Zusammenfassung der Ressource
The Bomb Plot
1944
- Aims
- Linked to the Kreisau Circle and
determined to achieve 'internal
purification', Stauffenburg offered to
assassinate Hitler by bomb plot with a
preset timing device.
- Others, such as von
Tresckow, advocated the plot
because they wanted to
demonstrate to posterity that
not all Germans had been
corrupted by Nazism.
- The plan to assassinate Hitler
was code-named Operation
Valkyrie.
- It's aim was to trigger a rising throughout the
Reich and the occupied lands ousting the
Nazi regime and replacing it by a new order
with Beck as President.
- Stauffenburg had access to the Fuhrer's
headquarters and on 20 July 1944, he left his
bomb in a briefcase by Hitler in a briefing
room. Leaving the meeting to take a phone call
he then left the Wolf's Lair to fly to Berlin.
- Hitler survived because the briefcase was moved, and he
was leaning over a heavy oak table that deflected much of
the explosion. The meeting took place in a wooden building
which allowed the explosion to dissipate.
- Outcome
- Hundred of suspected conspirators were
arrested, tortured and sentenced to death.
Some escaped by suicide.
- The army was now emasculated. The Hitler salute became compulsory in all ranks.
- Only 22 out of 2,000 generals were executed for their parts in the conspiracy.
- The Bomb Plot partly restored a little
dignity and self-respect to the army, but
its futility and its belatedness did not
succeed in rehabilitating the tarnished
image of the army as an institution.