On July 11, 1944, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler’s headquarters in Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer.
As the war started to turn against the Germans, and the atrocities being committed at Hitler’s behest grew, a growing numbers of Germans—within and beyond the military—began conspiring to assassinate their leader. As the masses were unlikely to turn on the man in whose hands they had hitherto placed their lives and future, it was up to men close to Hitler, German officers, to dispatch him. Leadership of the plot fell to Claus von Stauffenberg, newly promoted to colonel and chief of staff to the commander of the army reserve, which gave him access to Hitler’s headquarters at Berchtesgaden and Rastenburg.
Stauffenberg had served in the German army since 1926. While serving as a staff officer in the campaign against the Soviet Union, he became disgusted at his fellow countrymen’s vicious treatment of Jews and Soviet prisoners. He requested to be transferred to North Africa, where he lost his left eye, right hand, and two fingers of his left hand.
After recovering from his injuries, and determined to see Hitler removed from power by any means necessary, Stauffenberg traveled to Berchtesgaden on July 3 and received at the hands of a fellow army officer, Major-General Hellmuth Stieff, a bomb with a silent fuse that was small enough to be hidden in a briefcase.
On July 11, Stauffenberg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to report to Hitler on the current military situation. His plan was to use the bomb, but Stauffenberg held back because Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler—also considered crucial targets—were not present as expected. Hitler was called away to his headquarters at Rastenburg, in East Prussia, and Stauffenberg was asked to follow him there. On July 16, a meeting took place between Stauffenberg and Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, another conspirator, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Hofacker informed Stauffenberg that German defenses had collapsed at Normandy, and the tide had turned against them in the West. The assassination attempt was postponed until July 20, at Rastenburg, where it was finally carried out—without success.
