Eighty years ago, on July 20, 1944, at 12:42, a bomb went off in the conference room of the Wolf's Lair military headquarters in East Prussia, the easternmost province of the German Reich until the end of World War II. It was supposed to kill Adolf Hitler, and had been planted by German army officer Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. The former ardent National Socialist now no longer saw any other option apart from murdering the dictator. "There is nothing left but to kill him," he had told his closest confidants a few days earlier.

Stauffenberg was not only the assassin, but also the most important organizer of a large-scale coup attempt by people from conservative circles, which included high-ranking military, diplomatic and administrative officials.

Shortly before the time bomb exploded on July 20, 1944, the officer had left the barracks. He flew in a military aircraft toward Berlin, believing the "Führer" was dead. In the German capital, "Operation Valkyrie" was underway.

Originally devised as a Wehrmacht plan to suppress a possible uprising, the conspirators — who held key positions throughout the Nazi state apparatus — wanted to repurpose "Valkyrie" for their own coup.

Doomed to fail

But Hitler suffered only minor injuries. The heavy oak table and the fact the barracks' windows were opened wide due to the hot weather had dampened the force of the explosion.

Despite this, the chance for a putsch would not yet have been completely lost — if everyone involved had followed through with Operation Valkyrie unswervingly. But there were delays, breakdowns and insufficient planning. In addition, facing the enormous pressure of possibly being discovered, some of those involved remained passive or even changed sides.

By the evening, the coup attempt had failed. Hitler went on the radio to broadcast to the people and spoke of the "providence" which saved him. Stauffenberg and several co-conspirators were arrested and executed by firing squad that night. Others were only discovered later. In total, about 200 resistance fighters were killed.

Historian Wolfgang Benz believes the main reason for the failure was because "none of the famous military leaders" from that time, such as General Erwin Rommel, took part. "At least one of them needed to have been at the helm, so that then the people would say: 'Aha, Rommel also sees it that way, that Hitler is a criminal,'" he said.

An enduring symbol

Despite its failure, the resistance to Hitler on July 20, 1944, became a strong symbol. A few days before, Stauffenberg's co-conspirator Henning von Tresckow had concluded that success was no longer what mattered: The important thing was "that the German resistance movement had dared to risk its life in front of the world and in front of history."

There were other resistance operations, such as the narrowly failed attempt by carpenter Georg Elser to kill Hitler using a homemade bomb in a Munich beer hall in 1939, or the leaflet campaign by a group of young friends known as the White Rose. They were later unjustly overshadowed by "the late, not to say belated resistance of the conservative elites," as Wolfgang Benz judged the July 20, 1944 plot.

'The Holocaust did not interest them'

The remembrance of Operation Valkyrie and the assassination attempt has shifted over time. For a long time after the war ended, its initiators were still regarded as traitors. Stauffenberg's wife, for example, was initially refused the pension received by widows. Later, the conspirators were officially designated as heroes: Streets, schools and barracks were named after them, and public buildings were decorated with flags every July 20. Swearing-in ceremonies for Bundeswehr armed forces recruits were held on the anniversary: The military of democratic Germany invoked the resistance fighters surrounding the former Wehrmacht officer Stauffenberg.

But there was always criticism of those involved in the plot. Stauffenberg biographer Thomas Karlauf pointed out that the group first acted in the European summer of 1944, shortly after the Allies landed in Normandy. Following Germany's rapid military victories over Poland and France in 1940, Stauffenberg had enthused: "What a change in such a brief time!" He and the other men who participated in the military resistance took a "very, very long path to reformation," said Benz, adding: "The Holocaust did not interest them at all." Faced with a looming military defeat, they wanted to try to "save what can be saved" for Germany by initiating a coup.

Stauffenberg, not a democrat?

Fellow historian Johannes Hürter is of the view that Stauffenberg was no democrat: He had an authoritarian form of government in mind for Germany if the assassination had been successful.

Wolfgang Benz makes a slightly less harsh judgment: "Under any circumstances, Germany would have become a constitutional state again. But democracy as we know it, as it was established in the Basic Law constitution, was not the vision of the July 20 conspirators."

Many Germans today think first of July 20, 1944, when it comes to the resistance against National Socialism. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, as a result, has become its face. But there were many other heroes who rebelled against the terror of the Nazi regime: Jews, communists, people in the church, artists, partisans. There were certainly also people who resisted in silence and whose deeds, unlike those of the July 20 attackers, have since been forgotten.

This article was first published in German on 20.07.2019. It was updated and published in English on 19.07.2024.

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