Operation Valkyrie was the most famous assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler – and the closest to succeeding (Picture: AFP/Getty)
‘There is nothing left but to kill him.’
Those words were uttered by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg in July 1944, shortly before he embarked on the most audacious plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Eighty years ago, on July 20, he placed a bomb under the Fuhrer’s desk during a meeting at his Wolf’s Lair military headquarters in East Prussia.
The blast was supposed to kill Hitler and trigger a takeover of Nazi Germany by the Replacement Army led by his co-conspirators.
But Hitler survived the blast and the plot quickly crumbled.
The tyrant would live on for another nine months before taking his own life in the Fuhrerbunker as the Red Army closed in on his Berlin headquarters.
By that stage he had dragged Germany – and half of Europe – into the abyss with him.
It was exactly the devastating end the conspirators had sought to avoid.
Earlier plots to kill Hitler
Whisperings of a plot to topple the Fuhrer had been around since 1938, when the hope was to avoid being dragged into another world war.
But those plans were thwarted by a mix of indecision among the army high command and a reluctance among Western powers to stand up to his aggression.
By 1943, the disastrous defeat at Stalingrad and other military setbacks had convinced a new conspiratorial group led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow it was time for a ‘spark’.
Operation Spark was to see Germany taken under the control of Replacement Army troops after the death of Hitler.
The first opportunity to send the Fuhrer to oblivion presented itself in March that year.
Wilhelm Keitel, Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler and Martin Bormann are shown strolling at Fuhrer Headquarters around an hour after the failed assassination attempt (Picture: Bettmann Archive)
Claus von Stauffenberg (Picture: ullstein bild)
Plans to shoot the dictator during a visit to Army Group Centre headquarters at Smolensk on March 13 were aborted due to the possibility other senior army officers might be killed with him.
Preparations were then made to blow him up, with Tresckow asking one of Hitler’s entourage travelling with him on his plane to carry a package for another senior officer.
It looked harmless enough – two bottles of cognac. But it was actually two parts of a bomb put together by Tresckow himself.
The timer was set for half an hour after take-off, but the bomb never went off.
Yet another opportunity presented itself later that month when Hitler was due to attend an exhibition of captured Soviet war equipment on ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day.
German army officer Henning von Tresckow, who was one of the members of resistance planning the assassination attempt against Hitler July 20, 1944 (Picture: AFP via Getty)
Colonel Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, Tresckow’s Abwehr Intelligence Liaison Officer, also had the chance to attend and declared himself willing to lay his life down in order to end the Fuhrer’s.
After raising his right arm to greet Hitler he used his left to press the detonator of the bomb stuffed in his pocket, which had a 10-minute fuse.
That would have given him plenty of time to fulfil his task, with the dictator scheduled to be there for half an hour.
But in another sliding doors moment, Hitler raced through the exhibition and was gone within the space of two minutes, leaving von Gersdorff having to rush to the bathroom to defuse the device.
Who was Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg?
Like many young officers, National Socialism initially appealed to Stauffenberg, particularly its emphasis on the value of strong armed forces.
While he approved of the colonisation of Poland, he rejected the Nazis antisemitism and was appalled by reports massacres of Ukrainian Jews carried out by the SS killing squads.
Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg pictured with his children (Picture: ullstein bild via Getty Images)
He was badly wounded while serving in North Africa in April 1943, losing his left eye, right hand and two fingers from his left hand.
By early September, convinced the only way to deal with the Fuhrer was by killing him.
While he recovered, Stauffenberg was approached by the conspirators and would become a leading figure behind the plot.
With Hitler constantly surrounded by armed bodyguards and other lackeys who would taste his food, it was agreed the only option was a bomb.
Operation Valkyrie
In early July 1944, Stauffenberg was appointed chief of staff to General Friedrich Fromm, a position which gave him access to Hitler’s military meetings and an opportunity to assassinate him.
After the string of failed attempts, news came that the Gestapo had caught wind of the plot and the net seemed to be closing in.
On July 20, Stauffenberg flew to Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair HQ in East Prussia with two bombs in his briefcase.
Speaking to the BBC decades later, Stauffenberg’s son Berthold, who was just 10 at the time, said: ‘They were not sure they would succeed but Tresckow said the attack on Hitler must go on, if only to prove that not all Germans were his followers.’
He was ushered into a briefing with Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, at 11.30am.
The briefing with Hitler was then moved forward to 12.30pm owing to the arrival later that day of Benito Mussolini.
Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair HQ after the assassination attempt (Picture: AFP via Getty)
Between the two, Stauffenberg asked to freshen up and change his shirt.
Accompanied to the toilet by his adjutant, the two quickly began trying to set the time-fuses in the two bombs inside his briefcase.
But they were rushed out before they could prime the second explosive device, which his aide stuffed inside his own case instead of Stauffenberg’s.
In his magisterial biography of Hitler, Professor Sir Ian Kershaw writes: ‘It was a decisive moment.
‘Had the second device, even without the charge being set, been placed in Stauffenberg’s bag along with the first, it would have been detonated by the explosion, more than doubling the effect.
‘Almost certainly, in such an event, no one would have survived.’
Stauffenberg managed to place his case under Hitler’s heavy oak briefing table and come up with an excuse to swiftly leave the meeting.
But after he left, the bag was moved next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force when it detonated soon after.
Hitler’s terrible revenge
Once the smoke had settled and Hitler had been treated for his injuries. The worst being his swollen right arm and burst eardrums, suspicion quickly turned to the missing Stauffenberg.
He was already on his way back to Berlin, but the ambiguity over whether the plot had succeeded meant that vital time for the other conspirators to launch the coup was lost.
By early evening it was clear the plot had failed.
Hitler went on the radio to proclaim that ‘Providence’ had saved him from a ‘tiny gang of criminal elements’ who had tied to eliminate him and the army high command.
He also vowed the conspirators would be ‘mercilessly eradicated’.
Stauffenberg and other leaders of the plot were arrested at the War Office in Berlin and executed by firing squad.
In the bloody aftermath thousands of people thought to be involved in the plot were arrested, nearly 5,000 of whom eventually met the same fate.
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