and preserve public order” in the face of turmoil or an actual uprising. (https://www.beachesofnormandy.com/articles/Valkyrie/?id=2f2b1260f5)

The Coup Plan

Operation Valkyrie was modified in 1943 and 1944 by Henning von Tresckow to foster a military coup that would follow Hitler’s death.

(The Tom Cruise film Valkyrie makes it appear that Claus von Stauffenberg was the prime mover behind the planning of the Operation Valkyrie, but documents obtained by the Soviets after the war and released in 2007 show that three people were responsible for the revisions to the Operation Valkyrie and the General Orders: Tresckow, his wife Erika, and his secretary Margarethe von Oven. https://www.beachesofnormandy.com/articles/Valkyrie/?id=2f2b1260f5)

The revised operation included two General Orders that would be triggered immediately after Hitler’s assassination. The first General Order would announce that the Führer was dead and that “an unscrupulous clique of Party leaders, remote from the fighting front, have tried to exploit the situation, stab the struggling army in the back, and usurp power for their own ends.” (The Flame of Freedom, p 238)

The second General Order would declare a state of emergency and transfer power from both the Wehrmacht and the leadership of the Third Reich to designated commanders of the Reserve Army in the home territory. It would institute immediate actions to:

·         Occupy postal and military communication centers and broadcasting outlets.

·         Arrest the heads of the SS, police, Gestapo, SS administrators, district and propaganda leaders.

·         Take over operation of concentration camps and arrest commandants and guards.

·         Arrest resisting Waffen-SS leaders and disarm any units that resisted the change of power.

·         Occupy SD and Gestapo centers, with the help of local police.

·         Maintain liaison between the Reserve Army and the Navy and Air Force. (The Flame of Freedom, p 239)

The revised orders directed the Ersatzheer to seize and remove members of the civilian Nazi government “under the pretext that the SS had killed Hitler.” The Reserve Army High Command, as a result, would actually be executing the coup when they believed they were the ones who were targeting and eliminating traitors and restoring the existing government. (https://www.beachesofnormandy.com/articles/Valkyrie/?id=2f2b1260f5)

Focusing primarily on Berlin, detailed orders were prepared for the officers who would be assuming command as well as the troops they would lead. Designated commandants would be responsible for:

·         Sealing off the Government quarter using the Guard Battalion, arresting Josef Goebbels and overseeing the Propaganda Ministry as well as the Head Office of the SS.

·         Using shock troops to occupy Reich Headquarters and arrest Reich leaders.

·         Attacking SS barracks by sealing off access roads, demanding surrender of senior SS officials, disarming SS unit members, and firing on anyone who resisted.

Under martial law, everyone would have to relinquish weapons unless they were part of specially authorized guard units. All offices of the Nazi Party would be closed and party leaders arrested. Assets of the Nazi Party also would be confiscated, and anyone removing or altering assets or making changes to documents or files would be charged and prosecuted in a courts martial.

Three-member courts martial would be empaneled to oversee trials for crimes of abuse of power, blackmail and bribery, and murder and exact swift punishment.

A complex system of communications that at first closed off all radio connections and news would be reopened within a matter of hours so coup plotters could inform the public and begin forming a provisional government. (The Flame of Freedom, p 240-247).

The Plan for Assassination

Before the Valkyrie coup plans could be initiated, Adolf Hitler had to be assassinated, and as Kathleen Michelle Maclndoe points out in her student scholarly research, The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie, the July 20, 1944, assassination plot reflects four lessons learned by Henning von Tresckow after his previous failed attempts to kill Hitler:

·         First, when?  ”An assassination attempt should ideally be made when the war was not going in Germany's favor.”

·         Second, who? ”The assassin needed direct access to Hitler, as he [Tresckow] was alarmed at the security precautions taken by the Führer's entourage.”

·         Third, where? “The assassination attempt needed to take place in Hitler's own headquarters where his movements would be more predictable and he would not be as paranoid about security.”

·         Fourth, how? “The method of assassination must not be shooting, and … a bomb was a better option.”  (Kathleen Michelle MacIndoe: University of Mary Washington Eagle Scholar Student Research Submissions Spring 4-29-2016, The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning v Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht)

The First Lesson: When?

In mid-summer, 1944, the German war effort was collapsing after overwhelming opposition. Among the war’s turning points:

The German war effort began to fail on the Eastern Front in early 1943. German Army units were split into pockets in Stalingrad in January. Less than a month later, 93,000 troops were forced to surrender the city.  Despite gains in Ukraine in February and March, Soviet counteroffensives led to the discontinuation of Operation Citadel, the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front in July, after more than 550 tanks had been lost and 500,000 men killed, missing, or wounded. The Red Army continued to advance, recapturing Smolensk in September, ending the German blockade of Leningrad in January, 1944, and advancing troops into Romania in March. (Anthony Shaw: World War II Day by Day, Chartwell Books, Inc., 2010.

Allies intensified their air war, launching a four-month offensive in the Ruhr in March, 1943, and night attacks on industrial centers in May. Operation Pointblank lifted off in June with steady attacks on the German aircraft industry and saturation bombings on economic and civilian targets. The late July, early August bombing campaign on Hamburg created a firestorm and “hurricane” effect that sped up and fueled flames, killing 50,000 people. Also in August, British bombers targeted the Flying Bomb V1 rocket research center on the Baltic Sea and in November began a five-month-long bombing offensive on Berlin. (World War II Day by Day)

Then, on June 6, 1944, D-Day sent 50,000 men in the initial invasion onto five beachheads along the coast of Normandy along with three airborne US and British airborne divisions. Overall, more than 2 million men were shipped to France, nearly 140 major warships as well as 220 small combat vessels, 1000 minesweepers and other vessels were deployed, as well as 4000 landing craft and 800 merchant ships, and over 10,000 aircraft, including bombers, fighters, gliders, and transports. (World War II Day by Day)

Relentless losses on the battlefield plus an emboldened Resistance led to a target assassination date: July 20, 1944.

(See the next Historka blogs for information about the Hitler assassin, the attack location, and the method of attack.)

Peter Hoffman: Stauffenberg, Cambridge University Press, 1992)

The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1964.)

 (https://www.beachesofnormandy.com/articles/Valkyrie/?id=2f2b1260f5

 Kathleen Michelle MacIndoe: University of Mary Washington Eagle Scholar Student Research Submissions Spring 4-29-2016, The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning v Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht

 Anthony Shaw: World War II Day by Day, Chartwell Books, Inc., 2010.   

HISTORKA--The Other Stories: People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Heroes’ Day Plan

Little more than a week after the bomb hidden in a fake box of Cointreau bottles failed to bring down Hitler’s plane in Operation Flash, Col. Henning von Tresckow set in motion another assassination attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler, hoping to take advantage of Heroes’ Memorial Day, the annual ceremony that commemorated the spring offensive against the Western Front in WW I.

The 1918 Spring Offensive

Eric Ludendorff, Quartermaster General for the German Army under Chief of Staff Paul Von Hindenburg, was credited for victories over the Russians at Tannenberg in 1914 and at Masurian Lakes in 1915. In March, 1918, he initiated Kaiserschlacht, or the Kaiser’s Battle, an aggressive offensive aimed at defeating the Allies before massive numbers of American soldiers could be shipped overseas. (The US entered WW I in April, 1917.) (https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ludendorff_erich.shtml)

The principal operation, codenamed Michael, began in the early hours of March 21, 1918, when artillery units blasted more than 1 million shells over 150 square miles in five hours. Then 60 German military divisions from three separate army units bombarded Allies’ military headquarters and communications and destroyed artillery, infantry, and heavy armament defenses. In less than two days, Operation Michael pushed the British Fifth Army into full retreat and sent troops all the way back to ports along the English Channel. (Watson, Alexander: German Spring Offensives 1918, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.)

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/295196950577912174/

Kaiser’s Battle recaptured land the Wehrmacht had lost to the Allies in 1916-17, added new occupied territories, and accounted for the deepest military advancements they had made since 1914. While the offensive was the biggest crisis the Allies had faced since the start of the war, it did not achieve clear victory, and Wehrmacht advances came at a high cost. The Allies lost 255,000 men, 1300 pieces of artillery, and 200 tanks. Germans lost 239,000 men, most among the elite frontline Stormtroopers who were hard to replace, and the remaining infantrymen were exhausted, far away from supply lines, and in a matter of months in pitched battle with new British and Australian units. (1918: spring offensive and advance to victory, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/western-front-1918, (Manatū Taonga — Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 28-May-2024)

Heroes’ Memorial Day

A memorial ceremony had been held throughout Germany every year since 1919 to honor those who had served in the First World War. Between 1919 and 1934, the ceremony honored the dead; beginning in 1934, it became part of a national day of commemoration for war heroes and recognition of the initial success of the Ludendorff offensive on the Western Front. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstrauertag#:~:text=On%2027%20February%201934%2C%20the,%22)%2C%20cementing%20the%20observance)

For March 21, 1943 Heroes’ Memorial Day, Adolf Hitler planned to make a speech, then inspect captured Soviet weapons in the Zeughaus Berlin Armory on Unter den Linden, along with Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, and Grand Admiral Karl Donitz.

At Hitler’s side was Baron Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, one of the organizers of the exhibition and a member of the German Army General Staff who, like Tresckow, had opposed the Nazi Regime since military officers were forced to pledge obeisance to Hitler, not the country of Germany in 1933, and agreed that “Hitler must be cut down like a rabid dog.” (Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008, p 142)

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/poetic-justice-the-plot-kill-hitler.html; December 18, 2017

The March 21, 1943, Plot

Gersdorff had hoped to be able to smuggle a bomb inside the Zeughaus and find a suitable site to hide it, under the platform from which Hitler would make his Heroes’ Day address, under the platform from which Hitler wound make his Heroes’ Day address, for example. However, security was heavy throughout the armory, especially around the speaker’s dais. So the plan became a suicide mission—Gersdorff would secrete a bomb in the pocket of his uniform, activate a timer that would trigger detonation in ten minutes, and blow up himself as well as Hitler. (Countdown to Valkyrie)

Late on the night before the ceremony, Gersdorff received two bombs from Tresckow’s aide Fabian von Schlabrendorff and placed one in each coat pocket. The next afternoon beginning at 1:00 pm, an hour later than originally planned, Gersdorff watched the ceremony and Hitler’s speech, triggered the fuses to the bombs, then approached Hitler and the Führer’s entourage, including Göring, Himmler, Keitel, and Donitz, ready to lead the group through the exhibit of Soviet weapons for what been planned as a 30-minute tour.

The visit was cut short, however, as Hitler moved quickly from one exhibit to the next. Attempting to keep Hitler and the other members of his group within the armory long enough for the bombs to activate, Gersdorff stood in front of one of the artifacts on display—the Napoleon Army’s eagle standard that had been found and recovered from a river bed in Russia—and recounted its history.

But when Hitler sighted a side door to the street, he and his entourage quickly slipped outside where he spied a Russian tank. After spending a few minutes clamoring aboard the tank and peering inside, Hitler entered his automobile, and he and his chauffeur drove slowly down Unter den Linden.  (Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1967)

The expected half-hour tour had been cut down by more than half. The timers on the bombs still had several minutes before they would spark explosions. Gersdorff had only one option—find a nearby toilet, pull the fuses away from the bombs, hide the explosives, and leave. (Joachim Fest: Plotting Hitler’s Death, Metropolitan Books, 1994)

Seeds of Valkyrie

Two failed assassination attempts in a matter of days, plus plans that never even saw the light of day in 1941, gave Tresckow four major insights about future action. To increase the likelihood of success, a plot to kill Hitler had to meet four criteria:

First: Timing

Although some leaders of the German military had tried to oust Hitler as early as 1934, others were loath to consider removing the leader of the Third Reich in the 1940s. Some were resigned, believing that Hitler was “Germany’s destiny for better or worse,” and “nothing can be done.” (Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 213)

Some felt compelled to remain in Hitler’s ranks after FDR vowed in January, 1943, that the war would “continue relentlessly” until the Allies secured “unconditional surrender.” To them, turning against Hitler at this point would be tantamount to betrayal of their own country. (Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 211)

Moreover, people in the country remained, for the most part, on Hitler’s side.

But as the course of the war turned, most prominently with the capitulation of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad in February, 1943, high-ranking German military officers joined the military Resistance as well as an organized plan for assassination. (Maclndoe, Kathleen Michelle, "The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht in the July 20 Plot to Assassinate Hitler" (2016). Student Research Submissions. 58. https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/58)

To plotters, the coming year—1944—would be an opportune time to move ahead.

Second: Access

Security around Hitler had always been tight, but it steadily intensified after repeated attempts had been made on his life. Hitler’s residence at the Berghof, Obersaltzberg, was regularly patrolled by 2000 Waffen SS, and even high-ranking officials were routinely searched, aides were denied entrance to scheduled meetings and surveilled while waiting.

Anyone hoping to gain close enough access to make an attempt on Hitler’s life had to have a high enough security clearance to make sure he was not suspicious in the first place and would be allowed to meet with the Führer in person. ("The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht in the July 20 Plot to Assassinate Hitler"

The assassin had to be Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army who reported directly to Hitler about troop status at military conferences, was not routinely searched, and did not appear to be threatening. He had steadily moved up military ranks, joining the German Army High Command in 1940. Moreover, he was not fully functional. He lost his left eye and had to have his right hand amputated after an American fighter-bomber swooped down and strafed him during a raid in the Mediterranean on April 7, 1943. (John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022; Countdown to Valkyrie.   

Third: Location

Security constraints, nevertheless, could be overcome only by making an attempt on Hitler’s life while he was in his own headquarters, where he would be more relaxed and meetings would be held according to schedule. ("The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht in the July 20 Plot to Assassinate Hitler"

Despite rings of security and heavy armaments, the most likely site for the Valkyrie operation was Wolfsschanze in the woods five miles east of Rastenberg where Hitler and German military leaders met to direct operations against Russia.

Fourth: Method

Security and Hitler’s own protective clothing—bullet-proof vest, metal-lined cap—made the success of a rifle or pistol attack neigh on impossible. It also made clear who the would-be assassin was and therefore implicated accomplices. An explosive device, however, could be secreted and kept the identity of the perpetrators anonymous. (“The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht in the July 20 Plot to Assassinate Hitler"

Thus, the audacious plan codenamed Valkyrie took shape.

 Sources:

Maclndoe, Kathleen Michelle, "The Forgotten Faces of Operation Valkyrie: Major-General Henning von Tresckow and General Friedrich Olbricht in the July 20 Plot to Assassinate Hitler" (2016). Student Research Submissions. 58. https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/58

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ludendorff_erich.shtml

German Spring Offensives 1918, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

1918: spring offensive and advance to victory, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/western-front-1918, (Manatū Taonga — Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 28-May-2024

 Joachim Fest: Plotting Hitler’s Death, Metropolitan Books, 1994

Nigel Jones: Countdown to Valkyrie, Frontline Books, 2008, p 142

Eberhard Zeller: The Flame of Freedom, University of Miami Press, 1967

HISTORKA--The Other Stories: People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Tresckow Plans

Hans Oster was not the only top-level member of the German military establishment to plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and trigger a government coup. As early as 1941, Oberstleutnant Henning von Tresckow and others in the Army Group Center were “prepared to do anything” to support the German Resistance movement if it initiated a coup against the Nazi regime. (Joachim Fest: Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 181)

Two years later, Treskow himself was organizing the military Operation Flash bombing attempt on Hitler’s life and helping Claus von Stauffenberg plan the July 20, 1944 Plot or Operation Valkyrie, the focus of the 2008 film starring Tom Cruise and the subject of the next Historka posts.

https://alchetron.com/Henning-von-Tresckow

 Early Years

Tresckow supported the Nazis in the 1920s, campaigning for the party among army officers and denigrating opponents as hopeless reactionaries. (Plotting Hitler’s Death) That began to change in the summer of 1934 after the Night of the Long Knives purged the ranks of the SA’s Storm Troopers using what Tresckow called “methods of a gang of bandits” (Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 53) and Hitler’s actions brought the military under his control.

Tresckow’s opposition to Hitler intensified after the invasion of Poland when he learned about Einsatzgruppen’s “state-sanctioned murder squads” (Plotting Hitler’s Death p 119). In one case, an Einsatzgruppen squad had lined up naked men, women, and children at the edge of a pit, made them climb into the dirt and lie face down while eight SS shot them to death. Over the course of two days, the operation continued until 3000 people had been killed. (John Grehan, The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 139)

The decree on military law and Commissar Order of June, 1941, were a call to action for Tresckow.  Under the new decree on military law, military courts no longer had power to punish perpetrators for committing crimes against enemy civilians. The Commissar Order required German soldiers to shoot and kill any Soviet Communist Party commissar who was taken prisoner. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/commissar-order

Tresckow not only pushed for a retraction of the decrees: “If we don’t convince the field marshal to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders canceled, the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years.” (Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 175)

He also became the first General Staff Army officer on the frontlines of the war to form his own resistance cell and try to use military resources to remove Hitler and overthrow his regime.

The Barbarity of Barbarossa

Tresckow was the General Staff officer for the German Army’s Centre during the Barbarossa campaign, the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. He consequently was well aware of the actions taken on the Eastern Front: the ruthless elimination of partisans in battle or while escaping and the “annihilation of [civilian] attackers.” The German high command’s orders could not have been more explicit: “Every officer in the German occupation in the East … will be entitled to perform executions(s) without trial, without any formalities, on any person suspected of having a hostile attitude towards the Germans.” (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 138)

Tresckow saw a chance to mount an attack on Hitler and his regime in the winter of 1941-42 while the Soviet counteroffensive was stopping German troops in their tracks or gaining ground against them and other, powerful German military leaders were warming to the idea of removing Hitler from command.

As others before them, Tresckow and his group of military conspirators at first considered, then rejected, the idea of a sniper attack or a handgun shot at close range. Hitler was too heavily protected and his schedule was too erratic to pick a likely time and place, and too few candidates were willing to take the chance.

A plan to place a bomb in Hitler’s parked automobile while he was visiting the front failed when none of the conspirators could get close enough. Another barely got past the talking stage—a military unit would fire on Hitler “if an opportunity presented itself.” (Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 193)

Tresckow came up with a more satisfactory plan of attack—planting and detonating a bomb on Hitler’s aircraft.  The bomb could be placed without any of the conspirators being suspected, and it could be detonated while the plane was traveling over enemy territory, making it possible to blame the Soviets for the assault.  (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

What was needed—detailed drawings of the plane and its interior and explosives.

The Aircraft

The plane in which Hitler routinely traveled was heavily armor-plated, its windows made of thick bulletproof glass. A specially designed cabin for Hitler himself could be detached from the fuselage and parachuted away if the plane was disabled in any way. The aircraft also was heavily guarded by SS who searched every passenger as well as grounds crew and cleaners.

To be effective, the bomb would have to be secreted in Hitler’s cabin, which was nigh on impossible. Instead of trying to hide the bomb onboard, therefore, Tresckow and his adjutant Leutnant Fabian von Schlabrendorff decided to have it unwittingly carried on board. To house the bomb, the two created a square wooden package similar to the one that commonly carried two bottles of Cointreau.

The Explosive

The conspirators soon learned that German bombs were useless for their purpose. A German bomb could not be hidden because once activated, the fuse made a low but telltale hissing noise (William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p 1019). They consequently turned to enemy bombs—those that had been created by the British.

The British adapted a magnetic mine into what was known as the Clam, which was encased in either a stamped sheet metal casing or bakelite plastic. The rectangular, rounded case enclosed an 8-ounce plastic explosive charge and a pair of magnets at each end. The explosive was triggered by a Time Pencil or delay fuse attached to a No. 27 detonator.

The bomb was small in size: 5.75” x 2.75” x 1.5, so it could be carried in a pocket and easily concealed. https://armourersbench.com/2020/07/19/soe-sabotage-magnetic-petrol-tank-bomb/

https://varldenshistoria.se/krig/andra-varldskriget/hitler

Army Col. Rudolf-Christoph Baron von Gersdorff, an Army Group Center Intelligence Officer, gathered small amounts of Plastic C, a high-energy explosive supplied by the British to underground operatives and recovered by German soldiers from captured British agents. The explosive was made largely of hexogen with other materials to prevent the hexogen from crystallizing, and it was powerful in even small amounts. Less than a pound could blow the turret off the top of a tank and hurl more than 20 yards away. (James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, p 128)

Gersdorff then created a detonator that would trigger an explosion 30 minutes after activation. The detonator contained a glass vial that released acid into a wad of cotton until it ate through a trip wire. The trip wire then released a plunger into the explosive. (Target Hitler)

Operation Flash

On the morning of March 13, 1943, three Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft landed on the airstrip in Smolensk. While Me.109 fighters circled overhead and prepared to land, Hitler made his way down the ladder from the exit hatch of his Condor 2600 plane. He spent the next few hours at a war conference with leaders of the campaign against Soviet Russia and a lunch during which he extolled the prowess of the German Army and predicted massive victories against Soviet troops in the coming year. (Herbert Malloy Mason, Jr.: To Kill the Devil)

https://varldenshistoria.se/krig/andra-varldskriget/hitler

 Just as Hitler was approaching the aircraft for the return trip, Schlabrendorff triggered the fuse of the bomb by pressing down on the fuse with a heavy door key. He then handed the package to Col. Heinz Brandt, an aide to Hitler, who had agreed to deliver what he thought to be a package of Cointreau bottles to Tresckow’s friend Gen. Helmuth Stieff in Rastenburg. (To Kill the Devil)

Tresckow and Schlabrendorff then drove back to headquarters and waited for word. They heard nothing for two hours until a call reported that Hitler’s plane had landed safely and without incident on the return trip. To retrieve the package and make sure the bomb was not discovered, Tresckow immediately called Col. Brandt, saying he had given him the wrong package and would send Schlabrendorff to exchange it for the right one. (To Kill the Devil)

The next morning, when Schlabrendorff entered Brandt’s office to make the exchange, he was horrified to see the colonel tossing the package from one hand to the other. After leaving the office, Schlabrendorff traveled to the train station at Korschen and boarded a private compartment he had reserved for his return journey. He removed the wrapping paper, pulled out the fuse, and saw that the acid capsule had broken and eaten away the wire but the detonator had not triggered, presumably because the bomb had been stored in the cargo hold of the plane, which was colder than the main cabin. The explosive had crystallized, and the bomb had become inoperative. (To Kill the Devil, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Target Hitler, The Hitler Assassination Attempts).

Though this attempt had failed, Tresckow was not finished. He began meeting with Claus von Stauffenberg to set in motion Operation Valkyrie. (See the next Historka posts.)

 Sources:

Joachin Fest: Plotting Hitler’s Death, Metropolitan Books, 1996.

James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, Praeger, 1992.

Herbert Malloy Mason, Jr.: To Kill the Devil, W. W. Norton and Co., 1978.

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, MJF Books, 1990.

HISTORKA--The Other Stories: People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Oster Conspiracy Plan in 1939 and 1940

Hand-written plans for the Oster coup conspiracy (see previous posts) were destroyed or locked away in September, 1938, after the Munich accord appeared to prevent war over Germany’s moves against Czechoslovakia. But they were dusted off in 1939-40. With Britain and France now at war with Germany following the invasion of Poland, even reluctant members of the British government were willing to give coup plotters what they had been looking for—clear and forceful opposition to Hitler as head of the German state and his saber-rattling threats in Eastern and Western Europe and permission to depose him.

On March 11, 1940, the British government said it would discuss terms of peace with Germany if Hitler was removed from power and the rule of law was reinstated. (John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 85) The problem for the conspirators this time? Getting their own military leaders to give the order that would set in motions the coup that would oust Adolf Hitler.

Start of the Phony War

Despite the Munich accord, Allied governments as well as German military leaders could do little to stop Hitler from pursuing his plan for a new German empire. Hitler defied the Munich agreement’s protections of Czech independence months after it was signed—under the threat that Prague would be leveled by German bombers, Czech troops surrendered to the German Army and the country was absorbed by Germany as the Protektorate of Bohemia and Moravia on March 16, 1939.

Soon after, German troops occupied Memelland in Lithuania, a trade treaty brought Romania under German control, and Hitler signed non-aggression agreements with Latvia, Estonia, and Denmark. He allied himself with Mussolini through the Pact of Steel in May, 1939, and Stalin in August, then ordered troops to invade Poland on September 1.

https://defenceredefined.com.cy/1st-of-september-1939-germany-invades-poland-the-biggest-war-in-history-begins-video/

  Although both France and Britain immediately declared war against Germany, neither country was firing shots. French forces quickly withdrew after a minor assault on German territory soon after the Polish invasion, and Britain only went so far as to mobilize the Royal Navy to block German ports. (James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler)

Franz Halder. https://www.vle.lt/straipsnis/franz-halder/

 The German military argued futilely against preparations for aggression against the west or further action in the east. In November, 1939, General Franz Halder noted that the army was not prepared for an offensive—there were not enough officers to lead troop movements, personnel in some units had not been adequately trained, materiel was in short supply and took days to resupply, and some divisions were understaffed by at least a third. Though none of the members of army headquarters believed an offensive had “any prospect of success,” Halder wrote, “any sober discussion of these things is impossible with [Hitler].” (Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: The Halder War Diary)

 The German Resistance

 Though Oster conspirators had torn and set fire to their coup plan notes and maps days after the Munich accord, they had not fully given up. Members of the German Resistance became liaisons between groups opposed to Hitler within various branches of the civilian government and the military, got union leaders to promise they would strike against the government in support of a coup, and encouraged individuals who considered quick hits against Hitler—eg, invitations for Hitler to inspect fortifications where a grenade would be detonated or where other measures would be taken to “render him harmless once and for all.” (Target, p 89)

Coup planners decided to resurrect the hand-written plans Oster had secreted in his safe in 1938 and once again approach the British government for support. Coup planners had hoped in vain for Britain to make clear to the German people that a coup was necessary to stop Hitler from triggering a shooting war in 1938. This time, they wanted to be sure neither Britain nor France would take advantage of any turmoil following a coup and invade Germany. 

Emissaries to Great Britain, including Pope Pius XII, eventually convinced Lord Halifax, and Prime Minister Chamberlain acceded to plotters’ demand that the country would not invade if they succeeded in their attempt to assassinate the head of the German government. Specifically, the British government on March 11, 1940, agreed it would discuss peace with Germany as long as Hitler was no longer head of state, the country adhered to the rule of law, Poland would be liberated, the territories that had recently come under German rule could decide their fate for themselves, Germany would not wage war in western Europe, and an armistice would be negotiated via the pope. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

Britain’s acquiescence with the coup planners did not come without complaint. As Francis D’Arcy Osborne, British ambassador to the Holy See, noted: “If they wanted a change of government, why didn’t they get on with it.” (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 84)  

 A New Coup

Two leaders of the German Army were critical for setting a coup attempt in motion. Army Chief of Staff Franz Halder was needed to sign off on operational details that would lead to the assassination of Adolf Hitler and the creation of an interim government. His superior, Army Commander in Chief Walther von Brauchitsch, was the man who could issue the order to move against the Nazi leader.  

 In September, 1939, while Hitler was pushing for an invasion of western countries, Halder and Brauchitsch felt they had only three options—to follow Hitler’s orders for what they considered to be a disastrous military assault, do whatever they could to delay the mission, or work for “fundamental change.”  (Joachim Fest: Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 121)

Hitler’s insistence on a military campaign with an aggressive timeline—a full-blown attack within months—led members of the general staff, military intelligence, a Resistance cell within the high command called Action Group Zossen, and the foreign office to push Halder and Brauchitsch for coup marching orders. Yet the men hesitated. Halder worried that no one was prepared to take Hitler’s place as head of the government and that younger officers were not ready for a putsch. An offhand remark from Hitler about “the spirit of Zossen” made Halder believe coup plotters may have been betrayed or the plan uncovered, and there was infighting among the plotters. “If they’re so sure at Military Intelligence that they want an assassination, let [them] take care of it…,” Halder complained.  (Plotting Hitler’s Death, p 134)

The Oster conspirators nevertheless regrouped in early 1940 after Britain’s peace proposal in March. In a repeat of the 1938 coup plan, key locations within Berlin were identified, operatives were prepared to occupy the locations and seize resisters to the coup, impose martial law, and notify the public that elections would be held soon and peace talks would begin with Allies. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 85)

 Franz Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch

https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article234116336/Unternehmen-Taifun-1941-78-Divisionen-sollten-Moskau-nehmen.html

 But Halder and Brauchitsch stood down. Halder no longer felt Hitler’s plans for aggression were doomed for failure. He had reviewed troop strength on the west and in Poland and found they had been expanded and refitted and troop divisions could triple in size in months, factories were producing aircraft, guns, and tanks, and the recalcitrance of the British and the French was giving Hitler the time he needed to mount a superior force. (Herbert Malloy Mason, Jr: To Kill the Devil, p 93) A humiliating and costly military defeat was no longer assured.

And Brauchitsch faced reality: Action taken against the head of government while the country was at war would not only would be treasonous, a coup was bound to fail. As Brauchitsch said after the war: “Of course, I could have had Hitler arrested and even imprisoned him. Easily. I had enough officers loyal to me who would have carried out even that order if given by me. But that was not the problem. Why should I have initiated action against Hitler…? It would have been action against the German people. The German people were pro-Hitler.” (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 86.

Sources:

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

Joachim Fest: Plotting Hitler’s Death, Henry Holt and Company, 1997.

Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr. To Kill the Devil, W. W. Norton and Company, 1978.

James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, Praeger, 1992.

Charles Burdick and Hans –Adolf Jacobsen, eds: The Halder War Diary, Presidio, 1988.

HISTORKA--The Other Stories: People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Oster Conspiracy Plan and the British Connection

In the summer of 1938, German military intelligence had detailed plans for a coup that would remove Adolf Hitler from power (see the last Historka post). An attack force was armed and ready to take over the Reichs Chancellery, arrest Hitler, and prevent Gestapo and SS from interfering while the military took control of government until new civilian leadership could be put in place.

The operation flamed out, however, as leaders tossed “their lovely plans and projects into the fire” at the end of September. (John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 69). The so-called Oster Conspiracy failed because emissaries could not convince Britain to stand up to and stop Hitler from actions that could lead to war. Instead, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain negotiated what he believed to be “peace with honour…peace for our time.”  (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 69)

 The Spring of 1938

In the summer of 1938, German military intelligence had detailed plans for a coup that would remove Adolf Hitler from power (see the last Historka post). An attack force was armed and ready to take over the Reichs Chancellery, arrest Hitler, and prevent Gestapo and SS from interfering while the military took control of government until new civilian leadership could be put in place.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205193838 

On the morning of March 12, two mechanized divisions of German troops crossed the border with Austria and traveled to Vienna. Without a shot being fired, the Third Reich completed Anschluss, full annexation of the country. Though a violation of the Versailles Treaty, the move was not viewed by European countries as serious enough to warrant a strong military response or war. The vast majority of Austrians after all approved of unification with Germany (99.7 percent voted in favor of it in an April referendum), and while France and Britain may have fretted, they did nothing to oppose the action. In-country military and political situations kept the two countries on the sidelines. Both France and Britain had weak military forces in the Rhineland; France did not have a fully seated parliament; and many in Britain believed the “Germans were only going into their own back garden.” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/znxdnrd/revision/3)

The threat of war was far greater a little over a month later when German military units amassed along the border with Czechoslovakia, and in response, the Czech government mobilized military reservists and strengthened fortifications.

Czechoslovakia’s principal ally, France, as well as Britain issued a warning. Both countries vowed to support Czechoslovakia against aggression, stating that any move by Germany could lead to “European conflagration.” (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 62)

Members of the Oster group felt vindicated. To their way of thinking, their plan to remove Hitler from power was the only way to prevent another war on the continent. All they had to do to initiate their coup was get a firm commitment that Britain would take up arms in support of an independent Czechoslovakia.

 Secret Missions

 From July to early September, the Oster group sent German diplomat Erich Kordt and landowner Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin to meet with leaders of the British government--chief advisor to the British Foreign Office Sir Robert Vansittart, backbencher at the time Winston Churchill, and foreign secretary Lord Halifax.

A primary objective: to impress upon British officials the gravity of the situation. On April 21, Hitler had ordered the army General Staff to prepare for a full-scale invasion of Czechoslovakia no later than October 1. A preemptive strike, code named Case Green, was in keeping with Hitler’s “unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia in the near future…and then … tackle the situation in the west” in three or four years. (Herbert Malloy Mason: To Kill the Devil, p 37) Hitler was determined to create a German Empire encompassing Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Burgundy, Alsace-Lorraine, and Switzerland before moving on to Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, and Scandinavia.

Equally important for Oster conspirators was ensuring that Britain would take aggressive steps to intercede when Hitler moved ahead with the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the promise that the Oster Conspiracy would then proceed with a coup. “Bring me certain proof that England will fight if Czechoslovakia is attacked,” Kleist told Vansittart, “and I will make an end to this regime.” (To Kill the Devil, p 38)

British Reactions

https://www.amazon.com/Oster-Conspiracy-1938-Military-Hitler/dp/0060955252

 Ignoring Clear Signs

But British officials turned a blind eye toward threats of German aggression against Czechoslovakia. On July 18, Wehrmacht Cpt. Fritz Wiedemann carried Hitler’s direct message to Lord Halifax that he would not wait much longer. Czechoslovakia was stopping Sudeten Germans from returning to their Homeland. “If no satisfactory solution has been achieved soon, I will solve this question with violence,” Hitler told the foreign secretary through Wiedemann. (Terry Parssinen: The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 55)

Lord Halifax nevertheless pushed for a binding declaration that Germany would not resort to armed conflict. When Wiedemann reiterated Hitler’s resolve and impatience, Halifax asked for a timetable: “How long do we have to solve the problem peacefully?” he asked. “Approximately until March 1939,” he was told.

Halifax either misunderstood or misrepresented the entire interchange when he reported that the German government was “planning no kind of forcible action” and “until [March, 1939] we can achieve a lot.”  (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 55)

 Mediation

On July 16, Chamberlain announced he was sending an intermediary to push for peaceful resolution of the differences between the Czechoslovak government and Sudeten Germans-- Lord Runciman, shipping magnate and former president of the UK Board of Trade. Despite claims that he would act independently as an “investigator and mediator” in keeping with Czechoslovakia’s wishes, the Czech government had not asked for assistance. 

To the contrary, Runciman was speaking for the British government and his mission was to push Czechs to accede to Sudeten demands. (Runciman’s efforts soon failed. Sudeten Germans rejected every offer made by the Czech government. (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 88)

 Traitors

Chamberlain and others in the British cabinet considered Oster operatives not as protectors of peace but outright traitors to their country. Von Kleist reminded Chamberlain of Jacobites [British traitors at the Court of France during the reign of King William] and “we must discount a good deal of what he [Kleist] says,” Chamberlain said. (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 74)

Sir Robert Vansittart likewise viewed Oster men with suspicion, seeing little difference between them and Nazis. “The same sort of ambitions are sponsored by a different body of men, and that is about all.” (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 75.)

 Nothing To Do about It Anyway

At an emergency meeting August 30, Halifax acknowledged the only possibly effective deterrent to German aggression would be a declaration that Britain would declare war if the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. But then what? It wasn’t clear whether the country could actually take action and win a war against Germany.

And what would even come of it anyway? “There was nothing which would prevent Czechoslovakia from being overrun by Germany,” and it was “unlikely” that “any peace reached at the end of such a war would recreate Czechoslovakia as it existed today.”  (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 90)

In the end, few among the British government, other than Winston Churchill, saw the need to listen to the Oster conspirators and make clear to Germany that it would counter any aggression toward Czechoslovakia. Churchill in mid-August proposed forming a grand alliance involving Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and even the US to assure that Czechoslovakia remained independent. He also hoped the British government would support Oster and others’ anti-war efforts within Germany as well as Oster’s planned coup to create a new German government “that could guarantee stability and end the fear of war.” (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 72, 76)

In September even Lord Halifax had come to agree with the Oster conspirators. As requested by Kordt, Halifax drafted a speech that explicitly warned Hitler about the likelihood of war if he took the steps he had planned against Czechoslovakia. After Chamberlain and others vetoed that idea, Halifax sent a strongly worded message to Hitler via the British ambassador in Germany. The ambassador refused to deliver it, however, believing the message could push Hitler “over the edge…if not of actual madness, of mad action.” (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 106)

The Rest Is History  

Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to meet one-on-one with Adolf Hitler on September 15, thus beginning shuttle diplomacy that led to the international meeting in Munich and the Munch Agreement ceding Sudetenland to Germany, creating an international commission to determine the fate of the rest of Czechoslovakia, and finalizing a short-lived peace treaty between Germany and Britain.

The Oster Conspiracy of 1938 had come to an end. One operative recalled how Oster and two others spent the evening on the day German troops occupied Sudetenland: “meditating, not on Hitler’s triumph, but on the calamity that had befallen Europe.” (To Kill the Devil, p 50)

Others put the blame at the feet of Neville Chamberlain: “Chamberlain has made war inevitable.”(The Hitler Assassinations, p 69) “Chamberlain has saved Hitler.” (Target Hitler, p 80)

As for Oster? He kept the handwritten pages of his coup plan locked in his office safe. They lay untouched until 1939. (See the next Historka post)

 Sources:

 Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr: To Kill the Devil, W W Norton & Co., 1978.

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler, Bantam Books, 2006.

Terry Parssinen: The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.

James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, Praeger, 1992.  

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Oster Conspiracy Plan

In April, 1938, Adolf Hitler was firming up plans to create a new German Empire, one that would include Poland, the Ukraine, Baltic states, Scandinavia, Holland, Flemish Belgium, Luxembourg, Burgundy, Alsace-Lorraine, and Switzerland. But that meant war, pitting Germany against France and its ally Russia as well as Great Britain and the United States. A disastrous war instigated by an insular nation ill prepared militarily and economically to engage in what would trigger assaults on all of its sides—land, sea, and air.

 Hitler magnanimously gave the military three to four years to prepare for the beginning of that war—an assault on the west. Meantime, he told leaders of the German armed forces what he expected as the first step: begin mobilizing troops to neutralize the nearby seat of manufacturing and arms production—Czechoslovakia—“to smash Czechoslovakia in the near future by military action.” (Herbert Molloy Mason: To Kill the Devil, p 39.)

 Top-level members of the German army and military intelligence along with former government ministers immediately began preparing to act audaciously—to engineer and execute a coup that would remove Hitler from power, forestall retaliation from the Gestapo and SS, and impose military rule until a new civilian government could be formed.  (James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

 The Plan

What eventually became known as the Oster Conspiracy called for a squad from the Berlin Defense Distract III Military District and intelligence agents from Abwehr to march on and occupy the Reichs Chancellery in Berlin, take Hitler into custody and force him to resign on the spot or take him to a secret location until he did so.

https://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=26284 (Photo of the Reich Chancellery in 1938 before reconstruction completed in 1939.)

The plan took shape after Hitler was rebuked by French and British diplomats in May, 1938. Czech intelligence first noticed German troop buildups near the border on May 19. Two days later, Czech armed forces were sent to the border, and the following day both France and Britain delivered messages of warning. British Foreign Minister Halifax noted that Germany should “not count on this country being able to stand aside…” (Terry Parssinen: The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 36) Infuriated that the world press believed he might appear to have backed down and yielded to the west, Hitler on May 28 told his military high command of his “unshakable will”—“that Czechoslovakia shall be wiped off the map”--and called for invasion no later than October 1. (The Oster Conspiracy, p 38)

The first step for the prime mover of the conspiracy, Lt. Col. Hans Oster, second in command of Abwehr military intelligence, was to get the German Army’s General Staff on board.

Col Ludwig Beck, chief of the General Staff, was already wary. He called the “theoretical” plan to attack Czechoslovakia he was asked by Hitler to prepare in 1935 “an act of desperation.”(Mason: To Kill the Devil, p 35) When Hitler reiterated his demands for invasion in 1938, Beck intensified efforts to dissuade the Führer and push military leaders to resist. He sent memos to Hitler detailing the international ramifications of a Czech invasion and showed the likelihood of German defeat to army leaders in a hypothetical war game exercise in June, only to be met with derision. Junior officers dismissed Beck’s concerns, believing he did not “understand the dynamism of the new regime.” Hitler himself accused Beck of cowardice: “What kind of generals are those that I have to drive to war!” (The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, p 47)

Beck nevertheless worked to convince his superior, Walter von Brauchitsch, arguing forcefully against invasion and pushing for generals to resign in protest. Brauchitsch eventually held a meeting of senior commanders and agreed to meet with Hitler directly to voice their objections when none of the men was “convinced of the Führer’s genius,” only to be slapped down by the chancellor in August. (To Kill the Devil, p 39)

Beck then began meeting with Oster regularly, putting the final pieces together for a coup d’ etát.

Lightning Strike

Members of a Strosstrupp or raiding party were recruited from the ranks of active military and the Abwehr, former members of the Stahlen WW I veterans group, student and labor leaders. By mid-September, 1938, 56 hardline anti-Nazis had signed on, were given arms and explosives, and installed in safe houses throughout Berlin. Their assignment: to lead a direct attack on the chancellery, blow off entry doors if need be, remove the 12 to 15 SS who guarded the main entrance to the building and the entrance to Hitler’s quarters and patrolled the corridors and grounds as directed by Gen. Erwin von Witzleben, the commander of the military district of Berlin, Wehrkreis III, and Maj. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz.

More than men and materiel were needed. The coup plan also called for the coordinated movement of troops and police to tamp down the expected violent response from the Gestapo and SS by rounding up Nazi leaders ahead of or at the time of the attack and securing the city of Berlin.

Key locations were identified: The war ministry and other ministries, the main radio transmitter and radio stations, Gestapo headquarters, police and SS installations. As soon as the raiding party made its move, two senior military commanders would direct their divisions to target and occupy each location, arrest and detain all SS and Gestapo: Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt of the 23rd Infantry Division and Paul von Hase of the 50th Infantry Division.

A third, Erich Hoepner, would position the 1st Light Division across the road leading to Berlin from Munich to stop Hitler’s bodyguards in the SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte from entering the city.

Police units also had to be restrained from taking action against the army divisions once the coup became operational or, perhaps, encouraged to join the conspirators. The liaison to the police was Hans Gisevius, a former officer in the Gestapo and employee of the Ministry of the Interior.  With the help of Arthur Nebe, a police officer who had access to some of the Gestapo’s secret files and reports, and Wolf von Helldorf, Berlin chief of police, Gisevius obtained the addresses of police stations in Berlin, some of which were housed in private homes. (To Kill the Devil)  

More than Wishful Thinking

The conspirators gradually put meat on the bare bones of the coup plot. Gisevius and Brockdorff scoped out the targeted locations, careful not to catch the eyes or ears of the Gestapo. Posing as tourists, they rode up and down streets of Berlin driven by a woman whose husband was director of an insurance company and no friend of Hitler.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fotothek_df_ktgrf_0001538_Blick_von_der_Wohnung_Karl_Theodor_Gremmlers_am_Kurf%C3%BCrstendamm.jpg

While Elizabeth Strünck circled individual sites, Brockdorff sketched entrances and exits and flagged possible escape routes into back gardens and over walls, prioritized particularly dangerous areas, such as the SS barracks at Lichterfelde, and flagged the concentration camp at    Sachsenhausen, which could serve as a propaganda point, showing that the coup would be returning Germany to a country that valued human rights and dignity over the iron boot when the military regime released all 5000 inmates. (To Kill the Devil)

From a private office next to that of commander Witzleben in the Wehrkreis III military compound, Gisevius scanned intelligence reports without having to worry about wire taps or SS spies.

Plotters even came up with a cover story for the early days of the coup. Operatives would announce that they had to take drastic action because the SS was rising up against Hitler and the armed forces, thereby assuring that Wehrmacht units across the country would not interfere with their actions until they could tell the full story.

What To Do about Hitler

Plotters agreed initially that Abwehr chief Friedrich Heinz and his troops should breach the chancellery battlements and arrest Hitler. Opinions differed markedly after that. Some hoped for a trial that would conclude Hitler was unfit to continue serving as chancellor because of insanity. The trial would dredge up a report from the hospital where Hitler had recovered from a mustard gas attack in Flanders during WW I and cite the conclusion of medical experts at the time that he was psychopathic and exhibited symptoms of hysteria. (To Kill the Devil)

Others worried a trial and incarceration in a mental facility would feed Hitler’s myth and popularity but refrained from calling for an outright assassination or murder. But Beck and Heinz and others conceded that an altercation with Hitler could be arranged and lead to a gun battle that left Hitler dead from a gunshot would. (Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler)

 Though all its elements were in place, the Oster plan never fully materialized. So what went wrong? See next month’s Historka post.

Sources:

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, Praeger Publishers, 1992.

Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr.: To Kill the Devil, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978.

Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler, Bantam Books, 2006.

Terry Parssinen: The Oster Conspiracy of 1938, Harper Collins, 2003 

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

Inside Men

As early as 1938, high-ranking members of the German military intelligence apparatus planned a coup that would remove Adolf Hitler from power. Driven initially by Nazi-generated scandals that forced out two top generals and actions that brought the military under Hitler’s direct control, the coup plan gained support and momentum when Hitler’s moves against Austria and Czechoslovakia threatened all-out war.

https://www.amazon.com/Oster-Conspiracy-1938-Military-Hitler/dp/0060955252

The Purge

On January 27, 1938, 59-year-old Werner von Blomberg resigned from his position as War Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the German Armed Forces because of allegations about his new wife. Little more than two weeks before, Blomberg had married Margarethe Gruhn in a civil ceremony attended by Hitler himself and Luftwaffe Chief Hermann Göring. Under pressure from Hitler, Blomberg claimed he was retiring for “reasons of health” when in fact he sought to quash revelations about his wife’s criminal record for prostitution and a file of pornographic photographs, information obtained and passed along by Göring.

Army Commander-in-Chief General Barron Werner Freiherr von Fritsch was next. Hitler resurrected evidence of Fritsch’s homosexuality, evidence he had seen and rejected as wholly fabricated in 1936, and asked Göring to preside over a special court to investigate the charges. Fritsch resigned his post four days later on January 30, 1938.

On February 4, Hitler decided to “exercise personally the immediate command over the whole armed forces,” assuming Blomberg’s position as war minister, handpicking the successor to Fritsch’s position as commander-in-chief of the army, relieving 16 senior generals of their commands, and transferring 45 high-ranking officers, thereby replacing generals who were loath to go to war and reluctant to adhere to his will with “men of brutality,” men who thought the same way he did. (Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler) 

 Military Unrest

These sudden and shocking upper echelon changes built on disturbing undercurrents that were raising alarm among many of the German military.

Hitler had steadily enhanced the status of the armed forces by pointedly ignoring precepts of the Versailles Treaty that held the German military in check. Beginning in 1935, he enabled army expansion by allowing the reinstitution of conscription, remilitarized the Rhineland, blew past the limits that had been imposed by the treaty on the size of the military, increased funding and personnel, and modernized equipment. (Killing Hitler)

While many military leaders as well as the rank and file welcomed these moves, some were becoming concerned about the shift in the seat of their power.

Beginning on August 20, 1934, members of the armed services and civil servants were no longer required to take an oath to serve their country or its constitution. They now had to swear allegiance to a single man: to “render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler…and be ready at any time to stake my life for this oath.” (Killing Hitler)

Military leaders who did not toe the line were put at risk. The Night of the Long Knives, which eliminated Ernst Röhm and most of the other Brownshirts (see the previous Historka post), also targeted General Kurt von Schleicher, chancellor of the Weimar Republic, who was gunned down in his villa near Potsdam, and his associate, head of the Abwehr military intelligence unit Ferdinand von Bredow for criticizing Hitler and his cabinet.

Most disturbing was Hitler’s push for war.

 Run-up to War

On March 12, 1938, Hitler rode in one of a cavalcade of Mercedes automobiles across the German border into Austria as a “liberator,” making his homeland a province within the German Reich and absorbing its military into the Wehrmacht, thus violating one of the most uniformly despised clauses of the Versailles Treaty by Germans—Anschluss, unification of Austria and Germany.

A month later, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht’s General Staff to formulate a plan for a preemptive attack on neighboring Czechoslovakia, the first step in his vision for a “German Empire which would include Poland, Ukraine, Baltic States, Scandinavia, Holland, Flemish Belgium, Luxembourg, Burgundy, Alsace-Lorraine, and Switzerland.” (Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., To Kill the Devil)

The plan was considered to be disastrous for the country because of the status of Germany’s war machine—the military and defense industry were relatively weak and unprepared—the central location of the country, which opened it up to attacks on land, sea, and in the air, and the likelihood of provoking formidable enemies--Russia, France, Britain, and eventually the US.

Hitler nonetheless insisted: “It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia in the near future.” (To Kill the Devil)

In the summer months, propaganda reported on the so-called atrocities committed by Czechs on Germans living in Sudetenland. The Sudeten Nazi Party led demonstrations and other actions in Sudetenland to disrupt the Czech government’s operations. Maneuvers were held in Franconia, near the Czech border, the infantry trained soldiers in methods of storming the type of fortifications maintained by Czechoslovakia, and throughout the country citizens were learning civil defense. (James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci , Target Hitler)

Preparations accelerated in September: tanks and infantry divisions practiced firing on concrete bunkers similar to the ones Czechoslovakia maintained on its border. Concrete “dragon’s teeth” were being constructed, tank traps were being dug, and machine guns were being mounted along German’s West Wall or the Siegfried Line.  

Hitler set the deadline for an attack on Czechoslovakia—no later than October 2. (John Grehan, Assassination Attempts)

The Men

Key Plotters

Abwehr’s organized effort to remove Adolf Hitler from leadership was called The Oster Plan or the Oster Conspiracy. (See the next Historka for details.) Several men in- and outside the military were instrumental:

https://alchetron.com/Hans-Oster

 Colonel Hans Oster, Abwehr officer, was openly contemptuous of the Nazi Party, telling an Austrian officer who began to raise his arm: “Oh, no, no Hitler salute here.” (To Kill the Devil, p 34). He was the linchpin, the man who fostered communications among the conspirators.

https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/wissen/ludwig-beck-vom-generalstabschef-zum-widersacher-hitlers-100.html

 General Ludwig Beck, chief of the General Staff, who considered the time he had to take the new oath of allegiance to Hitler the blackest day of his life. (To Kill the Devil, p 35). He was the link to high-ranking members of the Wehrmacht.

https://alchetron.com/Wilhelm-Canaris

 Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, viewed Nazis as no more than a gang of criminals. He began looking for ways to use the intelligence agency to bring Hitler down soon after he was appointed its chief of operations.

https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index_of_persons/biographie/view-bio/hans-bernd-gisevius/?no_cache=1

 Hans Bernd Gisevius, police liaison to the Abwehr and former member of the Gestapo. He was central to the success of any action taken against Hitler by gaining the support of local police.

https://alchetron.com/Franz-Halder

 General Franz Halder, head of the General Staff, believed Hitler was not only a criminal but a “sexual psychopath” and “bloodsucker.” He replaced Beck after his resignation from the General Staff in September, 1938, and communicated regularly with plotters within the ranks of the military as well as civilians, including Giesvius.

Others

General Erwin von Witzleben, commander of Berlin’s military district, supported Gisevius, providing a private office next to his own at headquarters as well as false identity papers, and spearheaded the recruitment of commandos who would storm the Reich Chancellery, arrest Hitler, and transport him to a castle in Bavaria.

Lieutenant Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, Abwehr staff, recruited and trained 60 men to act as commandos, as per Witzleben’s order.

General Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, commander of the Potsdam garrison, mapped out locations within Berlin that needed to be quickly taken over by troops at the outset of the coup: the radio transmitter, Gestapo headquarters, and the Chancellery itself as well as escape routes.

Carl Friedrich Goerdler, mayor of Leipzig, obtained funds from industrialist Robert Bosch to finance travels to Britain and France where he met with government leaders and tried to get their support for regime change within Germany.

General Erich Hoepner, commander of the Wuppertal Panzer Division, planned to have tanks and armored vehicles on alert and ready to contain any armed response to the coup.

Theodore Kordt, counselor from the German embassy in London, and landowner Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin warned the British government about Hitler’s plans for war and sought support for the Oster coup.

Hjalmar Schact, director of the Reichsbank, provided economic and other data warning against Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia and supporting the coup attempt and communicated regularly with fellow conspirators Goerdler and Gisevius.     

 Sources:

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, Praeger Publishers, 1992.

Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr.: To Kill the Devil, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978.r

Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler, Bantam Books, 2006.

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

SA Brownshirts

The SA (Sturmabteilung, Storm Detachment or Storm Troopers) was formed in 1921 to serve as bodyguards for Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party leaders. Twelve years later, its leadership was purged, men killed in what’s known as the Night of the Long Knives, because of a supposed plot to overthrow the Nazi Party and eliminate Hitler and others. Except for a testy standoff between Hitler and an SA group in 1934, the organization posed no real threat to Hitler. Details of the plot were fabricated by Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Göring and fed to an increasingly frenzied Adolf Hitler.

Sturmabteilung (en-academic.com)

The SA

 The SA grew from the ranks of unemployed WW I veterans or Freikorps (Free Corps), independent and volunteer paramilitary units, who were attracted to the Nazi movement because of their opposition to the groups they believed were responsible for Germany’s defeat—government officials who had capitulated by signing the Versailles Treaty, the so-called November Criminals, as well as Communists, Jews and Social Democrats who profited from the war, betrayed the German Army, and as a result “stabbed the country in the back.” (Christopher Ailsby, The Third Reich Day by Day), p 14).  

 Their purpose: to maintain order during meetings of the Nazi Party and disrupt those held by other political parties, thereby, as Hitler said, “ruthlessly prevent—if necessary by force—all meetings or lectures that are likely to distract the minds of our fellow countrymen.” (William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p 43.)

The SA played prominent roles in a number of high-profile events in the early days of the Nazi movement:

·      The German Day folk festival on October 14 and 15, 1922. Hitler and 800 SA marched through Coburg and for the first time gained active support for the Nazi movement from people in attendance. (The Rise and Fall of Third Reich)

·      The First Nazi Party Day from January 27 to 29, 1923.  Members of SA for the first time publicly unveiled and flew the swastika flag in Munich. (Christopher Ailsby, The Third Reich Day by Day)  

Munich Putsch on November 8 and 9, 1923. Hundreds of SA surrounded the beer hall while Hitler and 20 of their men rushed inside and overtook a meeting of Bavarian government officials while Hitler announced “The National Revolution has begun.” After holding Bavarian government officials overnight, Hitler and nearly 3000 Stormtroopers marched toward the center of town, where they were stopped by police and arrested.

(Because of the failed putsch, Hitler was tried and convicted of high treason, and the Nazi Party and its enforcers, the SA, were disbanded, at least temporarily.)

 Membership in the SA increased markedly after the Great Depression threw many men out of work. From meager beginnings (SA membership totaled about 3000 in 1923), the organization grew steadily. Even though it was still considered to be illegal and called by another name—Frontbann—SA had 30,000 members in 1924. By 1930-31, 50,000 men were members, and in 1933-34, SA had between 2 and 4 million in its ranks. (The Third Reich Day by Day)

Falling Out

 One man was responsible for the early growth and militarization of the SA: Ernest Röhm. After fighting for the Imperial German Army in WW I and receiving the Iron Cross for his wartime service, Röhm remained in the military and rose to the rank of captain. He joined the German Workers’ Party in 1919 and transformed Hitler’s so-called Ordnertrupe strong-arm guards into Brownshirts who were known not only for disrupting political meetings and speeches but for street violence against Jews and opponents of the Nazi party in the early 1920s. Because of his participation in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Röhm was tried and found guilty of treason. After receiving a suspended sentence for the crime, he was dismissed from the army and served as a Reichstag deputy. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm#:~:text=After%20a%20stint%20as%20a,advisor%20to%20the%20Bolivian%20Army, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Third Reich Day by Day)

Röhm and Hitler had very different ideas about the role of the SA. From the first, Hitler viewed Stormtroopers as a political organization, one that would stir up enthusiasm for the Nazi Party among its own ranks and strike fear in the minds of those in other political parties. Röhm wanted the SA to be a revolutionary or people’s army that replaced old-guard Prussian generals with now seasoned Brownshirts and coalesced all military leadership—the armed forces, SA, and the elite SS--under his control. (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)

 Fake News

 Other Nazis were growing weary of Röhm’s ambitions. Heinrich Himmler, his second-in-command Reinhard Heydrich, and Hermann Goring as well as the German Army pushed for a purge of the SA and the elimination of Röhm himself.  The plan was to convince Hitler that Rohm was planning a putsch against the army and Hitler’s nascent government in 1934. Letters stating that Röhm was ordering the SA to arm itself in preparation for an attack on military headquarters were forged by Heydrich’s men. Telephone calls warning Hitler of an SA uprising in Berlin bombarded his hotel room in Essen. Over a full day and night reports told of an escalating situation: “armed bands of SA are marching through the streets of Berlin…the putsch will erupt all across Germany at 4 p.m. sharp…Rohm has set the machinery in motion for Hitler’s ouster.” (Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., To Kill the Devil, p 9)

 This “threatening intelligence” was highly exaggerated if not wholly fictional. Urgent messages told that an alarm muster had been ordered for 4:00 pm and a surprise attack leading to full occupation of government buildings in Berlin would follow within the hour, and in Munich SA had already been ordered to assemble in revolt. (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)

 In reality, SA was on holiday. Hitler had told the SA to take a month off from its duties, and Rohm took sick leave, moving to a hotel in the resort area of Wiesse outside of Munich. (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)

 Yet Hitler and the SS acted precipitously to stop Röhm and his minions.

 The Night of the Long Knives

  Beginning at 4:00 am on Saturday, June 30, 1934, leaders of the SA in Munich were arrested and taken to the Ministry of the Interior. SA in nearby Wiessee were dragged from their hotel rooms, hustled outdoors, and shot to death. Göring and Himmler rounded up 150 SA, stood them against the wall of a school, and executed them by firing squad in Berlin. Röhm himself was escorted to Stadelheim prison in Munich, presented with a pistol so he could take his own life if he chose, and then shot to death when he refused. (To Kill the Devil, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)

 Only two actual attempts on Hitler’s life were made by the SA. One was half-hearted. A man wearing an SA uniform was arrested at Hitler’s Berghof residence carrying a gun he said would be used for assassination in 1933. The other was in response to Röhm’s arrest during the Night of the Long Knives.  Hitler confronted a band of SA bodyguards as he was returning to Munich from the prison where Röhm was being held and convinced them to shoulder their weapons. Realizing their mistake, the SA bodyguards regrouped, setting up machine guns on both sides of the road to Munich. Hitler and his driver backtracked, however, and took a different route, one that bypassed the Stormtroopers as they lay in wait.

 Mystery surrounds another assassination attempt. One of Hitler’s personal bodyguards, SA member Heinrich Grunow, proposed picking off Adolf Hitler with a rifle shot as he traveled to his weekend retreat at the Berghof in 1936. Grunow even reported that he had fired off two shots, saw Hitler “screaming and clawing in the air” in the passenger seat, then fired again before turning the gun on himself and pulling the trigger. While Grunow did threaten Hitler’s life in 1939, he was arrested, imprisoned, and died in Sachenhausen concentration camp in 1945. (John Grehan, The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

 There are conflicting reports about Hitler’s travels to the Berghof in 1936, however.  Reichsführer-SS Julius Schreck, Hitler’s chauffeur, died suddenly in May of that year. Two days after his death, officials listed the cause of death as an infected tooth. Another report claimed his death was caused by meningitis. Later reports, including those from Humanitas International and the University of North Carolina’s D. H. Ramsey Library, state that Schreck was involved in an auto accident and died from his injuries. A Chicago newspaper article stated that Schreck and Hitler were traveling by car to the town of Bernau when shots were fired, and the man in the passenger seat was killed. That man was thought to be Julius Schreck, and Hitler, as the driver, escaped death. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

 Sources:

 Christopher Ailsby: The Third Reich Day by Day, Chartwell Books, 2011.

 John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

 Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr.: To Kill the Devil, George J. McLeod Ltd., 1978.

 William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, MJF Books, 1960.    

HISTORKA: The Other Stories

People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

Britain’s Special Operations Executive

Formed at the outset of World War II, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the UK fostered and supported behind-the-scenes Resistance abroad in many ways. SOE mounted undercover and surprise offensives to thwart enemy action, engaged in sabotage, promoted labor unrest, prepared and distributed propaganda, trained and supplied operatives for quick in-and-out missions, stole weapons, bombed vehicles, disrupted power supplies and linkages and communications networks. The backbone for Resistance groups in Nazi-Occupied countries, SOE can take credit for some of the most critical actions that delayed the progression of the war and at least once put a stop to dangerous escalation.

SOE was only tangentially involved in planning or executing assassination attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler until the latter days of the war. And even then, its full-fledged, intricate assassination plan—code named FOXLEY—was never carried out.

https://alchetron.com/Special-Operations-Executive

SOE

Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), created in 1909, was split into its two well-known divisions in 1921—MI 6, which focuses on obtaining, tracking, analyzing intelligence from other countries, and MI 5, which preserves intelligence at home. (M.R.D. Foot: S.O.E. The Special Operations Executive 1940-46). SOE itself was created in March, 1939, just after armed forces from the Third Reich occupied Czechoslovakia, specifically for undercover work and propaganda. From that time until it was dissolved at war’s end in 1946, SOE worked with Resistance fighters from Albania to Turkey and in the Far East, helping coolies, farmers, peasants, railway men and rubber workers, policemen, printers, and smugglers become informers, saboteurs, and secret agents. (The Special Operations Executive).

Among its successes, SOE was instrumental in:

·         Supplying intelligence that led to a pin-point attack on Gestapo headquarters in Aarhus, Denmark, October, 1944, and another in Copenhagen in March, 1945, that allowed imprisoned members of the Danish Freedom Council to escape and carry with them a card index that identified Danes who were cooperating with the Nazis. (The Special Operations Executive, p 296)

·         Securing and protecting a 25-mile stretch of docks and gates from destruction in Antwerp in September, 1944, which accelerated the end of the war by several months. (The Special Operations Executive, p 300)

·         Running telephone lines across Ponte Vecchio in Florence, thereby allowing operatives to learn about enemy actions and smuggle in patrols to thwart them in August, 1944. (The Special Operations Executive, p 330)

·         Blowing up bridges and a viaduct in November, 1942, and June, 1943, that closed rail lines in Greece for months, interfering with Rommel’s retreat from Allied forces in Egypt (The Special Operations Executive, p 337-8)

One SOE operation, in particular, changed the entire course of the war. An SOE raiding party in March, 1942, slipped into and destroyed the Norsk Hydro Plant in Norway, the only place in the world ablable to generate heavy water on an industrial scale, and totally disrupted German scientists’ work on heavy water that was destined for an eventual atomic bomb. (https://www.businessinsider.com/how-daring-norwegian-wwii-raid-kept-nazis-from-nuclear-bomb-2021-2, The Special Operations Executive, p 298-99)

PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES AND WOLSSCHANZE

The widely known July, 1944, assassination attempt by Oberst Claus von Stauffenberg (dramatized in the film Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise) relied on SOE explosives that had been dropped into France in 1943. As part of the highly detailed plan for a coup by high-ranking German military men that would eliminate Hitler as well as other Nazi leaders, Stauffenberg placed a kilogram of plastic explosive in a briefcase that he stowed under the briefing table at the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) Nazi headquarters in East Prussia. (Valkyrie will be the subject of a full Historka blog post in coming months.) The plastic explosive and the time pencil detonator used by Stauffenberg had been sent by SOE to a Resistance network in France and confiscated by the German military the year before.

Plastic explosives were developed by the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich before the start of World War II. The explosives mixed cyclonite with plastic material that could be molded into any number of shapes. It could be handled safely—the explosive would not detonate on its own or even if struck—requiring an embedded detonator, such as a time pencil, to set it off. The so-called Switch No. 10 Delay was made of brass with a section of copper at one end that housed a glass vial of copper chloride and a spring-loaded striker. A delay switch, which timed the device to explode ten minutes to 24 hours later, was triggered by crushing the copper section of the device to break the vial and release the chemical which would eat away at the striker and hit the percussion cap. (https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Pencil_detonator)

FOXLEY

An SOE plan to assassinate Hitler and other high-ranking members of the Nazi Party emerged in November, 1944, as Hitler’s support across Germany declined. Authored by Major H. B. Court, Operation FOXLEY detailed ways to eliminate Hitler including drawings, maps, and photographs of the most likely target area—Hitler’s retreat at Obersaltzberg, the Berghof.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hitlers/3226959811/

Hitler’s retreat since 1926, the Berghof was in the Austrian mountains 70 miles from Munich and 16 miles from Salzburg. The estate grew steadily to encompass barracks and an SS guardroom, residences for Nazi leaders such as Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, and Albert Speer, a small farm, hotel, and theater plus an underground system of bunkers. It was surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire as well as gates manned by Reichssichrheitsdienst (RSD) and SS escorts, but overall security was questionable. The large numbers of guards and workers increased the chances for an enemy agent or assassin to gain access disguised as one of them. (Peter Hoffman, Hitler’s Personal Security).

A 19-man team of RSD guards was installed in 1942-3, with the men making regular patrols in front of the main building and surrounding area. Another 16-man RSD unit served as guards at outer checkpoints and allowed access only to those with official visitors’ passes. (Hitler’s Personal Security, p 189). The property had anti-aircraft batteries, and regular five-minute readiness checks were conducted beginning in 1944 (Hitler’s Personal Security, p 196).

The Berghof nevertheless was the chosen site for FOXLEY. For one thing, Hitler maintained a fairly regular schedule at the retreat. He routinely took a walk between 10 and 11 from his residence through the woods to a teahouse on the grounds, and he walked alone or with a friend or colleague rather than a guard. While SS monitored him, their patrols followed only at a distance. Sentries also tracked his movements, but from 500 yards or more away from his path. (John Grehan, The Hitler Assassination Attempts).

As its first line of attack, FOXLEY proposed a sniper attack from a vantage point 100 to 200 yards away from Hitler as he took his daily walk. However, the perimeter of the grounds was not only enclosed by chain link and barbed wire, it was patrolled by guards and guard dogs minutes before the start of Hitler’s walk. If the sniper was not able to get into position in time or otherwise not able to carry out the mission, FOXLEY envisioned a two-man team firing on the Führer when he returned from the teahouse to the Berghof by car.

An aerial attack on the property itself was another option. FOXLEY envisioned an RAF sortie that bombed the residence and other buildings, especially those housing SS, followed by landing a parachute battalion of 800 men to overcome the approximately 300 SS and other German troops on site.

Attention shifted to Hitler’s travels between the Berghof and Berlin where trains were under less surveillance than they were in the occupied countries. According to FOXLEY planners, “signal boxes are not guarded as a rule… Guards at bridges and tunnels are said to consist of only two men and to be very slack in performing their duties.” (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 214). FOXLEY therefore surmised that a “sabotage party” could be disguised as train guards so as not to arouse suspicion. The sabotage party could then plant explosives in one of the tunnels near Salzburg or Stuttgart. Hitler’s train might also be derailed by diverting his train onto a siding where it would crash off the rails, or an operative might be able to toss a suitcase full of explosives under the train as it rolled by. The inability to get reliable advance information on Hitler’s movements ahead of time sidelined these FOXLEY options.

Other FOXLEY thoughts explored the possibility of a sniper attack as Hitler stepped out of his auto and poisoning the water supply to his train. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 218-220).

In the end, FOXLEY was abandoned. In 1944 and -45, Hitler’s misguided decisions involving the war effort and willingness to overrule sound advice from his own military leaders were “help[ing] the Allied cause enormously.” The focus therefore shifted to full defeat of the German military machine, Hitler’s eventual loss of power, and the perception of him as an object of ridicule. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 221).

 Sources

 M. R. D. Foot: S.O.E. The Special Operations Executive 1940-46, Arrow Books, 1984.

Peter Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security, Da Capo Press, 2000.

John Grehan, The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-daring-norwegian-wwii-raid-kept-nazis-from-nuclear-bomb-2021-2

https://www.history.com/news/july-plot-hitler-assassination-attempt-operation-valkyrie

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Valkyrie

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/operation-valkyrie.html

https:/encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-july-20-1944-plot-to-assassinate-adolf-hitler       

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

Resistance in Poland

In response to the brutality of the Nazi conquest and occupation of Poland in 1938, an extensive and highly effective Polish underground network planned and carried out attacks that just missed their target—Adolf Hitler—in 1939 and 1941-3.

September 1939

 A fake Polish radio news broadcast at 8:00 pm on August 1, 1939, was the excuse that propelled massive numbers of infantry across the German-Polish border and triggered rapid gunfire from the deck of the battleship Schleswig-Holstein on the port city of Westerplatte near Danzig early the next morning.

 German forces quickly overran major cities, leading to the capitulation of Warsaw less than a month later. In intervening days, the SS Death’s Head Division made the Führer’s judgment of Poles clear—“primitive, stupid, and amorphous.” (Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler). Death’s Head killed 800 people in one town, including Boy Scouts between the ages of 12 and 16, a parish priest, and a man too ill to stand upright on his own while he was gunned down. (Killing Hitler)

https://www.dw.com/es/polonia-y-alemania-conmemoran-los-75-a%C3%B1os-del-inicio-de-la-ii-guerra-mundial/a-17892696

  After the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland on September 17, the government of Poland fled initially to Romania and later to France and the UK and operated in exile. An active Resistance nevertheless remained. (The Soviet Union occupied East Poland until the Third Reich declared war in 1941 and Nazi Germany overtook the entire country.)

.Polish Resistance

Underground Resistance groups sprouted from Polish political parties that formed paramilitary units as well as the military. As many as 40 groups operated in Warsaw from September through the end of 1939, 140 by the end of the following year.

 Służba Zwycięstwu Polski (Service for Poland’s Victory), established on September 27 under the direction of General Michal Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, was the core of Armia Krajowa or AK (the Polish Home Army), which took shape in 1942(https://www.historyhit.com/polands-underground-state-1939-90/).

 Polish underground groups were highly organized and disciplined, marshalling the work of nearly 200,000 operatives across the country. In addition to maintaining an underground press, members of the Resistance distributed anti-Nazi propaganda and prominently displayed the symbol of the movement—PW for Polska Walcząca or Fighting Poland.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillunusual/7761435030/

The Resistance movement also managed informants and couriers. Cichociemni or Polish commandos were trained in the UK and transferred to cities and towns in Poland to guide local Resistance groups and lead intelligence gathering and sabotage. Operatives later provided British intelligence with replicas of the Enigma encryption machine, the location of a German research facility, and a V-2 rocket that had not detonated on impact in Eastern Poland (https://warsawinstitute.org/phenomenon-polish-underground-state/).

Resistance groups sabotaged railways, supply food chains, weapons manufacturing, and fuel dumps, successfully disrupting all rail lines in and around Warsaw for two days in 1942 (Killing Hitler). Estimates indicate that more than 700 trains were blown up and 400 were set on fire between 1941 and 1944, accounting for the destruction of 14,000 train cars and the collapse of 38 bridges. (https://warsawinstitute.org/phenomenon-polish-underground-state/)

Beginning in 1943 Kedyw, the Directorate of Diversion, section of the underground focused on the elimination of traitors through intimidation, observation, underground trials, and sentences of death, and targeted German functionaries for assassination. In 1943 Kedyw members killed one German policeman a day. A year later, they were killing ten policemen a day. In the first six months of 1944, 750 members of the Gestapo were assassinated, and 1000 members of the occupying force were killed or injured each month. (Killing Hitler)

 Attempts on Adolf Hitler’s Life

 The first of several attacks on Adolf Hitler himself occurred in the early days of Occupation. As the Polish military retreated from Germany’s overpowering numbers, it still managed to stop a convoy carrying Hitler to observe the frontlines. The Polish air force dropped bombs only 3 kilometers away from Hitler’s location near the Vistula River on September 4, and a Polish sniper shot the driver of a German supply lorry, causing the truck to crash into the Hitler convoy near the town of Koronowo. (Killing Hitler)

 Former Polish general and leader of the nascent Polish underground, Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, and Maj. Franciszek Niepokólczycki planted explosives at the intersection of two streets on the victory parade route that celebrated the German 8th Army in defeated Warsaw on October 5. One load of 250 kg of TNT was placed near a bank on the western corner of Nowy Świat, the other in a building on the western corner of Aleje Jerozolimskie. Cables ran from the loads to the basement of a building in the area, and men were in position to detonate the explosives. (Killing Hitler, John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photolibrarian/51229327496/

After reviewing the lines of marching troops with his generals for more than two hours, Hitler entered his vehicle and made a tour of the city, moving slowly among throngs of soldiers and passing—safely--over the intersection where the explosives were buried.

Reasons why? Speculation abounds: Niepokólczycki could not reach the site to order detonation because streets had been closed. The officer in charge at the scene did not confirm Hitler was actually in the automobile until it had passed him by. Wiring leading to the explosives was faulty. With 12 high-ranking Polish government officials held hostage in the basement of City Hall, the risk was too great. (Killing Hitler, The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

Train Targets

Perhaps because of the Polish underground’s history of successful disruptions of railways and transportation, assassination attempts involved Hitler’s train travels in 1941, -42 and -43.

This is not to say that train travel precautions were at all lax. So-called Special train cars were built expressly for Hitler’s use in 1937, -38, and -39 and were made entirely of welded steel.  There were two versions of the Führersonderzug (Führer Special Train). The train used during times of peace or in peaceful settings had sleeping cars, a dining compartment, Pullman coach, personnel and press cars. The train used during times of conflict (known as Führerhauptquartier—Fuhrer’s Headquarters—and nicknamed Amerika) had an armored anti-aircraft car manned by a 26-member crew, a car for commandos, and conference car with teletype and communications center with a short-wave transmitter. (Peter Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security)

Travel plans were kept secret until a few hours before departure, and advance units were established along the route to close crossing barriers and guard track lines. Onboard railway technicians checked for defects on rail lines as well as the train cars; train stations, platforms on both sides of the tracks, under- and overpasses were heavily guarded. Other trains were sidelined or their departures delayed until the Special train had left the upcoming station, freights or maintenance trains could not run on parallel tracks, and a dummy train typically preceded the Special train that actually transported Hitler. (Hitler’s Personal Security)

 Assassination Attempts

Detachments of the Polish Home Army, AK, placed explosives on railroad tracks in West Prussia 20 to 30 minutes before any fast train was scheduled to pass by. The explosives were set to be detonated by a transmitter approximately 400 meters away. The train carrying Hitler did not arrive at the scheduled place and time in the autumn of 1941. It made an unscheduled stop at a nearby station and sat for 20 minutes while Hitler addressed Danish volunteers en route to the Eastern Front. The train that went ahead of the Führersonderzug did crash as a result of the detonations, and 430 of the German passengers were killed. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

 On June 8, 1942, two AK teams learned that Hitler would be traveling across Poland to Berlin to attend the funeral of the head of Nazi-Occupied Czechoslovakia who had been killed by Czech partisans. Under the code name Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood), Lt. Jan Szalewski directed one of the teams to remove railroad tracks between Tczew and Chojnice and the other to secure the wooded area nearby.

 After the apparent dummy train passed by, the team removed the tracks and waited with their compatriots in the woods. When the train they assumed to be Führersonderzug derailed and ran down an embankment, the teams opened fire and killed 200 German soldiers as they fell from the train cars. Hitler was not among them. (Killing Hitler, The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

 The deputy commander of the Zagra Lin arm of AK, Bernard Drzyzga, learned two days ahead of time that Hitler’s train would be passing through Bydgoszcz in May, 1943.  Acting on his own because of the short time frame, he planted two explosive devices along a bend in the tracks and connected them by electric wire to a detonator. He waited along the tracks at the day and time the Führersonderzug was expected to arrive. The only train to pass by was a freight. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

Sources:

https://www.historyhit.com/polands-underground-state-1939-90/

https://warsawinstitute.org/phenomenon-polish-underground-state/

 Grehan, John: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

 Moorhouse, Roger: Killing Hitler, Bantam Books, 2006

 Hoffman, Peter: Hitler’s Personal Security, Da Capo Press, 2000

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Outsiders

By far, the most attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler were made by Germans who acted alone, in concert with others, or as part of an organized effort.

A few attempts were made by outsiders, men from other countries: A solo actor from Switzerland followed his own erratic path, two Brits at different times in different circumstances proposed what they considered to be fool-proof plans, and a Soviet agent was establishing a cover story as a defector to Germany only to be called back at the last minute.

 Maurice Bavaud

maurice bavaud - dofaq.co

 Like lone wolf Georg Elser (last month’s blog subject), Swiss theology student Maurice Bavaud was attracted to the pomp and circumstance of the annual National Socialist Procession held every year in Munich in early November in the late 1930s. His trip was even suggested by a security aide to the chief of the Reich Chancellery, Major Karl Deckert. (Note: Deckert is identified in various sources as Karl Derkert, a captain who was connected with Hitler’s personal security, and a policeman.)

Bavaud was studying to become a Catholic missionary at a seminary in Brittany when he met Marcel Gerbohay in 1935. Together, the two created the current affairs student discussion group Compagnie du Mystére and over time agreed that Hitler had to be removed because of his persecution of the Catholic Church and tolerance of the atheist Soviet Union. (Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler)

In the summer of 1938, Bavaud turned thoughts into action. He left the seminary and for a time lived with his family in Neuchâtel before he began tracking Hitler. He first traveled to Berlin, then, when Hitler was at his mountain retreat in Bavaria, Bavaud journeyed to Berchtesgaden in Obersalzberg, along the way purchasing a small automatic pistol and 6.35 mm ammunition, taking long walks in the hills surrounding Hitler’s house, the Berghof, and testing his marksmanship at a range of 25 feet against the trunks of trees.

Over a meal at an inn, Bavaud was pleased to meet two local teachers of French. Speaking in his native language, he told the teachers he was a fervent admirer of National Socialism and hoped to meet the Führer. Deckert, overhearing the conversation from the next table, told Bavaud it was fruitless to try to see Hitler at the Berghof, but he might be able to secure an audience with the leader of the Third Reich by going through channels in Munich. He could at least see Hitler and his entourage at the National Socialist Procession. (Since 1935, the March through Munich was held every year on the afternoon of November 9. Marchers, including the Führer himself, made their way from the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall down city streets and through plazas to the Feldherrnhalle where wreaths were laid in commemoration of the 16 men who had lost their lives during the 1923 putsch.)

In Munich on November 3 or 4, Bavaud posed as a Swiss journalist and got a ticket for a seat on the Holy Ghost Church reviewing stand, situated at the western end of a street where marchers would turn into a narrow archway. On the day of the March, he arrived early enough to get a seat in the front row. Yet, as marchers passed in front of him, Bavaud realized Hitler would be too far away for a clear shot, his line of sight would be blocked by SA who lined up along the curb, and security men at the edges of the marchers would prevent him from moving any closer.

Undeterred, Bavaud pursued other avenues: He forged letters of introduction from the foreign minister of France and traveled back and forth from Munich to Berchtesgarden, trying to deliver the letters in person, only to find Hitler was elsewhere. Running out of money, he boarded a train bound for Salzburg and snuck onto one of the coaches destined for Paris. Caught without a ticket or the means to purchase one, Bavaud was turned over to civilian authorities for trying to ride free on Reich railways.

On December 6, he was sentenced to 60 days in jail for fraud. A month later, the Gestapo confronted Bavaud in his jail cell with information about his actions and the purchase of the handgun. He confessed after a lengthy interrogation, spent 11 months in prison while awaiting trial and another 17 months after conviction before he was executed.

Noel Mason MacFarlane, Alexander Foote

The perfect spot for an assassination: An open bathroom window across the square from the reviewing stand where Hitler watched big parades in Berlin. Osteria Bavaria, the small lunch spot in Munich where Hitler ate eggs, vegetables, and fruit three times a week.

Colonel Noel Mason-MacFarlane, British military attaché in Berlin in the 1930s, was sure he could “pick the bastard off from here as easy as winking.” (John Grehan, The Hitler Assassination Plots). ‘Here’ was a window in his flat on Sophienstrasse, just under 100 yards from the raised platform from which Hitler would be watching the parade celebrating his birthday on April 20, 1939. 

MacFarlane told Ewen Butler, Berlin news correspondent for The Times from 1937-39, “All that was necessary was a good shot and a high-velocity rifle with telescopic sight and silencer.” (The Hitler Assassination Plots, p 71). “It could have been fired through my open bathroom window from a spot on the landing some 30 feet back from the window.” And the sound of the rifle shot would have been drowned out by the cheering, marching, and music. (Peter Hoffman, Hitler’s Personal Security, p 99)

Sir (Frank) Noel Mason MacFarlane - Person - National Portrait Gallery (npg.org.uk)

 All that would be necessary for Alexander Foote, an MI6 double agent working as a Soviet spy in Munich, was a time bomb in an attaché case placed on the other side of the private room where Hitler often lunched when he was in Munich. Foote believed the prospects of successfully assassinating Hitler at the restaurant were “promising.” Security at the restaurant was surprisingly lax. Hitler’s team did not take extra precautions or intensify surveillance while Hitler was lunching. Foote even tested the idea of an assassination attempt at the Osteria with a colleague named Bill Phillips. (Other sources identify Foote’s colleague as Len Brewer.)

“One day, Bill stationed himself at the table next to the gangway, and as Hitler approached, put his hand rapidly and furtively into his pocket, and drew out a cigarette case.” Nothing happened. None of the members of Hitler’s entourage and guests or Gestapo agents even flinched. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 76)

https://prabook.com/web/alexander.foote/3714455

 Neither plan made it beyond the talking stage. MacFarlane’s idea withered in London. Not yet at war with Germany, the British war ministry balked. As Butler noted, “the murder of the German Chancellor by the British Military Attaché would create a really formidable diplomatic incident.” But, MacFarlane countered, “Nobody in Germany would go to war on that account, whereas while Hitler lived war is certain.” Nonetheless, MacFarlane’s superiors vetoed the plan. One reason: “the act would have been ‘unsportsmanlike.’” (To Kill the Devil, p 48-49)

Although given an initial go-ahead by the Soviets, Foote was ordered to stand down in the summer of 1939. Germany and the Soviet Union had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-aggression Pact on August 23 and become allies. (The Hitler Assassination Plots, p 74)

Lev Knipper

Soviet thinking about assassinating Hitler shifted dramatically, at least for a brief time in 1941-43. In March, 1942, Stalin reportedly was “extremely anxious to see Hitler dead and proposed to use every effort to bring this about.” When Hitler was supposed to be in Minsk, Minsk was bombed. When the German General Staff was in Vilna three days later, Vilna was bombed. Minsk was bombed again when Hitler was reportedly in the city. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, page 131).

The Soviets also recruited Lev Knipper, the nephew of playwright Anton Chekov and brother of a Russian actress who had immigrated to Germany and become part of the Third Reich’s cultural elite, to be an assassin.  Knipper was a very willing operative, saying “it’s not even so frightening to die” for his country. (Killing Hitler, p 182).

A composer, Knipper was spending a year in Iran researching and eventually completing Two Preludes on Iranian Themes. His objective was to defect to Germany from Iran, hook up with a Soviet agent who was posing as a defector, and use his connections with his sister to bring him and Hitler together.

The project was canceled in the summer of 1943. Getting close to Hitler was nearly impossible. For one thing, he was rarely seen in public. Even when he was, he was surrounded by security. More important, German troops had just been defeated at Stalingrad and the tide of the war was turning.

Sources

Grehan, John: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Yorkshire, Pen and Sword Books, 2022.

Hoffman, Peter: Hitler’s Personal Security, Da Capo Press, 2000.

Molly Mason, Herbert: To Kill the Devil, New York, W W Norton & Co., 1978.

Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler, New York, Bantam Books, 2006

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

The Lone Wolf

Adolf Hitler traveled to Munich on November 8, 1939, to give the speech that commemorated the Beer Hall Putsch. He had been giving a speech on that date for the last six years to remind followers of the Nazis’ audacious attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic in 1923 and reiterate his declaration at the time that the “National Revolution” had begun.

This year he had to improvise, however. Instead of starting the speech at 8:00 pm and ending two hours later as was customary, he began an hour earlier and ended after 60 minutes. He needed to return to Berlin that same night to finalize plans for a western offensive and heavy fog prevented a quick night flight.

Standing at the podium in front of a pillar bearing the red, black, and white swastika flags in the Bürgerbäukeller, Hitler railed against the British: “When has there ever been a people more vilely lied to and tricked than the German Volk by English statesmen in the past two decades?” And he exhorted his followers to action: “This is a great time. And in it, we shall prove ourselves all the more as fighters.” (Killing Hitler, p 64-5)

He then left the beer hall at 9:07 pm.

Thirteen minutes later, a bright light flashed, a blast roared, and a rush of air toppled tables and chairs, shattered windows, and blew out doors. The podium and pillar exploded, the dais and lectern crumpled, the ceiling crashed to the floor, and more than 50 of the men who had stayed behind were injured or dead. (Killing Hitler, p 66)

 German Resistance Memorial Center - 7 Georg Elser and the Assassination Attempt of November 8, 1939 (gdw-berlin.de)

The target of the attack learned about the incident minutes later when his train stopped in Nuremburg. At about the same time, the perpetrator approached the Swiss border. He was stopped by German guards and turned over to the Gestapo almost immediately when a postcard of the Bürgerbäukeller, sketches of a bomb, and a fuse were found in his pockets.

Five days later, the man confessed. He was Georg Elser, an ordinary German, a member of the working class expected to be a staunch supporter of the Nazi Party. Even more surprising, he had acted alone, meticulously and patiently putting the incendiary device together.

The Plan

Elser decided almost immediately that the beer hall would be the location for his assassination attempt. The speech came off every year at the same location like clockwork. The streets outside the beer hall were routinely barricaded, crowded, and afforded little chance of a good shot. And the beer hall itself was fairly easily accessible. When he visited in November, 1938, Elser noticed that the speaker’s platform was in front of a column supporting the upper gallery of the building and in the middle of the hall. “In the course of the next few weeks,” he reported in his confession, “I slowly worked it out in my head that it would be best to pack explosives into this particular pillar behind the speaker’s platform and then by means of some kind of device cause the explosives to ignite at the right time.” (Bombing Hitler, p 157)

The Bomb

Since the summer of 1937, Elser had been working at the Waldenmaier armaments factory. Because of lax security, he was able to gather 250 compressed pellets of explosive powder, secreting each of the discs in sheets of paper and covering them with clothes in his locker. Realizing he needed more explosives as well as details about fashioning a detonator, he got a job at the Vollmer quarry in Itzelberg. Elser was able to pick up cans of explosives that had been left behind after blasts and “pay a visit” to the hut that served as a supply depot, easily filing down a key to fit the lock on the iron exterior door and yank open the unlocked wooden interior door. (Bombing Hitler, p 161, To Kill the Devil)

Elser trailed explosives experts at the quarry to learn their techniques and tested four devices in his parent’s orchard in the summer of 1939. The devices consisted of three blocks of explosives mounted on a board with a spring stretched across, a rifle shell as a firing cap, and a nail as the firing pin. He placed the materials, including 110 pounds of explosives, 125 high-capacity detonators, and quick-burning fuse, in the false bottom of his wooden suitcase and carried it with him when he moved to Munich in August, 1939.  (To Kill the Devil)

The Placement

Elser began having dinner in the Bürgerbäukeller regularly. He sat at the same table served by the same waitress a little after 8:00 pm. He ate the cheapest meal, had a single beer, and left the table about 10:00 pm. He canvassed the hall by walking through the cloakroom. When he was sure no one was watching, he climbed the stairs to the gallery and hid in a storage space behind a folding screen.

Elser waited for the sound of the key turning in the lock between 10:30 and 11:30 pm, then quietly made his way along the gallery to the column that would be the backstop for Hitler’s speech on November 8. He first created a door close to the bottom of the column, then he chiseled out a chamber for the bomb using a hand drill with a chisel bit. He covered his tools with rags to minimize the noise and stopped making loud actions, such as chipping out portions of brick or masonry, until sounds from outdoors could camouflage them. He worked for several hours each night, then dozed until morning when he walked out of the beer hall soon after it opened between 7:00 and 8:00 am.

He spent three to four hours a night over the course of about a month to hollow out the pillar, insert the bomb, and set the timing device, each time sweeping up dust and debris, hiding the detritus in a storage room on the gallery until he could return with a suitcase to remove any signs of his work. He loaded explosives, made corrections to his ignition device, added wire and started the clock on November 5, setting the timer to detonate the charge 63 hours and 20 minutes later. (Bombing Hitler, To Kill the Devil)

The Man

Elser was born in January, 1903, in a small village in southwest Germany, a region known for the manufacture and sale of cuckoo clocks. After working briefly for his father, he apprenticed as a lathe operator in a smelter at age 14 and soon left because of health issues. He switched to woodworking, graduating at the top of his class from the Heidenheim trade school eight years later. He then worked in a furniture factory, a factory that made aircraft propellers, and as a carpenter building desks. He also worked for a brief time at a clock factory.

 Georg Elser: Seine Bombe gegen Hitler explodierte pünktlich – 13 Minuten zu spät - WELT

Though not part of any organized political movement, Elser was driven to take action against Hitler because of National Socialism’s failure to improve the lot of the ordinary German worker. The German economy had improved with the rise of the Nazis. Workers’ wages had dropped, however, from 1 mark an hour in 1929 to 68 pfennigs in 1938. At the same time, withholding taxes doubled from 10 to 20 percent. (To Kill the Devil) “The workers find themselves under constraint,” he wrote. “Under the new laws, for example, they cannot change the place where they work; they cannot move to another town to look for a better job. No that is forbidden.” (To Kill the Devil, p 91)

Another driving force was the fear of war and the need to take action to avoid it. He stressed that “the dissatisfaction among the workers that I had observed since 1933 and the war that I had seen as inevitable since the fall of 1938 occupied my thoughts constantly… On my own, I began to contemplate how one could improve the conditions of the working class and avoid war.” His conclusion—to remove the leadership of the country, including Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels. “I came to the conclusion that by removing these three men other men would come to power who would not make unacceptable demands of foreign countries, ‘who would not want to involve another country,’ and who would be concerned about improving social conditions for the workers.” (Bombing Hitler, p 151)

After his arrest, Elser was taken to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen where he was beaten repeatedly and severely and drugged. In early 1945 he was taken to the camp at Dachau. Days after Hitler’s suicide, Elser was killed by a pistol shot to the back of the head.

Conspiracy Theories

Although evidence is clear that Elser acted alone, German leadership and the press believed otherwise. Among those blamed were the Nazi-opposition group organized by Otto Strasser—the Black Front—British SIS, and even Heinrich Himmler himself. Strasser, publisher of the Nationaler Sozialist, wrote in November, 1939, that he had “definite proof from a very reliable party member [that] the plot was the idea of Himmler himself, who told Hitler’s deputy Rudolph Hess that he needed an attempt on Hitler to let loose a hate offensive against the British and in order to have a pretext to attack internal enemies.” (The Hitler Assassination Attempts, p 99)

Essays and articles appearing in the 1960s and ‘70s confirmed Elser’s status as a lone wolf. A film by Klaus Maria Brandauer in 1989 made Elser and his actions well known across Germany. Most recently, the film 13 Minutes brings the man and his actions to life.

13 Minutes (2021) - IMDb

Sources:

Bombing Hitler, Hellmut G. Haasis, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013.

Killing Hitler, Roger Moorhouse, Bantam Books, 2006.

The Hitler Assassination Attempts, John Grehan, Frontline Books, 2022.

To Kill the Devil, Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.

HISTORKA: The Other Stories People, Places, and Events Behind the Headlines in History

Caught in the Act

Threats against the life of the new German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, were not unusual. In the months after he became head of parliament, police received tips about possible assassination attempts at least once a week. (Peter Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security) Some were fabricated by Heinrich Himmler who was jockeying for position in the new Reich in February and March of 1933. Some were far-fetched: one would-be assassin supposedly planned to squirt poison into Hitler’s face from a bouquet of flowers, another hoped to rig a fountain pen with an explosive that would detonate in Hitler’s hand (Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security, page 24-25).

Others were either pranks or mistakes. A telephone call to police on the day before the Prussian State Council was scheduled to meet warned of a time bomb hidden in the coal cellar of the ministry building. A suspicious object on the cellar stairs turned out, however, to be container of packing cord left behind by workers who had maintained the building years before. (Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security, page 25)

 Hitler's Personal Security: Protecting the Führer, 1921-1945: Hoffmann, Peter: 9780306809477: Amazon.com: Books

A couple of incidents may have been flat-out bravado or the result of wishful thinking. Two plotters offered information about assassination plans to officials in the United States. One, in exchange for cash. In October, 1933, a man identifying himself as M. X. Kimball approached the German embassies in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and asked for money to reveal the details of a plot by American Jews to send an emissary to Germany who would kill Hitler. According to the plan, a man of Jewish extraction would travel to London where he would get information about how to meet with Hitler in his office where the murder would be committed. (John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

A few months earlier, another man, Daniel Stern, wrote the German Ambassador in Washington, stating he would travel to Europe and assassinate Hitler if President Roosevelt did not demand an end to the persecution of Jews in Germany. A nationwide search could find not find Stern or any links to him. (Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, page 25-26)

But many of the threats real enough to be investigated were thwarted before they got very far.

The Potsdam Day Bomb Threats

A tip from an unlikely source--a medium who obtained messages via a crystal ball--reported that a tunnel had been dug under the Potsdam Garrison Church where Hitler was scheduled to symbolize the “marriage of the old grandeur with new power” through a formal handshake with the president of the German Reich, Paul von Hindenburg, during the celebration of the reopening of the Reichstag on March 21, 1933. (An arson attack burned the original Reichstag to the ground a month before. This fire was used by Hitler as a pretext to accuse Communists of attempting to overthrow the German government and led to the Reichstag Fire Decree that suspended civil liberties throughout Germany.)

 The church described as a 'symbol of evil' - BBC News

Before the newly elected members of the Reichstag would reconvene in Kroll Opera House, Berlin, Hitler and Joseph Goebbels organized speeches, religious services, parades, and memorials in an event known as Potsdam Day. The city of Potsdam was selected for the ceremony because it had been the seat of Frederick the Great’s Prussian Kingdom as well as Otto von Bismarck’s German Empire. The date was chosen because Imperial Germany’s first Reichstag opened on March 21, 1871. In addition to Hitler and Hindenburg, dignitaries also included Crown Prince Wilhelm of the Hohenzollern dynasty and three of his brothers. (Potsdam Day-- Wikipedia)

Investigators did find that the tunnel “seen” by the medium was, indeed, being dug. But instead of being loaded with explosives, the tunnel was lined with cables so the Potsdam Day proceedings could be broadcast live over the radio. (Hoffmann: Hitler’s Personal Security, page 25)

Police intervened to eliminate two more serious bomb threats associated with Potsdam Day. The day before the event, Himmler reported that three Checkists had driven to the Richard Wagner memorial in Tiergartenstrasse, Munich, carrying bombs that would be set off as Hitler passed by on the way from the Potsdam festivities to the new Reichstag in Berlin. The men were spotted and arrested before they could plant and arm the devices, however. According to Himmler, “The authorities saw in every attempt of this kind the grave danger to public order and security. From his own knowledge of the public mood and from reports of subordinate officials, [Himmler] was convinced that the firing of the very first shot -- whether it hit the mark or not -- might lead to unequalled chaos throughout Germany and to a great programme which no power of the state or the police would be able to prevent.” (Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, page 25)

Days before Potsdam Day, Kurt Lutter, a ship’s carpenter and member of a small group of Communists, was arrested for planning to detonate the speaker’s platform while Hitler was addressing a political rally in Konigsberg on March 4, 1933. On March 3, a police informer who had infiltrated the group notified authorities, and Lutter and others were rounded up and interrogated. When none of the plotters owned up to the plan, they all were released. (Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts; James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler)

Tight Security vs. Loose Lips

Routine security measures foiled at least one potential assassin. Hitler regularly strolled up and down the hilly walking paths near his mountain retreat on the slopes of the Obersaltzberg mountain range, talking with compatriots as he crisscrossed over public hiking trails in the open countryside. Hitler’s bodyguards grew suspicious when they spotted a stranger in an SS uniform intently watching Hitler and his entourage. After stopping and searching the man, the security detail found a loaded gun and promptly arrested him. (James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler; Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

Informers sidelined other assassins. A school teacher in early 1933 told police that she had heard about a plan by Ludwig Assner, a member of the Bavarian State Parliament, to send a personal letter laced with poison to Hitler from France. On other occasions, Assner declared that he would not rest until he had shot Hitler or otherwise removed him from office. Assner’s plans were dismissed as extortion when he promised to desist if given a large sum of money. (Duffy and Ricci: Target; Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts).

An elaborate plan to infiltrate the SS and gather information about Hitler’s movements was itself infiltrated by Gestapo in 1935. Led by industrialist Dr. Helmut Mylius, head of the Party of the Radical Middle Class and editor of a right-wing political and economics publication, and the retired Navy Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, 160 Radical Middle Class Party men supporters actually were able to join the SS according to plan. But the size of the group may have been its undoing. According to John Grehan, such a large group made its discovery almost inevitable, as some members of the group most likely fell into the “loose lips” category. As a result, the plan was discovered, and most of the men were arrested. Mylius himself was able to circumvent arrest by joining the army, as arranged by his friend Field Marshall Erich von Manstein. (Duffy and Ricci: Target; Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts)

Plans by another potential assassin were foiled not once, but twice. Josef “Beppo” Römer in 1934 was arrested after gaining entry to the Reich Chancellery. A former member of the Freikorps paramilitary group who sought revenge for Hitler’s purge of the ranks of the SA on the Night of the Long Knives (June and July, 1934 when Nazi Party members purged SA from its ranks) and later a Communist, Römer was imprisoned for his actions at Dachau concentration camp. After his release in 1939, Römer again plotted to eliminate Hitler (or, as he said, “cut off the snake’s head”). He may have flagged his own actions, however, by dropping incriminating information about his analysis of German military action and active resistance into wastebaskets. (Grehan, page 34). Römer was arrested and sentenced to death in 1942 and executed in 1944.

A Cause Célèbre

The Stuttgart born and raised German Jew Helmut Hirsch was not able to enroll in a German university because of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. He therefore traveled to Prague and entered the German Institute of Technology there. He soon joined the Black Front, an organization of former members of the Nazi Party and German expatriates who opposed Hitler and led underground activities.

Helmut Hirsch Collection, Robert D. Farber University, Brandeis University

In December, 1936, he was sent to Nuremburg to meet a man who would give him two baggage claim tickets for suitcases containing explosives. He traveled to Stuttgart instead to meet a friend he hoped would talk him out of participating in the plan. When his friend did not arrive, he checked into a hotel across from the railway station. There, he was arrested by Gestapo the next morning.

Although he had no explosives in his possession, he was indicted for possessing them and conspiring to commit high treason and held in solitary confinement for nine weeks. At his trial, a Gestapo double agent described the plot in detail. But while Hirsch contended he should be acquitted because he did not travel to Nuremburg or acquire the suitcases containing the explosives, he did acknowledge that he would have, if given the chance, attempted to assassinate Hitler. He consequently was sentenced to death.

Hirsch’s family engaged international organizations in an attempt to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, including the International Red Cross, human rights groups, and Quakers. The case was appealed to the League of Nations and discussed in the British House of Commons. Because Hirsch’s father was an American citizen, Helmut was granted citizenship in the US in April, 1937. Despite efforts by the American ambassador in Berlin and Secretary of State, Hirsch was decapitated on June 4, 1937. (Helmut Hirsch Collection, Robert D. Farber University Archives, Brandeis University) 

Sources

Peter Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security, DA Capo Press, 2000.

John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.

Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler, Bantam Books, 2006.

James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci: Target Hitler, Praeger, 1992.

Garrison Church (Potsdam) Wikipedia.

Helmut Hirsch Collection. Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, Brandeis University.