The plot to kill Hitler 75 years ago

Seventy five years ago a bomb plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler came tantalisingly close to killing the Nazi dictator and changing the course of World War II.

On July 20, 1944 explosives hidden in a briefcase detonated just metres from Hitler in the dictator’s heavily guarded Wolf’s Lair retreat in German-controlled Poland.

With Hitler apparently dead, a plan – Operation Valkyrie – hatched by dissident army officers was launched. The conspirators intended to arrest senior Nazi officials and seize control of German cities.

A new German government would then seek a peace deal with the western Allies to end the war, potentially saving millions of lives.

THE PLOTTERS

Headed by army officer Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the plotters were a mix of disenchanted military commanders and civilians who refused to take part in the Nazi rule of Germany.

There motivations were varied: some were disenchanted by the Nazis’ extermination of the Jewish people and other minorities as well as Hitler’s mismanagement of the war.

But other conspirators realised that killing Hitler was the only way to save Germany from catastrophic defeat at the hands of the advancing Soviet army on the eastern front.

JULY 20, 1944: THE BOMBING

Stauffenberg decided to carry out the assassination attempt himself during a meeting with Hitler and other military officers at the Wolf’s Lair – the Nazi leader’s sprawling military base.

Stauffenberg planted a briefcase packed with explosives under a table that Hitler was using. He then excused himself, telling the gathering he had to make a phone call.

The bomb detonated at 12.42pm. Minutes later Stauffenberg left the Wolf’s Lair, believing Hitler was dead and returned to Berlin.

Back in the German capital, he initiated the second part of Operation Valkyrie – to use the country’s reserve army to stage a coup against the Nazi regime.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

The blast devastated the meeting room, killing one person, and leaving three others with fatal wounds.

But Hitler was not among them. Just moments before the bomb explosion an officer moved the briefcase away from Hitler. The Nazi dictator, shielded by a large table, sustained only minor injuries.

With no official confirmation of Hitler’s death, the uprising stalled within hours. Stauffenberg and other conspirators were arrested and executed the following day.

THE AFTERMATH

Hitler’s revenge on the conspirators was swift and brutal. Thousands of people were arrested and 5000 eventually executed after a series of show trials.

In the July Plot’s aftermath, the Nazis took an even firmer grip on Germany and its military forces.

Hitler was sure that fate had spared him. He wrote weeks after the attempt on his life: “I am now more than ever convinced that the great cause which I serve will survive its present perils and that everything can be brought to a good end.”

The Nazi leader killed himself on April 30, 1945 shortly before Germany surrendered.