Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler 1933-45

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On July 20, 1944, a powerful bomb ripped through Adolf Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters during a briefing between the Führer and his senior officers. The bomb, planted by a dashing, highly decorated young count named Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, blew pieces of wreckage and columns of smoke high in the air and completely destroyed the wooden barracks that housed the crowded briefing room. Although it miraculously failed to maim or kill Hitler, the explosion dramatically announced to the world the existence of a secret, indigenous opposition to the Nazi regime.

These events are, of course, quite familiar to most readers. But what is less widely known is that well before July 20 a substantial number of Germans had come to despise Hitler and his policies, even as the Führer racked up impressive victories at the ballot box and on the battlefield. This nascent opposition formed clandestine groups to help Hitler’s victims escape from the country. Later, they plotted a coup d’état to rid Germany of Nazism and drafted plans for the soci­ety they wanted to create in place of the one they hoped to destroy. As many as fifteen assassination attempts were undertaken during the reign of National Socialism, but these efforts always failed: in some instances because of bad timing or poor planning; in others, because of the omnipresent scrutiny of the Gestapo or Hitler’s own unerring instinct for danger.

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