With great dictatorial powers, comes a great risk of ceasing to continue to breathe long before your elderly years, with the odds increasing markedly if you also just so happen to make enemies out of not just countless nations of the world, but within a relatively large percentage of your own population through brutality and oppression. Something the Führer of the III Reich was acutely aware of.

As the Austrian champion for World’s Silliest Moustache once said: ‘There will never be anyone in the future with as much authority as I have … I can, however, be removed at any time by some criminal or idiot … No one is safe against some idealist or an assassin who ruthlessly stakes his life for his purpose.’

Everybody with a passing knowledge of WWII history and/or Tom Cruise’s cinematography has heard about the Stauffenberg Plot, the failed assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler conducted on July 20, 1944. But this was just one in a long series of attempted or planned shootings, bombings and poisonings conducted against the dictator. And while efforts began rather quaint starting long before WWII, as you’ll soon see, as the years passed things got spicier and spicier for the so-called German Messiah. So let’s dive into it, shall we?

PART I

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS BEFORE THE WAR

BEER MUGS AND FREEDOM!

The first alleged attempt on Hitler’s life took place on November 4, 1921 in Munich, according to Hitler’s own report in his best seller ‘Mein Kampf’. At the time, the future Führer was still on the rise, a ‘bit player’ in the chaotic political scene of the Weimar Republic – albeit a very vocal one! That evening the National Socialist leader was in fact scheduled to deliver a speech at the Hofbräuhaus brewery. A large crowd had assembled, one that included a number of members of the Independent Socialist Party and the Communist Party, dead-set on disrupting the event.

This wasn’t anything new, and in fact the orator arrived under the escort of 46 Sturmabteilung troopers, also known as ‘SA’ or ‘brownshirts’, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing. While Hitler spoke, some members of the audience heckled him while downing large mugs of beer, and curiously kept storing the empty vessels under the table. After an hour and a half, one of them went all Braveheart and shouted, ‘Freedom!’

At this signal, the protesters began lobbing the empty beer glasses at Hitler. The brownshirts counterattacked, and after a fierce struggle, they were able to corner their adversaries. However, at this point one of the inebriated protesters decided beer glasses weren’t enough and pulled out a handgun, firing two shots that hit the platform where Hitler was standing.

Of course, because the source of the event is Mein Kampf, not exactly a bastion of literary accuracy, some question whether this ever actually happened. However, it doesn’t really seem far fetched given that violence at political rallies – even involving firearms – was the norm at the time. Drunk people, heated politics, and guns not exactly being a great combination for civility. So many historians have been willing to accept the story at face value despite its source.

Now let’s move forward about a decade to January 1932, and travel to the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin.

MY FOOD TASTES FUNKY

At this point, the Nazi Party was clearly on the rise, after securing 107 parliamentary seats in the September 1930 elections. The Party, however, had not yet established a permanent HQ in the German capital, and Hitler used the Kaiserhof Hotel as a venue to meet his acolytes. On an unspecified day in January 1932, Hitler and other Nazi cadres were enjoying a luxurious dinner at the Hotel, while discussing Party policies. One hour after the meal, all dinner guests started suffering from violent stomach cramps and severe vomiting.

Hitler himself did not suffer any symptoms. He was not a strict vegetarian as it is often claimed, but he was a fussy eater owing to his extreme gastrointestinal problems which actually is thought to have been why he went rather loopy towards the end of WWII given the bizarre cocktail of substances he was consuming or being injected with daily, sometimes credited with helping to win the war for the Allies because of it.

This brings us to who would have been the most successful assassin of them all if Hitler had lived another year or two, albeit unintentionally- a doctor by the name of Theodor Morell, who began trying to fix Hitler’s intestinal issues by prescribing him Mutaflor, which was made from the excrement of others and meant to function as a sort of probiotic. But the doctor didn’t stop there, progressing to giving Hitler so-called Anti-gas pills that turned out to have strychnine as a primary ingredient. By 1941 he had Hitler taking 63 different pills containing 92 different drugs from stimulants to sedatives to painkillers at a rate of about 150 pills per week. And just for the cherry on top, he also began giving Hitler daily injections of what he called a special blend of vitamins, but was actually, at least in part, made up of Amphetamines. It was reported that within minutes, the injections would transform the Fuhrer from exhausted and groggy to alert, euphoric and chatty – a state that lasted for several hours afterward. By 1944, in order to get the same effect and ward off other negative symptoms, he had increased his dosage to twice daily of 16cc of whatever the specific cocktail Dr. Morell used, which was a 700 fold increase from when he started.

And with this increasing dependence came the classic symptoms of amphetamine abuse: insomnia, loss of appetite, euphoria, irritability, paranoia, impulsiveness, and wild mood swings – all of which severely affected his ability to make rational decisions in a time of crisis. By April of 1945, while Hitler was holed up in his Berlin Fuhrerbunker as the Red Army closed in on the city, SS doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck remembered being shocked at the leader’s condition, describing him as a “living corpse, a dead soul.” He states, “His spine was hunched, his shoulder blades protruded from his bent back, and he collapsed his shoulders like a turtle.… I was looking into the eye of death.”

Needless to say, given how erratic, mentally unstable, and detached from reality Hitler progressively became as the war went on, and the ramifications of this in his military tactics and leadership, many credit Dr. Morell for inadvertently helping the allies win the war thanks to his efforts to try to solve Hitler’s intestinal issues.

But going back to the alleged poisoning attempt, the Party leader is thought to have avoided the specific dish which had caused the ensuing ‘chunderstorm’ among the rest present. But the big question is: was this a case of food poisoning? Or voluntary poisoning?

There were no casualties, but Hitler himself suspected that the kitchen staff had tried to kill him. Surprisingly, he continued to lodge and dine at the Kaiserhof, although his meals would now be personally supervised by Magda, wife of propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. One of Hitler’s closest friends, German-American businessman Ernst Hanfstaengl, later reported that after this incident the leader would be increasingly mistrustful of any gift involving food.

And when President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933, he hired a trusted cook to take charge of the Chancellery kitchen.

On February 27 of the same year, the Reichstag, or parliament building, was set ablaze by a Dutch communist activist. The Nazis seized the occasion to dismantle what was left of parliamentary rule with the infamous ‘Enabling Act’, formally initiating a dictatorial regime.

As democracy dissolved, plots to eliminate Hitler intensified, but so did security around him. And the first two schemes with a known, named, assassin took place during those crucial weeks.

KILL THE CHANCELLOR!

The first came from Ludwig Assner, a former political rival belonging to another right-wing Party, the Volkisch-Social block. Back in 1924, Hitler had objected to Assner taking a seat at the Bavarian parliament. The seething Ludwig had relocated to Palaiseau, France, plotting his revenge. In February 1933, his plan was taking shape: he would send a personal letter to Hitler, doused in a lethal poison. The deadly missive was stopped in its tracks, however, when an unknown informant reported Assner to Nazi officials. The disgruntled politician eventually was not deemed a serious threat, thanks to a large sum of money in exchange for not posting his letter of doom and letting his animosity go.

During that same February, another group of conspirators was at work, headed by communist activist Kurt Lutter. Their plan was to be enacted on March 4, when the Führer was scheduled to deliver a speech in Konigsberg. Lutter and friends were to gather large quantities of explosives to blow up the speaker’s platform, but unfortunately there was a police informer in their midst. The conspirators were arrested on March 3, but prosecutors never found any explosives and eventually they were all released.

It appears that over the same period German police received dozens of tip offs concerning other assassination plots, which somehow almost always involved showering the dictator with gifts. Gifts such as an exploding pen, for example. Or a bunch of flowers rigged with an acid-spraying device. And perhaps best of all, a rabid dog!

Fanciful schemes rarely come to fruition, but also straight-forward approaches have high chances of failing – such as the attempt carried out by the first, organised anti-Nazi movement to take shape after the Enabling Act. This was a network of professors, government officials, businessmen and military officers, revolving around Doctor Paul Joseph Sturmer, lawyer Nicholas von Halem and communist newspaper editor, Josef Romer.

Von Halem offered Romer some funds for him to hire an assassin, but the editor refused, preferring to carry out the deed himself. Some time in the spring of 1933, Romer walked straight into the Reich Chancellery with a concealed weapon. Unfortunately, he was immediately caught and imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp. His sentence was relatively lenient and he was released in 1939 and resumed his schemes, joining a clandestine communist group called ‘The Revolutionary Workers and Soldiers’.

It appears that he was more of a liability than an asset, as he frequently discarded written assassination plans in unsafe waste paper baskets and in the end the opposition group was dismantled by the Gestapo in February 1942, and Romer was executed on September 25, 1944. Before his execution, Romer was questioned and tortured, revealing intelligence which led to the execution of von Halem, the lawyer, and more than 100 conspirators.

KNIVES OUT!

But let’s not get ahead of our main timeline, for we are still in 1934. From June 30 to July 2, Hitler, Nazi officials and SS officers carried out the infamous ‘Night of the Long Knives’, the arrest and mass execution of the SA. The leader of the brownshirts, Ernst Rohm, was arrested at a spa in Bad Wiessee, an action overseen by the Führer in person. As Rohm and the SA leadership were being transported to a prison in Munich, a platoon of SA troopers showed up to confront Hitler and the SS.

After a tense stand-off, the brownshirts withdrew, only to set up an ambush on the road to Munich. They suspected Hitler would be driving along that road very soon, and placed their machine guns, ready to exact carnage. The crafty dictator, however, smelled trouble, and instructed his motorcade to take a longer, alternative route, unfortunately dodging death for the umpteenth time.

The Night of the Long Knives sparked at least two more assassination plots. The prize for the most ambitious one goes to that of Dr Helmuth Mylius.

Mylius managed to recruit 160 supporters, who then succeeded in infiltrating the SS! This paramilitary organisation was in charge of Hitler’s security, and thus Mylius’ men could get very, very close to their target.

But just like the conspirators had infiltrated the SS, the Gestapo was able to infiltrate the conspirators! The organisation was dismantled in 1935, and Mylius avoided execution only thanks to the protection of his good friend, General Erich von Manstein.

Moving on from there, we have the ‘hit on Hitler’ carried out by one Heinrich Grunow, a former SA and close friend of Ernst Rohm who had escaped the 1934 purge. In early 1936, Grunow approached Otto Strasser for support in his plans. Otto and his brother Gregor had been amongst the early members of the Nazi Party, but had been expelled in 1930. Otto had gone into exile in France, while Gregor had remained in Germany, only to be killed during the Night of the Long Knives. He was not a member of the SA, but the Nazis had taken the occasion of the general carnage to settle some old scores.

According to Otto Strasser’s own memoirs, Grunow wanted Hitler’s death ‘To be more than a mere act of violence – an isolated assassination, a sudden crime of passion. I want his death to mean something to the German people’

Otto agreed to help, providing Grunow with funds and the support of one Eitel Sturm. In May 1936, the two would-be assassins set off for the Berghof, Hitler’s retreat on the Bavarian Alps. Some days later, only Sturm returned to Strasser bearing bad news and good news.

The bad news: Grunow was dead.

The good news: but so was Hitler!

Allegedly… There are some issues with exact details on this one obviously. And more than just the obvious, leading some to question its veracity despite contemporary accounts.

Eitel Sturm reported that on May 16, 1936, he and Grunow had set up the perfect ambush: they had identified a bend on the road leading to the Berghof, where Hitler’s car would be forced to slow down. They then waited patiently, clutching their high-powered rifles. Finally, Hitler’s car arrived, without any escort: it was just him and his chauffeur. As the car slowed down, Grunow leapt to his feet, took aim and fired twice. Sturm let go one more shot, and the figure in the passenger seat, ‘Flopped over into the back of the car, and the chauffeur, panicky, jammed the gas pedal down and the car lurched and skidded out of sight’

With his mission apparently accomplished, Grunow allegedly produced a revolver, stuck the muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Sturm, having no desire for self-immolation, crossed the border with Czechoslovakia and then rejoined Strasser in France.

So, what exactly happened?

Supposedly that day Hitler should have been driven by his favourite chauffeur, bodyguard, and occasional body double Julius Schreck. But the dictator liked to sit behind the wheel from time to time, swapping places with Schreck. Thus, according to Strasser, the two must have pulled a switcheroo, and the slain man in the back of the car was actually Schreck!

Strasser also wrote how the assassination attempt was kept secret, and Schreck’s official cause of death was reported as sepsis caused by an infected tooth. This version of events was confirmed by a Chicago Times article of the time, according to which ‘They reached a railway crossing and slowed up. As they did so, shots fired with unerring accuracy burst from the roadside. The man in the passenger seat slumped. The wrong man had been assassinated.’

However, several points in Strasser’s story don’t seem to be accurate. For example, Schreck’s official cause of death was not a bad tooth as he reported, but rather meningitis. And Heinrich Brunow did not shoot himself! Records show that he was concocting another assassination plan when he was arrested in January 1940, and died in March 1945 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

ASSASSINS IN UNIFORM

Thus far the Fuehrer had had several brushes with death, but none of them could be really described as a close call. That is until the autumn of 1938, perhaps the period in which organised resistance to Nazism would get closest to shaving that toothbrush moustache off the face of the Earth up to this point.

The man at the centre of these resistance efforts was Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster, deputy head of the Abwehr, the armed forces’ intelligence service. Oster had grown disillusioned with, and indeed horrified by National Socialism following the Night of the Long Knives and the horrors of the Kristallnacht, in which Jewish families, homes and businesses were targeted by carefully orchestrated mob violence. Oster was also concerned at how the Party was seeking to extend its influence over the Armed Forces, an influence they might use to declare war on France and Great Britain. Germany had successfully skirted most of the limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI, thus embarking in an impressive rearmament program. But insiders like Oster knew that in 1938 the Wehrmacht was still too undersupplied, understaffed and undertrained to engage in a major European war.

Such concerns were shared by high ranking officers, such as Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, and Minister of War, and by the next in line in his chain of command, General Werner von Fritsch. In February 1938, Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, swiftly ousted them from office with well-orchestrated sexual scandals, replacing them with the more compliant Marshal von Brauchitsch.

After this low-key takeover of the Armed Forces, dissent within the Army grew, with more and more notable figures rallying around Oster and his superior, the head of the Abwehr Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Figures such as former Gestapo official Hans-Bernd Gisevius, and the Chief of the Army General Staff, General Ludwig Beck. With the latter’s support, Oster was able to plant anti-Hitler agents in all 12 military districts of Germany, ready to mobilise the Army against the Nazi government, and, if necessary, take out Adolf Hitler himself!

By August 1938, the Fuehrer had set his sights on Czechoslovakia, and was planning an annexation of the bordering Sudetenland region. Oster, Beck and the conspirators feared that such a move would precipitate an all-out war with France and Britain, one that Germany would surely lose. They reasoned that, if Paris and London opposed Germany’s demands, the bulk of the Army would rise up against Nazi leadership, rather than challenging the Western powers.

Their plan thus developed along two main lines of attack: agents abroad would encourage the British and French governments to firmly oppose the annexation of the Sudetenland; while Army conspirators at home would plan for the occupation of key targets in Berlin: a veritable coup!

General von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt took responsibility for designing the plans for the coup. Two infantry divisions would swiftly move from Potsdam and into Berlin, while an armoured division would block access points to the capital, thus preventing an intervention from the SS. Once the capital was secured, the mutinous army would seize local barracks, the main radio studios, the Gestapo headquarters and the Chancellery building.

Here, a squad led by one Major Heinz, would be tasked with liquidating Hitler’s bodyguard and arresting the ‘main man’. Most conspirators had been convinced by Oster that the end goal would be to force the Fuehrer’s resignation. But both Oster and Heinz were privy to a ‘conspiracy within the conspiracy’: the Major had instructions to provoke a gun battle, one which would result in Hitler’s death!

Now, military action would have surely helped neutralise the SS, the Gestapo and other Party-friendly forces. But Oster believed that for the coup to be truly successful, the Fuehrer had to lose face. And for that, he needed the Western political establishment to take a defiant stand against Hitler’s demands. To this end, he dispatched acolyte Edward von Kleist-Schmenzin to London, with precise instructions ‘Bring me certain proof that England will fight if Czechoslovakia is attacked, and I will make an end of this regime.’

Von Kleist met with Sir Robert Vansittart, an under-secretary at the Foreign Office, advising him that Britain’s decisive action could prevent the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Vansittart consulted with Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, who escalated the issue to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The latter held a cabinet meeting on August 30th, but his ministers could not make up their mind: should they oppose Hitler and call his bluff? And what if it wasn’t a bluff? What if Germany was ready to unleash a second war on the European continent? Chamberlain’s cabinet eventually decided to wait and see … a decision which played in the Prime Minister’s hands. An advocate of appeasement, Chamberlain had already prepared the so-called ‘Plan Z’ in his back pocket, a plan to propose a peace deal to Hitler at the very last minute!

Another of Oster’s agents, Theo Kordt, met with Lord Halifax and Treasury Secretary Sir Horace Wilson on September 5, reiterating the message. Should they oppose Hitler, ‘The ‘political and military circles for whom I speak, will take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them’.

Meanwhile, back in Berlin, Ludwig Beck had been replaced by General Franz Halder as Chief of General Staff. Halder would be one of the first commanders to receive orders from Hitler to initiate ‘Plan Green’, the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There would have been a grace period of 24 hours, before Halder was expected to cascade down those orders to divisional commanders. Luckily for Oster, Halder was on his side! So, as soon as Halder would receive those ‘Plan Green’ orders, he and the other conspirators would use those 24 hours to set the coup in motion! And just to be on the safe side, Halder took to attending staff meetings with a loaded pistol, ready to blow Hitler’s brains out if the occasion was right.

But then, history got in the way.

On September 14, Chamberlain set in motion his own ‘Plan Z’, calling for a peaceful solution of the Sudetenland problem. Hitler agreed, but then clamoured for invasion once more at the end of the month. This time Benito Mussolini stepped in, proposing to mediate a conference with Britain and France. The result was the infamous Munich Agreement of September 30, which essentially gifted the Sudetenland to Germany and sacrificed the integrity of Czechoslovakia.

Chamberlain proudly announced he had achieved ‘peace with honour’ and ‘peace for our time’. But this ill-timed policy of appeasement had essentially boosted Hitler’s popularity just when the opposition against him was at its zenith. Oster, Canaris, Halder, and the other conspirators realised that the bulk of the armed forces would not turn against the triumphant Fuehrer, now hailed as a diplomatic and political genius who had “liberated” the Sudetenland without firing a shot. The plotters set their schemes aside, but especially those in the Abwehr would remain vigilant, waiting for another opportunity to strike against the Fuehrer.

Unbeknownst to them, a Swiss seminary student would soon attempt to eliminate Hitler on his own. Remarkably, this young would-be assassin would arguably get closer to accomplishing the deal than Oster and friends!

THE LONE SEMINARIST

Maurice Bavaud was a member of a debate group called ‘The Company of Mystery’, whose discussions frequently focused on the persecution of devout Catholics by the Nazi regime. Bavaud eventually came to the conclusion that Hitler had to go, and formulated a simple plan: he would move to Germany in the autumn of 1938, pretend to be a staunch Nazi and thus gain access to the dictator.

By October 21, Bavaud was in Berlin, carrying a 6.35mm pistol in his pocket, looking for ways to gain access to Hitler. Problem was, his target was not in town at the time, rather he was chillaxing down at the Berghof. The Swiss student relocated to Berchtesgaden, looking for ways to infiltrate Hitler’s residence … but it was too late, as the Fuehrer had just left for Munich!

Bavaud was running low on funds, and he had to find a solution fast! Luckily, whilst befriending Nazis in a beerhall – as you do – he learned that Hitler would soon be attending the annual celebrations in Munich commemorating the failed coup of 1923. Thus, on November 9, 1938, Bavaud posed as a Swiss journalist and gained access to a grandstand seat, overlooking the road where Hitler and friends would soon be marching at the head of a procession. But just when the Fuehrer came within range of Bavaud’s pistol, a wave of right hands shot up in a Nazi salute, thus obscuring the view.

Bavaud hesitated, and by the time his target was again into view, he was already out of range.

The would-be assassin did not desist, however. In the following days he forged two letters of introduction, ostensibly drafted by the French Foreign Minister, hoping they would open the doors to either the Berghof or the ‘Brown House’, the Nazi HQ in Munich. But the ruse did not work, and a completely broke Bavaud had no choice but to escape to France, jumping on a train without a ticket. He was soon caught by a ticket inspector, who escalated the case to the railway police, and eventually the Gestapo.

Maurice Bavaud, however enthusiastic and energetic, was no professional operative, and the secret police found stashes of evidence in his luggage: the gun, ammunition, and maps of Munich and the Berghof. Bavaud eventually confessed, declaring during the ensuing trial that he had acted for the good of humanity and all of Christendom. The confession did not grant him leniency, and the brave Maurice Bavaud was executed on May 14, 1941.

A FLATULENT TARGET

Let’s now fast forward to August 1939 – one month to go before the start of the War. A pair of Munich residents had taken notice of an extraordinary fact. Whenever Hitler was in town, he would have lunch at his favourite restaurant, ‘Osteria Bavaria’, virtually without any protection! The Fuehrer would take a seat in a small private room, separated from the other patrons only by a thin, wooden screen. Our pair of friends noted how the dictator would always order the same menu: hard boiled eggs and mayo, followed by vegetables and pasta, with fruit compote for dessert. The entire meal would be accompanied by a generous barrage of farts, it appears.

Now, these two friends weren’t just any regular Joes hanging about in Munich. Their names were Alexander Foote and Bill Philips, veterans of the Spanish Civil Wars, and double-agents working for both British and Soviet secret services. And it was to the Soviets that they pitched the idea of eliminating Hitler while he was licking the plates clean at the ‘Osteria Bavaria’. Their superiors in Moscow gave them the go ahead, and Foote formulated a plan.

The wooden partition used to screen Hitler’s private room was also used as a coat hanger. And this partition was placed in a corridor, surrounded by stone walls. Foote’s idea was to fill a briefcase with explosives, and hang it to the partition, hidden by the coats. The stone walls would have deflected the force of the blast directly towards the private dining room – ensuring the dictator’s body would be cooked very thoroughly, erring on the charred side.

Foote and Philips, however, missed a key ingredient: the explosives! And having no contacts in town, they could not procure them when they tried. Time for a plan B: Hitler would casually walk in and out of the restaurant, in full view of the patrons in the main dining hall. It would have been easy-peasy for a patron to just pull out a pistol, stand up, and open fire! The two conducted a trial run, as described by Foote: ‘One day Bill stationed himself at the table next to the gangway, and as Hitler approached, put his hand rapidly and furtively into his pocket – and drew out a cigarette case.’

Foote expected for Bill to have been at least tackled to the ground by some SS bodyguard, but nothing of the sort happened. It appeared that Hitler and his entourage felt entirely safe when dining – and tooting – at the ‘Osteria’.

So, what prevented Foote and Phillips from taking action? Once again, it was grand political schemes which foiled the actions of operatives on the ground. In this case, it was the signature of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-aggression Pact of August 23, 1939. In other words: Hitler and Stalin had just become allies in preparation for the invasion of Poland, and the British double-agents were ordered to abort the mission.

PART II

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS DURING THE WAR

Only a few weeks into the start of WWII, Hans Oster had resumed his schemes to eliminate Hitler. With the backing of Admiral Canaris, Oster sought to establish a channel of communication with London. Germany and Britain were now at war, so Oster needed an intermediary and he found one in the Vatican …

VATICAN vs NAZIS

On September 27, 1939, the two conspirators summoned to Abwehr headquarters one Dr Joseph Müller, leader of a silent, anti-Nazi Catholic resistance, and personal friend of Eugenio Pacelli, also known as Pope Pius XII. Müller agreed to cooperate, and act as a messenger with the Holy See. Piloting his own single-seat plane, the newly recruited agent flew to Northern Italy in October, carrying concealed documents for the eyes of the Pope. On October 17, Pius agreed to participate in the plot: he would help Oster and Canaris use the Vatican as a safe ‘dropbox’ to communicate with the British secret services and secure their help in eliminating Hitler and his sidekicks.

Müller would continue acting as a go-between, and Canaris gave him the perfect cover: his official mission would be to travel frequently to Italy and investigate anti-Fascist resistance groups. Under this guise, Müller returned to Rome and met with the Pope’s private secretary, Father Robert Leiber, on November 7.

Leiber informed Müller that the Pope was eager to speak directly to the British, and to propose a peace deal between London and Berlin. This was still the time of the ‘Phoney War’, with little land-based engagements having taken place in the West. But this was about to change, as General Halder informed the conspirators that Hitler aimed to invade France on November 12.

Such an invasion would nullify any chance at even attempting peace talks via the Pope, so Oster and friends redirected their attention again towards killing the big man in charge. If they blew him to smithereens before the 12th, the invasion would be aborted. An official at the Foreign Ministry, Erich Kordt, volunteered to carry out the deed: he was senior enough to have frequent access to the Chancellery and the Fuehrer himself, and on those occasions he was never searched for weapons! Kordt asked another plotter, General von Lahousen to source some explosives, but the officer could not fulfil the order, due to wartime restrictions on ordnance. Kordt resolved to just walk into the Chancellery with a pistol and shoot Hitler at point blank, but Oster deemed the plan too risky.

Eventually, Hitler and his generals decided to postpone the attack in the west until May of 1940, which gave Oster and Canaris more time to reconsider their plans. And they had another reason to regroup: Müller’s activities had been uncovered!

It turns out that Müller had been ratted out by one Herman Keller, who happened to be a Benedictine monk and an agent for the SD, the SS intelligence service. Interesting job description there! Keller’s report made its way both to the SD and the Abwehr, which allowed Canaris to pull a genius move. Before anyone at the SD could take any action, Canaris instructed Müller to file another report, completely made up, describing a plot to remove Hitler from power. This second report implicated two generals, one of which had died in Poland, and the other was a known Nazi fanboy, Walter Reichenau, who would have never supported such a scheme!

Canaris’ bogus dossier muddied the waters enough for the SD and, apparently, Hitler himself, to dismiss any reports coming from the Vatican as utter nonsense. Müller was safe, but Canaris advised him to lay low for a while.

In the meanwhile, Pope Pius XII continued to conduct talks with the British, meeting with Ambassador D’Arcy Osborne in January and February 1940. Osborne related to his superior, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, that the plotting generals were eager to seal a peace deal with London, provided that Germany maintained some of their territorial gains, such as Austria and the Sudetenland. In March, Halifax informed Osborne and the Pope that the British Government was indeed interested, provided that Canaris, Oster and co. would first remove – or eliminate – Hitler!

At this stage, General Franz Halder took a gamble: he attempted to bring on their side the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch! Did it work? Well, Halder was not arrested, let alone executed, so that’s a win … but the Marshal’s loyalties were well defined: ‘What is happening here is sheer treason. Under no circumstances can we be involved in this. We are at war. In peacetime you can talk about contacts with a foreign power, but in wartime soldiers cannot do that.’

After the War, Brauchitsch stated that he had the power to remove Hitler from power, but decided against it, claiming the dictator’s rule was legitimised by popular support

‘I could have had Hitler arrested and even imprisoned him … I had enough officers loyal to me who would have carried out even that order if given by me. But that was not the problem. Why should I have initiated action against Hitler… ? It would have been action against the German people. The German people were pro-Hitler.’

JUST BLOW HIM UP ALREADY!

All conspiratorial strands related to the Vatican eventually fizzled out, but those were not the only plans in motion over late 1939 and early 1940.

As the invasion of Poland was taking place, the Abwehr offices received a message from a General stationed on the Siegfried Line, on the border with France. Baron von Hammerstein-Equord had famously described Hitler and his leadership as ‘filthy pigs’ and a ‘gang of criminals’, so he was eager to rid the face of the earth of such a scourge.

The disgruntled general asked the conspirators at the Abwehr to inform British secret services of his simple plan: he would invite the Fuehrer to visit his formidable fortifications on the Siegfried line, to bolster the garrison’s morale. Once there, the dictator could suffer an unfortunate accident … For example: the detonation of a grenade in a bunker!

Because scheisse happens.

Hitler, however, did not accept the invitation, von Hammerstein was later moved to another post, and eventually made to retire from the Army. It is not clear if the dictator had smelled a rat, more probably he was too preoccupied with operations in Poland. When these came to a swift victory, the Fuehrer did accept another invitation: attending a victory parade in Warsaw, on October 5, 1939.

The Polish Army may have formally surrendered, but numerous officers were still unbeaten. Two of them, General Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski and Major Niepokólczycki, traced the itinerary of the victory parade and prepared two booby traps in advance. And when I say ‘booby traps’ I mean massive underground bombs each containing 125 kg of TNT! A group of soldiers under a junior officer were tasked with detonating the charges, as soon as the Major gave the order.

So, the parade came this close to being livened by a magnificent ‘firework display’, and concluded with the spectacle of Hitler flying high into the sky of Warsaw.

But the Major was held back by German roadblock, and the junior officer on site hesitated: he had instructions to act on his own initiative only if Hitler was indeed at the head of the motorcade. But he had no absolute certainty of this, as it was rumoured that the dictator’s place may have been taken by a senior general instead! Plus, German authorities had previously arrested a number of high-profile Polish hostages, to prevent any seditious activities. Was it worth risking their lives, if Hitler was not in the parade after all? As the officer pondered these questions, the victory motorcade drove by the explosive devices, completely unharmed.

A MAN OF FOCUS

Just some weeks after the missed opportunity at Warsaw, another bomb attack came very, very close to snuffing out the Fuehrer for good. Hitler and his top Party brass never missed an opportunity to visit Munich on November 8th, the anniversary of the failed Nazi coup of 1923. As per tradition, the dictator would deliver a speech, normally around 9pm, at the Bürgerbräukeller, the beer hall in which the coup had started.

This regular pattern was not lost on Georg Elser, a committed communist with the obsession to assassinate the Fuehrer. Elser was a carpenter by trade, and had no affiliations to any resistance movement, no contacts with the Abwehr conspirators and no training as an operative whatsoever. But, much like a certain retired hitman, he was a man of focus, commitment, and sheer will.

Elser’s plan was to plant a bomb in a pillar, right behind the speakers’ podium at the beer hall. And to accomplish this plan, he prepared for an entire year, seeking employment in armament factories and quarries, so he could steal small quantities of explosives, fuses and detonators. In August 1939, Elser relocated to Munch, and spent his evenings at the Bürgerbräukeller. Each night after dinner, he would then hide into a store-room and wait for all patrons and staff to leave the building. Then, at the faint light of a torch, Elser chipped away at the chosen pillar, little by little, night after night, after he had carved a cavity of the right size.

During the days, he worked at building his bomb, which was completed by the end of October. On the night of November 2nd, he installed the device inside the pillar, and on the 7th he set the timer for the bomb to explode on November 8, at 9:20pm.

A perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Weather. Weather is what went wrong.

Hitler arrived in Munich by plane, just in time before a thick fog descended on the city. The Fuehrer intended to return to Berlin that very night, but flying was out of the question. His personal pilot advised he catch the night train instead, which would be leaving Munich at 9:31pm. Hitler had to rearrange his plans at the last minute: instead of starting his speech at the Beer Hall at 8:30pm, he would start at 8pm, and leave at 9pm sharp to catch the train.

Thus, the bomb went off as planned, claiming eight dead and 62 wounded. But the dictator and his closest cronies had already left the building. That night, Elser attempted to cross the border with Switzerland, but was arrested by two border guards, who found his pockets bursting with incriminating evidence: a badge of the Communist party, a photo of the Beer Hall, a fuse … and a sketch of a bomb! The Gestapo interrogated and tortured Elser at length and eventually the ‘lone wolf’ was interned at Dachau and executed on April 9, 1945.

The intelligence branch of the SS, the SD, knew very well that Elser had acted alone, but they glimpsed a propaganda opportunity to link the assassination attempt with British involvement. The perfect opportunity was handed over to Walter Schellenberg, head of SD counterespionage, on the very next day …

You see, a group of SD operatives, including Schellenberg himself, had been meeting with British and Dutch intelligence officers, near the border with the Netherlands, since September of 1939. The SD men had been posing as anti-Hitler conspirators, in a scheme to extract information from the British officers, Sigismund Best and Richard Stevens. Best, Stevens and Dutch officer Lieutenant Klop were due to meet their SD contacts on November 9th, at Velmo, on the Dutch side of the border. Schellenberg thus organised a daring raid, which became known as ‘Velmo incident’: SD agents drove past the border, gun blazing. Klop returned fire, but was shot dead by the Germans. Best and Stevens were arrested, and interned until the end of the war.

Following the incident, not only German propaganda was able to spin the conspiracy theory that Elser was just a British pawn … but the involvement of Dutch intelligence gave Hitler a pretext to later violate the neutrality of the Netherlands.

A VERY BRITISH KIDNAPPING

Throughout 1940 and 1941, the Axis escalated its military engagements, opening more and more fronts across Europe and North Africa. All German generals, regardless of their stance vis-a-vis National Socialism, were expected to fulfil their duties. Being too busy with their ‘day jobs’, Oster and the other high-ranking conspirators had to take a break from their side hustle in plotting.

British forces, however, were always open to any plot, plan and scheme to eliminate Hitler, whether by assassination or kidnapping. A little too open, in this particular case.

In early February 1941, the British Air Attaché in Sofia, Bulgaria, was approached by a local man called Kiroff, who claimed to be the father-in-law of a German pilot called Johan Peter Baur, known as ‘Hans’. Kiroff informed the attaché that Baur had grown disillusioned with the war and the Nazi Party, and thus intended to defect by landing his Focke-Wulf Condor in Southern England. It turns out that this Baur was not some random airman, he happened to be the personal pilot to Adolf Hitler himself! And he intended to defect while the Fuehrer was on board his plane. In other words: Baur was offering to kidnap his employer and hand him over to the enemy!

What could go wrong?!?! Well when the report landed on the desk of RAF Air Marshal Arthur Harris, he informed his superior Air Marshal Sholto Douglas on February 21. The latter authorised the operation, and ordered Harris to put on alert Lympne airfield, in Kent. The two also devised a system of signals to ensure the defector would not be shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Their plans were relayed back to Sofia, and communicated to Kiroff: Lympne airfield would be waiting for Mr Baur and Mr Hitler on March 25!

But March 25 came and went, and no ‘Condors’ landed. April went by, and still no signs of the defector. On May 28, the operation was officially closed by Air Marshal Norman Bottomley.

What happened?

Despite this particular attempt being widely cited, the truth is if Hans Baur had the intention to defect, he must have been a serial procrastinator, as he remained in HItler’s service until the bitter end, and fell captive to the Soviets. More to the point, in 1991 Baur and his third wife were interviewed, and he denied involvement in any plans to abduct the Fuehrer. Moreover, his wife stated that neither she, nor Baur’s previous wives, were Bulgarian.

STALIN’S TURN!

Following the launch of Operation Barbarossa, in June 1941, Hitler found himself in the crosshairs of Stalin, too. But after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Fuehrer spent most of his time at the heavily fortified and heavily guarded ‘Wolf’s Lair’, his headquarters in Eastern Prussia. Thus, the occasions to catch him in the open would be extremely scarce.

As the Axis advanced towards Moscow, Lavrenti Berja’s secret police, the NKVD, reasoned that if the capital did fall, it would be bursting with triumphant Nazi generals, and possibly the Big Man himself. And the occupiers might indulge in organising ballets, theatre shows or other events. An elaborate and rather unhinged plan was concocted in October 1941 to arm ballerinas, musicians and other performers with handguns and grenades, ready to assassinate any high-ranking Nazi in sight.

The spearhead of this army of assassins was a squad of 11 individuals led by classical

music composer Lev Knipper and his wife Mariya Gsriknova. Knipper would exploit his knowledge of the German language and his caches of weapons to get close to, and later assassinate Nazi leadership. If everything else failed, Knipper would sabotage Moscow’s water supply.

The German advance was halted by the Red Army, so Knipper could stick to his compositions. By the end of 1941, he had penned two ‘preludes’ inspired by Iranian folk music … which actually were part of another complicated scheme woven by Berija. Lev Knipper happened to have a sister, Olga Chekhova, who had been living in Berlin since 1920, becoming a successful actress. In the 1930s, Olga had become a covert agent for the Soviets, and it was time to put her to good use … Lev and his wife had to relocate to Iran, a pro-Axis country, with the cover story of researching local music. From there, the couple had to fake a defection, and move to Germany. Once in Berlin, Knipper would reunite with Olga, and exploit her high-ranking contacts to carry out an assassination, potentially Hitler’s!

It is our humble opinion that Berja’s plan made for a great movie pitch, less so for a viable assassination plot. Unsurprisingly, the entire idea was abandoned, and Stalin preferred to rely on less subtle methods to eliminate his archenemy:

Step 1 – Locate the Fuehrer

Step 2 – Send the Soviet air force

Step 3 – Bomb him out of existence.

Thanks to intelligence submitted by British code-breakers at Bletchley Park, Soviet forces learned that Hitler and all his top generals on the Eastern Front would be meeting at the train station in Orsha, Belarus, on November 12, 1941. Twenty bombers attacked the location, but it later emerged that Hitler had not left his Wolf’s Lair for most of November.

On March 22, 1942, Stalin received unconfirmed reports that the German dictator and his generals were in Minsk, Belarus, and the city was heavily bombed. On the 26th, the generals were sighted in Vilnius, Lithuania. Squadrons of bombers promptly pounded Vilnius, too. On the 27th, the Soviets believed that Hitler and his pals had returned to Minsk, and the unlucky city took a second pounding.

And guess where Hitler had been all the time? That’s right, safe and cosy at the Wolf’s Lair! Stalin had to concede that his fellow moustachioed mass-murderer would not make for an easy target. Besides, the ever paranoid ‘Man of Steel’ came to a chilling conclusion: if Hitler were to be killed, he would be replaced by a provisional government, probably run by a junta of generals. And the Western Allies might be inclined to negotiate a separate peace with a non-Nazi military government.

And what if his new, non-Nazi, but still militaristic government was still intent on fighting the Soviets? The Red Army would be facing the entire might of the Wehrmacht, without financial and material support from the West!

In short: Stalin evaluated that it was in his, and his country’s best interest, to keep Hitler alive.

CRAZY TRAIN

The Polish resistance movement, or ‘Home Army’ was not of the same persuasion. Poland had been suffering a brutal occupation, and the resistance had responded in fashion, becoming lethally effective at assassinating, bombing and derailing any target bearing a swastika. Especially derailing trains was something of a Home Army signature move, as they destroyed some 6,000 Axis trains over the course of the war!

In June 1942, the resistance learned that Hitler would be hurtling through Poland on his personal armoured train, the Amerika. More precisely,in the early hours of June 9, it would be travelling on the line connecting Konigsberg – modern-day Kaliningrad – with Berlin. Lieutenant Jan Szalewski of the Home Army was in charge of the operation, leading two fire squads on the ground. Szalewski knew that the Amerika was always preceded by a dummy train, to act as decoy. At 02:45 hours, what appeared to be the decoy convoy sped by.

Quick as a flash, the Polish specialists sabotaged the train line, waiting for the ‘real thing’ to appear. The Fuehrer train soon arrived at speed, flying off the damaged tracks and rolling down an embankment. The carriages were utterly wrecked, but several SS troops had survived: they scrambled out the train and engaged the Poles in a firefight, until the latter retreated.

Szalewski believed to have scored a success, but Hitler’s knack for changing plans at the last minute had saved him once again! It later emerged that he had decided to make an unscheduled stop to meet with the provincial governor of Danzig. And the derailed train was not the Amerika, and likely not even the dummy train, but another military transport. What is sure, is that the Fuehrer was not on board!

TRESCKOW’S BOMBS

The increasingly brutal conduct of German occupation forces in Poland and on the Eastern Front gradually brought more and more officers into the conspirators’ fold. Commanders of the Heer, or land army, were issued orders such as ‘Every officer in the German occupation in the East of the future will be entitled to perform execution(s) without trial, without any formalities, on any person suspected of having a hostile attitude towards the Germans.’

Such draconian measures appalled, among others, General Hermann Henning Karl Robert von Tresckow and his young adjutant, Lieutenant von Schlabrendorff, serving with Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front. The two considered assassinating the Fuehrer as early as the winter of 1941, and Tresckow even sought to bring into the conspiracy his commander, Field Marshal Von Kluge. The latter was ambivalent, to say the least: he had been accepting bribes in cash and land from the Nazi party to remain loyal to the regime, and thus would not take an active role in any assassination attempt. But he reassured Tresckow he would not oppose it, either!

Schlabrendorff from his part did his homework, discovering that a resistance movement had been gravitating around Canaris and Oster within the Abwehr. Furthermore, he found that General Olbricht, Chief of the General Army Office, was highly critical of Hitler’s strategic decisions in the East, and was partial to a good old regime change!

During the winter of 1942 and 1943 conditions on the Eastern Front greatly worsened for the Axis, and many German officers grew tired of Hitler’s meddling in strategic decisions. Tresckow felt that the mood was ripe to attempt an assassination, but first he had to get the dictator out of his Wolf’s Lair. After much insistence, Tresckow succeeded in inviting the Fuehrer to perform an inspection of the Army Group Centre headquarters at Smolensk, to take place in March 1943.

Before that date arrived, Tresckow, Schlabrendorff and other conspirators set frantically to work, laying out plans not only to kill Hitler, but also to seize power in Berlin and put in place a new government, with General Ludwig Beck as head of state.

Initially, the plotting officers considered shooting their Fuehrer, either with a sniper rifle, or at close quarters. Both options were dismissed on practical grounds, as Hitler’s sizable SS bodyguard would have likely foiled such an attempt. Well, how about engaging the SS, and Hitler’s entire retinue, in a large scale gun fight? General Kluge vetoed the idea, as he did not want large groups of Germans fighting each other. Another suggestion was to ‘jump’ the dictator during the welcome meal. Kluge vetoed again, finding it uncouth to kill a man whilst he had his dinner.

Eventually it was up to Tresckow to come up with the right idea: planting a bomb on Fuehrer’s plane, for it to explode on the way back from Smolensk, while flying over territory held by enemy partisans. This would have allowed the conspirators to blame the Soviets, whilst forming a new, legitimate government.

Next, Tresckow had to source the right material: he needed a compact, yet powerful explosive; a reliable fuse; and a silent timer. All these items were provided by a man at the Abwehr, Baron von Gersdorff, who discreetly pilfered stock captured from the British Special Operations Executive.

Finally, the plotting officer obtained designs of Hitler’s personal plane, to identify the best spot in which to plant the explosive device. This plane, by the way, was the same Focke-Wulf Condor piloted by the same Hans Baur we already discussed in the alleged kidnapping! But unlike that attempt, this was not a bogus one!

Tresckow and Schlabrendorff wracked their brains, trying to find a way to place the bombs on the closely guarded Condor. And they came up with a genius solution: they would wrap the devices in a gift parcel, and would claim it contained two bottles of Cointreau, famously square in shape. They would then find an excuse to hand the ‘gift’ to a member of Hitler’s entourage.

Back in Berlin, General Beck, Admiral Canaris and Colonel Oster were dealing with arguably the most delicate elements of the entire plot: how to ensure a quick transition to the new government, whilst neutralising the potential reaction of the SS and Hitler’s more fanatic supporters. To achieve this, they needed the support of the Reserve Army, a large corps stationed inside the Reich tasked with training and internal security functions. Very conveniently, the deputy commander of the Reserve Army, General Olbricht, had already pledged his support to the conspirators. Olbricht’s direct superior, General Fromm, refused to join the conspirators, but crucially did not betray them, nor opposed them – which was just as good!

Olbricht had conceived another masterstroke, to ensure the Reserve Army could be used to achieve the goals of the coup. The General had warned Nazi leadership of the risk posed by the large number of forced labourers within German territories. With their authorisation, he conceived a series of plans to make good use of the Reserve Army and quash a potential uprising of said labourers, plans which were named after elements and characters of Wagnerian operas, such as ‘Rheingold’, or, more famously, ‘Valkyrie’. Needless to say, these contingencies were in fact blueprints to seize control of the government, and could be activated directly by the heads of the Reserve Army if Hitler were to be incapacitated.

Of course, there was the ever present risk of SS troops thwarting the intervention of forces under the control of the conspirators. Enter another key player in the plot, General Fellgiebel, who would be in charge of seizing all signal stations and telephone exchanges, to control the narrative around Hitler’s demise and isolate his most loyal henchmen. Fellgiebel would also be entrusted with distributing a message to the German people, informing them that their Fuehrer had been assassinated by a rebellious cabal of Nazi Party cadres, and that the Army was now taking over the Reich.

So, the big day came: on March 13, 1943, Hitler and his retinue visited Army Group Centre HQ in Smolensk for a briefing with Field Marshal Kluge and General von Tresckow. During the formal lunch that ensued, Tresckow struck up a conversation with a member of the entourage, Lt Colonel Brandt, and spun him a big fat lie … Tresckow had lost a bet with some Colonel in service at the Wolf’s Lair, and thus had to pay a price: two bottles of Cointreau! Would Brandt be so kind as to fly them back in the Fuehrer’s Condor?

Brandt fell for the ruse, and unwittingly carried the bombs on board, primed to detonate 30 minutes after take off.

But, as usual, Hitler’s insane luck came to the rescue. Tresckow expected Brandt to carry the parcel with him, but the unwitting dupe placed the devices in the cargo hold instead. As it happens, a fault in the heating system of the hold caused temperatures to plummet during the flight, and the cold environment prevented the fuses from functioning properly. When news reached Tresckow and Schlabrendorff that the Condor had landed safely at the Wolf’s Lair, they immediately sent a code word to their allies in Berlin to abort the coup. But what if Brandt opened the package? It would have been obvious that someone had tried to assassinate the Fuehrer! Tresckow phoned Brandt, who assured him that the ‘gift-wrap’ was still intact and unopened. Elated, Tresckow explained that there had been a mix up, that doofus of his adjutant had given Brandt the wrong parcel!

This Brandt must have been one of the chillest Nazi officers around, as he agreed to hold onto the package, until Schlabrendorff came to collect it the very next day. Of course, he exchanged it with two actual bottles of Cointreau!

Tresckow and his team were not demoralised, and kept their eyes open, looking for other assassination opportunities. And one came along, almost immediately after their failed aeroplane bombing. Tresckow learned that Hitler was due to deliver a speech at the Old Armoury in Berlin, on March 21, 1943. The event would be followed by an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry.

Tresckow mobilised one of his acolytes, Abwehr officer Rudolf von Gersdorff, the man who had supplied the devices for the previous attempt. Gersdorff was a veteran of the Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front, and therefore perfectly suited to act as tour guide for the weaponry exhibit – the perfect cover!

Gersdorff scoped out the Armoury on March 20, and soon came to a conclusion: the location was too large and too well guarded for him to plant a device. The only alternative was for him to carry the bomb in his pocket, and stand beside the Fuehrer when it went off. Gersdorff was ready to sacrifice his life!

At 1pm on March 21, Hitler opened up the ceremony by delivering his speech. Gersdorff waited patiently for him to finally shut up, before activating the 10 minute fuse of his bomb. As the dictator stood down from the podium, Gersdorf approached him, to guide him through the exhibition. According to the program, the guided tour should have lasted 30 minutes, but the impatient Fuehrer rushed through the halls of the Armoury, while a desperate Gersdorff attempted to slow him down. It was all futile, and apparently Hitler cleared the museum in less than a minute!

Gersdorff had followed Hitler in the street outside the armoury. As an explosives expert, he knew that in the open air the blast of his bomb would be greatly reduced. And if he botched the attempt, he risked compromising all his friends at Army Group Centre! With just a few minutes to spare, the would-be bomber rushed into a toilet and deactivated the fuse.

A CATWALK FOR HITLER

Tresckow’s conspiracy ring suffered another blow when, on April 5, 1943, Abwehr officer Hans von Dohnanyi was arrested by the Gestapo. This was not related to the assassination plots, rather to unauthorised currency transfers organised by Donhanyi on behalf of Jewish families he was protecting.

Nonetheless, his superior officer was Hans Oster, a leading figure in the whole conspiracy! As a result of the investigation against Dohnanyi, Oster was demoted to a reserve unit, and then placed under house arrest.

Around the same time, General Ludwig Beck had to undergo surgery to treat his stomach cancer. Beck and Oster were vital cogs in the entire plan, especially when it came to securing power in Berlin. In August of 1943, Tresckow ‘pulled a sickie’ and went to Berlin to redraft the ‘Valkyrie’ plan accordingly. The tenacious conspirator could now rely on a new recruit, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.

Stauffenberg had become disillusioned with the regime after witnessing the extent of the losses suffered on the Eastern Front, a result of Hitler’s insane war of annihilation. As other officers in Tresckow’s circle, the colonel was also sickened by the war crimes perpetrated by the SS, police units and regular armed forces at the Nazi Party’s behest.

While serving in the North African theatre, Stauffenberg had suffered crippling injuries, losing one eye and one hand. He had therefore been transferred to desk duties, serving with the Staff at the Reserve Army

So, Tresckow and Stauffenberg drew up meticulous timetables, detailing the three phases of ‘Valkyrie’:

Phase one – after Hitler had been assassinated, the Reserve Army would receive instructions to stay in alert, ready to quash an uprising.

Phase two – the commander of the Reserve Army, General Fromm, would sign orders for his men to round up the SS and the Gestapo, and to capture key power centres in Berlin.

Phase three – the conspirators would broadcast an announcement, imposing a state of emergency and martial law.

Tresckow and his new best buddy made it just on time to finalise the plan, as the former was recalled to the Eastern Front in a combat role. Tresckow could not act any longer as the main leader for the big officer plot, but Stauffenberg was ready to fill in his shoes – and rather enthusiastically so!

The first scheme cooked up by Stauffenberg was to take place on November 16, 1943. On that date, Hitler was scheduled to attend a sort of ‘catwalk’ at the Wolf’s Lair, a showcase of new winter uniforms for the Army. The man selected to model this new attire was Major Axel Bussche-Streithorst, a fine ‘Aryan’ specimen: a two-metres-tall, blond, and blue-eyed war hero – who happened to hate the Nazis! So much so, that Bussche volunteered to sacrifice his life to obliterate Hitler. He would carry a modified hand-grenade in his pocket during the modelling session, activate the fuse at the right time, and then lock the Fuehrer in a deadly embrace.

But luck was, once again, on the Devil’s side: a British bombing raid destroyed the trains carrying the new uniforms, and the catwalk was postponed to February 11, 1944. Bussche was still on board with the plan, but in January he suffered a heavy wound in battle, losing one of his legs. Another male model slash assassin stepped forward, Captain von Kleist, but by then the military situation was so dire, that all plans to show off the new winter uniforms had been shelved.

STAUFFENBERG’S FIRST ATTEMPTS

On June 6, 1944, the Allies staged the Normandy landings, opening another front on continental Europe. The doom of Germany was only a matter of ‘when’, rather than ‘if’. The conspiratorial officers in the Abwehr and the army wondered if it was too late for them to act against Hitler, for them to save Germany from further destruction, for them to atone for the war crimes committed at the Nazi Party’s behest.

Von Tresckow had to relinquish a leading role in the assassination attempts, but was still a source of inspiration for his fellow plotters: ‘The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be undertaken. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance movement dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence’

By then, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg had been appointed Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army. As such, he would be consulted in person by Hitler and his staff in matters of training and outfitting new units. This appointment had made him the natural choice to conduct the assassination! Stauffenberg knew that he had to take advantage of any occasion in which he would be called to report to the Fuehrer, preferably at the Wolf’s Lair headquarters in Eastern Prussia, or at the Berghof retreat on the Bavarian Alps – the farther away from Berlin, the better!

The colonel also knew that SS guards confiscated all officers’ sidearms before briefings with Hitler, which restricted his weapon of choice to only one option: explosives concealed in his briefcase.

On July 6, 1944, Stauffenberg attended a meeting at the Berghof, carrying plastic explosives in his case. This was just a trial run, which proved very encouraging, as nobody searched his briefcase.

On July 11, the colonel was summoned again to the Berghof, and this time he intended to act! Before attending the meeting, Stauffenberg notified General Olbricht at the Reserve Army, who in turn alerted Erwin von Witzleben, a Field Marshal who had joined the ranks of the conspiracy. Both high ranking officers stood ready to enact the three phases of the ‘Valkyrie’ plan.

However, nothing happened.

You see, the conspirators had previously agreed that they needed to take out Hitler, Himmler and Goering in one go. It was too risky to leave the latter two alive, lest they take the occasion to seize power, and then unleash the SS and Gestapo against the resistance movement. And on that day, the heads of the SS and the Luftwaffe did not show up for the meeting.

On July 15, Stauffenberg was invited once again to confer with the Fuehrer – this time at the Wolf’s Lair – to discuss the deployment of 15 Reserve divisions to the Eastern Front. As usual, the colonel made the trip with a special item tucked under his spare shirt: two kilos of plastic explosive! Unlike the previous occasion, he was accompanied by a fellow conspirator, General Stieff.

The two attended a series of short meetings throughout the day: Hitler was there for most of them, but Himmler and Goering were absent once again. Stauffenberg slipped out of the meeting room and placed a call to Berlin, seeking instructions from his fellow plotters. Crucially, he had left his briefcase behind … Over the phone, Generals Olbricht and Beck discouraged him from carrying out the attack, while another officer, Colonel von Quirnheim simply told him ‘Do it’.

At least some of the officers in the resistance had abandoned the idea of blowing up three high-ranking Nazis in one go: Hitler was enough! And so Stauffenberg returned to the briefing room, ready to ignite the fuse of his device. To his horror, his case had disappeared … and so had General Stieff! The General walked back into the room a few minutes later, carrying the briefcase. Probably it had been a wise move to remove it from the area when Stauffenberg had gone on the phone with Berlin, but now the meetings for the day were drawing to a close, and Stauffenberg would not have the occasion to ignite the fuse.

It was another missed opportunity.

THE ‘BIG ONE’: THE JULY 20 PLOT

But on July 19, Stauffenberg received orders to travel once more to the Wolf’s Lair, and report on the status of those 15 divisions.

On the morning of July 20, Stauffenberg was driven to Rangsdorf airport outside Berlin, where he met with his aide and ally, Werner von Haeften, who would be carrying two explosive devices in his briefcase. Their plan took off at 7am, and landed at Rastenburg, near the Wolf’s Lair, shortly after 10am.

Stauffenberg conducted two routine briefings at 11 and 11:30. He was due to attend a meeting with Hitler’s staff at 1pm, but this was brought forward to 12:30, to allow for an official visit from Benito Mussolini later in the afternoon.

At 12:25, Stauffenberg asked if he could have some privacy to change his shirt, which tended to become soiled due to seepage from his wounds. Nobody could deny such a request to a wounded war hero, and so the colonel was shown to a small room. As we mentioned earlier, Stauffenberg had lost one hand in combat, and so he required help from his aide, von Haeften, to change his shirt.

This was the perfect occasion for Haeften to transfer the two bombs from his briefcase to Stauffenberg’s. The latter was about to activate both devices, when a sergeant walked into the room, looking for the colonel: he was wanted on the phone and in the meeting room! One of those days at the office, apparently!

With the sergeant standing on the doorway, Stauffenberg was able to discreetly activate only one of the bombs, which was placed into his case. The other device remained with Haeften. The conspirator then walked a short distance to the cabin hosting the meeting room, as one Major Freyend offered help to carry his briefcase. Stauffenberg eventually accepted the offer: as they entered the cabin, Freyend unknowingly placed the disguised bomb under the large table in the meeting room, against one of its thick wooden supports.

Hitler opened the meeting on time, and Stauffenberg knew he had 10 minutes before the bomb would go off. He had noticed that the table’s support stood between the bomb and the Fuehrer, but did not have the opportunity to place the device closer to his target. Moreover, one General Heusinger had just asked the colonel to take the floor and deliver his briefing on the 15 reserve divisions.

That was bad timing, as Stauffenberg had planned to slip out of the room just moments before the blast, so as to alert his acolytes in Berlin to activate the ‘Valkyrie’ plan.

An unlikely ally came to his rescue: Hitler himself told Heusinger to continue with his part of the agenda, Stauffenberg’s briefing could wait. It was now or never: the colonel informed Field Marshal Keitel that he needed to answer an important phone call from Berlin, and quietly exited the room. He then walked to the communications room, but of course there wasn’t a call waiting for him. Instead, he reunited with his aide Haeften, climbed on a car, and headed for the exit of the Wolf’s Lair complex.

At 12:42, the bomb went off. A stenographer present in the meeting room, Heinz Buchholz, described the explosion as such: ‘I remember it as a clap of thunder connected with a bright yellow flash and ever-increasing thick smoke. Glass and wood splintered through the air. The large table on which all the situation maps had been spread out and around which the participants were standing – only we stenographers were sitting – collapsed. After a few seconds of silence … shouts and screams of pain arose’

At 12:44, Stauffenberg and Haeften made it through the first checkpoint on the way out, but by the time they got to the second set of gates, the alarm had already been raised. The Wolf’s Lair had been sealed, and the sergeant on duty would not allow the two officers through. Stauffenberg was a master of improv, however: he entered the sergeant guardhouse, picked up the phone and rang his acquaintance captain von Mollendorff, adjutant to the Wolf’s Lair’s chief of security. The colonel insisted that he had to reach the Rastenburg airfield immediately, as his own commander, General Fromm, was waiting for him in Berlin. The ruse worked, and the conspirators were allowed through the gates.

By 1:15pm, Stauffenberg and Haeften had taken off. As they flew towards Berlin, they were certain that Adolf Hitler was reduced to a mangled, charred body. That part of the plot had been taken care of, now they had to activate the ‘Valkyrie’ plan and launch their coup …

Meanwhile, at the Wolf’s Lair, the Fuehrer was very much alive, having gotten away from the blast with minor wounds. As usual, an uncanny luck had protected him …

The force of the explosion had been deflected away from him by the thick oak support of the table. Four participants to the meeting had died, nonetheless, and the Fuehrer acknowledged his extraordinary luck to secretary Christa Schroeder: ‘The heavy table leg diverted the explosion. The stenotypist sitting near me had both legs blown off. I had extraordinary luck! If the explosion had happened in the bunker and not in the wooden hut, nobody would have survived it. But haven’t I always anticipated that happening?’

It was clear from the start to everyone present that a bombing attack had just been perpetrated. As it was clear that the only individual missing from the meeting room was Claus von Stauffenberg. Suspicion against the colonel was solidified when sergeant Adam, a phone operator, confirmed that Stauffenberg had indeed popped by the communications room … but had not received any call from Berlin! And then there was the testimony from the other sergeant, the one who had walked in on Stauffenberg when he was supposedly changing his shirt. It did not take much brainpower to realise that the colonel and his aide were the culprits!

Orders were immediately dispatched to the Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin, to intercept and shoot down Stauffenberg’s plane. Luckily, the orders were intercepted and suppressed by one of Stauffenberg’s sympathisers, Major Georgi.

That order was not the only frantic communication to be broadcast towards Berlin from the Wolf’s Lair after the blast. But all radio traffic to the capital had to pass through four repeater stations, all of which were shut down by a group of signal officers under General Fellgiebel, one of the key conspirators.

Fellgiebel was also the first member of the plot to learn that Hitler was still alive. But despite being a communications officer, he somehow lacked in that department … At 1:15pm, he phoned his colleague General Thiele in Berlin, relaying a very ambiguous message: ‘Something fearful has happened. The Führer is still alive.’

And then he hung up.

Thiele was confused. What was going on?

Had Hitler survived the bombing? That was not ideal, but it was still worth launching the coup, with the excuse of restoring order …

But what if the bombing had been aborted at the last minute? In that case, ‘Valkyrie’ had to wait!

Thiele informed General Olbricht, whose role was to mobilise the Reserve Army to take control of key locations in Berlin. Faced with such ambiguity, Olbricht decided to wait for Stauffenberg to return to the capital. This was a fatal decision, as it wasted precious time for the effective conduct of the operation. In the meanwhile, Hitler had already ordered Himmler to mobilise the SS, the SD and the Gestapo to suppress a potential insurgency.

At 3:45pm, Stauffenberg landed in Berlin and immediately phoned Olbricht, to confirm what he believed to be true: Hitler is dead, my dear General. Have you started that little power grab of ours? The colonel learned in horror that no, nothing had happened and that the Fuehrer may still be alive. Nonetheless, there was no turning back at this point: Valkyrie had to be activated!

Stauffenberg then was driven to the Bendlerblock, the war ministry compound, to join other high-ranking plotters and coordinate operations. Olbricht was already there and had finally decided to act: he stepped into the office of his superior, General Fromm, and informed him that Hitler was dead. He had to sign the orders to initiate Valkyrie!

Fromm was dubious. He placed a call to the Wolf’s Lair and demanded to speak with Field Marshal Keitel. His reply was ‘There was an assassination attempt, but fortunately it failed. The Führer is alive and was only slightly injured.’

Until that point, Fromm had been sitting on the fence. But upon hearing the news, he decidedly sided against the conspirators, accusing them of treason. For all his shouting, Fromm was alone against the conspirators, and Olbricht and Stauffenberg placed him under arrest. Command of the Reserve Army was entrusted to another officer, General Hoepner, and the Valkyrie orders were promptly issued.

Next, General Witzleben broadcast another set of orders to all headquarters throughout the Reich and occupied territories, aimed at seizing control from the SS and other party loyalist organisations: ‘An irresponsible gang of Party leaders, far behind the front, has tried to exploit this situation to stab the hard-pressed army in the back and seize power for its own ends. In this hour of supreme danger the Reich government, to maintain law and order, has proclaimed a state of emergency and has entrusted to me both supreme command of the armed forces and executive power in the Reich’

Many things had gone wrong thus far in the plan, but the worst was yet to come. And that ‘worst’ had a rank and a name: Major Otto Ernst Remer, commander of the Grossdeutschland Guard Battalion. Remer had received orders to seal the roads into Berlin and surround SS barracks. Smelling something fishy, he dispatched one of his lieutenants to the Ministry of Propaganda to gather intelligence. The young officer returned with news that Goebbels himself had just spoken to Hitler, who was very much alive – albeit not so kicking due to some wooden splinters in his legs.

Remer realised that a coup was underway! He assembled several SS units and headed towards the Benderblock, from where the orders had been issued. A short, but intense firefight ensued, pitting the SS against the conspirators. During the battle, some of the plotters managed to escape, while others were arrested. Stauffenberg was badly wounded in his left arm, while the ambivalent General Fromm was released from custody.

Now Fromm was in a sticky situation: he had opposed the plot at the very last moment, but had known about it for a long time, and done nothing to prevent it. To avoid being implicated, he ordered the immediate execution of the ringleaders of the Valkyrie plot.

Stauffenberg, his aide captain Haeften, General Olbricht and his deputy colonel von Quirnheim, were marched into the courtyard of the Blenderblock, and executed by firing squad.

That was only the beginning of the brutal repression that ensued. The aftermath of the failed assassination attempt and subsequent coup would require a full-length video of its own, so we will only cover the main consequences here.

At 1am on July 21, Adolf Hitler spoke on the radio, reassuring the German people that he had survived an assassination attempt. A simple step which effectively put an end to any remaining resistance. A wave of arrests followed, with 7,000 individuals being seized by the Gestapo, of which 4,980 were executed.

Among them, General Fromm, whose efforts to distance himself from the plot were eventually fruitless. The ‘spiritual leaders’ of the resistance movement, Abwehr spymasters Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster were hanged in 1945.

As per the man who had arguably done the most to set the ‘Valkyrie’ coup in motion, General von Tresckow, he decided to take his own life on July 21, 1944, while on the Eastern Front. These were his last words to his loyal adjutant Schlabrendorff: ‘The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany, but of the world … God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if only ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope for our sake God will not destroy Germany’

In other words: the entire plot may have failed, but at least the conspirators had shown the world that not all Germans had bought into Hitler’s murderous lies, and were willing to resist.

Sadly, however righteous Tresckow, Stauffenberg and friends had proved to be, their valiant yet doomed efforts had the effect of consolidating the grip of the Nazi Party over the regular armed forces. The newly appointed head of the Army’s General Staff, legendary General Heinz Guderian, imposed that all officers now formally join the Party.

Those who emerged triumphant from the whole ordeal were Heinrich Himmler and his SS troops. They had proved their loyalty to the regime, and as a result the organisation was greatly expanded. Moreover, Himmler was given command of the Reserve Army after Fromm’s execution, which effectively consolidated all security forces and internal troops under his command.

But what if the assassination had actually succeeded? The Allies were doubtful it would have resulted in the desired regime change. A July 27 report from the US Office of Strategic Services, OSS, read: ‘There was no indication that the fighting spirit of the German Army had been impaired … The common soldier may actually experience a certain upswing. He may even believe that the defeat in the East was due to treason rather than faulty German strategy and Russian superiority … ‘It can now be assumed that the Nazi leadership is committed to a fight to the finish and will not hesitate to make Germany a battlefield.’

OPERATION FOXLEY

Despite the failure of the July 20 plot, and the subsequent OSS assessment, part of the Allied forces did consider assassinating the Fuehrer themselves. More specifically, we are referring to the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, the elite force in charge of conducting daring sabotage raids in Axis-occupied Europe.

These plans were codenamed ‘Operation FOXLEY’, to be coordinated by Major H.B. Court. In November of 1944, Court handed in an extensive report to the SOE council, detailing his suggested plans to eliminate the head of Nazi Germany.

Much of these plans stemmed from the interrogation of a 19-year-old ‘grunt’, Private Obernigg, who had been captured on July 19. Obernigg had served as a guard at the Berghof, Hitler’s retreat on the Bavarian Alps. The young soldier sang like a canary, providing a wealth of information on the Berghof’s security measures, Hitler’s habits and location of SS posts. Based on this intelligence, Major Court concluded that the dictator would be at his most vulnerable whilst chilling at his retreat.

It emerged that Hitler liked to take solitary morning walks, from 10 to 11am every day, on his way for breakfast at his favourite Tea House. After indulging in milk and toast, the Fuehrer would be picked up by a car and driven back to his residence. Court worked out that an SOE team could be parachuted into the woods surrounding the Berghof. A sniper team could pick off Hitler while walking to the Tea House. If that failed, another team would blow up his car on the way back, by shooting a PIAT anti-tank weapon.

Now, the problem was finding the right men to accomplish the deed. Infiltrating a British operative may have been tricky, so Court considered employing a Czech, Slovak or Austrian resistance fighter. This setup was similar to Operation ANTHROPOID, the assassination of Himmler’s deputy, Reynhard Heydrich, conducted by Czech and Slovak agents in Prague on May 27, 1942. The hit had been a success, but the reprisal had been brutal, with the town of Lidice – and its inhabitants – being completely wiped from existence. With this precedent in mind, who would have risked conducting such a high profile action?

Court considered a Plan B.

When not at the Berghof, Hitler was at his most vulnerable whilst travelling on his personal train, previously the ‘Amerika’, now rebranded the ‘Branderburg’. Court knew that the train was routinely serviced in Salzburg, Austria, where a team of six French female forced labourers were in charge of cleaning it.

According to the FOXLEY report, these young ladies were not only

‘Approachable’

But also

‘Dateable’

So, a strapping SOE operative could date one of them, and convince her to slip some poison into the train’s drinking water supply! Court had even identified a poison – cited only as ‘i’ in the report – whose effects would be delayed by six days, therefore removing all suspicion from the maintenance team.

This plan was eventually scrapped, as it emerged that the French cleaners were only in charge of the train’s exterior, and had no access to the water tank.

Even if the SOE toyed with assassination plans until early 1945, Operation FOXLEY was cancelled, for a variety of reasons.

First, the SOE council feared that killing Hitler would make him a martyr, hardening the German’s resolve to fight on under new leadership.

Second, the Allied’s strategic objective was to impose an unconditional surrender upon Germany. To do so, they had to demolish Germany’s military strength, rather than seeking an early solution to the war.

Which takes us to the third reason. The best way to defeat Germany in the field, was to leave Hitler in charge! As noted in the part about Hitler being a raging substance abuse addict by the end of the war, with all the symptoms that went with it, not to mention that even before his mental and physical state had deteriorated he was never exactly what we would call a military mastermind. His poor strategic decisions and meddling in military matters had been doing more harm than good to the German war effort. Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Thornley had eloquently expressed this point as early as October 9, 1944:

‘As a strategist, Hitler has been of the greatest possible assistance to the British war effort … his value to us has been the equivalent to an almost unlimited number of first-class SOE agents strategically placed inside Germany. Although the military situation has been temporarily stabilised on the western front and the German army appears to have regained cohesion, Hitler is still in a position to override completely the soundest of military appreciations and thereby help

the Allied cause enormously … From every point of view, the ideal end to Hitler would be one of steadily declining power and increasing ridicule.’

FINAL ATTEMPTS

So, let’s get back to homegrown, would-be assassins. Enter Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production.

By mid-February 1945, Hitler had permanently retreated to his bunker under the Chancellery building in Berlin, waiting for the Soviet onslaught. During an air raid, Speer found himself in a shelter with one of his deputies, Dietrich Stahl, head of the main committee for munitions. According to a later testimony by Stahl, Speer revealed that Hitler had given him instructions to destroy all of Germany’s infrastructure and manufacturing plants before they fell into Allied hands.

Speer despised the order, and had come to despise the Fuehrer himself. Thus, he revealed to Stahl his idea to eliminate not only the dictator, but three of his underlings: Himmler, Goebbels and Martin Bormann. The plan allegedly involved dropping poison gas shells into the ventilators of the Chancellery bunker … but exactly what type of shells? As a munitions expert, Stahl could help with sourcing the right type of ordnance! Stahl made some enquiries, and found that gas shells would actually need to explode before releasing their poisonous payload. And the explosion would have likely shattered the ventilation ducts, thus dispersing and nullifying the effect of the toxic agent.

Speer concocted another plan: simply pumping some kind of poisonous gas through the ventilation system. For it to succeed, the air filters had to be removed, and instructed the bunker’s chief engineer Johannes Henschel to do so. Henschel was not in on the plot, but Speer convinced him to remove the filters nonetheless, claiming they were malfunctioning. Unluckily for Speer, the entire ventilation system was overhauled, and its ground-level shafts were replaced with well-guarded tall chimneys, making it impossible to drop the gas.

Speer eventually abandoned the idea of targeting the well-secured bunker. According to Stahl, he tried to secure some weapons to ambush Himmler, Goebbels and Bormann and assassinate them in a good old shootout. But as the Reich crumbled into the dust, it became impossible for the munitions expert to securely deliver those firearms.

After the war, it was ascertained that Speer had indeed challenged Hitler’s authorities, by refusing to devastate German infrastructure. And the Minister himself confirmed to the Allies that he had indeed considered poisoning the Nazi leadership. But his claims, as well as Stahl’s, should be taken with a pinch of salt, as they may have been an attempt to soften their sentences at the Nuremberg trials.

This takes us to the last assassination attempt against the life of Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Fuehrer of the III Reich. At around 3:30pm, on April 30, 1945, a desperate individual managed to not only infiltrate the Hitler Bunker, but also convinced Hitler to take a capsule, which just so happened to contain cyanide. This would have likely killed the Fuhrer eventually. But the hero of the hour, presumably considering how many attempts Hitler had survived over the years, decided to make sure the deed was done this time, putting a bullet through Hitler’s head.

That individual was, of course, Hitler himself.

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