On July 20, 1944, an explosion rocked the Führer's headquarters. One person died on the spot, three more died later from their wounds. Hitler suffered only superficially, but it was the most serious of all murder attempts aimed at him. How close was it to be successful?
July 20 was a hot and stuffy day. The German dictator got up earlier than usual and expected the arrival of Benito Mussolini in the afternoon. Preparations for his arrival accelerated the daily situational consultation and brought it to 12.30.
As a result of the explosion, the conference room where Hitler held his meetings was almost completely destroyed.
Shortly before that hour, Hitler left his shelter and went to a wooden barrack in which all the windows were wide open due to the heat. There, generals, admirals and adjutants gathered around a long oak table waiting for him.
"I am indestructible, I am immortal"
The last to arrive at the meeting was Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg - a tall soldier of aristocracy who was to present a report on the Reserve Army. He was severely maimed during the North African campaign, where he lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers of his left hand . One of those present at the conference said that he looked "like a typical warrior at any point in history." This time, however, he did not come as a warrior, but an assassin.
The destroyed quarter in the Wolf's Lair, photographed by Heinrich Hoffmann immediately after the attack.
Stauffenberg entered the room as Lieutenant General Adolf Heusinger was reporting on the situation on the Eastern Front. The conspirator apologized for being late, sat on Hitler's right side and set the briefcase on the floor, about a meter from his target. Then he mumbled something about answering the phone and left the conference room.
Its other participants did not know that the briefcase he left contained a kilogram explosive charge with a time fuse set to 10 minutes . The explosion occurred at 12:42 pm with Stauffenberg in an adjacent building.
As the dust settled a little, a scene full of chaos appeared. The floor and walls of the room were shattered and the oak table crumbled. The wounded stumbled as they left the barracks. Almost all of them had a concussion and cracked eardrums.
Some were less fortunate. The stenographer Heinrich Berger was closest to the explosion. He lost both legs and was lying in a growing pool of blood . He died before the end of the day. Three high ranking officers were fatally wounded. Hitler, although stunned, only suffered injuries to his ears and bruises to his hands and buttocks, and hundreds of pieces of wood were stuck in his legs. When he was treated by a doctor, he said, "I am indestructible, I am immortal."
A hair of success
In fact, it was pure chance that the Führer was saved. The open conference room windows helped to disperse the force of the explosion, and the bomb briefcase was inadvertently moved behind the thick table leg that shielded Hitler. Most importantly, however, Stauffenberg managed to arm only one of the two loads he had with him. However, it would have been enough if he had put a second bomb in the briefcase as well, even without a fuse, and everyone in the barracks would probably have been killed .
Of course, for Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators, eliminating the German dictator was only part of the plan. While the Wolf's Lair was in chaos, the chief bomber and his adjutant Werner von Haeften confused the guards at two posts and arrived at the airport, from where they departed for Berlin.
They were convinced that Hitler was already dead, so upon arriving in the capital, they attempted to seize power from the hands of the Nazis by seizing control of key buildings in the city. When that failed - mainly because news came that the Führer had survived the outbreak - Stauffenberg and the other organizers of the coup were arrested. Around midnight, they were led out into the courtyard of the building, which housed, among others, the headquarters of the Reserve Army, and shot.
The Nazi security services launched a raid on everyone who had any connection with the plot , even if completely irrelevant. A total of around 5,000 people were arrested, hundreds of whom were executed and many more sent to concentration camps.
Source:
The above text originally appeared in Roger Moorhouse's book The Third Reich in 100 Objects , which was published by Znak Horyzont.
The title, illustrations with captions, boldface text, explanations in square brackets and subheadings come from the editors. The text has undergone some basic editing to introduce more frequent paragraph breaks.