20 July plot
| 20 July plot | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler and German resistance to Nazism | |
 | |
| Type | Coup d'état |
| Locations | Several, including Wolf's Lair, East Prussia 54°04′50″N 21°29′47″E / 54.08056°N 21.49639°E and Berlin |
| Objective |
|
| Date | 20 July 1944 |
| Executed by | |
| Outcome |
|
| Casualties | 4 killed, 20 injured |
  Wolf's Lair The location of the assassination attempt on Hitler | |
The 20 July plot, sometimes referred to as Operation Valkyrie (German: Unternehmen Walküre), was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany, and overthrow the Nazi government on 20 July 1944. The plotters were part of the German resistance, mainly composed of Wehrmacht officers.[1][2] The principal mastermind of the conspiracy, Claus von Stauffenberg, tried to kill Hitler by detonating an explosive hidden in a briefcase. However, due to the location of the bomb at the time of detonation, the blast only dealt Hitler minor injuries. The planners' subsequent coup attempt also failed and resulted in a purge of the Wehrmacht.
As early as 1938, German military officers had plotted to overthrow Hitler, but indecisive leadership and the pace of global events stymied action. Plotters gained a sense of urgency in 1943 after Germany lost the Battle of Stalingrad and Soviet forces began to push towards Germany. Under the leadership of Stauffenberg, plotters tried to assassinate Hitler at least five times in 1943 and 1944. With the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, closing in on the plotters, a final attempt was organised in July 1944. Stauffenberg personally took a briefcase containing a block of plastic explosive to a conference in the Wolf's Lair (German: Wolfsschanze), the bunker complex and military headquarters then located in eastern Prussia. The explosives were armed and placed next to Hitler, but it appears they were moved unwittingly at the last moment behind a table leg by Heinz Brandt, inadvertently saving Hitler's life. When the bomb detonated, it killed Brandt and two others, while the rest of the room's occupants were injured, one of whom, Rudolf Schmundt, later died from his injuries. Hitler's trousers were singed by the blast, and he suffered a perforated eardrum and conjunctivitis, but was otherwise unharmed.
The plotters, unaware of their failure, then attempted a coup d'état. A few hours after the blast, the conspiracy used Wehrmacht units to take control of several cities, including Berlin, immediately after giving them disinformation on the intention of the orders they were given. This part of the coup d'état attempt is referred to by the name "Operation Valkyrie", which has also become associated with the entire event.[3][4] Within hours, the Nazi regime had reasserted its control of Germany. A few members of the conspiracy, including Stauffenberg, were executed by firing squad the same night. In the months after the coup attempt, the Gestapo arrested more than 7,000 people, 4,980 of whom were executed. Roughly 200 conspirators were executed.[5]
The apparent aim of the coup d'état attempt was to wrest political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the Schutzstaffel) and to make peace with the Western Allies as soon as possible. The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown.[6][7][8][9][10]
Background
[edit]
Since 1938 there had been groups plotting an overthrow of some kind within the German Army and in the German Military Intelligence Organization.[11] Early leaders of these plots included Major General Hans Oster, the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office; Colonel General Ludwig Beck, a former Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command (OKH); and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, a former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command in the West. They soon established contacts with several prominent civilians, including Carl Goerdeler,[12] the former mayor of Leipzig, and Helmuth James von Moltke,[13] the great-grandnephew of Moltke the Elder, hero of the Franco-Prussian War.
Groups of military plotters exchanged ideas with civilian, political, and intellectual resistance groups in the Kreisauer Kreis (which met at the von Moltke estate in Kreisau) and in other secret circles. Moltke was against killing Hitler; instead, he wanted him placed on trial. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle it". Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical: Hitler and National Socialism had turned wrongdoing into a system, something which the resistance should avoid.[14]
Plans to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 1938 and 1939, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army General Franz Halder and Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, and the failure of the Western powers to oppose Hitler's aggression until 1939.[15]
In 1942 a new conspiratorial group formed, led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's staff, who commanded Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa. Tresckow systematically recruited oppositionists into the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of the army resistance. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him.[16]
During 1942, Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective resistance network. Their most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units throughout Germany. Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created a viable coup apparatus.[17]
In late 1942 Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and stage an overthrow during Hitler's visit to the headquarters of Army Group Centre at Smolensk in March 1943, by placing a bomb on his plane (Operation Spark). The bomb failed to detonate, and a second attempt a week later with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin also failed.[18] These failures demoralised the conspirators. During 1943 Tresckow tried without success to recruit senior army field commanders such as Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to support a seizure of power. Tresckow, in particular, worked on his Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, to persuade him to move against Hitler and at times succeeded in gaining his consent, only to find him indecisive at the last minute.[19] However, despite their refusals, none of the Field Marshals reported their treasonous activities to the Gestapo or Hitler.[citation needed]
Motivation and goals
[edit]Opposition to Hitler and to Nazi policies
[edit]While the primary goal of the plotters was to remove Hitler from power, they did so for various reasons. The majority of the group behind the 20 July plot were conservative nationalists—idealists, but not necessarily of a democratic stripe.[20][21] Martin Borschat portrays their motivations as a matter of aristocratic resentment, writing that the plot was mainly carried out by conservative elites who were initially integrated by the Nazi government but during the war lost their influence and were concerned about regaining it.[22] However, at least in Stauffenberg's case, the conviction that Nazi Germany's atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war were a dishonour to the nation and its military was likely a major motivating factor.[23] Historian Judith Michel assesses the circle around the 20 July Group as a diverse and heterogeneous group that included liberal democrats, conservatives, social democrats, authoritarian aristocrats, and even communists. The common goal was to overthrow Hitler's regime and bring the war to a swift end.[24] There is evidence of the plot encompassing a broad spectrum of plotters which included communists. That April, before the attempted coup, Stauffenberg agreed to cooperate with the Operational Leadership of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) remaining in Germany. Contacts were established through the Social Democrats Adolf Reichwein and Julius Leber.[25]
Territorial demands
[edit]Among demands initially countenanced by the plotters for issue towards the Allies were such points as re-establishment of Germany's 1914 boundaries with Belgium, France and Poland and no reparations. Like most of the rest of German resistance, the 20 July plotters believed in the idea of Greater Germany and as a condition for peace demanded that the western allies recognise as a minimum the incorporation of Austria, Alsace-Lorraine, Sudetenland, and the annexation of Polish-inhabited territories that Germany ceded to Poland after 1918, with the restoration of some of the overseas colonies. They believed that Europe should be controlled under German hegemony.[26]
The overall goals towards Poland were mixed within the plotters. Most of the plotters found it desirable to restore the old German borders of 1914, while others pointed out that the demands were unrealistic, and amendments had to be made.[27] Some like Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg even wanted all of Poland annexed to Germany.[28]
To Poland, which was fighting against Nazi Germany with both its army and government in exile, the territorial demands and traditional nationalistic visions of resistance were not much different from the racist policies of Hitler.[29] Stauffenberg, one of the leaders of the plot, stated in 1939 during the Poland campaign, five years before the coup attempt: "It is essential that we begin a systemic colonisation in Poland. But I have no fear that this will not occur."[30][31]
Political vision of post-Hitler Germany
[edit]Many members of the plot had helped the Nazis to gain power and shared revisionist foreign policy goals pursued by Hitler, and even at the time of the plot were anti-democratic, hoping to replace Hitler with a conservative-authoritarian government involving aristocratic rule. They opposed popular legitimation or mass participation in governance of the state.[32]
Political program
[edit]The political program of the planned government was outlined in a draft for a government policy statement, consisting of twelve points:
- Restoration of the rule of law, independence of the courts, protection of personal and property security, dissolution of concentration camps, prevention of lynch law,
- Combating corruption, restitution of looted works of art, ending the persecution of Jews, punishment of war crimes,
- Dissolution of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and an end to propaganda reporting on the course of the war,
- Separation of church and state, a Christian mindset as the basis for policies, freedom of the press,
- Restoration of Christian education by parents
- Reduction of bureaucracy, examination and possible punishment, dismissal or transfer of all officials appointed and promoted from 1 January 1933, especially Nazi party members
- Transformation of the provinces of Prussia and states into Reichsgaue, local self-government for the Reichsgaue, districts and municipalities under the supervision of Reichsstatthalter,
- Restoration of full economic freedom after the war, protection of private property, planned economic measures only under conditions of war-related shortages,
- Responsible and conscientious social policy in the hands of Reichsgaue and trade unions
- Ending national debt through tax increases and austerity policies, international agreement on debt repayment
- Continuation of the war for defence purposes only,
- Commencement of peace negotiations with the Western Allies, punishment of those Germans responsible for the Second World War.[33]
Planning a coup
[edit]Von Stauffenberg joins
[edit]
By mid-1943 the tide of war was turning decisively against Germany. The army plotters and their civilian allies became convinced that Hitler should be assassinated, so that a government acceptable to the western Allies could be formed, and a separate peace negotiated in time to prevent a Soviet invasion of Germany. In August 1943 Tresckow met, for the first time, a young staff officer named Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Severely wounded in April 1943 by an Allied strafing attack near Mezzouna in North Africa, Stauffenberg was a political conservative and zealous German nationalist.[3]
From early 1942, he had come to share two basic convictions with many military officers: that Germany was being led to disaster and that Hitler's removal from power was necessary. After the Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942, despite his religious scruples, he concluded that the Führer's assassination was a lesser moral evil than Hitler's remaining in power.[34] Stauffenberg brought a new tone of decisiveness to the ranks of the resistance movement. When Tresckow was assigned to the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg took charge of planning and executing the assassination attempt.
New plan
[edit]Olbricht now put forward a new strategy for staging a coup against Hitler. The Replacement Army (Ersatzheer) had an operational plan called Operation Valkyrie, which was to be used in the event that the disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities would cause a breakdown in law and order, or an uprising by the millions of forced labourers from occupied countries now being used in German factories. Olbricht suggested that this plan could be used to mobilise the Reserve Army for the purpose of the coup.[35]
In August and September 1943, Tresckow drafted the "revised" Valkyrie plan and new supplementary orders. A secret declaration began with these words: "The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of party leaders has attempted to exploit the situation by attacking our embattled soldiers from the rear in order to seize power for themselves."[36] Detailed instructions were written for occupation of government ministries in Berlin, Heinrich Himmler's headquarters in East Prussia, radio stations and telephone offices, and other Nazi apparatus through military districts, and concentration camps.[37]
Previously, it was believed that Stauffenberg was mainly responsible for the Valkyrie plan, but documents recovered by the Soviet Union after the war and released in 2007 suggest that the plan was developed by Tresckow by late 1943.[38] All written information was handled by Tresckow's wife, Erika, and by Margarethe von Oven, his secretary. Both women wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints.[39] On at least two other occasions Tresckow had tried to assassinate the Führer. The first plan was to shoot him during dinner at the army base camp, but this plan was aborted because it was widely believed that Hitler wore a bullet-proof vest. The conspirators also considered poisoning him, but this was not possible because his food was specially prepared and tasted. They concluded that a time bomb was the only option.[40]
Operation Valkyrie could only be put into effect by Hitler himself, or by General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, so the latter had to be either won over to the conspiracy or in some way neutralised if the plan was to succeed.[35]
Previous failed attempts
[edit]During 1943 and early 1944 von Tresckow and von Stauffenberg organised at least five attempts to get one of the military conspirators near enough to Hitler, for long enough to kill him with hand grenades, bombs, or a revolver:
- 13 March 1943 by von Tresckow[41][42]
- 21 March 1943 by Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff[41][42]
- late November 1943 by Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst[42]
- February 1944 by Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin
- 11 March 1944 by Eberhard Freiherr von Breitenbuch
As the war situation deteriorated, Hitler no longer appeared in public and rarely visited Berlin. He spent most of his time at his headquarters at the Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg in East Prussia, with occasional breaks at his Bavarian mountain retreat Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden. In both places, he was heavily guarded and rarely saw people he did not know or trust. Himmler and the Gestapo were increasingly suspicious of plots against Hitler and rightly suspected the officers of the General Staff, which was indeed the source of many conspiracies against him.
Preparations
[edit]By mid-1944 the Gestapo was closing in on the conspirators. When Stauffenberg sent Tresckow a message through Lieutenant Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort asking whether there was any reason for trying to assassinate Hitler given that no political purpose would be served, Tresckow's response was: "The assassination must be attempted, coûte que coûte [whatever the cost]. Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin , for the practical purpose no longer matters; what matters now is that the German resistance movement must take the plunge before the eyes of the world and of history. Compared to that, nothing else matters."[43]
Himmler had at least one conversation with a known oppositionist when, in August 1943, the Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz, who was involved in Goerdeler's network, came to see him and offered him the support of the opposition if he would make a move to displace Hitler and secure a negotiated end to the war.[44] Nothing came of this meeting, but Popitz was not arrested and Himmler apparently did nothing to track down the resistance network which he knew was operating within the state bureaucracy. It is possible that Himmler, who by late 1943 knew that the war was unwinnable, allowed the plot to go ahead in the knowledge that if it succeeded he would be Hitler's successor, and could then bring about a peace settlement.
Popitz was not alone in seeing Himmler as a potential ally. General von Bock advised Tresckow to seek his support, but there is no evidence that he did so. Goerdeler was apparently also in indirect contact with Himmler via a mutual acquaintance, Carl Langbehn. Wilhelm Canaris's biographer Heinz Höhne suggests that Canaris and Himmler were working together to bring about a change of regime, but this remains speculation.[45]
- Stauffenberg's co-conspirators in the plot
