Plot against Hitler 1944. Attempt on Hitler's life

According to the military archives of the German intelligence services, attempts were made on Hitler's life approximately 20 times. According to the writer Will Berthold, who worked as a reporter during the Nuremberg trials, there were more than 40 such attempts. However, according to new data, they tried to take the Fuhrer’s life at least 50 times.

During his lifetime, attempts were made on the life of the “great German leader” a large number of times. After his death, the number of participants in the assassination attempts increased so much that researchers did not know who to believe.
Yes, this is, in general, understandable. Modern Germany in every possible way rejects the fact that the country's population ardently supported the Fuhrer. To prove her words, she needs to provide anti-Hitler heroes. Moreover, there were a lot of them.
The very history of Adolf Hitler's rise to power contains many moments when he could have been eliminated without any problems. However, this had to be done no later than the summer of 1934.
It was during this time that the Fuhrer removed his most real competitors - Ernst Rehm and Gregor Strasser. The third competitor, Otto Strasser, managed to flee outside the state.
It can be assumed that if Hitler had been killed then, and one of these three had come to power, the situation would have turned out completely differently. If the reins of government had gone to the Strasser brothers, it is quite possible that there would have been no war, and Rem would have completely turned into an obedient pawn of the USSR, since there was plenty of dirt on him.
However, Hitler remained alive, even though the chances of destroying him were very high. Firstly, he could have been shot by the police, who repeatedly dispersed National Socialist rallies using firearms. And, as everyone knows, Hitler was always in the forefront. He was clearly not a coward. Evidence of this is the large number of awards he received during the First World War, as well as the stories of his colleagues. They say that after the first assassination attempt, Hitler was in great emotional shock and even told the officers that he could be killed by some idiot at any moment.

Hitler visits one of the officers, like himself, who suffered from an unsuccessful attempt on his life on July 20, 1944. After the assassination attempt, Hitler was unable to stand on his feet all day, since many fragments were removed from his legs (according to some sources, more than 100). In addition, he had a dislocated right hand (the picture clearly shows how he is holding it), the hair on the back of his head was singed and his eardrums were damaged. I became temporarily deaf in my right ear. He ordered the execution of the conspirators to be turned into humiliating torture, filmed and photographed. Subsequently, I personally watched this film. By his order, this film was shown to the highest echelon of the Reich.

Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Reich Minister of the Imperial Aviation Ministry Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler and Head of the NSDAP Party Chancellery, Hitler's closest ally Martin Bormann. The photograph was taken after the most famous assassination attempt on Hitler - he is rubbing his hand, which was damaged in the explosion.

German communist Georg Elser (Johann Georg Elser, 1903-1945) testifies to a Gestapo investigator about the location of an explosive device in the Munich beer hall "Bürgerbräukeller", which was intended to assassinate Hitler.
One of the most famous assassination attempts on Hitler was carried out by a lone individual - the German communist Georg Elser - on November 8, 1939, on the day of the celebration of the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. More than a month before the assassination attempt, Elser came every day to the Bürgerbräukler beer hall and stayed there overnight, hiding in the toilet. After the establishment was empty, he hollowed out the column near which Hitler usually spoke in order to plant an improvised explosive device with a clock mechanism.
Elser knew that traditionally Hitler's speech began at 21:00 and lasted about an hour. So he set his explosive device for 21:20. But Hitler limited himself to a brief greeting and left the hall 7 minutes before the explosion, which killed 7 people and injured 64.
Elser was arrested by the Gestapo on November 10, 1939. During a search, they found a postcard with a picture of the Bürgerbräukeller, containing a mark on the column in which he had placed explosives. After several interrogations, Elser confessed to the assassination attempt.
Elser was placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then transferred to Dachau. On April 9, 1945, when the Allies were already close to the concentration camp, Elser was shot by order of Himmler.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (left), together with Adolf Hitler and a group of officers, inspect the consequences of the explosion at the Fuhrer's headquarters "Wolfsschanze" (Wolf's Lair), carried out during an attempt on the life of the leader of Nazi Germany. On the right is a German diplomat and translator, SS Oberführer Paul Schmidt.

A very good moment for an assassination was missed in the fall of 1938, when the Swiss Maurice Bavo wanted to shoot Hitler with a pistol during the Beer Hall Putsch. He knew that the Fuhrer was always among the first. The Swiss not only took out a pistol, but also practiced shooting, after which on the appointed day he took his place among the spectators. But when the column approached the place where the terrorist was, the spectators raised their hands in greeting, thus completely blocking the view. The assassination attempt failed. The Swiss was soon arrested and sentenced to death.

Another assassination attempt took place in November 1939, when Munich carpenter Elser Johann Georg decided to plant a bomb to kill Hitler during one of his long speeches. But even then it went wrong. The Fuhrer changed his habit of speaking for three hours, and managed it in an hour, leaving the podium 10 minutes before the explosion.

Oddly enough, Stalin’s guards also paid attention to the assassination attempts. They were able to see how easy it was to organize an assassination attempt on a leader. As a result, they began to check with particular care everyone who came to see the “Father of Nations,” even carrying out searches of briefcases and bags.

But as for the guards of the German leader, for some reason they did not draw any conclusions, so attempts on the life of the leader continued with no less intensity.

A natural question arises: how did he manage to stay alive? After all, there are a large number of surefire ways - for example, mixing him with a slow-acting poison, the properties of which have been known since the century before last, moreover, considering that the Fuhrer’s personal confectioner was kept by the British intelligence services...

A striking example is 1944, when foreign intelligence agencies united in a joint hunt for Hitler's life. However, this also had no result. The most famous episode is the attempt to kill the Nazi leader during his flight from Prussia to Berlin. One of the officers accompanying the leader was given two bottles of explosives under the guise of cognac. The explosion was supposed to take place 20 minutes after takeoff. But at the most crucial moment, for some reason this mixture did not work and the plane landed safely in Berlin.

There were also cases when there were volunteers who were ready to destroy the Fuhrer at the cost of their own lives. A notable incident is an assassination attempt during Hitler's visit to an exhibition of captured Soviet weapons. The leader's guide was Baron von Gersdorff, who had a bomb in his pocket. It was planned that it should work in 10 minutes. But Hitler didn’t stay there even three minutes, but immediately went to the site where the tanks were...

Once again, the chief of staff of the reserve, Claus von Staufferberg, tried to kill Hitler, who wanted to commit an assassination attempt right during the meeting. At the end of July 1944, he came to a meeting with a briefcase containing a bomb. The colonel left him not far from Hitler, and he himself left the building. After the explosion, he immediately flew to Berlin to inform his accomplices about the death of the Fuhrer. However, he was wrong. During the meeting, someone pushed the briefcase, which was in everyone's way, under the table, so the table cover actually saved his life. During the explosion, Hitler suffered a concussion and minor injuries. And this while 4 officers present at the meeting were killed, and another 18 were seriously injured.

The conspiracy was suppressed, the perpetrators were punished...

Further attempts were either thwarted or postponed for certain reasons. This, for example, happened with the attempts of Soviet intelligence to kill Hitler, using the Fuhrer’s close friend Olga Chekhova for this. She, together with her good friend Prince Radziwill, was supposed to provide access to the killers to the German leader. Theoretically, the operation could have been carried out, but Stalin personally issued a ban on its implementation.

On July 20, 1944, the most famous attempt on the Fuhrer’s life took place at Hitler’s headquarters in the Görlitz forest near Rastenburg in East Prussia (the “Wolf’s Lair” headquarters). From "Wolfsschanze" (German: Wolfsschanze) Hitler led military operations on the Eastern Front from June 1941 to November 1944. The headquarters was well guarded; it was impossible for outsiders to enter it. In addition, the entire surrounding territory was in a special position: just a kilometer away was the headquarters of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces. To be invited to Headquarters, a recommendation was needed from a person close to the top leadership of the Reich. The call to the meeting of the Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces of the Reserve, Klaus Schenck von Stauffenberg, was approved by the head of the Wehrmacht High Command, the Fuhrer's chief adviser on military issues, Wilhelm Keitel.

The assassination attempt was the culmination of a plot by the military opposition to assassinate Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany. The conspiracy, which existed in the armed forces and the Abwehr since 1938, involved military personnel who believed that Germany was not ready for a major war. In addition, the military was angered by the increased role of the SS troops.

From the assassination attempts on Hitler

The attempt on July 20 was the 42nd in a row, and all of them failed, often Hitler survived by some miracle. Although Hitler's popularity among the people was high, he also had plenty of enemies. Threats to physically eliminate the Fuhrer appeared immediately after the transfer of power to the Nazi Party. The police regularly received information about an impending assassination attempt on Hitler. Thus, from March to December 1933 alone, at least ten cases posed, in the opinion of the secret police, a danger to the new head of government. In particular, Kurt Lutter, a ship carpenter from Königsberg, and his associates in March 1933 prepared an explosion at one of the election rallies at which the head of the Nazis was supposed to speak.

On the part of Hitler’s left, they mainly tried to eliminate loners. In the 1930s, four attempts were made to eliminate Adolf Hitler. Thus, on November 9, 1939, in the famous Munich beer hall, Hitler spoke on the occasion of the anniversary of the failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in 1923. Former communist Georg Elser prepared and detonated an improvised explosive device. The explosion killed eight people and injured more than sixty people. However, Hitler was not injured. The Fuhrer ended his speech earlier than usual and left a few minutes before the bomb exploded.

In addition to the left, supporters of Otto Strasser’s “Black Front” also tried to eliminate Hitler. This organization was created in August 1931 and united extreme nationalists. They were dissatisfied with the economic policies of Hitler, who, in their opinion, was too liberal. Therefore, in February 1933, the Black Front was banned, and Otto Strasser fled to Czechoslovakia. In 1936, Strasser persuaded the Jewish student Helmut Hirsch (he emigrated to Prague from Stuttgart) to return to Germany and kill one of the Nazi leaders. The explosion was planned to take place in Nuremberg, during the next Nazi rally. But the attempt failed; Girsha was handed over to the Gestapo by one of the participants in the conspiracy. In July 1937, Helmut Hirsch was executed in Plötzensee prison in Berlin. The Black Front tried to plan another assassination attempt, but things did not go beyond theory.

Then Maurice Bavo, a theological student from Lausanne, wanted to kill Hitler. He failed to get into the Fuhrer's speech on the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch (November 9, 1938). Then the next day he tried to get into Hitler's residence in Obersalzburg and shoot the Nazi leader there. At the entrance he said that he had to give Hitler a letter. However, the guards became suspicious and arrested Bavo. In May 1941 he was executed.

Military conspiracy

Part of the German military elite believed that Germany was still weak and not ready for a big war. War, in their opinion, would lead the country to a new catastrophe. Around the former mayor of Leipzig, Karl Goerdeler (he was a famous lawyer and politician), a small circle of senior officers of the armed forces and the Abwehr formed who dreamed of changing the government course.

A notable figure among the conspirators was the Chief of the General Staff, Ludwig August Theodor Beck. In 1938, Beck prepared a series of documents in which he criticized the aggressive plans of Adolf Hitler. He believed that they were too risky and adventurous in nature (given the weakness of the armed forces, which were in the process of formation). In May 1938, the Chief of the General Staff spoke out against the plan for the Czechoslovak campaign. In July 1938, Beck sent a memorandum to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Colonel General Walter von Brauchitsch, in which he called for the resignation of Germany's top military leadership in order to prevent the outbreak of war with Czechoslovakia. According to him, there was a question about the existence of the nation. In August 1938, Beck submitted his resignation and ceased to serve as Chief of the General Staff. However, the German generals did not follow his example.

Beck even tried to find support from Great Britain. He sent his emissaries to England; at his request, Karl Goerdeler traveled to the British capital. However, the British government did not make contact with the conspirators. London followed the path of “pacifying” the aggressor in order to direct Germany towards the USSR.

Beck and a number of other officers planned to remove Hitler from power and prevent Germany from being drawn into the war. An assault group of officers was being prepared for the coup. Beck was supported by the Prussian aristocrat and staunch monarchist, commander of the 1st Army Erwin von Witzleben. The strike force included Abwehr officers (military intelligence and counterintelligence) led by the chief of staff of the foreign intelligence department, Colonel Hans Oster, and Major Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz. In addition, the new Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder, Walter von Brauchitsch, Erich Hoepner, Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeld, and the head of the Abwehr Wilhelm Franz Canaris supported the ideas of the conspirators and were dissatisfied with Hitler’s policies. Beck and Witzleben did not intend to kill Hitler, they initially only wanted to arrest him and remove him from power. At the same time, Abwehr officers were ready to shoot the Fuhrer during the coup.

The signal for the start of the coup should have come after the start of the operation to capture the Czechoslovak Sudetenland. However, there was no order: Paris, London and Rome gave the Sudetenland to Berlin, the war did not take place. Hitler became even more popular in society. The Munich Agreement solved the main problem of the coup - it prevented Germany from going to war with a coalition of countries.

The Second World War

Members of Hölderer's circle considered the outbreak of World War II a disaster for Germany. Therefore, a plan was hatched to blow up the Fuhrer. The organization of the bombing was to be carried out by the adviser of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Erich Kordt. But after the assassination attempt on November 9, 1939, carried out by Georg Elser, the security services were on alert and the conspirators failed to obtain explosives. The plan failed.

The Abwehr leadership attempted to thwart the invasion of Denmark and Norway (Operation Weserubung). Six days before the start of Operation Weser, on April 3, 1940, Colonel Oster met with the Dutch military attaché in Berlin, Jacobus Gijsbertus Szasz, and informed him of the exact date of the attack. The military attaché had to warn the governments of Great Britain, Denmark and Norway. However, he informed only the Danes. The Danish government and army were unable to organize resistance. Later, Hitler's supporters would “cleanse” the Abwehr: Hans Oster and Admiral Canaris were executed on April 9, 1945 in the Flossenburg concentration camp. In April 1945, another head of the military intelligence department, Hans von Dohnanyi, who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, was executed.

The successes of the “greatest commander of all time” Hitler and the Wehrmacht in Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland and France also became a defeat for the German Resistance. Many lost heart, others believed in the “star” of the Fuhrer, the population supported Hitler almost completely. Only the most irreconcilable conspirators, like the Prussian nobleman, General Staff officer Henning Hermann Robert Karl von Treskow, did not reconcile and tried to organize the assassination of Hitler. Treskov, like Canaris, had a sharply negative attitude towards terror against Jews and the command and political personnel of the Red Army, and tried to protest such orders. He told Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff that if the instructions about the execution of commissars and “suspicious” civilians (almost any person could be included in this category) were not canceled, then “Germany will finally lose its honor, and this will make itself felt throughout hundreds of years. The blame for this will be placed not on Hitler alone, but on you and me, on your wife and mine, on your children and mine.” Even before the start of the war, Treskov said that only the death of the Fuhrer could save Germany. Treskov believed that the conspirators were obliged to make an active attempt to assassinate Hitler and a coup d'etat. Even if it fails, they will prove to the whole world that not everyone in Germany was supporters of the Fuhrer. On the Eastern Front, Treskov prepared several plans to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but each time something got in the way. So, on March 13, 1943, Hitler visited the troops of Group Center. On the plane returning from Smolensk to Berlin, a bomb was installed, disguised as a gift, but the fuse did not go off.

A few days later, von Treskow’s colleague at the headquarters of the Center group, Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff, tried to blow himself up along with Adolf Hitler at an exhibition of captured weapons in Berlin. The Fuhrer had to stay at the exhibition for an hour. When the German leader appeared at the arsenal, the colonel set the fuse for 20 minutes, but after 15 minutes Hitler unexpectedly left. With great difficulty, Gersdorff managed to stop the explosion. There were other officers who were ready to sacrifice themselves to kill Hitler. Captain Axel von dem Bussche and Lieutenant Edward von Kleist independently wanted to eliminate the Fuhrer during the display of the new army uniform in early 1944. But Hitler, for some unknown reason, did not attend this demonstration. Field Marshal Busch's orderly Eberhard von Breitenbuch planned to shoot Hitler on March 11, 1944 at the Berghof residence. However, on this day the orderly was not allowed into the conversation between the German leader and the Field Marshal.

Valkyrie Plan

From the winter of 1941-1942. Deputy Commander of the Reserve Army, General Friedrich Olbricht, developed the Valkyrie plan, which was to be implemented during an emergency or internal unrest. According to the Valkyrie plan, during an emergency (for example, due to massive acts of sabotage and uprising of prisoners of war), the reserve army was subject to mobilization. Olbricht modernized the plan in the interests of the conspirators: the reserve army during the coup (Hitler's assassination) was supposed to become a weapon in the hands of the rebels and occupy key facilities and communications in Berlin, suppress possible resistance of SS units, arrest supporters of the Fuhrer, the highest Nazi leadership. The head of the Wehrmacht communications service, Erich Felgiebel, who was part of the group of conspirators, was supposed to, together with some trusted employees, ensure the blocking of a number of government communication lines and at the same time support those that would be used by the rebels. It was believed that the commander of the reserve army, Colonel General Friedrich Fromm, would join the conspiracy or be temporarily arrested, in which case Hoepner would take over leadership. Fromm knew about the conspiracy, but took a wait-and-see attitude. He was ready to join the rebels in the event of news of the Fuhrer's death.

After the assassination of the Fuhrer and the seizure of power, the conspirators planned to establish a provisional government. Ludwig Beck was to become the head of Germany (president or monarch), Karl Goerdeler - to head the government, and Erwin Witzleben - the armed forces. The provisional government had to first make a separate peace with the Western powers and continue the war against the Soviet Union (possibly as part of a Western coalition). In Germany they were going to restore the monarchy and hold democratic elections to the lower house of parliament (to limit its power).

The last hope for success for the conspirators was Colonel Klaus Philipp Maria Schenck, Count von Stauffenberg. He came from one of the oldest aristocratic families in southern Germany, associated with the royal dynasty of Württemberg. He was brought up on the ideas of German patriotism, monarchical conservatism and Catholicism. He initially supported Adolf Hitler and his policies, but in 1942, due to mass terror and military mistakes by the High Command, Stauffenberg joined the military opposition. In his opinion, Hitler was leading Germany to disaster. Since the spring of 1944, he, together with a small circle of associates, planned an assassination attempt on the Fuhrer. Of all the conspirators, only Colonel Stauffenberg had the opportunity to get close to Adolf Hitler. In June 1944, he was appointed chief of staff of the Army Reserve, which was located on Bendlerstrasse in Berlin. As chief of staff of the reserve army, Stauffenberg could participate in military meetings both at Adolf Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia and at the Berghof residence near Berchtesgaden.

Von Treskow and his subordinate Major Joachim Kuhn (trained as a military engineer) prepared homemade bombs for the assassination attempt. At the same time, the conspirators established contacts with the commander of the occupation forces in France, General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel. After the liquidation of Hitler, he was supposed to take all power in France into his own hands and begin negotiations with the British and Americans.

On July 6, Colonel Stauffenberg delivered an explosive device to the Berghof, but the assassination attempt did not occur. On July 11, the Chief of Staff of the Army Reserve attended a meeting at the Berghof with a British-made bomb, but did not activate it. Previously, the rebels decided that, together with the Fuhrer, it was necessary to simultaneously destroy Hermann Goering, who was Hitler's official successor, and Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, and both of them were not present at this meeting. In the evening, Stauffenberg met with the conspiracy leaders Olbricht and Beck and convinced them that the next time the explosion should be carried out regardless of whether Himmler and Goering would participate.

Another assassination attempt was planned for July 15. Stauffenberg took part in the meeting at Wolfsschanze. Two hours before the start of the meeting at headquarters, the deputy commander of the reserve army, Olbricht, gave the order to begin implementing the Valkyrie plan and move troops in the direction of the government quarter on Wilhelmstrasse. Stauffenberg made a report and went out to talk on the phone with Friedrich Olbricht. However, when he returned, the Fuhrer had already left headquarters. The colonel had to notify Olbricht about the failure of the assassination attempt, and he managed to cancel the order and return the troops to their places of deployment.

Failure of assassination attempt

On July 20, Count Stauffenberg and his orderly, Senior Lieutenant Werner von Heften, arrived at Headquarters "Wolf's Lair" with two explosive devices in their suitcases. Stauffenberg had to activate the charges just before the assassination attempt. The head of the Wehrmacht High Command, Wilhelm Keitel, called Stauffenberg to the Main Headquarters. The colonel was supposed to report on the formation of new units for the Eastern Front. Keitel told Stauffenberg something unpleasant: due to the heat, the military council was moved from a bunker on the surface to a light wooden house. An explosion in a closed underground room would be more effective. The meeting was supposed to start at half past twelve.

Stauffenberg asked permission to change his shirt after the journey. Keitel's adjutant Ernst von Friend took him to his sleeping quarters. There the conspirator began to urgently prepare fuses. It was difficult to do this with one left hand with three fingers (in April 1943 in North Africa, during a British air raid, he was seriously wounded, he was shell-shocked, Stauffenberg lost an eye and his right hand). The colonel was only able to prepare and place one bomb in his briefcase. Friend entered the room and said that he needed to hurry. The second explosive device was left without a detonator - instead of 2 kg of explosives, the officer had only one at his disposal. He had 15 minutes before the explosion.

Keitel and Stauffenberg entered the house when the military meeting had already begun. There were 23 people present, most of them sitting at a massive oak table. The colonel sat to the right of Hitler. While they were reporting on the situation on the Eastern Front, the conspirator placed a briefcase with an explosive device on the table closer to Hitler and left the room 5 minutes before the explosion. He had to support the rebels' next steps, which is why he did not stay in the room.

A happy accident saved Hitler this time: one of the meeting participants put his briefcase under the table. At 12.42 an explosion occurred. Four people were killed, others received various injuries. Hitler was shell-shocked, received several minor shrapnel wounds and burns, and his right arm was temporarily paralyzed. Stauffenberg saw the explosion and was sure that Hitler was killed. He was able to leave the cordoned off zone before it was closed.

At 13:15 Stauffenberg took off for Berlin. Two and a half hours later, the plane landed at Rangsdorf airport, where they were to be met. Stauffenberg learns that the conspirators, due to the contradictory information coming from headquarters, are doing nothing. He informs Olbricht that the Fuhrer has been killed. Only then did Olbricht go to the commander of the reserve army, F. Fromm, so that he would agree to implement the Valkyrie plan. Fromm decided to make sure of Hitler's death for himself and called Headquarters (the conspirators were unable to block all communication lines). Keitel told him that the assassination attempt had failed and Hitler was alive. Therefore, Fromm refused to participate in the rebellion. At this time, Klaus Stauffenberg and Werner Heften arrived at the building on Bandler Street. It was 16:30, almost four hours had passed since the assassination attempt, and the rebels had not yet begun to implement their plan to seize control of the Third Reich. All the conspirators were indecisive, and then Colonel Stauffenberg took the initiative.

Stauffenberg, Heften, and Beck went to Fromm and demanded that he sign the Valkyrie plan. Fromm again refused and was arrested. Colonel General Hoepner became the commander of the reserve army. Stauffenberg sat on the phone and convinced the formation commanders that Hitler had died and called for them to follow the instructions of the new command - Colonel General Beck and Field Marshal Witzleben. In Vienna, Prague and Paris, the implementation of the Valkyrie plan began. It was carried out especially successfully in France, where General Stülpnagel arrested the entire top leadership of the SS, SD and Gestapo. However, this was the last success of the conspirators. The rebels lost a lot of time, acted uncertainly and chaotically. The conspirators did not take control of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Imperial Chancellery, the Main Directorate of Imperial Security and the radio station. Hitler was alive, many knew about it. The Fuhrer's supporters acted more decisively, while those who wavered remained aloof from the rebellion.

At about six in the evening, the Berlin military commandant of Gase received a telephone message from Stauffenberg and summoned the commander of the Greater Germany security battalion, Major Otto-Ernst Roemer. The commandant informed him of Hitler's death and ordered him to put his unit on alert and cordon off the government quarter. A party functionary was present during the conversation; he convinced Major Roemer to contact Propaganda Minister Goebbels and coordinate the received instructions with him. Joseph Goebbels established contact with the Fuhrer and he gave the order to the major: suppress the rebellion at any cost (Roemer was promoted to colonel). By eight in the evening, Roemer's soldiers controlled the main government buildings in Berlin. At 22:40 the guards at the headquarters on Bandler Street were disarmed and Römer's officers arrested von Stauffenberg, his brother Berthold, Heften, Beck, Hoepner and other rebels. The conspirators were defeated.

Fromm was released and, in order to hide his participation in the conspiracy, organized a meeting of a military court, which immediately sentenced five people to death. An exception was made only for Beck; he was allowed to commit suicide. However, two bullets to the head did not kill him and the general was finished off. Four rebels - General Friedrich Olbricht, Lieutenant Werner Heften, Claus von Stauffenberg and the head of the general department of the ground forces headquarters, Merz von Quirnheim, were taken one by one into the headquarters courtyard and shot. Before the last salvo, Colonel Stauffenberg managed to shout: “Long live Holy Germany!”

On July 21, G. Himmler established a special commission of four hundred senior SS ranks to investigate the “Plot of July 20,” and arrests, torture, and executions began throughout the Third Reich. In the case of the July 20 Conspiracy, more than 7 thousand people were arrested, about two hundred were executed. Hitler even took “revenge” on the corpses of the main conspirators: the bodies were dug up and burned, the ashes were scattered.

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Every year on July 20, wreaths are laid in Berlin in honor of the participants in the conspiracy against Hitler executed by the Nazis. On this day in 1944, an explosion occurred at Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. This was not the first, but the most serious attempt on the life of the “Führer”, the result of a conspiracy against him and his accomplices. But Hitler survived. Hundreds of participants in the conspiracy (primarily military personnel from noble German families) were executed.

The memory of these people, who, like other heroes of the Resistance, saved the honor of the Germans, is highly revered in today's Germany. The most famous of the participants in the July 20 conspiracy, in fact its leader, who carried the explosive device into Hitler's headquarters, is Colonel, Count Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.

Officers and aristocrats

He was 36 years old. An officer and an aristocrat, after the Kristallnacht of the Jewish pogroms of 1938 and the mockery of the civilian population of occupied Poland a year later, he became convinced that the Nazis were bringing misfortune to his homeland. But the war was going on, and the career military man hesitated: the murder or removal of the charismatic leader of the nation would weaken Germany. Many future conspirators from the officer corps thought so then. Military officers despised the “butchers” from the SS and considered it shameful to wage war against the civilian population and shoot prisoners, no matter who they were.

Nevertheless, Stauffenberg, like many of his like-minded officers, believed that the war must first be won, and only then, as he then told his brother Berthold, “get rid of the brown evil spirits.” But in 1942-1943, the mood in opposition circles changed. One of the reasons is the turn in the course of the war, large losses in people and equipment. After Stalingrad, there was no doubt left for Stauffenberg: the war was lost. It was at this time that a positive response came to the report he had submitted long ago about his transfer from the General Staff, where he was then serving, to the front. Not to the Eastern Front, but to Africa.

But here, too, things were bad for the Germans. Just three months after Stalingrad, the Western Allies captured about 200 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and officers in North Africa. Stauffenberg was not among them: a few days before the defeat he was seriously wounded and was transported to Germany. He lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left hand.

Failed assassination attempts

Meanwhile, the conspirators tried to organize more and more attempts on Hitler's life. On March 13, 1943, they managed to smuggle an explosive device disguised as a bottle of cognac into the plane on which the Fuhrer was flying, but it did not go off. Other attempts, for example, by Hauptmann Axel von dem Bussche, also failed. The "Fuhrer" expressed a desire to get acquainted with the new uniforms for officers and non-commissioned officers of the Wehrmacht. He wished that an experienced front-line commander be present at this “presentation” as an expert. The conspirators managed to arrange for Hauptmann Bussche to become this commander. He had to blow himself up along with Hitler. But the train, which contained samples of the new uniforms, was bombed on the way to East Prussia, and the “presentation” did not take place.

However, the perseverance of the conspirators was eventually rewarded: in May 1944, the commander of the Wehrmacht reserve, who sympathized with the conspirators, appointed Stauffenberg as his chief of staff. Thus, the colonel was among those who were invited to meetings at headquarters. The assassination attempt on Hitler became a reality. Moreover, it was necessary to hurry: clouds began to gather over the conspirators. Too many people already knew about the coup plans, and information about the plot began to flow to the Gestapo. It was decided not to wait for any more major meetings at headquarters, at which Himmler and Goering would also be present along with Hitler, but to send the Fuhrer to the next world alone, at the first opportunity. She introduced herself on July 20th.

A rebellion cannot end in success...

The night before, Claus von Stauffenberg had placed plastic explosives in his briefcase and tested the fuse. Both bags of explosives weighed about two kilograms: too heavy for Stauffenberg's only crippled hand. Maybe that’s why he was already at headquarters, having gone through all the cordons, left one of the packages with explosives with the adjutant and took only one with him to the hall where the meeting was taking place. However, this amount would have been quite enough: as it turned out later, the ceiling collapsed from the explosion and the hall turned into a pile of ruins, 17 people were injured, four died.

Hitler survived due to chance. The briefcase should have been placed closer to the place where the “Führer” was sitting, but one of the meeting participants mechanically pushed the briefcase containing the explosives further under the table: it was in his way. This saved Hitler.

When the explosion was heard, Stauffenberg, who had left the hall under a plausible pretext, was already leaving the headquarters. He hurried to the airfield. He had no doubt that the “Führer” was dead, so he hurried to Berlin: now everything was decided there.

But the conspirators acted too slowly, unforgivably slowly. The military failed to isolate SS units and Gestapo headquarters during Operation Valkyrie. Military units received orders both from the conspirators and directly opposite orders from Himmler. When Colonel Stauffenberg arrived at the War Ministry, he began to act more decisively, but it was too late. In the end, several people, along with Stauffenberg, were arrested right in the War Ministry building. They were shot that same day.

Later, the Nazis dealt with everyone who even knew about the conspiracy with terrible cruelty. Hundreds of people were executed. The Gestapo also arrested all of Claus von Stauffenberg's close relatives, including his wife and mother. The children had their last names changed and were sent to a special orphanage, forbidden to tell who they were. Fortunately, there were only a few months left until the end of the war...

When you look from the outside at Germany in the Second World War, you can’t help but get the impression that all Germans unanimously supported the course and decisions of the Nazis, warmly welcomed Hitler and shared the ideas of National Socialism. However, this is not at all true. Even with this totalitarian regime, which strictly controlled society, from the very beginning, even in the pre-war years, there were those who did not agree with the Nazis and did not welcome their ideas, who went against them and tried to rebel, remove or destroy the Fuhrer. Such conspiracies were brutally suppressed in their infancy; many attempts to assassinate Hitler could not be carried out due to various circumstances and accidents. The oppositionists, united by historians in the so-called “Goerdeler-Beck group,” came closest to implementing the coup plan. On July 20, 1944, they attempted to assassinate Hitler and seize power. This conspiracy became the most famous in the history of the Second World War, it was also called “Operation Valkyrie.”

First opposition

In fact, the opposition began to form not in 1944, but much earlier. Most studies name the years 37-38 as the starting point. The oppositionists showed themselves most actively in connection with German aggression against Czechoslovakia. However, the goals of the opposition were not as noble as one might think. A number of generals at that time feared that Hitler’s actions would lead to a big war with Western countries, that England and France would stand up for Czechoslovakia and prevent the division of its territory. The conspirators, which then included the former chief of the general staff of the ground forces Beck, who replaced him Halder, the former imperial commissioner for price control Goerdeler, the commander of the Berlin military district of Witzleben, the chief of the Berlin police Geldorf, the head of military intelligence and counterintelligence Canaris, the head of the main criminal department Nebe police and intelligence officer Gisevius tried to secretly establish contact with the West by sending their representatives to them. The German opposition hoped that if England and France, with the support of the United States, decisively opposed Hitler’s aggression, they would be able to take advantage of their authority among the soldiers and remove the Fuhrer, carry out a coup, convincing the Germans that Hitler was leading them into the abyss. However, Neville Chamberlain, who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain at that time, preferred not to spoil relations with the Nazi leaders, doing everything to avoid war. He took the path of “pacifying” the aggressor, allowing the division of Czechoslovakia and even supporting this decision. Hitler at that time insisted that the Sudetenland was his last territorial claim in Europe, and Chamberlain was glad to believe it. As a result, the defeated oppositionists had no choice but to postpone the implementation of their plan and lie low. In addition, apparently, many of them believed that they could tolerate Hitler for now if his actions did not entail immediate consequences and a global war could be avoided. To overthrow him, it was supposed to find a more convenient moment, when his authority would be shaken by some serious defeats or failures. In the meantime, in Germany, Hitler was greeted as a triumphant, which means that the coup was extremely difficult to carry out. However, this idea was not abandoned, despite the danger threatening the opposition - the Fuhrer was extremely suspicious and, in case of failures in the war, was ready to see betrayal everywhere, blaming his generals for everything.

Impact of defeats on the Eastern Front

The conspirators became more active during the defeats on the Eastern Front; several attempts were made to assassinate Hitler, but all of them failed. The opposition began to act most decisively when it became clear that Germany's shameful defeat in the war was only a matter of time. In 1943, it seems, everyone understood this except Hitler himself, who imagined himself to be a great strategist, destined to lead his country to victory and glory. The joining of the conspirators by Colonel Henning von Treskow and Count Claus von Stauffenberg, the most determined participants in the conspiracy, pushed the opposition to more thoughtful and bold actions. Until 1943, many ideologists of the conspiracy were against the murder of Hitler, explaining this for various reasons, moral, religious, political, they only wanted to remove him or take him prisoner, arrest him, however, after the terrible Battle of Stalingrad, which struck with its cruelty, severity, and the number of senseless victims, the majority the conspirators were forced to agree that the Nazi leader must be eliminated at all costs. And in 1943, an attempt was made to blow up the Fuhrer. In March, Hitler personally visited the headquarters of German troops near Smolensk to familiarize himself with the situation on the spot. The conspirators decided to take advantage of this. Colonel Treskov, who was delivered a portable time bomb, initially wanted to plant a mine in Hitler's car, but it was too well guarded. Then he came up with an original solution. Treskov asked one of Hitler’s adjutants to take with him on the plane a package containing “a couple of bottles of cognac” for his friend General Stief, who worked at the main headquarters. The adjutant did not suspect anything and carried the package on board. The plane with the Fuhrer took off, but after some time of tense waiting the conspirators learned that it had landed safely in Rastenburg. The bomb did not explode, as is believed, due to the low air temperature during the flight. Schlabrendorff, Treskov's adjutant, managed to urgently fly to the site and quietly pick up the undetonated bomb. After this, several more assassination attempts were made, but all of them failed for the most absurd and strange reasons, so it seemed as if Hitler was being protected by fate itself or by God, which, by the way, he himself fully believed in.

Operation Valkyrie

Long ago, the Wehrmacht command developed a secret plan in case of internal danger, which could arise either in the event of a parachute landing or due to internal unrest or a coup attempt. This plan was called “Operation Valkyrie”. The conspirators, who had long been looking for a reliable way to seize power, decided to act “in plain sight”, almost without hiding, using the plan that already existed at that time for their own purposes, slightly changing it. They wanted to present everything as if it were the party leaders who betrayed the Fuhrer and killed him, and therefore “Valkyrie” was introduced. The essence of the operation was to, with the help of the Reserve Army, capture and isolate the Nazis, transferring power to the military, which was to be led by the generals who participated in the conspiracy. For this purpose, the persons responsible for carrying out Operation Valkyrie and who were at the head of the reserve army were brought in. The plan, it must be admitted, was quite smart in theory, but in practice it did not work so well, the reasons for which we will turn to below.

Hitler was to be killed by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a war hero who served under Rommel in Africa and was seriously injured as a result of the bombing (he lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers of his left hand). He became the main, iconic figure of the conspiracy, the most famous opponent of Hitler, although in fact he did not lead the conspiracy and was not the main ideologist or inspirer. Stauffenberg was a respected man, who, perhaps, was trusted by both the Fuhrer and his entourage. Thus, General Schmundt, Hitler's chief adjutant, himself proposed making Stauffenberg chief of staff of the reserve army. And Hitler, as Albert Speer, the Reich Minister of Armaments, states in his book, asked him to cooperate as closely as possible with Stauffenberg and to trust him in everything.

At first, Stauffenberg wanted to shoot Hitler, but due to the fact that the count was missing one arm and the other was damaged, it was decided to settle on a mine. The conspirators had already obtained sabotage time bombs, similar to the one that Treskov used in the previous assassination attempt. Stauffenberg, having received a mine, from that time on always carried it with him in his briefcase, looking for an opportunity when Hitler, Himmler and Goering would be together at a meeting in order to get rid of all the most dangerous opponents who could lay claim to power at once. The conspirators at this time were afraid that in the event of the death of one Fuhrer, his place would simply be taken by Himmler, who was considered his official deputy and successor. However, it was never possible to catch them all in one place; Goering and Himmler may have been aware of the impending conspiracy and more often did not appear at general meetings. Then it was decided to act, even if it was necessary to kill only one Hitler.

On July 17, an arrest warrant was issued for Goerdeler, about which the conspirators were warned in advance by Nebe, the head of the criminal police. Goerdeler was forced to hide, but after the start of the Valkyrie plan, he was supposed to reappear in Berlin as the leader of the rebels, and then as the head of the new government. The conspirators understood that they could not delay any longer, that at any moment they could be exposed and arrested, and they were looking for an opportunity to carry out their plan.

July 20, 1944

On July 20, 1944, a meeting of military leaders was to be held at Hitler's headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia. The oppositionists made this date final for the execution of their plan. Stauffenberg was also to attend the meeting and make a presentation regarding the recruitment of additional units of reserve soldiers for the war in the East. On this day, from the very beginning, everything did not go quite as desired; again a number of accidents intervened. The meeting was scheduled for 13:00, however, as it turned out, due to the arrival of Mussolini, the meeting time was postponed at the last moment. The meeting began at 12:30 and speakers were asked to shorten their reports. Stauffenberg, preparing for the meeting, asked permission to change clothes in one of the rooms where he, along with his assistant Werner von Heften, was to equip and activate two bombs. However, due to the fact that the room was entered, they had to abandon the second one, which they did not have time to prepare. They considered that the power of one mine would be quite enough.

Another circumstance also played a role. Due to the hot weather, the meeting was held instead of an underground fortified bunker, where the power of the explosion and damage from the blast wave would have been greater (and the conspirators planned the assassination attempt, counting on this), in a lighter room, an ordinary barracks, the windows and doors of which were open wide open (Hitler initially stood near the window during the meeting). Stauffenberg entered the room and placed the briefcase with the bomb under the heavy oak table on which the map was spread, leaning it against the crossbar, while positioning the bomb so that it was as close to Hitler as possible. He received a call from Berlin at headquarters, as agreed, and he, citing an urgent call, left the premises and then left the building altogether. While he was looking for a car in the courtyard of the headquarters, he saw a strong explosion that penetrated the building and even threw one of the meeting participants out of the window. Convinced that the Fuhrer simply could not survive such a powerful explosion, Stauffenberg safely left the Wolf’s Lair, getting rid of the second bomb along the way, and flew to Berlin. For three hours while he was in the air, he was forced to do nothing.

Although Stauffenberg could have sworn that Hitler had been killed, he was mistaken. And the following happened: after Stauffenberg placed the bomb and left, Colonel Brandt, who was standing not far from him, leaning over the map, bumped into the briefcase with his foot, and it fell. To keep his briefcase out of the way, Brandt moved it on the other side of the massive cabinet, away from Hitler. Of course, he had no idea that the thick briefcase contained a bomb and acted unconsciously. The explosion, which could have had great consequences in a concrete bunker, was weakened here by a heavy table, which was shattered into pieces, and the blast wave was extinguished due to open windows and doors. Hitler was directly above the table at the time of the explosion, bending over it to better see the map (he was nearsighted). One of his hands lay on the table. The explosion killed several people, among them Colonel Brandt. Hitler received minor injuries, a burn to his leg, his eardrums were damaged, and he was temporarily shell-shocked and stunned. He stood in clothes torn to shreds, burned, with a blackened face, a trembling jaw, however, as the doctors who examined him said, all the wounds were minor. At first, the headquarters didn’t even understand what had happened and how to react. At first no one suspected Stauffenberg, it was thanks to this that he managed to escape from Wolfschanze, but soon many remembered that he behaved somehow strangely that day, his absence was noticed, and they began to look for Stauffenberg.

Lieutenant General Felgiebel, the chief of the communications troops who participated in the conspiracy and was at Hitler’s headquarters, according to the plan, was to inform the conspirators in Berlin about the successful explosion and destroy the communications center so that no one from the headquarters could contact Berlin and give any orders. He completed the first part of his work, but did not destroy the connection. It is not known exactly why he did this. Perhaps he soon learned that Hitler was alive, or he simply decided not to risk it and try to save his own life without incurring additional suspicion. However, this circumstance seriously affected the course of the entire operation, confusing the plans of the rebels. This was one of the biggest mistakes they made.

The putsch “stalled” at the very beginning. The conspirators were looking forward to this day and hour with impatience and anxiety, many of them did not sleep at night, but when the time came for decisive action, they showed unforgivable timidity and slowness. So, while Stauffenberg, confident in his success, reached Berlin, on Bendlerstrasse, where the military leadership of the Reich was located and where the putschists were sitting, they were inactive, not knowing what to do and wasting valuable time on fruitless disputes. Some conspirators decided to abandon the plan at the very beginning. Thus, Colonel-General Fromm, who knew about the conspiracy and should have supported it, at the right moment refused to act and doubted. Olbricht told him that Hitler had been killed and the order should be given to start Operation Valkyrie, but Fromm wanted to personally contact Hitler’s headquarters and get confirmation. To the surprise of both Olbricht and Fromm, the phone was answered immediately - the connection with headquarters was not cut off, as expected. General Keitel answered the phone. Fromm asked him what was happening, to which he received the answer that an attempt had been made on Hitler, but he remained alive. At the same time, Keitel asked Fromm where Colonel Stauffenberg was now, to whom he wanted to ask some questions. From the conversation, Fromm realized that the headquarters realized that his people were involved in a conspiracy, and he flatly refused to activate the Valkyrie. At this time, in the Berlin police headquarters, Gisevius was waiting for instructions from Olbricht, but he still hesitated.

They began to act only at 16:00, when Stauffenberg arrived in Berlin and contacted the War Ministry. Fromm, who decided to dissociate himself from the conspirators, was arrested and locked in his office, leaving him with a telephone. They finally gave orders to launch Valkyrie, but at the same time orders were received from Hitler’s headquarters canceling their commands. Hitler’s headquarters did not immediately understand the scale of the conspiracy, deciding at first that Stauffenberg acted independently; the conspirators had time to set all their forces in motion, but they missed it. In most military districts, orders received from Benlerstrasse were in no hurry to carry out. Only a few radio towers were captured, but broadcasting from them did not stop. Oddly enough, the most decisive actions were taken in Paris, where General Stülpnagel arrested many SS men; in other places, commanders, even those who knew about the conspiracy, chose to do nothing, especially since radio messages soon began to spread that Hitler was in fact alive, refuting orders coming from Berlin. The conspirators completely did not take into account the power of information and radio communications, and did not immediately think of using all means to spread their calls for rebellion. This is probably partly due to the fact that they were not against fascism as a whole, not for fighting the regime itself, but only against Hitler, wanting to establish a military dictatorship in the country, which could hardly find support among the people, ordinary people, to which they never addressed.

In Berlin, the security battalion that carried out the Valkyrie plan was commanded by Major Roemer, an ardent supporter of Nazism and an admirer of Hitler. The order to capture and isolate the Nazi leadership left him bewildered. At this time, Albert Speer was in the imperial chancellery with Goebbels, who described this event in his memoirs. Goebbels, sensing that Roemer had doubts about the right thing to do, spoke with him, appealing to his honor and reminding him of his loyalty to National Socialism. He told the major that Hitler was in fact alive, and then called the Wolf's Lair and handed the phone to Roemer so that he could talk to the Fuhrer himself. After this, Roemer, along with his troops, immediately went over to Goebbels’ side and cordoned off Bendlerstrasse, which the conspirators initially took to be the execution of their own orders. Fromm was soon released, and the conspirators in the building were arrested. Of all of them, it seems that only one Stauffenberg tried to resist, but he was wounded in the arm and disarmed.

The released Fromm, realizing that he himself would soon fall under suspicion, decided, without waiting for an investigation and instructions from above, to pass a sentence and get rid of the leaders of the coup in order to cover up his tracks. Colonel Beck asked him for a pistol and tried to shoot himself, but only wounded himself. Then he shot again, and again he failed to commit suicide. Then one of Fromm’s soldiers shot him, either taking pity on him, or on the orders of his superior. Fromm immediately sentenced the conspirators to death; they were taken out into the yard and shot in the light of the truck's headlights. After this, Fromm sent a telegram to Hitler, in which he said that he himself had punished the conspirators. He also contacted occupied Paris and ordered the release of detained SS members. However, the betrayal only briefly delayed Fromm’s death; he was still convicted and executed, like the others.

Trial and execution of the conspirators

Hitler, who had long disliked his generals and blamed them for all the failures of the war, after the assassination attempt brutally punished everyone who was involved in the conspiracy. He took the fact that he managed to survive once again as an indication from above that he was destined to win and lead Germany to glory and prosperity. After these events, Hitler spoke to his comrades and assured them that now that the conspiracy had finally been revealed and suppressed, and all the traitors had been destroyed, they could finally win, because these people, in his opinion, were to blame for all the defeats. At that time, he even managed to infect some skeptics with his confidence; many were sincerely horrified by the rebels, because in those circumstances of the increasingly intensifying crisis in Germany, such a rebellion was disastrous for the country.

Goerdeler, who was supposed to become the leader of the conspiracy, did not appear at the War Ministry on Bendlerstrasse on July 20, taking a wait-and-see attitude. When he saw that the rebellion was doomed, he fled with false documents, but was recognized and caught. In conclusion, he showed his weak character, behaved cowardly and readily betrayed the other participants in the conspiracy. Despite the repentance he showed, his cooperation with the investigation, and his abandonment of previous ideas, he was hanged along with the other conspirators.

Arrests and searches began on July 21, and trials of the suspects took place on August 7-8. Moreover, they arrested not only people who were actually somehow involved in these events, the Nazis were simply settling old scores, capturing those who had nothing to do with the conspiracy at all. Their relatives were also subjected to repression, and the children were sent to orphanages under false names, while their parents were exiled to concentration camps. The cases were considered by the “People's Tribunal”, composed of the judges most devoted to the cause of Nazism and Hitler personally. The sentences, which were equally merciless for almost everyone, were carried out in prisons on the same day. The conspirators were hanged, in addition, they were mocked both at the trial itself and during the execution. The sessions and reprisals against the rebels were filmed, and they tried to capture the putschists in the most unfavorable light, humiliated, dirty, weak, downtrodden, and the recordings were then shown to everyone who wanted and did not want to “raise morale” throughout the country.

After July 20, 4,980 people were executed in Germany and at least 10 thousand were imprisoned in camps. According to Gestapo data alone, 700 officers and generals were repressed and killed. However, some participants in the conspiracy betrayed their comrades and were spared by Hitler.

Reasons for the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot

The assassination of Hitler and the coup d'etat were prevented by a number of unfortunate events. One cannot help but be surprised at how unsuccessfully everything turned out for Stauffenberg and the rest of the conspirators and because of what seemingly trifles “Valkyrie” failed. However, this is not the only reason for the failure of the putschists. As Goebbels himself correctly said, as Speer, who did not know about the conspiracy in advance, pointed out, the rebels behaved stupidly and indecisively, did not immediately occupy the main communication centers, provided Goebbels with the opportunity to freely communicate with Hitler’s headquarters and give instructions, and did not even turn off his telephone , although a handful of soldiers would have been enough to arrest Goebbels and Speer, who was with him. They did not use the full power of propaganda and did not appeal to the masses. This conspiracy is quite accurately called the “conspiracy of the generals.” Among the opposition there were people endowed with great power, with authority in the political and military environment, but they relied too much on the fact that the army would unquestioningly carry out any of their instructions. Their main opponents were not immediately arrested; all this time they remained free. Ordinary officers were not involved in the conspiracy either, relying only on the generals, some of whom only flirted with the conspirators, and in the process decided to betray them or became cowardly (however, this did not save them either). One cannot but agree that if the putschists had not lost so much time, acted faster, tougher and more decisively, they would have had a greater chance of success, but among them there were no people experienced in conspiracies, deception and propaganda, so Goebbels should not have making special efforts to lure troops to their side. A conspiracy in this case could only have been achieved with the assistance of Western intelligence services, which Goerdeler and other ideological leaders tried to attract, but to no avail. All they could offer the Americans and the British was a separate peace and the creation of a new government, but at this stage, in 1944, when it was clear that the defeat of Germany was just around the corner, this was not enough, and even the West could not go, both fearing a response from the Soviet Union and not wanting to violate the terms of the alliance with Russia.

Goals and meaning of the conspiracy

The mutiny did not have any particular effect on the situation in Germany. The goals of the opposition also seem not entirely clear. Of course, among the rebels there were people who disagreed with the methods and ideology of the Nazis, who wanted to overthrow this government and end the war, building a new society on more democratic foundations. There were those who fought out of disgust and hatred of the war and the crimes of the fascists. However, many of the conspirators were conservatives, and some completely shared the ideas of National Socialism; they did not agree with the ideology, but with the victims and failures. Their goal, apparently, was to conclude a separate peace with Western countries, transfer power into the hands of the generals and continue the war in the East on one front and without Hitler, who with his decisions only most often interfered with the generals, being confident that he understood military art and strategy are much better than them. Many military men were outraged by Hitler's behavior with old and experienced generals and officers, who enjoyed the well-deserved respect of soldiers and people, and by the measures that the Nazis initially took to eliminate undesirable figures and concentrate all power in their hands. The system that Hitler created in the army, with many separate leaderships and units for each group of troops, seemed to many to be ineffective, cumbersome, Germany’s enormous resources were not fully used, and decision-making and implementation became more complicated. And it was impossible not to see that Germany in 1944 was in a deep crisis, from which it could no longer get out. The war was now taking place on German territory, many of its allies had lost, the USSR was successfully liberating its territory and neighboring countries, and the Americans and British carried out a grand landing in Normandy and were moving to Germany from the other side. The ring was shrinking, the conspiracy would no longer be of decisive importance, and the Allies, angry and embittered by the war, having suffered colossal, horrific losses, having been subjected to barbaric, vile attacks, could not come to terms with the existing regime in Germany. In any case, they would demand unconditional surrender, the trial of Nazi leaders and compensation for all damage caused by the Nazis. This was especially wanted in the USSR, whose losses both in the economic sphere and in human lives were the most terrible. The Soviet government would never have come to terms with a simple peace treaty and would not have made concessions, so almost none of the leaders of the conspiracy even thought of turning to the communists for help or establishing ties with the USSR.

In general, in historiography there are different assessments of the July 20 conspiracy. Soviet and Western researchers often have diametrically opposed views of the conspirators. Soviet historians, in the spirit of that time and that ideology, especially during the Cold War, insisted that the conspiracy was not of a popular nature and had no special significance, and did not in any way influence subsequent events. The conspirators can hardly be called heroes. They are convinced that the purpose of the conspiracy was only a separate peace with the West and the continuation of the war with the USSR. Western sources, funny as it may seem, claim the opposite, praise the conspirators, see them as heroes who sacrificed themselves, and deny that any negotiations on a separate peace with representatives of the secret services of America or Great Britain took place. In addition, the two camps also differ in their assessment of individuals.

If in 1944, being called a participant in the July 20 conspiracy was tantamount to signing one’s own death warrant, and then everyone, on the contrary, tried to express their loyal feelings to Hitler in order to avoid suspicion, then after the war, at the Nuremberg trials and later, many former military leaders, the Nazis began to look for a way somehow associate himself with the fallen conspirators and justify his actions. Anglo-American historians and the press helped them in this to some extent (I do not presume to judge how legitimate all this is). Anyone who allegedly tried to resist Hitler during the war years could count on the leniency of the court at the Nuremberg trials, and in the future he often held a significant position, published books, received prizes and even gave lectures. Thus, the role of Heusinger, Speidel and some other individuals in the opposition activities seems controversial. Heusinger even held an important position in NATO after the war, his advice was listened to, although he, as the head of the operational department of the OKH General Staff, was directly involved in many decisions made by the Wehrmacht. The Soviet leadership, on the contrary, demanded that Heusinger be extradited or executed as a war criminal, and considered the acquittal against him unfair. However, I will talk about the Nuremberg trials and the disagreements between Western and Soviet representatives in more detail in a separate article.

Bryan Singer's film "Operation Valkyrie"

Much has been written about the July 20th plot, and more than once those events served as the basis for feature films. The most famous and popular of them is the film by Bryan Singer “Operation Valkyrie”, in which the role of Colonel von Stauffenberg was played by Tom Cruise. In many ways, it was this film that shaped most people’s ideas about those events. Although this film is evaluated differently, sometimes very critically, it must be said that from the point of view of the event outline and historical accuracy, it quite accurately reproduces the events of July 20. The film shows the episode with the briefcase and the bomb, the consequences of the explosion, and the further course of Valkyrie. The film, however, does not depict all the conspirators, but the main events are presented correctly. Except that their importance is perhaps somewhat overestimated, and the images of the conspirators are overly romanticized, which, in my opinion, is quite acceptable for a feature film. The emotional, artistic part of Singer's film is all right. "Valkyrie" has a lot of dialogue and much less action, it is more of a historical drama than an action movie, which some people may not like. Only in the second part of the film and closer to the end does the action speed up. Cruise managed to play a surprisingly serious role, he coped with it quite well, and the other actors turned out to be up to par. Singer's film can be watched to get an idea of ​​the events of July 20th.

Still from Bryan Singer's film "Operation Valkyrie"

main sources

1. Milshtein, M.A. Conspiracy against Hitler.

2. Churchill, W. The Second World War.

3. Speer, A. The Third Reich from the inside.

4. Yakovlev, N.N. USA and England in World War II.

Members of anti-Hitler groups should not be idealized; on a number of issues they were not far behind him. Indicative, for example, is the attitude of the conservative opposition towards Jews. While rejecting genocide in the true sense of the word, many considered the Jewish people to be a different race from which Germany should be “cleansed.” They proposed making all Jews citizens of the new state. Various options were considered: Canada, Latin America, Palestine. Those Jews who were allowed to remain in Germany would receive the status of foreigners, like the French or the British.

In general, the anti-Hitler groups were so diverse that they could not - and as a rule, did not try - to come to a common opinion either on the foreign policy program or on the need to carry out actions against the Fuhrer. Some believed that the Wehrmacht must first win the war and only then turn its weapons against the tyrant. Thus, the Kreisau circle, for example, opposed any acts of violence. It was a group of young idealistic intellectuals who united around the scions of two eminent German families - Count Helmuth James von Moltke (Helmuth James von Moltke, 1907-1945) and Count Peter York von Wartenburg (Yorck von Wartenburg, 1903-1944). The group was more like a debating society and included Jesuit priests, Lutheran pastors, conservatives, liberals, socialists, wealthy landowners, former trade union leaders, professors and diplomats. Almost all of them were hanged before the end of the war. Judging by the surviving documents, the Kreisau circle was developing a plan for creating a future government, the economic, social and spiritual foundations of society - something like Christian socialism.

The oppositionists, united around the former Mayor of Leipzig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, 1884-1945) and the Chief of the General Staff, Ludwig Beck (1880-1944), considered the issue more realistically - they sought to put an end to Hitler and seize power. It mainly included prominent political figures and senior officers. They maintained contacts with the West to keep the Allies informed of what was happening and negotiated possible peace terms with the new anti-Nazi government.

"Flash"

By February 1943, Goerdeler's associates were General Friedrich Olbricht (1888-1944), chief of the general administration of the ground forces, and Henning von Tresckow (Henning Hermann Robert Karl von Tresckow, 1901-1944), chief of staff of Army Group Center (one of the three German army groups concentrated to attack the USSR according to the Barbarossa plan), they developed a plan to eliminate Hitler. The operation was called “Operation Outbreak”; it is described in detail in the book by American historian and journalist William Shirer (1904-1993) “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”.

It was decided to place a bomb on the Fuhrer's plane. The resemblance to the accident would have made it possible to avoid the unwanted political costs of the murder: those devoted to the ideas of Hitler, of which there were many at that time, could counter the rebels. After the tests, it became clear that the German time bombs were unsuitable - their fuses made a low hissing sound before the explosion. Silent British bombs of this type were more suitable. The necessary bombs were obtained for the conspirators by a 25-year-old lieutenant colonel, commander of a cavalry regiment in the Center group of troops, who had access to any army equipment, Philipp von Boeselager (1917-2008)

A junior officer on General Treskow's staff, Fabian von Schlabrendorff (1907-1980), assembled two explosive packages and wrapped them so that they looked like cognac bottles. These bottles were transferred to the plane on which Hitler was flying, as a present for an old military friend, General Treskow. At the airfield, Schlabrendorf activated the delayed-action mechanism and handed the parcel to the colonel accompanying the Fuhrer.

The attempt, however, failed - the explosion package did not work. Before the bombs were discovered, the "gift" had to be taken. The next day, Schlambrendorff, risking being exposed at any moment, went to Hitler's headquarters - ostensibly on business - and exchanged real cognac for bombs, explaining that the wrong bottles had been transferred by mistake.

Politicians and the military, having united their efforts to eliminate Hitler, continued to try. According to one of the plans, the bombs should have been wrapped in the overcoat of Colonel Baron Rudolf von Gersdorff (Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, 1905-1980), who, approaching Hitler and his entourage on March 21 in the Berlin Zeichhaus at an exhibition of captured Russian weapons, was supposed to detonate them everyone. It took at least 10-15 minutes for the activated bomb to go off. At least three “overcoat” attempts were made, but each of them ended in failure. Not the least role in this was played by the fact that Hitler often changed his plans at the last moment. He could, for example, stay at the event not for half an hour, as planned, but for five minutes or not come at all - this was a characteristic method of self-preservation for him.

From September 1943 to January 1944 alone, half a dozen assassination attempts were carried out, each of which failed. You can really count on a meeting with Hitler only during his twice-daily military meetings in the “Wolf’s Lair” - Hitler’s headquarters from June 1941 to November 1944 was located in the Mauerwald forest near Rastenburg in East Prussia. From here the Fuhrer directed military operations, here he discussed the situation at the fronts with a narrow circle of close associates and received important guests.

"Valkyrie"

The key figure among the conspirators during this period was Claus von Stauffenberg (Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, 1907-1944), a representative of an old aristocratic family, a professional army officer. Brilliant erudition, talent, energy, and inquisitive mind attracted attention to him. Reasonable, athletic, extremely handsome, the father of four children, Stauffenberg seemed an exemplary German officer.

He took part in the Polish and French campaigns, then was sent to the East. In Russia he met General von Treskow and Schlabrendorff. Even then, Stauffenberg was sure that in order to save Germany, it was necessary to get rid of Hitler's tyranny, so he immediately joined the conspirators. In Tunisia, where he was transferred in February 1943, his car ended up in a minefield. Stauffenberg was seriously wounded: he lost his left eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left, and was wounded in the head and knee. But already in the middle of summer, having learned to hold a pen with three fingers, he wrote to General Olbricht that he expected to return to military service. At the end of September 1943, he returned to Berlin with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was appointed to the post of chief of staff in the department of ground forces.

He soon gathered around him key figures who could help him carry out his plans. Among them were: General Stiff, head of the organizational directorate of the ground forces, General Eduard Wagner, first Quartermaster General of the ground forces, General Erich Felgiebel, head of the communications service at the Supreme High Command, General Fritz Lindemann, head of the artillery-technical department, General Paul von Hase , head of the Berlin commandant's office, Colonel Baron von Rene, head of the department of foreign armies.

The year was 1944. In June, the Americans and the British landed in Normandy and opened a second front, Soviet troops were moving west through Poland, the situation was becoming critical and it was impossible to postpone the assassination attempt on Hitler in the Wolf's Lair.

On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg arrived at Hitler's headquarters, accompanied by his adjutant Heften. Having explained that he needed to change his shirt after the journey, he retired to a special room. It was very difficult to prepare chemical fuses with three remaining fingers, so in his haste the colonel only managed to set up one explosive device. The second bomb was left without a fuse. He had fifteen minutes to place the briefcase with the bomb next to Hitler and leave the Wolf's Lair.

However, it turned out that the meeting would not be held in a concrete bunker, as the colonel had assumed, but in a small wooden barracks with open windows, which significantly reduced the destructive power of the bomb. There were 23 people present. While there was a report on the situation on the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg placed the briefcase with the bomb under the table closer to Hitler and left the room five minutes before the explosion. However, Stauffenberg’s briefcase was in the way for one of the meeting participants, and he rearranged it. At 12:42 p.m. There was a powerful explosion. Almost everyone in the barracks was knocked down. Four people were seriously injured and died the same day. The rest were slightly injured. Hitler escaped with a slight scratch and torn trousers.

Stauffenberg and Geften managed to pass the checkpoint and, seeing the explosion, flew to Berlin. Two and a half hours later, having landed at Rangsdorf Airport, the colonel called the army headquarters on Bandler Street and informed Friedrich Olbricht that Hitler was dead.

Olbricht went with this news to Colonel General Friedrich Fromm (1888-1945), so that he would give instructions for the start of Operation Valkyrie. This was a plan to provide the army with a security reserve for Berlin and other major cities in the event of an uprising of foreign workers working in Germany. It was signed by Hitler himself. The likelihood of such an uprising was extremely small, but the Fuhrer suspected danger everywhere. Colonel Stauffenberg developed appendices to this document, so that immediately after the liquidation of Hitler, the reserve army could capture Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Cologne and other cities and help carry out a coup d'etat. In Scandinavian-German mythology, Valkyries were beautiful maidens who inspired terror; they flew over the battlefield, choosing who was destined to die. According to the conspirators, Hitler was supposed to die this time.

However, Friedrich Fromm decided to make sure of the Fuhrer’s death and called the Wolf’s Lair. Upon learning that the assassination attempt had failed, Fromm refused to give orders to begin the operation. He was aware of the impending conspiracy and did not interfere with it, but made it clear that his support could only be counted on in the event of Hitler's death.

At this time, Stauffenberg and Heften arrived at the headquarters of the ground forces, who insisted that Hitler was dead, and his entourage was trying to hide this in order to gain time. Stauffenberg took the initiative into his own hands and began to act. Very quickly, the troops had to occupy and hold the national broadcasting office, two radio stations in the capital, the telegraph, telephone centers, the Reich Chancellery, the ministry and the headquarters of the SS and Gestapo.

The colonel himself called the commanders of units and formations, convincing them that the Fuhrer was dead and urging them to follow the orders of the new leadership - Colonel General Beck and Field Marshal Witzleben. In Vienna and Prague they immediately began to implement the Valkyrie plan. More than a thousand SS men and members of other security services were arrested in Paris.

You can read about the events of that day in the Berlin Diary. 1940-1945" by Maria Illarionovna Vasilchikova, nicknamed Missy. Her family left Russia in 1919. Missy grew up as a refugee in Germany, France, and Lithuania. Knowledge of five European languages ​​and secretarial experience helped her quickly get a job - first in the Broadcasting Bureau, then in the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she soon became friends with a small group of staunch opponents of Hitlerism, who later became active participants in the plot of July 20, 1944. This is what she wrote that day:

The conspirators seized the main radio station, but were unable to go on the air, and now it is again in the hands of the SS. However, officer schools in the suburbs of Berlin have rebelled and are now moving towards the capital. And indeed, an hour later we heard the tanks of the Krampnitz Armored School rumble through Potsdam. […] A little later it was announced on the radio that at midnight the Fuhrer would make an address to the German people. We realized that only then would we know for sure whether it was all a hoax or not. Yet Gottfried stubbornly clung to hope. He said that even if Hitler was indeed alive, his headquarters in East Prussia was located so far from everything that the regime could still be overthrown before he again seized control of Germany itself.

It is not possible to describe in a short article how the actions developed minute by minute. Many scientific works, books, and films are dedicated to this day. When you get acquainted with this material, it seems that these are these few hours when the story really could have gone differently. Kurt Finker, author of the book “The Plot of July 20, 1944,” believes that an analysis of the situation in Germany at that time shows that the conspiracy, even if it succeeded only in Berlin and other important points, had a good chance of success. To do this, the fencers should have seized radio stations and printing houses as quickly as possible in order to call on the people and the Wehrmacht to a general uprising.

On the Eastern Front, news of the assassination and attempted coup led to an increase in the number of defectors, as was repeatedly reported by the Freies Deutschland newspaper. In the Lublin-Demblin region alone, in three days, having become convinced that even the highest military leaders considered the war lost and Hitler a criminal, 32 groups of German soldiers and officers (637 people) went over to the side of the Soviet Army.

Thus, non-commissioned officer of the 1067th Infantry Regiment Paul Keller recalls:

We took a position on the bank of the Neman. On July 26, through loud-speaking radio installations, we heard from the other side about an attempt on Hitler’s life. Soldier Pfefferkorn involuntarily exclaimed: “Thank God, it’s finally starting!” As soon as they get rid of him, the war will end immediately!“ The rest of the soldiers agreed with him.

When the Russians crossed the river at dawn the next day, Keller and his comrades did not retreat, remained and went over to the side of the National Committee.

Former artillery general Johannes Zukertort wrote about it this way:

I was not in the least privy [to the conspiracy]; General Olbricht, with whom I was particularly friendly, did not establish any contact with me, although he could not help but know about my oppositional political views. If he had done this, I, in all likelihood, would have been on the side of the conspirators.

Richard Scheringer supports him in this:

we all hoped that the army would take some action. But why didn't we know anything about her? Why didn't our former field commander Bek inform us about this? Why did they limit themselves to the general's conspiracy?

None of the participants in the conspiracy prepared a refuge for themselves in case the uprising failed. They were sure that the court of officers' honor would sentence them to death. But not everyone was lucky enough to be shot. The executions were carried out in a room specially equipped for this purpose in the Berlin Plötzensee prison. The torment of the victims suspended on huge hooks was filmed. Those who knew better the Nazi methods of investigation tried not to fall into the hands of the Gestapo alive and ended their lives by suicide. In total, about two hundred people involved in organizing the assassination attempt were executed.

The rebels probably understood that the chances of a successful completion of the campaign were slim, yet they repeatedly risked their lives (and the lives of their families) to push the tyrant off Olympus. For what? General Treskov once answered this question in a conversation with von Stauffenberg: “The assassination attempt must be carried out at any cost. Even if we do not achieve any practical benefit, it will justify the German Resistance before the world and history."

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