Valkyrie Fails: Hitler Survives Assassination Bomb

Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg placed a briefcase containing two pounds of plastic explosive under a conference table at the Wolf's Lair, Adolf Hitler's East Prussian headquarters, on July 20, 1944. The resulting blast killed four men and wounded twenty others, but Hitler survived with only minor injuries, and the conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime collapsed within hours. Stauffenberg, a decorated aristocratic officer who had lost an eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand in North Africa, had concluded by 1943 that Hitler was leading Germany to total destruction. He joined a network of military officers, diplomats, and civilians plotting to kill Hitler, seize control of the government, and negotiate peace with the Western Allies. The conspirators planned to use Operation Valkyrie, the army's contingency plan for maintaining order during a domestic emergency, as the mechanism for their coup. Stauffenberg armed the bomb in a bathroom before the briefing, but managed to prepare only one of two charges due to an interruption. He placed the briefcase near Hitler and excused himself from the room. After the explosion, he saw the building's wreckage and flew to Berlin convinced Hitler was dead. But Colonel Heinz Brandt, seated next to the briefcase, had unknowingly moved it behind a thick oak table leg, which shielded Hitler from the worst of the blast. The conspirators in Berlin hesitated for critical hours, waiting for confirmation of Hitler's death before activating Valkyrie. When it became clear Hitler had survived, loyalist officers arrested Stauffenberg and three co-conspirators at the War Ministry. General Friedrich Fromm, desperate to cover his own knowledge of the plot, had them executed by firing squad in the courtyard that same night. Stauffenberg's last words were "Long live holy Germany." Hitler's retribution was savage. The Gestapo arrested approximately 7,000 people and executed nearly 5,000 over the following months, including field marshals, generals, and former ambassadors, many by slow strangulation with piano wire while cameras filmed their deaths.