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The day that Hitler should die

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20. In July 1944 wanted to kill officers of the Wehrmacht, Adolf Hitler and the Second world war end. However, their Plan failed. Today, heroes are of Stauffenberg and his comrades-in-arms – back then, you were considered a traitor.



“The statement of these usurpers, that I no longer lived, is now, in this moment, as I speak to you, my dear comrades,”, blaring Hitler’s voice through the receiving devices in the living room of Nazi Germany. At one in the morning of the 21. July 1944, The Führer is not dead, the coup is failed.

About 12 hours earlier, Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg during a meeting in the wolf’s lair, a briefcase stuffed with one kilogram of explosives in the vicinity of Adolf Hitler. He then leaves on the pretext of having an important telephone call from Berlin, take the space.

Ten minutes later: Hitler leans on the large map on the oak table stands in the middle of the meeting room to discuss with his generals the military situation in the Soviet Union. Then, the briefcase exploded. Four people die, Hitler survived and is only slightly injured. The massive map table saves his life.

Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg in the early 1930s, at that time a declared supporter of national socialism

Von Stauffenberg is able to escape from the wolf’s lair, and flies – in the Belief that Hitler was dead -back to Berlin to overthrow with his co-conspirators to the Nazi regime.

Operation “Valkyrie” fails

While von Stauffenberg is in the air, waiting for his co-conspirators in the Imperial capital, impatiently awaiting the order to mobilize the reserve army. Under the pretext that the SS had killed Hitler and organize a coup d’état, to arrest the Wehrmacht throughout the German Reich of the SS and Gestapo, the government quarter, occupy, and usurp the Power. Von Stauffenberg and co. a Separately, want to negotiate peace with the allies, and the cruel end of the war, finally, that’s the Plan.

However, instead of the desired codeword “Walküre” function of General Erich Fellgiebel, the wolf’s lair: “It’s happened something terrible, the Führer is alive.” The military in the bendler block are at a loss and make a serious wrong decision: you have to wait. It was only when von Stauffenberg, about three hours later in Berlin, lands and asserted that Hitler had been killed by his bomb, starts Operation “Valkyrie”.

Reich Marshal Hermann Göring (light Uniform) and his generals inspect after the failed bomb attack destroyed a barrack in the wolf’s lair

However, the coup attempt ends in disaster: warrants for the arrest of the SS and the Gestapo will only be transmitted slowly to the replacement army. Some of the remote write will reach your recipient until late in the evening. The planned closure of the government district and the Acquisition of the broadcasting-Central fail.

At the same time, more and more reports of Hitler’s leakage to Survive. Already in the early evening, the Berlin radio that Hitler had survived the assassination attempt. Within a few hours of the circuit of the resistance is broken. Some refuse orders, others make out of the dust, or to switch the pages.

Today, a plaque marks the location of the resistance fighters to Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg were shot

Hitler winds up for the strike

While in Berlin, the company “is about to fall into Valkyrie” in together, prepare the Survivors in the wolf’s lair, the counter-strike before. Within a few hours of the troops in Berlin to be mobilized, to strike the coup attempt down.

The resistance fighters are quickly identified. Against 23 o’clock the building is occupied complex bendler block, where the Heer office and the assassination attempt was planned by Hitler’s troops. Shortly after midnight, von Stauffenberg and the other “conspirators” in the yard to be shot and killed legally. Thousands of alleged accomplices and opponents of the regime are detained in the weeks and months following the assassination, hundreds of them executed, or suicide.

At that time, a traitor, today a hero

Up to the fall of the third Reich, the Nazi Propaganda, the assassins of the 20 tries. July 1944, as a people, a traitor to the brand – with success. Because even after the liberation of Germany by the allies, the image of a louse Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and his comrades remains a negative one. Public commemorative events are rare. Until well into the 1950s, a large majority of the West rejects German to naming streets or schools after the French Resistance.

And even in the GDR, they are not to be celebrated about as anti-fascist freedom fighters. Finally, many of the “conspirators had been” for many years, ardent followers of Hitler. It was the Communist resistance, and the mighty Red army of the great Soviet brother, the Nazi Germany would have forced to the knees, said in East Berlin.

20. July 2018: Minister of defence Ursula von der Leyen during the ceremonial vow of the Bundeswehr recruits in the bendler block, which is since 1993, the second seat of the Ministry of defence

In the West, a shift from the 1960s. In many of the commemorative celebrations since then, along with other French Resistance also thought of Stauffenberg and his comrades-in-arms. One of these events is to honor the Murdered particularly: For 20 years, recruits of the Bundeswehr place in the courtyard of the bendler block, the place was shot to von Stauffenberg, a solemn pledge, on the 20. July.

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