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July 20, 2018 | 1944: The July 20 Plot

On this day in 1944, Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him.

High German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and assassination was the only way to stop him. A coup d’état would follow, and a new government in Berlin would save Germany from complete destruction at the hands of the Allies. That was the plan. This was the reality: Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, chief of the army reserve, had been given the task of planting a bomb during a conference that was to be held at Berchtesgaden, but was later moved to Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair,” a command post at Rastenburg in Prussia, the Führer’s headquarters nearer the Eastern Front. Stauffenberg planted the explosive in a briefcase, which he placed under a table, then left quickly. Hitler was studying a map of the Eastern Front as Colonel Heinz Brandt, trying to get a better look at the map, moved the briefcase out of place, farther away from where the Führer was standing. At 12:42 P.M. the bomb exploded. When the smoke cleared, Hitler was wounded, charred, and even suffered the temporary paralysis of one arm — but he was very much alive. He was even well enough to keep an appointment with Benito Mussolini that very afternoon. He gave Il Duce a tour of the bomb site. Four others present died from their wounds.

As the bomb went off, Stauffenberg was making his way to Berlin to carry out Operation Valkyrie, the overthrow of the central Nazi government. In Berlin, he and co-conspirator General Olbricht arrested the commander of the reserve army, General Fromm, and began issuing orders for the commandeering of various government buildings. And then the news came through from Hermann Göring — Hitler was alive. Fromm, released from custody under the assumption he would nevertheless join the effort to throw Hitler out of office, turned on the conspirators. Stauffenberg and Olbricht were shot that same day. Once Hitler figured out the extent of the conspiracy (it reached all the way to occupied France), he began the systematic liquidation of his enemies. More than 7,000 Germans would be arrested (including evangelical pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer), and up to 5,000 would die — either executed or as suicides. Hitler, Himmler, and Göring took an even firmer grip on Germany and its war machine. Hitler became convinced that fate had spared him— “I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed upon me by Providence” — and that “nothing is going to happen to me… [T]he great cause which I serve will be brought through its present perils and…everything can be brought to a good end.”

Adapted from “1944: Assassination plot against Hitler fails,” History.

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