THE JULY CONSPIRACY OF 1944 By the end of 1943, the RSHA realized the presence of a powerful anti-Hitler opposition in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, but it seemed that it could not find evidence against many specific individuals. Those suspects who were finally identified were not touched,

Operational report for July 19, 1944 The troops of the 3rd BALTIC Front, having crossed the VELIKAYA River, broke through the heavily fortified, deeply developed German defenses south of the city of OSTROV and in two days of offensive battles advanced forward to 40 kilometers, expanding the breakthrough to 70

Operational report for July 20, 1944 During July 20, south of the city of OSTROV, our troops fought forward and occupied more than 30 settlements, including DEMESHKINO, PASHKOVO, SERGINO, PEZLOVO, ROGOVO, SHMAILI. North of the city of DRUYA ours troops continued to lead

Operational report for July 21, 1944 On the KARELIAN front, north and west of the city of SUOYARVI, our troops fought offensive battles, during which they occupied more than 40 settlements; among them? KUDOM-GUBA, GINDENVARA, ILYANVARA, TERKKELYA, SUOKONTO, YAGLJARVI, KIVIJARVI,

Operational report for July 22, 1944 During July 22, on the KARELIAN front, northwest of the city of SUOYARVI, our troops fought and occupied several settlements; among them? IZYANVARA, PAKHKALAMPI, LONGONVARA, VARPAVARA, LIUSVARA. In the area of ​​LONGONVARA, our troops reached

Operational report for July 23, 1944. Troops of the 3rd BALTIC Front stormed a powerful stronghold of the German defense on July 23. city ​​and a large railway junction of PSKOV, and also occupied more than 100 settlements with fighting, including large settlements

Operational report for July 24, 1944 During July 24, to the west and southwest of the city of PSKOV, our troops continued to conduct offensive battles, during which they occupied more than 60 settlements, including the large settlements of KORLY, PODDUBE, VYZHLIVO, ELISEEVO, ZAITSEVO,

Operational report for July 25, 1944 During July 25, southwest of the city of PSKOV, our troops fought and occupied more than 40 settlements, including LAKAMTSEVO, BELOKHVOSTOVO, SAMOKHVA-LOVA, KACHANAVA, AKSENAVA, TEPENITSA, MEIROVA, VILAKA, SVILPOVA and the railway station

On July 20, 1944, the most famous attempt on the Fuhrer’s life took place at Hitler’s headquarters in the Görlitz forest near Rastenburg in East Prussia (the “Wolf’s Lair” headquarters). From "Wolfsschanze" (German: Wolfsschanze) Hitler led military operations on the Eastern Front from June 1941 to November 1944. The headquarters was well guarded; it was impossible for outsiders to enter it. In addition, the entire surrounding territory was in a special position: just a kilometer away was the headquarters of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces. To be invited to Headquarters, a recommendation was needed from a person close to the top leadership of the Reich. The call to the meeting of the Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces of the Reserve, Klaus Schenck von Stauffenberg, was approved by the head of the Wehrmacht High Command, the Fuhrer's chief adviser on military issues, Wilhelm Keitel.

The assassination attempt was the culmination of a plot by the military opposition to assassinate Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany. The conspiracy, which existed in the armed forces and the Abwehr since 1938, involved military personnel who believed that Germany was not ready for a major war. In addition, the military was angered by the increased role of the SS troops.

From the assassination attempts on Hitler

The attempt on July 20 was the 42nd in a row, and all of them failed, often Hitler survived by some miracle. Although Hitler's popularity among the people was high, he also had plenty of enemies. Threats to physically eliminate the Fuhrer appeared immediately after the transfer of power to the Nazi Party. The police regularly received information about an impending assassination attempt on Hitler. Thus, from March to December 1933 alone, at least ten cases posed, in the opinion of the secret police, a danger to the new head of government. In particular, Kurt Lutter, a ship carpenter from Königsberg, and his associates in March 1933 prepared an explosion at one of the election rallies at which the head of the Nazis was supposed to speak.

On the part of Hitler’s left, they mainly tried to eliminate loners. In the 1930s, four attempts were made to eliminate Adolf Hitler. Thus, on November 9, 1939, in the famous Munich beer hall, Hitler spoke on the occasion of the anniversary of the failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in 1923. Former communist Georg Elser prepared and detonated an improvised explosive device. The explosion killed eight people and injured more than sixty people. However, Hitler was not injured. The Fuhrer ended his speech earlier than usual and left a few minutes before the bomb exploded.

In addition to the left, supporters of Otto Strasser’s “Black Front” also tried to eliminate Hitler. This organization was created in August 1931 and united extreme nationalists. They were dissatisfied with the economic policies of Hitler, who, in their opinion, was too liberal. Therefore, in February 1933, the Black Front was banned, and Otto Strasser fled to Czechoslovakia. In 1936, Strasser persuaded the Jewish student Helmut Hirsch (he emigrated to Prague from Stuttgart) to return to Germany and kill one of the Nazi leaders. The explosion was planned to take place in Nuremberg, during the next Nazi rally. But the attempt failed; Girsha was handed over to the Gestapo by one of the participants in the conspiracy. In July 1937, Helmut Hirsch was executed in Plötzensee prison in Berlin. The Black Front tried to plan another assassination attempt, but things did not go beyond theory.

Then Maurice Bavo, a theological student from Lausanne, wanted to kill Hitler. He failed to get into the Fuhrer's speech on the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch (November 9, 1938). Then the next day he tried to get into Hitler's residence in Obersalzburg and shoot the Nazi leader there. At the entrance he said that he had to give Hitler a letter. However, the guards became suspicious and arrested Bavo. In May 1941 he was executed.

Military conspiracy

Part of the German military elite believed that Germany was still weak and not ready for a big war. War, in their opinion, would lead the country to a new catastrophe. Around the former mayor of Leipzig, Karl Goerdeler (he was a famous lawyer and politician), a small circle of senior officers of the armed forces and the Abwehr formed who dreamed of changing the government course.

A notable figure among the conspirators was the Chief of the General Staff, Ludwig August Theodor Beck. In 1938, Beck prepared a series of documents in which he criticized the aggressive plans of Adolf Hitler. He believed that they were too risky and adventurous in nature (given the weakness of the armed forces, which were in the process of formation). In May 1938, the Chief of the General Staff spoke out against the plan for the Czechoslovak campaign. In July 1938, Beck sent a memorandum to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Colonel General Walter von Brauchitsch, in which he called for the resignation of Germany's top military leadership in order to prevent the outbreak of war with Czechoslovakia. According to him, there was a question about the existence of the nation. In August 1938, Beck submitted his resignation and ceased to serve as Chief of the General Staff. However, the German generals did not follow his example.

Beck even tried to find support from Great Britain. He sent his emissaries to England; at his request, Karl Goerdeler traveled to the British capital. However, the British government did not make contact with the conspirators. London followed the path of “pacifying” the aggressor in order to direct Germany towards the USSR.

Beck and a number of other officers planned to remove Hitler from power and prevent Germany from being drawn into the war. An assault group of officers was being prepared for the coup. Beck was supported by the Prussian aristocrat and staunch monarchist, commander of the 1st Army Erwin von Witzleben. The strike force included Abwehr officers (military intelligence and counterintelligence) led by the chief of staff of the foreign intelligence department, Colonel Hans Oster, and Major Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz. In addition, the new Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder, Walter von Brauchitsch, Erich Hoepner, Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeld, and the head of the Abwehr Wilhelm Franz Canaris supported the ideas of the conspirators and were dissatisfied with Hitler’s policies. Beck and Witzleben did not intend to kill Hitler, they initially only wanted to arrest him and remove him from power. At the same time, Abwehr officers were ready to shoot the Fuhrer during the coup.

The signal for the start of the coup should have come after the start of the operation to capture the Czechoslovak Sudetenland. However, there was no order: Paris, London and Rome gave the Sudetenland to Berlin, the war did not take place. Hitler became even more popular in society. The Munich Agreement solved the main problem of the coup - it prevented Germany from going to war with a coalition of countries.

The Second World War

Members of Hölderer's circle considered the outbreak of World War II a disaster for Germany. Therefore, a plan was hatched to blow up the Fuhrer. The organization of the bombing was to be carried out by the adviser of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Erich Kordt. But after the assassination attempt on November 9, 1939, carried out by Georg Elser, the security services were on alert and the conspirators failed to obtain explosives. The plan failed.

The Abwehr leadership attempted to thwart the invasion of Denmark and Norway (Operation Weserubung). Six days before the start of Operation Weser, on April 3, 1940, Colonel Oster met with the Dutch military attaché in Berlin, Jacobus Gijsbertus Szasz, and informed him of the exact date of the attack. The military attaché had to warn the governments of Great Britain, Denmark and Norway. However, he informed only the Danes. The Danish government and army were unable to organize resistance. Later, Hitler's supporters would “cleanse” the Abwehr: Hans Oster and Admiral Canaris were executed on April 9, 1945 in the Flossenburg concentration camp. In April 1945, another head of the military intelligence department, Hans von Dohnanyi, who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, was executed.

The successes of the “greatest commander of all time” Hitler and the Wehrmacht in Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland and France also became a defeat for the German Resistance. Many lost heart, others believed in the “star” of the Fuhrer, the population supported Hitler almost completely. Only the most irreconcilable conspirators, like the Prussian nobleman, General Staff officer Henning Hermann Robert Karl von Treskow, did not reconcile and tried to organize the assassination of Hitler. Treskov, like Canaris, had a sharply negative attitude towards terror against Jews and the command and political personnel of the Red Army, and tried to protest such orders. He told Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff that if the instructions about the execution of commissars and “suspicious” civilians (almost any person could be included in this category) were not canceled, then “Germany will finally lose its honor, and this will make itself felt throughout hundreds of years. The blame for this will be placed not on Hitler alone, but on you and me, on your wife and mine, on your children and mine.” Even before the start of the war, Treskov said that only the death of the Fuhrer could save Germany. Treskov believed that the conspirators were obliged to make an active attempt to assassinate Hitler and a coup d'etat. Even if it fails, they will prove to the whole world that not everyone in Germany was supporters of the Fuhrer. On the Eastern Front, Treskov prepared several plans to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but each time something got in the way. So, on March 13, 1943, Hitler visited the troops of Group Center. On the plane returning from Smolensk to Berlin, a bomb was installed, disguised as a gift, but the fuse did not go off.

A few days later, von Treskow’s colleague at the headquarters of the Center group, Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff, tried to blow himself up along with Adolf Hitler at an exhibition of captured weapons in Berlin. The Fuhrer had to stay at the exhibition for an hour. When the German leader appeared at the arsenal, the colonel set the fuse for 20 minutes, but after 15 minutes Hitler unexpectedly left. With great difficulty, Gersdorff managed to stop the explosion. There were other officers who were ready to sacrifice themselves to kill Hitler. Captain Axel von dem Bussche and Lieutenant Edward von Kleist independently wanted to eliminate the Fuhrer during the display of the new army uniform in early 1944. But Hitler, for some unknown reason, did not attend this demonstration. Field Marshal Busch's orderly Eberhard von Breitenbuch planned to shoot Hitler on March 11, 1944 at the Berghof residence. However, on this day the orderly was not allowed into the conversation between the German leader and the Field Marshal.

Valkyrie Plan

From the winter of 1941-1942. Deputy Commander of the Reserve Army, General Friedrich Olbricht, developed the Valkyrie plan, which was to be implemented during an emergency or internal unrest. According to the Valkyrie plan, during an emergency (for example, due to massive acts of sabotage and uprising of prisoners of war), the reserve army was subject to mobilization. Olbricht modernized the plan in the interests of the conspirators: the reserve army during the coup (Hitler's assassination) was supposed to become a weapon in the hands of the rebels and occupy key facilities and communications in Berlin, suppress possible resistance of SS units, arrest supporters of the Fuhrer, the highest Nazi leadership. The head of the Wehrmacht communications service, Erich Felgiebel, who was part of the group of conspirators, was supposed to, together with some trusted employees, ensure the blocking of a number of government communication lines and at the same time support those that would be used by the rebels. It was believed that the commander of the reserve army, Colonel General Friedrich Fromm, would join the conspiracy or be temporarily arrested, in which case Hoepner would take over leadership. Fromm knew about the conspiracy, but took a wait-and-see attitude. He was ready to join the rebels in the event of news of the Fuhrer's death.

After the assassination of the Fuhrer and the seizure of power, the conspirators planned to establish a provisional government. Ludwig Beck was to become the head of Germany (president or monarch), Karl Goerdeler - to head the government, and Erwin Witzleben - the armed forces. The provisional government had to first make a separate peace with the Western powers and continue the war against the Soviet Union (possibly as part of a Western coalition). In Germany they were going to restore the monarchy and hold democratic elections to the lower house of parliament (to limit its power).

The last hope for success for the conspirators was Colonel Klaus Philipp Maria Schenck, Count von Stauffenberg. He came from one of the oldest aristocratic families in southern Germany, associated with the royal dynasty of Württemberg. He was brought up on the ideas of German patriotism, monarchical conservatism and Catholicism. He initially supported Adolf Hitler and his policies, but in 1942, due to mass terror and military mistakes by the High Command, Stauffenberg joined the military opposition. In his opinion, Hitler was leading Germany to disaster. Since the spring of 1944, he, together with a small circle of associates, planned an assassination attempt on the Fuhrer. Of all the conspirators, only Colonel Stauffenberg had the opportunity to get close to Adolf Hitler. In June 1944, he was appointed chief of staff of the Army Reserve, which was located on Bendlerstrasse in Berlin. As chief of staff of the reserve army, Stauffenberg could participate in military meetings both at Adolf Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia and at the Berghof residence near Berchtesgaden.

Von Treskow and his subordinate Major Joachim Kuhn (trained as a military engineer) prepared homemade bombs for the assassination attempt. At the same time, the conspirators established contacts with the commander of the occupation forces in France, General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel. After the liquidation of Hitler, he was supposed to take all power in France into his own hands and begin negotiations with the British and Americans.

On July 6, Colonel Stauffenberg delivered an explosive device to the Berghof, but the assassination attempt did not occur. On July 11, the Chief of Staff of the Army Reserve attended a meeting at the Berghof with a British-made bomb, but did not activate it. Previously, the rebels decided that, together with the Fuhrer, it was necessary to simultaneously destroy Hermann Goering, who was Hitler's official successor, and Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, and both of them were not present at this meeting. In the evening, Stauffenberg met with the conspiracy leaders Olbricht and Beck and convinced them that the next time the explosion should be carried out regardless of whether Himmler and Goering would participate.

Another assassination attempt was planned for July 15. Stauffenberg took part in the meeting at Wolfsschanze. Two hours before the start of the meeting at headquarters, the deputy commander of the reserve army, Olbricht, gave the order to begin implementing the Valkyrie plan and move troops in the direction of the government quarter on Wilhelmstrasse. Stauffenberg made a report and went out to talk on the phone with Friedrich Olbricht. However, when he returned, the Fuhrer had already left headquarters. The colonel had to notify Olbricht about the failure of the assassination attempt, and he managed to cancel the order and return the troops to their places of deployment.

Failure of assassination attempt

On July 20, Count Stauffenberg and his orderly, Senior Lieutenant Werner von Heften, arrived at Headquarters "Wolf's Lair" with two explosive devices in their suitcases. Stauffenberg had to activate the charges just before the assassination attempt. The head of the Wehrmacht High Command, Wilhelm Keitel, called Stauffenberg to the Main Headquarters. The colonel was supposed to report on the formation of new units for the Eastern Front. Keitel told Stauffenberg something unpleasant: due to the heat, the military council was moved from a bunker on the surface to a light wooden house. An explosion in a closed underground room would be more effective. The meeting was supposed to start at half past twelve.

Stauffenberg asked permission to change his shirt after the journey. Keitel's adjutant Ernst von Friend took him to his sleeping quarters. There the conspirator began to urgently prepare fuses. It was difficult to do this with one left hand with three fingers (in April 1943 in North Africa, during a British air raid, he was seriously wounded, he was shell-shocked, Stauffenberg lost an eye and his right hand). The colonel was only able to prepare and place one bomb in his briefcase. Friend entered the room and said that he needed to hurry. The second explosive device was left without a detonator - instead of 2 kg of explosives, the officer had only one at his disposal. He had 15 minutes before the explosion.

Keitel and Stauffenberg entered the house when the military meeting had already begun. There were 23 people present, most of them sitting at a massive oak table. The colonel sat to the right of Hitler. While they were reporting on the situation on the Eastern Front, the conspirator placed a briefcase with an explosive device on the table closer to Hitler and left the room 5 minutes before the explosion. He had to support the rebels' next steps, which is why he did not stay in the room.

A happy accident saved Hitler this time: one of the meeting participants put his briefcase under the table. At 12.42 an explosion occurred. Four people were killed, others received various injuries. Hitler was shell-shocked, received several minor shrapnel wounds and burns, and his right arm was temporarily paralyzed. Stauffenberg saw the explosion and was sure that Hitler was killed. He was able to leave the cordoned off zone before it was closed.

At 13:15 Stauffenberg took off for Berlin. Two and a half hours later, the plane landed at Rangsdorf airport, where they were to be met. Stauffenberg learns that the conspirators, due to the contradictory information coming from headquarters, are doing nothing. He informs Olbricht that the Fuhrer has been killed. Only then did Olbricht go to the commander of the reserve army, F. Fromm, so that he would agree to implement the Valkyrie plan. Fromm decided to make sure of Hitler's death for himself and called Headquarters (the conspirators were unable to block all communication lines). Keitel told him that the assassination attempt had failed and Hitler was alive. Therefore, Fromm refused to participate in the rebellion. At this time, Klaus Stauffenberg and Werner Heften arrived at the building on Bandler Street. It was 16:30, almost four hours had passed since the assassination attempt, and the rebels had not yet begun to implement their plan to seize control of the Third Reich. All the conspirators were indecisive, and then Colonel Stauffenberg took the initiative.

Stauffenberg, Heften, and Beck went to Fromm and demanded that he sign the Valkyrie plan. Fromm again refused and was arrested. Colonel General Hoepner became the commander of the reserve army. Stauffenberg sat on the phone and convinced the formation commanders that Hitler had died and called for them to follow the instructions of the new command - Colonel General Beck and Field Marshal Witzleben. In Vienna, Prague and Paris, the implementation of the Valkyrie plan began. It was carried out especially successfully in France, where General Stülpnagel arrested the entire top leadership of the SS, SD and Gestapo. However, this was the last success of the conspirators. The rebels lost a lot of time, acted uncertainly and chaotically. The conspirators did not take control of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Imperial Chancellery, the Main Directorate of Imperial Security and the radio station. Hitler was alive, many knew about it. The Fuhrer's supporters acted more decisively, while those who wavered remained aloof from the rebellion.

At about six in the evening, the Berlin military commandant of Gase received a telephone message from Stauffenberg and summoned the commander of the Greater Germany security battalion, Major Otto-Ernst Roemer. The commandant informed him of Hitler's death and ordered him to put his unit on alert and cordon off the government quarter. A party functionary was present during the conversation; he convinced Major Roemer to contact Propaganda Minister Goebbels and coordinate the received instructions with him. Joseph Goebbels established contact with the Fuhrer and he gave the order to the major: suppress the rebellion at any cost (Roemer was promoted to colonel). By eight in the evening, Roemer's soldiers controlled the main government buildings in Berlin. At 22:40 the guards at the headquarters on Bandler Street were disarmed and Römer's officers arrested von Stauffenberg, his brother Berthold, Heften, Beck, Hoepner and other rebels. The conspirators were defeated.

Fromm was released and, in order to hide his participation in the conspiracy, organized a meeting of a military court, which immediately sentenced five people to death. An exception was made only for Beck; he was allowed to commit suicide. However, two bullets to the head did not kill him and the general was finished off. Four rebels - General Friedrich Olbricht, Lieutenant Werner Heften, Claus von Stauffenberg and the head of the general department of the ground forces headquarters, Merz von Quirnheim, were taken one by one into the headquarters courtyard and shot. Before the last salvo, Colonel Stauffenberg managed to shout: “Long live Holy Germany!”

On July 21, G. Himmler established a special commission of four hundred senior SS ranks to investigate the “Plot of July 20,” and arrests, torture, and executions began throughout the Third Reich. In the case of the July 20 Conspiracy, more than 7 thousand people were arrested, about two hundred were executed. Hitler even took “revenge” on the corpses of the main conspirators: the bodies were dug up and burned, the ashes were scattered.

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Groups of conspirators planning an anti-Nazi coup existed in the Wehrmacht and military intelligence (Abwehr) since 1938 and had as their goal the abandonment of Germany's aggressive foreign policy and the prevention of a future war, for which most of the conspirators believed Germany was not ready. In addition, many military personnel perceived the strengthening of the SS and the Fritsch-Blomberg affair that happened in 1938 as a humiliation of the Wehrmacht. The conspirators planned to remove Hitler after he ordered an attack on Czechoslovakia, create a provisional government, and subsequently hold democratic elections. The dissatisfied included Colonel General Ludwig Beck, who resigned from the post of Chief of Staff of the Army on August 18, 1938 as a sign of disagreement with Hitler's policies, the new Chief of Staff Franz Halder, future Field Marshals Erwin von Witzleben and Walter von Brauchitsch, Generals Erich Hoepner and Walter von Brockdorff-Alefeld, Abwehr head Wilhelm Franz Canaris, Abwehr Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster, as well as Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz, banker Hjalmar Schacht, former Leipzig mayor Karl Goerdeler and diplomat Ulrich von Hassell. Goerdeler regularly traveled throughout Europe, meeting with prominent politicians. On behalf of Oster, one of the conspirators, Ewald von Kleist-Schmentzin, flew to London on August 18, at the height of the crisis, to warn British politicians of Hitler's aggressive intentions. The coup was planned for the last days of September 1938, but on the morning of September 28, the plans of the conspirators were confused by the message that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had agreed to come to Germany and negotiate with Hitler, and Great Britain would not declare war on Germany. The subsequent signing of the Munich Agreement made the main goal of the coup - preventing an armed conflict - fulfilled.

Plans to remove Hitler continued to exist, but due to the indecisiveness of the conspirators (primarily Brauchitsch and Halder), none of them were implemented. With the outbreak of the war, the military, especially on the eastern front, were also forced to turn a blind eye to atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war (the activities of the Einsatzgruppen, the “Commissar Decree”, etc.), and in some cases, to independently carry out certain measures . Since 1941, a group of conspirators led by Colonel Henning von Treskow, nephew of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, operated at the headquarters of Army Group Center on the Eastern Front. Treskov was a staunch opponent of the Nazi regime and consistently appointed people to his headquarters who shared his views. Among them were Colonel Baron Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, reserve lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, who became Treskow's adjutant, and brothers Georg and Philipp von Boeselager. Von Bock was also dissatisfied with Hitler's policies, but refused to support the conspiracy in any form. After the defeat in the Battle of Moscow, Brauchitsch and von Bock were dismissed, and Hans Gunther von Kluge was appointed commander of the Center. The Resistance group created by Treskov was preserved at the headquarters of the “Center” in Smolensk. Through Schlabrendorff she maintained contacts with Beck, Goerdeler and Oster. Goerdeler and Treskow also tried to bring von Kluge into the conspiracy and believed that he was on their side.

In the fall of 1942, Halder was removed from his post, which deprived the conspirators of contact with the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces. However, Oster was soon able to attract the head of the Combined Arms Directorate of the High Command of the Ground Forces and the deputy commander of the reserve army, General Friedrich Olbricht. The Reserve Army was a combat-ready unit intended, in particular, to suppress unrest within Germany. During 1942, the plot evolved into a two-stage operation, including the assassination of Hitler by the conspirators and the capture of main communications and suppression of SS resistance by the reserve army.

Numerous attempts by the Treskow group to kill Hitler were unsuccessful. On March 13, 1943, during Hitler's visit to Smolensk, Treskov and his adjutant, von Schlabrendorff, planted a bomb on his plane, in which the explosive device did not go off. Eight days later, von Gersdorff wanted to blow himself up along with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet equipment in a workshop in Berlin, but he left the exhibition prematurely, and von Gersdorff barely managed to deactivate the detonator.

Valkyrie Plan

Since the winter of 1941-1942, Olbricht had been working on the Valkyrie plan, designed to deal with emergencies and internal unrest. According to this plan, the reserve army was subject to mobilization in the event of mass acts of sabotage, uprising of prisoners of war and in similar situations. The plan was approved by Hitler. Later, Olbricht secretly changed the Valkyrie plan with the expectation that in the event of a coup attempt, the reserve army would become a tool in the hands of the conspirators. After the assassination of Hitler, she was supposed to occupy key targets in Berlin, disarm the SS and arrest other Nazi leadership. It was assumed that the commander of the reserve army, Colonel General Friedrich Fromm, would join the conspiracy or be removed, in which case Hoepner would take command. Fromm was aware of the existence of the conspiracy, but took a wait-and-see attitude. Simultaneously with the deployment of the reserve army, the head of the Wehrmacht communications service, Erich Felgiebel, who was part of the conspiracy, together with some trusted subordinates, had to ensure the blocking of a number of government communication lines, while simultaneously supporting those that were used by the conspirators.

Goerdeler advocated saving Hitler's life. Various options for such a scenario were discussed (in particular, taking Hitler hostage or cutting off communication lines and isolating Hitler from the outside world for the duration of the coup), but in the spring of 1943 the conspirators came to the conclusion that all of them were impractical. After the assassination of Hitler, it was planned to form a provisional government: Beck was to become the head of state (president or monarch), Goerdeler - the chancellor, Witzleben - the supreme commander. The tasks of the new government were to conclude peace with the Western powers and continue the war against the USSR, as well as to hold democratic elections within Germany. Goerdeler and Beck developed a more detailed project for the structure of post-Nazi Germany, based on their conservative monarchical views. In particular, they believed that popular representation should be limited (the lower house of parliament would be formed as a result of indirect elections, and the upper house, which would include representatives of the lands, would not have elections at all), and the head of state should be the monarch.

In August 1943, Treskov met Lieutenant Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who was destined to become the most famous participant in the conspiracy (and the direct perpetrator of the assassination attempt on Hitler). Stauffenberg served in North Africa in Rommel's troops, was seriously wounded there, and had nationalist-conservative views. By 1942, Stauffenberg had become disillusioned with Nazism and was convinced that Hitler was leading Germany to disaster. However, due to religious convictions, he initially did not believe that the Fuhrer should be killed. After the Battle of Stalingrad, he changed his mind and decided that leaving Hitler alive would be a greater evil. Treskov wrote to Stauffenberg: “The assassination attempt must take place at any cost (fr. cote que cote); even if we fail, we must act. After all, the practical side of the matter no longer means anything; the only thing is that the German resistance took a decisive step before the eyes of the world and history. Compared to this, nothing else matters.”

Assassination attempts in the first half of July

In June 1944, Stauffenberg was appointed chief of staff of the Army Reserve, which was located on Bendlerstrasse in Berlin (the so-called Bendlerblock; now the street is named Stauffenbergstrasse). In this capacity, he could attend military meetings both at Hitler's Wolfschanze headquarters in East Prussia and at the Berghof residence near Berchtesgaden. On July 1, he was also awarded the rank of colonel. At the same time, the conspirators came into contact with the commander of the occupation forces in France, General Stülpnagel, who was supposed to take power in France into his own hands after the assassination of Hitler and begin negotiations with the allies. On July 3, Generals Wagner, Lindemann, Stiff and Felgiebel held a meeting at the Berchtesgadener Hof Hotel. In particular, the procedure for shutting down government communication lines by Felgibel after the explosion was discussed.

On July 6, Stauffenberg delivered a bomb to the Berghof, but the assassination attempt did not take place. Stiff later testified during interrogation that he dissuaded Stauffenberg from attempting to kill Hitler at that time. According to other sources, Stiff was supposed to detonate the bomb himself the next day at an arms exhibition at Klessheim Castle near Salzburg. On July 11, Stauffenberg attended a meeting at the Berghof with a British-made bomb, but did not activate it. Previously, the conspirators had decided that, together with Hitler, it was necessary to eliminate Goering, Hitler's official successor, and Himmler, the head of the SS, and both of them were not present at the meeting. In the evening, Stauffenberg met with Beck and Olbricht and convinced them that the next time the assassination attempt should be carried out regardless of whether Goering and Himmler were present.

On July 15, Stauffenberg gave a report on the state of reserves at a meeting at Wolfschanz. Two hours before the start of the meeting, Olbricht gave the order to launch Operation Valkyrie and move the reserve army towards the government quarter on Wilhelmstrasse. Stauffenberg made a report and went out to talk on the phone with Olbricht. When he returned, Hitler had already left the meeting. Stauffenberg notified Olbricht of the failure, who canceled the order and returned the troops to the barracks.

Events of July 20

On July 20, at about 7:00, Stauffenberg, together with his adjutant Oberleutnant Werner von Heften and Major General Helmut Stiff, flew from the airfield in Rangsdorf to Hitler's headquarters on a Junkers Ju 52 courier plane. In one briefcase they had papers for a report on the creation of two new divisions of reservists that were needed on the Eastern Front, and in the other - two packages of explosives and three chemical detonators. In order for the bomb to explode, it was necessary to break the glass ampoule, then the acid in it would corrode the wire that released the firing pin within ten minutes. After this, the detonator went off.

The plane landed at 10:15 at the airfield in Rastenburg (East Prussia). Stiff, Stauffenberg and von Heften went by car to the Fuhrer's headquarters. Upon arrival, Stauffenberg had breakfast with staff officers and spoke with several military personnel. At the beginning of the first, Keitel announced that, due to Mussolini's visit, the meeting was postponed from 13:00 to 12:30, and Stauffenberg's report was shortened. In addition, the meeting was moved from an underground bunker, where the destructive force of the explosion would have been much greater, to a wooden barracks room. Before the meeting, Stauffenberg, together with Heften, asked to go to the reception room and crushed the ampoule with pliers, activating the detonator. One of the officers hurried Stauffenberg, so he did not have time to activate the second bomb and von Heften took its components with him.

When Stauffenberg entered, he asked Adjutant Keitel von Freyend to give him a seat at the table closer to Hitler. He stood next to Colonel Brandt and placed the briefcase under the table a couple of meters from Hitler, leaning it against the massive wooden cabinet that supported the table. After this, under the pretext of a telephone conversation, Stauffenberg left. Brandt moved closer to Hitler and moved the briefcase that was in his way to the other side of the cabinet, which now protected Hitler. Before leaving, while Stauffenberg was looking for the car, he went to Felgiebel and they watched the explosion together. Then Stauffenberg, confident that Hitler was dead, left. He managed to leave the cordoned off area before it was completely closed. At the last checkpoint, Stauffenberg was detained by an officer, but after receiving confirmation from the commandant’s adjutant, he was allowed to go.

The explosion occurred at 12:42. Of the 24 people present at the meeting, four - Generals Schmundt and Korten, Colonel Brandt and stenographer Berger - died, and the rest were injured of varying degrees of severity. Hitler received numerous shrapnel wounds, burns to his legs and damaged eardrums, was shell-shocked and temporarily deaf, and his right arm was temporarily paralyzed. His hair was singed and his trousers were torn to shreds.

At about 13:00 Stauffenberg and Heften left the Wolfschanze. On the way to the airfield, Heften threw out a second package of explosives, which was later discovered by the Gestapo. At 13:15 the plane took off for Rangsdorf. Felgiebel sent a message to his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Fritz Tille in Berlin: “Something terrible has happened. The Fuhrer is alive." Presumably, the message was composed in such a way that the role of Felgiebel and the recipients of the message was not revealed: the communication lines could be tapped. At the same time, another conspirator, General Eduard Wagner, notified Paris of the assassination attempt. Then an information blockade of Wolfschanze was organized. However, the communication lines reserved for the SS remained intact, and already at this time the Minister of Propaganda Goebbels became aware of the attempt to assassinate Hitler.

At about 15:00, Tille informed the conspirators in Bendlerblock about conflicting information from the Fuhrer's headquarters. Meanwhile, having flown to Rangsdorf, Stauffenberg called Olbricht and Colonel Hofacker from Stülpnagel's headquarters and told them that he had killed Hitler. Olbricht did not know who to believe. At that moment, the information blockade was lifted from the Wolfschanze, and the investigation into the assassination attempt on Hitler was already in full swing.

At 16:00, Olbricht, having overcome doubts, nevertheless gave the order to mobilize in accordance with the Valkyrie plan. However, Colonel General Fromm called Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at headquarters, who assured him that everything was fine with Hitler and asked where Stauffenberg was. Fromm realized that Wolfschanz already knew where the tracks led, and he would have to answer for the actions of his subordinates.

Conspiracy failure

At 16:30 Stauffenberg and Heften finally arrived at Bendlerblock. Olbricht, Quirnheim and Stauffenberg immediately went to Colonel General Fromm, who was to sign the orders issued under the Valkyrie plan. Fromm already knew that Hitler was alive, he tried to arrest them and was himself put under arrest. At this moment, the first orders were sent to the troops, which Hitler’s Wolfschanze headquarters also received by mistake. At the Berlin city commandant's office, the city commandant, Lieutenant General Paul von Hase, held an operational meeting.

At 17:00 the commander of the security battalion "Großdeutschland" Major Otto-Ernst Roemer, returning from the commandant's office, set the task for the personnel, who, in accordance with the Valkyrie plan, were to cordon off the government quarter. Shortly after 17:00, the first message about the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler was broadcast on the radio (the next message went around the world at 18:28).

Units of the infantry school in Döberitz near Berlin were put on full combat readiness, tactics teacher Major Jacob was ordered to occupy the Radio House with his company.

At 17:30, Goebbels announced the alarm in the training unit of the 1st Leibstandarte-SS Division "Adolf Hitler", which was put on high alert. However, the Minister of Propaganda wanted to avoid an armed conflict between the SS and Wehrmacht units at all costs.

Then at 17:30, SS Oberführer, Police Colonel Humbert Ahamer-Pifrader, appeared at the headquarters of the conspirators, accompanied by four SS men. He stated that, on the personal instructions of the head of the Main Directorate of Reich Security, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, he should find out from Stauffenberg the reasons for his hasty return to Berlin from Hitler’s headquarters. Instead of explanations, Stauffenberg arrested Achamer-Pifrader along with those accompanying him and put him under lock and key in the same room with Colonel General Fromm and General Kortsfleisch, who had already been arrested by the conspirators.

At about 18:00, Major Jacob's company occupied the Radio House, which nevertheless continued to broadcast.

Between 18:35 and 19:00, after cordoning off the government quarter, Major Roemer went to the Propaganda Ministry to see Goebbels, whom he was supposed to arrest. But he had doubts. At about 19:00, Goebbels asked to be put in touch with Hitler and handed the phone to Major Roemer so that he could make sure that the Fuhrer was alive. Hitler ordered Roemer to take control of the situation in Berlin. After a conversation with Hitler, Roemer set up a command post in Goebbels’s office apartment and attracted additional units to his side. The training tank units that left Krampnitz to support the conspirators were ordered to suppress the rebellion of the generals. At 19:30, Field Marshal Witzleben arrived from Zossen to Bendlerblock and reprimanded Olbricht and Stauffenberg for their uncertain actions and missed opportunities.

Fromm, transferred to his private office, was allowed to receive three officers from his headquarters in the absence of security. Fromm led the officers through the back exit and ordered them to bring backup. Meanwhile, units under the command of Remer began to gain the upper hand over the reserve army units loyal to the conspirators. When Olbricht began preparing Bendleblock for defense, several officers led by Colonel Franz Gerber demanded an explanation from Olbricht. After Olbricht's evasive answer, they returned armed and arrested him. Olbricht's assistant called Stauffenberg and Heften to understand the situation, a shootout began and Stauffenberg was wounded in the left arm. Within ten minutes, Gerber detained all the conspirators and released Fromm from custody.

At about 23:30 (according to other sources, at the beginning of ten) Fromm announced that the conspirators were under arrest. Beck, with Fromm's permission, tried to shoot himself, but only inflicted a slight wound on himself. Fromm announced that he had sentenced Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Quirnheim and Heften to death by a military tribunal. At the beginning of the first hour, all four were shot in the Bedlerblock courtyard. At the same time, Beck fired a second shot, remained alive again and, on Fromm’s orders, was shot by one of the guards. At 00:21 Fromm sent a telegram to Hitler informing him that he had suppressed the putsch. By shooting the conspirators, Fromm allegedly sought to demonstrate loyalty to Hitler and at the same time destroy witnesses. Skorzeny, who arrived later, ordered a halt to further executions.

At the same time in the evening, the commander of the troops in occupied France, General Stülpnagel, ordered the arrest of representatives of the SS, SD and Gestapo in Paris. It turned out to be the most successful operation of July 20: by 10:30 p.m., 1,200 people had been arrested without firing a shot, including the head of the SS in Paris, SS Major General Karl Oberg. The conspirators gathered at headquarters at the Raphael Hotel, and Stülpnagel went to the suburb of La Roche-Guion, where von Kluge was, and unsuccessfully tried to convince him to come over to their side. At the eleventh hour, Stauffenberg called Paris and reported that the uprising in Berlin had ended in failure. At night, Stülpnagel received notification that he had been removed from command, and Admiral Kranke, loyal to Hitler, was ready to send sailors to suppress the putsch, and gave the order to release the SS men. Soon, the military and SS men began to fraternize together at Rafael, drinking champagne.

The decisive role in the failure was played not only by the incident that saved Hitler, but also by a number of serious miscalculations and half-hearted measures of the conspirators, as well as the wait-and-see attitude of many of them.

Repressions, executions

The night after the plot, Hitler addressed the nation on the radio, promising to severely punish all participants in the rebellion. In the coming weeks, the Gestapo conducted a detailed investigation into the case. Everyone who had even the slightest connection with the main participants in the events of July 20 was arrested or interrogated. During the searches, diaries and correspondence of the participants in the conspiracy were discovered, previous plans for a coup and the assassination of the Fuhrer were revealed; new arrests of the persons mentioned there began. However, not everyone had anything to do with the case on July 20 - the Gestapo often settled old scores. Hitler personally instructed the chairman of the People's Court, Roland Freisler, that the trial should be speedy and the defendants should be hanged "like cattle in a slaughterhouse."

By order of Hitler, most of the convicts were executed not by guillotine, like civilian criminals, and not by firing squad, like military ones - they were hanged from piano wires attached to a butcher's hook on the ceiling in Plötzensee prison. Unlike ordinary hanging, death did not occur from a broken neck during a fall or from relatively rapid suffocation, but from stretching of the neck and slow suffocation. Hitler ordered that the trial of the conspirators and execution be turned into humiliating torture, filmed and photographed. These executions were filmed under spotlights. Subsequently, he personally watched this film, and also ordered it to be shown to soldiers to raise morale. According to Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant von Below, Hitler did not give the order to film and looked at the photographs of the executed, which were brought to him by the SS adjutant Fegelein, with reluctance. Unlike film footage of show trials, footage of executions has not survived.

On July 21, Treskov committed suicide by simulating death in battle: he blew himself up with a grenade on the Polish front near Bialystok and was buried as a dead officer in his homeland (then his body was dug out of the grave and burned). The first trial of Witzleben, Hoepner and six other participants in the conspiracy took place on August 7-8. On August 8, everyone was hanged. In total, up to 200 people were sentenced to death by the verdict of the People's Chamber. William Shirer gives total figures of 4,980 executed and 7,000 arrested. In accordance with the “ancient German” blood guilt laws (Sippenhaft), relatives of the conspirators were also subjected to repression: many were arrested and sent to concentration camps, and the Nazis placed children under new names in an orphanage (most of the repressed family members of the conspirators survived the war and were able to reunite with selected children).

Colonel General Franz Halder was arrested, one of the few who were lucky enough to survive (albeit in a concentration camp) the end of the war and be released. Field Marshal von Kluge poisoned himself on 19 August near Metz, fearing the fate of Witzleben after Hitler recalled him from the front. In October, Erwin Rommel, Stauffenberg's commander in Africa, on whom the conspirators were counting, but whose actual connection with them is unclear, committed suicide and was solemnly buried. Another field marshal indirectly involved in the conspiracy, Fedor von Bock, escaped prosecution, but survived Hitler by only four days: he died on May 4, 1945, after his car came under fire from an English attack aircraft. On August 30, Stülpnagel, who tried to shoot himself, was hanged, and on September 4, Lehndorff-Steinort and Felgiebel. On September 9, Goerdeler, who tried to escape and was betrayed by the hotel owner, was sentenced to death, but his execution was postponed, presumably because his political weight and authority in the eyes of the West could be useful to Himmler in the event of peace negotiations. On February 2 he was hanged, on the same day Popitz was hanged in Plötzensee prison.

The consequence of the discovery of the plot was the increased vigilance of the Nazis towards the Wehrmacht: the armed forces were deprived of the relative autonomy from the party and the SS that they had previously enjoyed. On July 24, the army made the Nazi salute mandatory instead of the traditional military salute. Among the 200 executed were 1 field marshal (Witzleben), 19 generals, 26 colonels, 2 ambassadors, 7 diplomats at other levels, 1 minister, 3 secretaries of state and the head of the Reich criminal police (SS Gruppenführer and Police Lieutenant General Arthur Nebe). More and more trials and executions took place almost non-stop from August 1944 to February 1945. On February 3, 1945, the day after the execution of Goerdeler and Popitz, an American bomb hit the People's Court building during a meeting, and a beam that fell from the ceiling killed Freisler. After the death of the judge, the processes were suspended (on March 12, Friedrich Fromm was executed, whose treason only delayed the execution). However, the discovery in March of Canaris's diaries with details of the Abwehr plot led him, Oster and their several comrades, against whom there had previously been no direct evidence, to the gallows; On April 8, they were executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, just 22 days before Hitler's death.

Grade

The participants in the July 20th conspiracy are considered in modern Germany to be national heroes who gave their lives in the name of freedom; Streets are named after them, monuments erected to them. On memorable dates associated with the assassination attempt, ceremonies are held with the participation of senior officials of the state. In modern German historiography, the July 20th plot is considered the most important event of the German Resistance.

At the same time, many participants in the conspiracy did not share modern ideals of democracy, but represented traditional Prussian nationalist conservatism and were critical of the Weimar Republic. Thus, Stauffenberg supported Hitler in 1933 and even in his family was considered a staunch National Socialist, Beck and Goerdeler were monarchists, and the latter also advocated the preservation of pre-war territorial acquisitions.

Every year on July 20, wreaths are laid in Berlin in honor of the participants in the conspiracy against Hitler executed by the Nazis. On this day in 1944, an explosion occurred at Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. This was not the first, but the most serious attempt on the life of the “Führer”, the result of a conspiracy against him and his accomplices. But Hitler survived. Hundreds of participants in the conspiracy (primarily military personnel from noble German families) were executed.

The memory of these people, who, like other heroes of the Resistance, saved the honor of the Germans, is highly revered in today's Germany. The most famous of the participants in the July 20 conspiracy, in fact its leader, who carried the explosive device into Hitler's headquarters, is Colonel, Count Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.

Officers and aristocrats

He was 36 years old. An officer and an aristocrat, after the Kristallnacht of the Jewish pogroms of 1938 and the mockery of the civilian population of occupied Poland a year later, he became convinced that the Nazis were bringing misfortune to his homeland. But the war was going on, and the career military man hesitated: the murder or removal of the charismatic leader of the nation would weaken Germany. Many future conspirators from the officer corps thought so then. Military officers despised the “butchers” from the SS and considered it shameful to wage war against the civilian population and shoot prisoners, no matter who they were.

Nevertheless, Stauffenberg, like many of his like-minded officers, believed that the war must first be won, and only then, as he then told his brother Berthold, “get rid of the brown evil spirits.” But in 1942-1943, the mood in opposition circles changed. One of the reasons is the turn in the course of the war, large losses in people and equipment. After Stalingrad, there was no doubt left for Stauffenberg: the war was lost. It was at this time that a positive response came to the report he had submitted long ago about his transfer from the General Staff, where he was then serving, to the front. Not to the Eastern Front, but to Africa.

But here, too, things were bad for the Germans. Just three months after Stalingrad, the Western Allies captured about 200 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and officers in North Africa. Stauffenberg was not among them: a few days before the defeat he was seriously wounded and was transported to Germany. He lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left hand.

Failed assassination attempts

Meanwhile, the conspirators tried to organize more and more attempts on Hitler's life. On March 13, 1943, they managed to smuggle an explosive device disguised as a bottle of cognac into the plane on which the Fuhrer was flying, but it did not go off. Other attempts, for example, by Hauptmann Axel von dem Bussche, also failed. The "Fuhrer" expressed a desire to get acquainted with the new uniforms for officers and non-commissioned officers of the Wehrmacht. He wished that an experienced front-line commander be present at this “presentation” as an expert. The conspirators managed to arrange for Hauptmann Bussche to become this commander. He had to blow himself up along with Hitler. But the train, which contained samples of the new uniforms, was bombed on the way to East Prussia, and the “presentation” did not take place.

However, the perseverance of the conspirators was eventually rewarded: in May 1944, the commander of the Wehrmacht reserve, who sympathized with the conspirators, appointed Stauffenberg as his chief of staff. Thus, the colonel was among those who were invited to meetings at headquarters. The assassination attempt on Hitler became a reality. Moreover, it was necessary to hurry: clouds began to gather over the conspirators. Too many people already knew about the coup plans, and information about the plot began to flow to the Gestapo. It was decided not to wait for any more major meetings at headquarters, at which Himmler and Goering would also be present along with Hitler, but to send the Fuhrer to the next world alone, at the first opportunity. She introduced herself on July 20th.

A rebellion cannot end in success...

The night before, Claus von Stauffenberg had placed plastic explosives in his briefcase and tested the fuse. Both bags of explosives weighed about two kilograms: too heavy for Stauffenberg's only crippled hand. Maybe that’s why he was already at headquarters, having gone through all the cordons, left one of the packages with explosives with the adjutant and took only one with him to the hall where the meeting was taking place. However, this amount would have been quite enough: as it turned out later, the ceiling collapsed from the explosion and the hall turned into a pile of ruins, 17 people were injured, four died.

Hitler survived due to chance. The briefcase should have been placed closer to the place where the “Führer” was sitting, but one of the meeting participants mechanically pushed the briefcase containing the explosives further under the table: it was in his way. This saved Hitler.

When the explosion was heard, Stauffenberg, who had left the hall under a plausible pretext, was already leaving the headquarters. He hurried to the airfield. He had no doubt that the “Führer” was dead, so he hurried to Berlin: now everything was decided there.

But the conspirators acted too slowly, unforgivably slowly. The military failed to isolate SS units and Gestapo headquarters during Operation Valkyrie. Military units received orders both from the conspirators and directly opposite orders from Himmler. When Colonel Stauffenberg arrived at the War Ministry, he began to act more decisively, but it was too late. In the end, several people, along with Stauffenberg, were arrested right in the War Ministry building. They were shot that same day.

Later, the Nazis dealt with everyone who even knew about the conspiracy with terrible cruelty. Hundreds of people were executed. The Gestapo also arrested all of Claus von Stauffenberg's close relatives, including his wife and mother. The children had their last names changed and were sent to a special orphanage, forbidden to tell who they were. Fortunately, there were only a few months left until the end of the war...