The Secret Bomb That Was Supposed to Kill Hitler

Beads of sweat drip profusely  down Lieutenant Colonel Claus   von Stauffenberg’s forehead as he  approaches the wooden conference hut   at Hitler’s infamous Wolf’s Lair complex.  He’s fraught with nerves thinking about   the contents of the leather briefcase he  tightly grips in his one remaining hand.
Inside, two dozen of the Third Reich’s most senior  military leaders stand crowded around a map spread   across the table. At their head stands the man  he brought the briefcase for: Adolf Hitler. Soon, what Stauffenberg is carrying  will either trigger the end of World   War 2 – or expose a dark secret  that will cost him his life… In the summer of 1938, as Hitler’s threatened  invasion of Czechoslovakia brought Europe   ever closer to the brink of war, a remarkable  plot was taking shape in the heart of Berlin.
General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the German  General Staff, had reached a breaking point.   The Führer’s relentless drive toward  military aggression was leading Germany   into what Beck was certain would  be a catastrophic two-front war. Beck’s opposition wasn’t merely strategic  – it was also deeply moral.
When ordered to   prepare the invasion of Austria earlier  that year, he had initially refused,   horrified at the prospect of Germans potentially  taking the lives of other ethnic Germans. Though   he eventually capitulated when  threatened with SA involvement,   the experience left him profoundly  shaken.
Now, facing Hitler’s demands   to seize the German-speaking Sudetenland region  of Czechoslovakia, Beck drew a line in the sand. In a memorandum dated July 1938,   Beck wrote words that would define the  resistance movement for years to come:   [QUOTE] “The very existence of the nation is at  stake.
History will attribute a blood-guilt to   leaders that do not act in accordance with their  professional expertise and political conscience.” He urged his fellow generals to resign en masse,  hoping their collective action would force Hitler   to abandon his violent expansionist plans.  When the generals failed to unite behind him,   Beck resigned in protest. But his moral courage  inspired others.
General Franz Halder, Beck’s   successor, along with generals Erwin von Witzleben  and Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, chose a more   direct path. Working with Hans Oster of military  intelligence, they hatched an audacious plan to   arrest Hitler and put him on trial for treason the  moment he ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The conspiracy was meticulously planned.
Detailed orders were prepared down to the   divisional level for seizing key installations  in Berlin and disarming Nazi paramilitary   organizations. The plotters were counting  on German war-weariness – the people had   suffered terribly in the Great War and  would surely oppose another conflict. However, on September 29, 1938, something totally  unexpected happened. At the Munich Conference,   British Prime Minister Neville  Chamberlain and French Premier   Édouard Daladier capitulated to Hitler’s  demands, handing him the Sudetenland   without a fight. Chamberlain returned to  London, proclaiming “peace for our time.
” With Hitler’s bloodless triumph,  the conspiracy collapsed overnight.   They could not arrest a successful dictator on  grounds of madness when he had just achieved his   objectives without firing a shot. The best  chance to stop Hitler before the war began   had slipped away, leaving the conspirators  to scatter and await another opportunity.
The years following the Munich  debacle brought Hitler triumph   after triumph. Poland fell in weeks, France  surrendered in barely a month, and by 1941,   the Third Reich controlled Europe from the  Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean.
Many   German officers found themselves swept up in the  euphoria of these swift victories, their earlier   doubts about Hitler’s leadership temporarily  silenced by his apparent military genius. But not everyone shared this intoxication  with conquest. The core of military   opposition that had crystallized around  Ludwig Beck in 1938 remained unbroken,   driven underground but not destroyed.
When Hitler  launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941,   these scattered resistance groups found new  cause for alarm—and new opportunities for action. Major General Henning von Tresckow, serving as  Chief Operations Officer for Army Group Centre,   embodied the aristocratic officer class  that had reluctantly accepted Nazi rule.   Born into a Prussian military family with  three centuries of service, Tresckow had   initially supported Hitler’s reversal of the  hated Versailles Treaty.
But as German forces   pushed deep into the Soviet Union, he encountered  orders that shattered his remaining illusions. The “Commissar Order” commanded troops  to execute captured Soviet political   officers on sight. The “Barbarossa Decree”  suspended military justice for crimes against   Russian civilians.
Behind German lines, SS  Einsatzgruppen wiped out Jewish civilians   en masse while Soviet prisoners of war  were starved and shot in their thousands. When Tresckow learned of a massacre at Borisov  where thousands of Jews were exterminated,   he appealed desperately to Field Marshal  Fedor von Bock: [QUOTE] “Never may such   a thing happen again! And so we must  act now.
We have the power in Russia!” By autumn 1941, Tresckow had begun quietly  recruiting like-minded officers to his   staff – men from Prussia’s finest families who  shared his horror at what Germany had become.   Army Group Centre was transforming from  a military headquarters into the nerve   center of a new resistance movement, one  that would soon reach back to Berlin with   a message that would reshape the anti-Hitler  conspiracy: they were “prepared to do anything.
” By late 1941, Tresckow’s message had reached  sympathetic ears in Berlin. Among them was   General Friedrich Olbricht, Chief of the General  Army Office, who controlled Germany’s military   replacement system from his headquarters  in the Bendlerblock. Unlike Tresckow,   who commanded respect but no troops, Olbricht  possessed something potentially more valuable:   oversight of practically everything the  military did inside the Reich itself. The highly decorated veteran had watched with  growing alarm as the Wehrmacht’s winter retreat
from Moscow exposed the true face of Nazi rule.  German soldiers were confronted for the first   time with evidence of SS atrocities committed  behind their lines. The aura of invincibility   was cracking, and with it, the regime’s  psychological hold over the German people. Olbricht recognized that this moment  of disillusionment might never come   again.
Working with Admiral Wilhelm  Canaris, chief of military intelligence,   he convinced Hitler that Germany faced  a serious internal threat. Millions of   foreign slave laborers now toiled in German  factories – what if they rose in revolt?   The Führer, ever paranoid about enemies  within, immediately ordered the Home   Army to develop contingency plans  for suppressing such an uprising.
The plan was christened “Valkyrie,” after  the warrior maidens of Norse mythology   who decided which heroes would fall in  battle. On paper, it appeared entirely   loyal – detailed procedures for Home Army units  to secure key installations, arrest saboteurs,   and restore order in German cities.
Hitler  himself approved the operation, never   suspecting that Olbricht was crafting what was  designed to be the weapon of his own destruction. The genius lay in the plan’s deliberate ambiguity.  Who exactly were these “saboteurs” to be arrested?   The orders spoke vaguely of “unreliable  elements” and “enemies of the state.” With   careful rewording, these same directives could  be turned against the Nazi leadership itself.
Olbricht began quietly recruiting officers  who might be sympathetic to his cause,   testing their loyalty through carefully  coded conversations. Hidden within   Hitler’s own emergency protocols,  he had created the blueprint for   a military coup – one that would use  the regime’s paranoia against itself.
By March 1943, the conspiracy had  crystallized into three operational cells:   Tresckow commanding Army Group Centre in the East,  Olbricht controlling the Home Army in Berlin,   and Hans Oster running intelligence operations  until the Gestapo’s growing suspicions forced   him underground.
The winter disaster at  Stalingrad had finally shattered German   confidence – if Hitler could be eliminated  now, the military coup might actually succeed. The opportunity came on March 13, when Hitler  finally agreed to visit Army Group Centre   headquarters at Smolensk. Tresckow had been  working for months to arrange such a visit,   and now he had to decide how to assassinate  the most heavily guarded man in Europe.
The first plan involved collective action  during Hitler’s luncheon with the staff. At a   predetermined signal, multiple officers would draw  their pistols and shoot Hitler simultaneously.   But Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, Army Group  Centre’s commander, balked at the idea. He pleaded   with Tresckow: [QUOTE] “For heaven’s sake, don’t  do anything today! It’s still too soon for that!” Kluge feared the German people  weren’t ready for such a dramatic act,   and worried about civil war  between the Army and the SS.
Tresckow had anticipated this  reluctance. As Hitler prepared   to depart, the general approached  Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Brandt,   one of Hitler’s staff officers,  boarding the Führer’s Condor aircraft. Handing over a package wrapped like  a gift, Tresckow asked casually:   [QUOTE] “Would you be good enough  to take this to Colonel Stieff at   headquarters? It’s a couple of bottles  of Cointreau – payment for a lost bet.
” Brandt smiled and agreed, never suspecting  he was carrying a bomb crafted from captured   British plastic explosives. Tresckow’s  aide, Fabian von Schlabrendorff,   had fashioned the device to look like two  liqueur bottles, complete with a silent acid   fuse that would eat through a wire in thirty  minutes – enough time for the aircraft to   crash deep in Soviet-controlled territory where  partisan activity could explain the “accident.
” As Hitler’s plane lifted off, Schlabrendorff  sent the coded message to Berlin:   “Flash” – the assassination was underway.  In thirty minutes, Hitler would be no more,   and Operation Valkyrie would  swing into action across Germany. But the Condor landed safely at Hitler’s  Wolf’s Lair headquarters.
The bomb’s   detonator had functioned perfectly,  but the freezing temperatures in the   unheated cargo hold had prevented  the main charge from igniting. Displaying remarkable composure,  Schlabrendorff took the next flight   to retrieve the package before  anyone discovered the failed bomb.   The perfect assassination had failed  by mere degrees of temperature.
The failure of the Cointreau bomb didn’t deter the  conspirators – it only made them more desperate.   Within days of Hitler’s narrow escape, they were  planning another attempt, this time at a Berlin   exhibition of captured Soviet Weapons that Hitler  would open on March 21, where the exhibition was   due to take place, offered a rare opportunity:  Hitler would be confined in a relatively small   indoor space for thirty minutes, surrounded by  top Nazi leaders, including Himmler and Göring.
A member of Tresckow’s inner circle at Army  Group Centre, Colonel Rudolf Christoph Freiherr   von Gersdorff, bravely volunteered to serve as  Hitler’s tour guide through the exhibition – a   role that would involve sacrificing his  own life to end the Führer’s reign of   terror.
Hidden in his greatcoat pockets would  be British plastic explosives with ten-minute   fuses – enough time to position himself  close to Hitler before the detonation. As the appointed day arrived, Gersdorff activated  the fuses and began the tour. But Hitler,   perhaps warned by some sixth sense, raced through  the exhibition in barely two minutes instead of   the scheduled thirty.
Gersdorff desperately  tried to engage the Führer’s interest, pointing   out various weapons and captured equipment,  but Hitler showed no inclination to linger. Another perfect opportunity had slipped away. However, in November 1943, the conspirators  would once again get a chance to get close to   Hitler.
The German Army was to get a new winter  uniform, and it would be modeled for the Führer   at the Wolf’s Lair. Among Tresckow’s network  was a young officer named Captain Axel von   dem Bussche; standing over six feet tall with  blond hair and blue eyes, Bussche embodied the   Nazi “Aryan ideal” – making him the perfect  choice to demonstrate the uniform’s features. Bussche planned to carry a landmine in his  backpack, which he would detonate while   embracing Hitler during the presentation,  blowing them both to smithereens.
Yet once again, the plot to eliminate  the Führer fell victim to bad luck. On   the night before the scheduled  demonstration, Allied bombers   destroyed the freight car containing the  new uniforms. The viewing was canceled,   then repeatedly postponed.
By the time it  was finally rescheduled for February 1944,   Bussche had returned to frontline duty, where  he was severely wounded, losing part of one leg. Captain Ewald von Kleist volunteered to  replace him, but that demonstration too   was repeatedly delayed and eventually canceled  altogether. Captain Eberhard von Breitenbuch   made a final attempt in March 1944, planning  to shoot Hitler with a concealed pistol during   a staff briefing. But new security measures  excluded junior officers from the meeting room.
By spring 1944, the conspiracy was racing  against time. The Gestapo’s investigations were   intensifying, closing in on resistance networks  that had operated in relative safety for years.   In January, Count Helmuth James von Moltke, a key  figure in the civilian resistance, was arrested.   Other prominent opponents, including  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Julius Leber,   and Wilhelm Leuschner, had been  swept up in the expanding dragnet.
Each arrest brought the possibility of torture,   confession, and the exposure of the entire  military conspiracy. The resistance leaders   knew they were living on borrowed time –  every day they delayed increased the risk   that their carefully constructed network  would be rolled up before they could act.
However, not only had all the  assassination attempts failed,   but the likelihood of successfully carrying  one out in the future was rapidly diminishing.   Hitler had become virtually unreachable,  greatly reducing his public engagements   and instead spending his time between  the heavily fortified Wolf’s Lair and   his Bavarian retreat. The plot against him  needed a new approach – and a new assassin.
The previous August, Olbricht had taken  on a new deputy: Lieutenant Colonel Claus   Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. Unlike the  early conspirators who had opposed Hitler   from the beginning, the 36-year-old Swabian  aristocrat had initially supported the regime,   even speaking enthusiastically about German  colonization during the Polish campaign.
But Stauffenberg’s battlefield  experiences had gradually   eroded that faith. Serving  with Rommel’s Afrika Korps,   he witnessed Germany’s growing weakness against  overwhelming Allied material superiority,   while reports filtering back from the Eastern  Front revealed systematic atrocities that violated   every principle of his Catholic upbringing and  Prussian military honor.
By early 1943, he had   concluded that Hitler was leading Germany not to  victory but to moral and physical destruction. The Allied air attack that nearly  ended his life in Tunisia in April   1943 had proven paradoxically liberating. The  blast had cost him his left eye, right hand,   and two fingers on his remaining hand,  but his injuries had brought him back   to Berlin – and into contact with an internal  resistance movement he had never known existed.
When Olbricht had approached him to  work as his deputy in August 1943,   Stauffenberg had readily joined the  conspiracy in a planning role. Since then,   he had been focused on refining the Valkyrie  operation, building upon the detailed framework   that Tresckow had drafted during his sick  leave in Berlin before being transferred   back to frontline duty in October, limiting his  involvement in future assassination attempts.
As summer 1944 drew near, the  situation was looking increasingly   desperate for the conspirators. While.  The Gestapo’s net continued to tighten,   and now Germany’s military fortunes were quickly  deteriorating. On June 6, the D-Day landings saw   the Allies begin the liberation of France,  while news from the Eastern Front was equally   distressing, with Soviet forces now advancing  relentlessly westward toward the Reich itself.
While it was now clear that their country faced  inevitable defeat, Olbricht, Stauffenberg,   and their colleagues believed that a  successful coup might allow Germany   to surrender to the Western Allies before  Soviet forces could occupy the entire country.   More importantly, it would demonstrate to the  world that the German people had not all supported   Hitler’s regime – that there had been those  willing to risk everything to oppose tyranny.
Yet just then, an unexpected opportunity  emerged. General Friedrich Fromm,   commander of the Home Army and the only man  besides Hitler authorized to activate Valkyrie,   needed a new chief of staff. Fortuitously, on July  1, the post was officially given to Stauffenberg. This presented him with something  the conspiracy had never possessed:   regular access to Hitler’s military conferences.
The once-loyal officer was now perfectly placed   to become the man to finally eliminate the  Führer – but he would have to work fast. On July 11, less than two weeks after  being appointed to his new position,   Stauffenberg received his first summons to  Hitler’s headquarters on short notice. He   realized this was his moment.
He planned to enter  Hitler’s military briefing with a briefcase,   which would contain an explosive device  consisting of approximately two pounds   of British plastic explosive  fitted with pencil detonators. He would activate the timer, leave  the case near the Führer, and excuse   himself from the room before the explosion,  before immediately flying back to Berlin,   where his presence would be crucial for  convincing hesitant military commanders   to follow the coup orders that Olbricht  would issue under Operation Valkyrie.
Given the rushed preparations, barely giving  them enough time to notify the other members   of their network, the conspirators agreed  that Stauffenberg should only proceed if   both Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring  were present alongside Hitler. Eliminating   all three Nazi leaders simultaneously  would maximize their chances of success.
When Stauffenberg arrived at the Wolf’s  Lair and discovered that neither Himmler   nor Göring would attend the briefing, he  called Olbricht to report their absence.   Without the other two targets present,  the assassination was called off. Four days later, on July 15, Stauffenberg was  again summoned to brief Hitler.
This time,   with the need to act growing more and more  urgent, the conspirators decided that the   assassination would have to proceed  regardless of who else was present. Since reliable army units were stationed farther  from Berlin than SS forces loyal to Hitler,   Olbricht decided to give the military a head  start by issuing Valkyrie Alert Level One   approximately two hours before Stauffenberg  could reasonably attempt the assassination.
At 1:10pm, Stauffenberg entered the  first briefing at the Wolf’s Lair,   his briefcase containing the bomb. But the meeting  was cut short to allow for a second session where   he was required to present detailed reports.  By 2:20pm, the second briefing had also ended,   and Stauffenberg had still not found  an opportunity to detonate the bomb. Meanwhile, back in Berlin, Valkyrie Alert Level  One had been active for over three hours.
Reserve   units across the Berlin Military District  had been placed on alert and were awaiting   further orders. When Stauffenberg called to  report his failure, Olbricht faced a nightmare   scenario – how to explain the unauthorized  military alert without exposing the conspiracy. Thinking quickly, Olbricht embarked on what  he claimed to be an “inspection tour” of the   activated units, visiting each one to explain that  this had been a routine exercise.
His performance   was flawless, but the damage was done. Both  Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Armed Forces   High Command, and Himmler himself demanded  explanations for the unauthorized alert. Stauffenberg’s failed attempt had  inadvertently functioned as a dress   rehearsal, proving that Valkyrie could be  activated effectively when the time came.
But it had also painted a target  on Olbricht’s back. Next time,   there could be no premature alerts, no second  chances, no room for error. The assassination   would have to be a total success – or the  conspiracy would disappear with its leaders. On July 20, Stauffenberg was to attend another  military briefing with Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair.
That morning, he set off from Berlin in  a Heinkel He 111 with his briefcase bomb,   while his aide, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften,  carried additional explosives as backup. As they   touched down at Rastenburg airfield and  began making their way to the compound,   the temperature was already climbing toward  what would become a sweltering summer afternoon,   and Stauffenberg’s shirt quickly  became soaked with perspiration.
Upon arrival at the Wolf’s Lair,  Stauffenberg learned that Benito   Mussolini was due to arrive later that  day, meaning the military briefing was to   be moved forward by thirty minutes – a change  that compressed his already tight timeline. Just before 12:30pm, he excused himself to use  the washroom in Wilhelm Keitel’s office, claiming   he needed to change his sweat-soaked shirt.
There,  with Haeften’s assistance, he used pliers to crush   the acid capsule in one of the pencil detonators.  The device would now eat through a restraining   wire in approximately ten minutes, releasing  the firing pin and triggering the explosion. However, they were interrupted by a  guard’s knock – the briefing was about   to begin.
In his haste, Stauffenberg  was unable to prepare the second bomb,   handing it back to Haeften as they hurried toward  the conference room. With the timer now running,   every second brought them closer to the  moment that was due to change history forever. At 12:37pm, Stauffenberg entered the conference  room, his deadly cargo in hand. Hitler stood   hunched over a large oak table, studying military  maps with his staff.
The room was stifling in the   summer heat, its windows thrown open to catch any  breeze. Twenty-four officers crowded around the   table as General Adolf Heusinger droned through  his situation report from the Eastern Front. Stauffenberg approached the table and positioned  his briefcase as close to Hitler as possible.
The Führer stood just feet away, his back  turned as he listened to reports of Soviet   advances. With the timer now counting  down, Stauffenberg quietly announced he   needed to take an urgent telephone  call and slipped out of the room. As he walked briskly toward the communications  building, Stauffenberg could hear Heusinger’s   voice continuing through the open  windows.
But at exactly 12:42pm,   the general’s words were cut short as two pounds  of British plastic explosive transformed Hitler’s   daily briefing into a scene of carnage and  chaos. The wooden hut’s windows blew out,   debris scattered across the compound,  and smoke billowed into the summer sky. Stauffenberg witnessed the blast from  roughly 200 yards away as he and Haeften   raced toward their waiting aircraft.  The explosion seemed so massive that   they were convinced no one in the  room could have lived through it.
Bluffing their way past three security checkpoints  with remarkable composure, they reached Rastenburg   airfield just as it was being sealed off.  By 1:15pm, their Heinkel was airborne,   and they were on their way to Berlin, where  they would help instigate Operation Valkyrie. But back at the Wolf’s Lair, things hadn’t gone  quite as planned.
As General Erich Fellgiebel,   the conspirators’ communications chief, prepared  to notify Berlin of a successful assassination,   he witnessed something that changed everything:   Hitler crawling out of the wreckage,  singed and shaken – but very much alive. Fellgiebel managed to place one cryptic call  to Berlin before communications were seized by   Hitler’s staff.
His message to General  Fritz Thiele was deliberately vague:   [QUOTE] “Something terrible has  happened. The Führer lives.” The ambiguous phrasing left Thiele and Olbricht  uncertain whether this meant the assassination   had failed or that Hitler had somehow survived  the explosion. For nearly three crucial hours,   the conspiracy’s leadership in Berlin remained  paralyzed by uncertainty.
Olbricht knew that   launching Valkyrie if Hitler was still  alive would be catastrophic – but waiting   for confirmation might also doom the  entire operation. Without Stauffenberg   yet to arrive, and with only Fellgiebel’s  cryptic warning to guide them, they hesitated. Meanwhile, at the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s  staff was conducting its own investigation.
The discovery that Stauffenberg had been  in the briefing room but was now missing   led them to an inescapable conclusion: the  explosion had been an assassination attempt,   and the chief of staff to the Home  Army was likely the perpetrator. By 4:00pm, Stauffenberg had finally returned  to Berlin and burst into the Bendlerblock with   the electrifying news of Hitler’s demise.
His euphoric certainty swept away hours of   paralyzing doubt. Olbricht immediately moved to  activate Valkyrie, but when he approached General   Fromm for authorization, disaster struck.  Fromm had already spoken with Field Marshal   Keitel at the Wolf’s Lair, who assured him the  Führer had survived with only minor injuries. Refusing to be deterred, Olbricht and  Stauffenberg took the unprecedented   step of arresting their own commanding  officer.
With Fromm locked away under guard,   General Hoepner assumed command of the Home Army,  and Valkyrie orders began flowing to military   districts across Germany. For a brief, shining  moment, the impossible seemed within reach. The orders carried an elegant deception crafted  months earlier by Tresckow: [QUOTE] “The Führer   Adolf Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of  party leaders has attempted to exploit the   situation by attacking our embattled soldiers  from the rear to seize power for themselves.
”   Military commanders were instructed to arrest  all Nazi officials, occupy radio stations,   and secure concentration camps – all in the  name of protecting Germany from an SS coup. In Paris, the deception worked perfectly. General  Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, military commander   of occupied France and a committed conspirator,  immediately ordered the arrest of SS and SD   leaders throughout the city. By evening,  over a thousand Nazi security personnel were   in military custody, their headquarters  occupied, their communications severed.
But elsewhere, the coup began  fragmenting almost immediately.   The fatal delay in activating Valkyrie had  allowed Hitler’s staff to issue counter-orders   simultaneously with the conspiracy’s  commands.
Confused military district   commanders received contradictory instructions:  Berlin ordered them to arrest Nazi officials   while the Wolf’s Lair commanded them to  ignore all orders from the Bendlerblock. In this chaos of conflicting loyalties, personal  relationships became decisive. Some officers   trusted Stauffenberg and Olbricht enough to  follow their orders despite the confusion. Others,   uncertain whether this was a genuine emergency  or an SS trap, chose to wait for clarification.
Major Otto Ernst Remer, commander of the Berlin  Guard Battalion responsible for securing the   government district, was still uncertain about the  conflicting orders he was receiving. At 7:00pm,   he decided to consult with Propaganda Minister  Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels immediately arranged a   telephone connection to the Wolf’s Lair, allowing  Hitler himself to speak directly with Remer.
Hearing the Führer’s unmistakable voice confirming  his survival, Remer instantly switched sides and   received orders to crush the rebellion. Within  hours, his troops had surrounded the Bendlerblock. By 10:00pm, the conspiracy was collapsing  from within. As news of Hitler’s survival   spread and radio broadcasts confirmed the  Führer was alive, doubt crept into the   hearts of officers who had initially followed  Valkyrie orders.
In the Bendlerblock itself,   staff members who had been kept in the  dark about the plot began questioning   their superiors’ increasingly frantic  telephone calls to military districts. Around 11:00pm, a group of armed  officers confronted Olbricht directly,   demanding to know what was really happening.
When  Stauffenberg appeared and saw the weapons drawn,   he attempted to flee. A shot rang  out, wounding him in the shoulder,   and within minutes the remaining  conspirators were under arrest. General Fromm, freed from his makeshift prison,   found himself in a desperate position. His own  knowledge of the conspiracy made him complicit,   and he knew that surviving conspirators might  reveal his involvement under interrogation.
In a calculated attempt to save himself,  he convened an impromptu court-martial in   his own office, appointing himself  as judge, jury, and executioner. Fromm declared Beck, Olbricht,  Stauffenberg, Haeften, and Colonel   Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim guilty of high  treason and sentenced them all to immediate   execution.
When Beck requested the privilege of  taking his own life, Fromm granted the request,   but after two failed attempts, a  sergeant was ordered to finish the job. At 12:10am on July 21, the four surviving  conspirators were marched down the red marble   staircase into the Bendlerblock courtyard. Staff  cars were positioned to provide illumination,   their headlights casting stark  shadows against the building’s   walls. A hastily assembled firing  squad of ten men took their positions.
The volley of gunfire echoed through the  courtyard at 12:15am. In less than twelve hours,   the conspiracy that had taken years to plan  and months to execute had been crushed. Stauffenberg had remained defiant to the  end. As he faced the rifles, he called out   his final words: [QUOTE] “Es lebe das heilige  Deutschland!” – “Long live sacred Germany!” Interestingly, some witnesses claimed  he shouted instead: [QUOTE] “Es lebe das   geheime Deutschland!”—”Long live secret Germany!” “Secret Germany” likely refers to  an idealistic vision of the nation   promoted by poet Stefan George, whose  circle had influenced Stauffenberg’s
youth and represented moral values  in opposition to Nazi brutality. Still posted on the Eastern Front, Tresckow,  the intellectual architect of the resistance,   learned of the coup’s failure the following  morning. Rather than face capture,   he walked into no-man’s land between German  and Soviet lines and detonated a hand   grenade.
His final words to Schlabrendorff  captured the conspiracy’s tragic nobility:   [QUOTE] “The whole world will vilify us now,  but I am still totally convinced that we did   the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy  not only of Germany but of the world.” Back in Berlin, Fromm’s desperate gambit  to cover his tracks had turned out to be   futile – he too would be arrested within hours.  He was eventually executed in March 1945.
While the plot’s leaders were now all gone,   Heinrich Himmler was not satisfied.  Over the following months, the Gestapo’s   dragnet would sweep up anyone with even the  remotest connection to anti-Nazi sentiment. The investigations revealed the true scope of  the resistance movement that had operated in   the shadows for six years.
The discovery of  letters, diaries, and documents in the homes   and offices of arrested conspirators exposed  the plots of 1938, 1939, and 1943, leading   to further rounds of arrests. Colonel General  Franz Halder, who had led the 1938 conspiracy,   was dragged from retirement to spend the  war’s final months in a concentration camp.
Most of those arrested faced the grotesque  theater of Roland Freisler’s People’s Court,   where the fanatical Nazi judge  screamed insults at defendants   while cameras recorded their humiliation  for propaganda purposes. The conspirators   were stripped of their uniforms and  forced to wear shabby civilian clothes,   their military honors publicly revoked  before they faced the hangman’s noose.
Under Himmler’s new doctrine of Sippenhaft –  “blood guilt” – the regime extended its vengeance   to the families of the conspirators. Wives,  children, parents, and even distant relatives   were arrested and imprisoned. The Stauffenberg  children were taken from their mother and placed   in foster care under assumed names, their father’s  surname now considered too dangerous to bear.
By the war’s end, over 7,000  people had been arrested in   connection with conspiracies against the  Nazi leadership, and nearly 5,000 executed. The plot to eliminate Hitler had failed  miserably.
But it had shown the world that not   all Germans – not even high-ranking Army officers  – were prepared to sit by and allow Adolf Hitler   to get away with his crimes unchallenged,  even if it meant paying with their lives.