Operation Valkyrie (Operation Walküre) was an operational plan developed for the Reserve Army of the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer). The plan was approved by German dictator Adolf Hitler, who intended it to be used in the event that a disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities resulted in a breakdown in law and order, or a rising by the millions of forced laborers from occupied countries working in German factories.
The 20 July plot of 1944 was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, inside the Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg (East Prussia), in order to take power by means of an emergency plan called Operation Valkyrie (Unternehmen Walküre). Operation Valkyrie was approved by Hitler himself and, at face value, it was intended to be used in the event that disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities resulted in a breakdown in law and order. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg played the key role in the plot and was in charge of Operation Valkyrie. Because of his position, von Stauffenberg was allowed access to Hitler to make reports and for carrying out the other intended use of Operation Valkyrie.
The conference room soon after the explosion
The 20 July plot was the culmination of the efforts of the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi regime. Its failure, both in Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" (Wolfsschanze) Headquarters and then in Berlin's Bendlerblock, led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo. According to records of the Fuerhrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 persons were executed which ultimately led to the destruction of the resistance movement.
On July 1, 1944 Stauffenberg was appointed chief-of-staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse in central Berlin. This position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler’s military conferences, either in East Prussia or at Berchtesgaden, and would thus give him a golden opportunity, perhaps the last that would present itself, to kill Hitler with a bomb or a pistol. Conspirators who had long resisted the idea of killing Hitler on moral grounds now changed their minds—partly because they were hearing reports of the mass murder at Auschwitz of up to 250,000 Hungarian Jews, the culmination of the Nazi Holocaust. Meanwhile new key allies had been gained. These included General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the German military commander in France, who would take control in Paris when Hitler was killed and, it was hoped, negotiate an immediate armistice with the invading Allied armies.
The plot was now as ready as it would ever be. On July 7 General Stieff was to kill Hitler at a display of new uniforms at Klessheim castle near Salzburg. However, for psychological reasons, Stieff felt unable to kill Hitler. Stauffenberg now decided to do both: to assassinate Hitler, wherever he was and to manage the plot in Berlin. Twice by mid July Stauffenberg attended Hitler’s conferences carrying a bomb in his briefcase, but because the conspirators had decided that Himmler and probably Göring should be killed simultaneously if the planned mobilization of Operation Valkyrie was to have a chance to succeed, he held back at the last minute because Himmler was not present. In fact, it was unusual for Himmler to attend military conferences. By July 15, when Stauffenberg again flew to East Prussia, this condition had been dropped. The plan was for Stauffenberg to plant the briefcase with the bomb in Hitler’s conference room with a timer running, excuse himself from the meeting, wait for the explosion, then fly back to Berlin and join the other plotters at the Bendlerblock. Operation Valkyrie would be mobilized, the Reserve Army would take control of Germany and the other Nazi leaders would be arrested. Beck would be appointed head of state while Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a conservative politician and Nazi opponent, would be Chancellor, and Witzleben would be commander-in-chief. The plan was ambitious and depended on a run of very good luck, but it was not totally fanciful.
Again on 15 July the attempt was called off at the last minute, for reasons which are not known because all the participants in the phone conversations which led to the postponement were dead by the end of the year. Stauffenberg, depressed and angry, returned to Berlin. Due to the false assumption that the assassination had succeeded, Operation Valkyrie had been partially unleashed on 15 July. Only with severe efforts and much luck had the plotters been able to 'smother up' the events as an exercise. On 18 July rumors reached Stauffenberg that the Gestapo had wind of the conspiracy and that he might be arrested at any time—this was apparently not true, but there was a sense that the net was closing in and that the next opportunity to kill Hitler must be taken because there might not be another. At 10:00 hours on 20 July Stauffenberg flew back to Rastenburg for another Hitler military conference, once again with a bomb in his briefcase. It is remarkable in retrospect that despite Hitler’s mania for security, officers attending his conferences were not searched.
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
With Wife Nina
Around 12:30 hours as the conference began, Stauffenberg made an excuse to use a washroom in Wilhelm Keitel's office where he used pliers to crush the end of a pencil detonator inserted into a 1 kg block of plastic explosive wrapped in brown paper, that was prepared by Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven.
Stauffenberg at Rastenburg on 15 July 1944 on the far left, with Hitler (center) and Keitel (right)
The detonator consisted of a thin copper tube containing acid that would take ten minutes to silently eat through wire holding back the firing pin from the percussion cap. He then placed the primed bomb quickly inside his briefcase having been told his presence was required. He entered the conference room and with the unwitting assistance of Major Ernst John von Freyend he placed his briefcase under the table around which Hitler and more than 20 officers had gathered. After a few minutes, Stauffenberg made an excuse and left the room. At 12:40 the bomb detonated, demolishing the conference room. Three officers and the stenographer were seriously injured and died soon after, but Hitler survived. His pants were blown off and he suffered only minor injuries. It was discovered later that he was saved because Colonel Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase to the opposite side of a heavy table leg when it bumped against his foot, thus deflecting the blast. The table was made of solid oak. Stauffenberg, hearing the explosion and seeing the smoke issuing from the broken windows of the concrete dispatch barracks, assumed that Hitler was dead, climbed into his staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften and managed to bluff his way past three checkpoints to exit the Wolf's Lair complex. He then tossed a second unprimed bomb into the forest and made a dash for Rastenburg airfield before it was realised that he could be responsible for the explosion. By 13:00 hours his He 111 was airborne.
By the time Stauffenberg’s plane reached Berlin at about 15:00, General Erich Fellgiebel, an officer at Rastenburg who was in on the plot, had phoned the Bendlerblock and told the plotters that Hitler had survived the explosion. This was a fatal step (literally so for Fellgiebel and many others), because the Berlin plotters immediately lost their nerve, and judged, probably correctly, that the plan to mobilize Operation Valkyrie would have no chance of succeeding once the officers of the Reserve Army knew that Hitler was alive. There was more confusion when Stauffenberg’s plane landed and he phoned from the airport to say that Hitler was in fact dead. The Bendlerblock plotters did not know who to believe. Finally at 16:00 Olbricht issued the orders for Operation Valkyrie to be mobilized. The vacillating General Fromm, however, phoned Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at the Wolf's Lair and was assured that Hitler was alive. Keitel demanded to know Stauffenberg’s whereabouts. This told Fromm that the plot had been traced to his headquarters, and that he was in mortal danger. Fromm replied that he thought Stauffenberg was with Hitler.
At 16:40 Stauffenberg and Haeften arrived at the Bendlerblock. Fromm now changed sides and attempted to have Stauffenberg arrested, but Olbricht and Stauffenberg restrained him at gunpoint. By this time Himmler had taken charge of the situation and had issued orders countermanding Olbricht’s mobilization of Operation Valkyrie. In many places the coup was going ahead, led by officers who believed that Hitler was dead. The Propaganda Ministry on the Wilhelmstrasse, with Joseph Goebbels inside, was surrounded by troops—but Goebbels's phone was not cut off, another fatal error. In Paris Stülpnagel issued orders for the arrest of the SS and SD commanders. In Vienna, Prague and many other places troops occupied Nazi Party offices and arrested Gauleiters and SS officers. The decisive moment came at 19:00, when Hitler was sufficiently recovered to make phone calls. He was able to phone Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels arranged for Hitler to speak to the commander of the troops surrounding the Ministry, Major Otto Remer, and assure him that he was still alive. Hitler ordered Remer to regain control of the situation in Berlin. At 20:00 a furious Witzleben arrived at the Bendlerblock and had a bitter argument with Stauffenberg, who was still insisting that the coup could go ahead. Witzleben left shortly afterwards. At around this time the planned seizure of power in Paris was aborted when Kluge, who had recently been appointed commander-in-chief in the west, learned that Hitler was alive, changed sides with alacrity and had Stülpnagel arrested.
The less resolute members of the conspiracy in Berlin also now began to change sides. Fighting broke out in the Bendlerblock between officers supporting and opposing the coup, and Stauffenberg was wounded. By 23:00 Fromm had regained control, hoping by a show of zealous loyalty to save his own skin. Beck, realizing the game was up, shot himself—the first of many suicides in the coming days. Fromm declared that he had convened a court-martial consisting of himself, and had sentenced Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, to death. At 00:10 on 21 July they were shot in the courtyard outside, possibly to prevent them from revealing Fromm's involvement. Others would have been executed as well, but at 00:30 the SS, led by Otto Skorzeny, arrived on the scene and further executions were forbidden. Fromm went off to see Goebbels to claim credit for suppressing the coup. He was immediately arrested and later would be executed.
Assassination Place
Bendler Block Memorial
Resemblance between Col Stauffenberg and Cruise
The 20 July plot of 1944 was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, inside the Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg (East Prussia), in order to take power by means of an emergency plan called Operation Valkyrie (Unternehmen Walküre). Operation Valkyrie was approved by Hitler himself and, at face value, it was intended to be used in the event that disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities resulted in a breakdown in law and order. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg played the key role in the plot and was in charge of Operation Valkyrie. Because of his position, von Stauffenberg was allowed access to Hitler to make reports and for carrying out the other intended use of Operation Valkyrie.
The conference room soon after the explosion
The 20 July plot was the culmination of the efforts of the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi regime. Its failure, both in Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" (Wolfsschanze) Headquarters and then in Berlin's Bendlerblock, led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo. According to records of the Fuerhrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 persons were executed which ultimately led to the destruction of the resistance movement.
On July 1, 1944 Stauffenberg was appointed chief-of-staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse in central Berlin. This position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler’s military conferences, either in East Prussia or at Berchtesgaden, and would thus give him a golden opportunity, perhaps the last that would present itself, to kill Hitler with a bomb or a pistol. Conspirators who had long resisted the idea of killing Hitler on moral grounds now changed their minds—partly because they were hearing reports of the mass murder at Auschwitz of up to 250,000 Hungarian Jews, the culmination of the Nazi Holocaust. Meanwhile new key allies had been gained. These included General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the German military commander in France, who would take control in Paris when Hitler was killed and, it was hoped, negotiate an immediate armistice with the invading Allied armies.
The plot was now as ready as it would ever be. On July 7 General Stieff was to kill Hitler at a display of new uniforms at Klessheim castle near Salzburg. However, for psychological reasons, Stieff felt unable to kill Hitler. Stauffenberg now decided to do both: to assassinate Hitler, wherever he was and to manage the plot in Berlin. Twice by mid July Stauffenberg attended Hitler’s conferences carrying a bomb in his briefcase, but because the conspirators had decided that Himmler and probably Göring should be killed simultaneously if the planned mobilization of Operation Valkyrie was to have a chance to succeed, he held back at the last minute because Himmler was not present. In fact, it was unusual for Himmler to attend military conferences. By July 15, when Stauffenberg again flew to East Prussia, this condition had been dropped. The plan was for Stauffenberg to plant the briefcase with the bomb in Hitler’s conference room with a timer running, excuse himself from the meeting, wait for the explosion, then fly back to Berlin and join the other plotters at the Bendlerblock. Operation Valkyrie would be mobilized, the Reserve Army would take control of Germany and the other Nazi leaders would be arrested. Beck would be appointed head of state while Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a conservative politician and Nazi opponent, would be Chancellor, and Witzleben would be commander-in-chief. The plan was ambitious and depended on a run of very good luck, but it was not totally fanciful.
Again on 15 July the attempt was called off at the last minute, for reasons which are not known because all the participants in the phone conversations which led to the postponement were dead by the end of the year. Stauffenberg, depressed and angry, returned to Berlin. Due to the false assumption that the assassination had succeeded, Operation Valkyrie had been partially unleashed on 15 July. Only with severe efforts and much luck had the plotters been able to 'smother up' the events as an exercise. On 18 July rumors reached Stauffenberg that the Gestapo had wind of the conspiracy and that he might be arrested at any time—this was apparently not true, but there was a sense that the net was closing in and that the next opportunity to kill Hitler must be taken because there might not be another. At 10:00 hours on 20 July Stauffenberg flew back to Rastenburg for another Hitler military conference, once again with a bomb in his briefcase. It is remarkable in retrospect that despite Hitler’s mania for security, officers attending his conferences were not searched.
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
With Wife Nina
Around 12:30 hours as the conference began, Stauffenberg made an excuse to use a washroom in Wilhelm Keitel's office where he used pliers to crush the end of a pencil detonator inserted into a 1 kg block of plastic explosive wrapped in brown paper, that was prepared by Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven.
Stauffenberg at Rastenburg on 15 July 1944 on the far left, with Hitler (center) and Keitel (right)
The detonator consisted of a thin copper tube containing acid that would take ten minutes to silently eat through wire holding back the firing pin from the percussion cap. He then placed the primed bomb quickly inside his briefcase having been told his presence was required. He entered the conference room and with the unwitting assistance of Major Ernst John von Freyend he placed his briefcase under the table around which Hitler and more than 20 officers had gathered. After a few minutes, Stauffenberg made an excuse and left the room. At 12:40 the bomb detonated, demolishing the conference room. Three officers and the stenographer were seriously injured and died soon after, but Hitler survived. His pants were blown off and he suffered only minor injuries. It was discovered later that he was saved because Colonel Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase to the opposite side of a heavy table leg when it bumped against his foot, thus deflecting the blast. The table was made of solid oak. Stauffenberg, hearing the explosion and seeing the smoke issuing from the broken windows of the concrete dispatch barracks, assumed that Hitler was dead, climbed into his staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften and managed to bluff his way past three checkpoints to exit the Wolf's Lair complex. He then tossed a second unprimed bomb into the forest and made a dash for Rastenburg airfield before it was realised that he could be responsible for the explosion. By 13:00 hours his He 111 was airborne.
By the time Stauffenberg’s plane reached Berlin at about 15:00, General Erich Fellgiebel, an officer at Rastenburg who was in on the plot, had phoned the Bendlerblock and told the plotters that Hitler had survived the explosion. This was a fatal step (literally so for Fellgiebel and many others), because the Berlin plotters immediately lost their nerve, and judged, probably correctly, that the plan to mobilize Operation Valkyrie would have no chance of succeeding once the officers of the Reserve Army knew that Hitler was alive. There was more confusion when Stauffenberg’s plane landed and he phoned from the airport to say that Hitler was in fact dead. The Bendlerblock plotters did not know who to believe. Finally at 16:00 Olbricht issued the orders for Operation Valkyrie to be mobilized. The vacillating General Fromm, however, phoned Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at the Wolf's Lair and was assured that Hitler was alive. Keitel demanded to know Stauffenberg’s whereabouts. This told Fromm that the plot had been traced to his headquarters, and that he was in mortal danger. Fromm replied that he thought Stauffenberg was with Hitler.
At 16:40 Stauffenberg and Haeften arrived at the Bendlerblock. Fromm now changed sides and attempted to have Stauffenberg arrested, but Olbricht and Stauffenberg restrained him at gunpoint. By this time Himmler had taken charge of the situation and had issued orders countermanding Olbricht’s mobilization of Operation Valkyrie. In many places the coup was going ahead, led by officers who believed that Hitler was dead. The Propaganda Ministry on the Wilhelmstrasse, with Joseph Goebbels inside, was surrounded by troops—but Goebbels's phone was not cut off, another fatal error. In Paris Stülpnagel issued orders for the arrest of the SS and SD commanders. In Vienna, Prague and many other places troops occupied Nazi Party offices and arrested Gauleiters and SS officers. The decisive moment came at 19:00, when Hitler was sufficiently recovered to make phone calls. He was able to phone Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels arranged for Hitler to speak to the commander of the troops surrounding the Ministry, Major Otto Remer, and assure him that he was still alive. Hitler ordered Remer to regain control of the situation in Berlin. At 20:00 a furious Witzleben arrived at the Bendlerblock and had a bitter argument with Stauffenberg, who was still insisting that the coup could go ahead. Witzleben left shortly afterwards. At around this time the planned seizure of power in Paris was aborted when Kluge, who had recently been appointed commander-in-chief in the west, learned that Hitler was alive, changed sides with alacrity and had Stülpnagel arrested.
The less resolute members of the conspiracy in Berlin also now began to change sides. Fighting broke out in the Bendlerblock between officers supporting and opposing the coup, and Stauffenberg was wounded. By 23:00 Fromm had regained control, hoping by a show of zealous loyalty to save his own skin. Beck, realizing the game was up, shot himself—the first of many suicides in the coming days. Fromm declared that he had convened a court-martial consisting of himself, and had sentenced Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, to death. At 00:10 on 21 July they were shot in the courtyard outside, possibly to prevent them from revealing Fromm's involvement. Others would have been executed as well, but at 00:30 the SS, led by Otto Skorzeny, arrived on the scene and further executions were forbidden. Fromm went off to see Goebbels to claim credit for suppressing the coup. He was immediately arrested and later would be executed.
Assassination Place
Bendler Block Memorial
Resemblance between Col Stauffenberg and Cruise
