Robert J Samples Loc: Round Rock, Texas

Plots to Assassinate Hitler

You don’t have to mark your calendar, but July 20th is the date when a bomb was planted in a meeting room with the intention to kill Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany. I have accumulated more about Hitler and his evil crew but first will report what I have read and heard about him and another plot to kill him.

There was a planned attempt to assassinate Hitler when he planned to lead a victory parade through Paris, passing under the Ache Triumph. An expert sniper was positioned to shoot him there. However, whether Hitler sensed the danger of being exposed to such an attempt on his life, or for some other reason, he did not take this opportunity. As you will see if you read further, there were many other attempts on his life. He was cautious enough not to meet with anyone he did not already know, as a precaution. So, feel free to mark your calendar on July 20th as one of those dates.


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20 July plot

Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, and Bruno Loerzer surveying the damaged conference room
Type Coup d'état

Locations Several, including Wolf's Lair, East Prussia

54°04′50″N 21°29′47″E
and Berlin

Objective • Ensure continuity of government
• Make peace with the Western Allies

Date 20 July 1944; 78 years ago
Executed by • Friedrich Olbricht
• Erwin von Witzleben
• Claus von Stauffenberg
• among others…

Outcome • Hitler survives with minor injuries
• Military coup fails within 5 hours
• 7,000 arrested; 4,980 executed
Casualties 4 killed, 13 injuries

Wolf's Lair
The location of the assassination attempt on Hitler
The 20 July plot was a failed attempt to assassinate the German dictator Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944. The plotters were part of the German resistance, mainly composed of Wehrmacht officers.[1][2]
The leader of the conspiracy, colonel Claus von Stauffenberg planned to kill Hitler by detonating an explosive hidden in a briefcase. However, it only slightly injured him. A few hours later, the conspiracy used Wehrmacht units to take control of several cities, including Berlin, right 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 also has 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 night afterwards. In the months after the coup d'état attempt, the Gestapo had arrested more than 7,000 people, 4,980 of whom 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 SS) and to make peace with the Western Allies as soon as possible. The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown,[6][7][8] but they would have included unrealistic demands for the confirmation of Germany's extensive annexations of European territory.[9][10]
Background[edit]

Battlefronts in Europe as of 15 July 1944
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, Colonel General Ludwig Beck and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. Oster was the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office. Beck was a former Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command (OKH). Von Witzleben was the former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command in the West. 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]

In 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.
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 in 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 the re-establishment of Germany's 1914 boundaries with Belgium, France and Poland and no reparations. Plotters' demands meant a return to pre-1939 German borders; it seems highly unlikely that the Allies would have accepted such enormous demands.[23][26][page needed] Like most of the rest of the German resistance, the 20 July plotters believed in the idea of Greater Germany and as a condition for peace demanded that the Western allies recognize 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.[27]

The overall goals towards Poland were mixed among 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.[28] Some like Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg even wanted all of Poland annexed to Germany.[29]

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.[30] Stauffenberg, as one of the leaders of the plot, stated five years before the coup in 1939 during the Poland campaign: "It is essential that we begin systemic colonisation in Poland. But I have no fear that this will not occur."[31][32]

Political Vision of post-Hitler Germany[edit]
Many members of the plot had helped the Nazis 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 the governance of the state.[33]

Planning a coup[edit]
See also: List of members of the 20 July plot
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 North Africa, Claus von 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 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]
Main article: Operation Valkyrie
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 the 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 the autumn of 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 bulletproof 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 General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, so he 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]

Main articles: Operation Spark (1941) and List of assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2019).

During 1943 and early 1944
• 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 Eberha
Just Sayin...RJS

rickybrock Loc: Dalton Georgia

Its great hearing from you again ( I was starting to worry about you ) Ricky

Robert J Samples Loc: Round Rock, Texas

Ricky, you don't have to worry about me, I am in good hands! At times when the pain is about to take control, I am ready to go, or think so! Just Sayin...RJS