THE MEN WHO TRIED TO ASSASSINATE HITLER!
During 1943 and early 1944, opposition to Hitler in high army circles increased as Germany’s military situation deteriorated. It was the peak of WW2, and there were several attempts to assassinate him. They realized the outcome of his closed meetings with his key officers led to the horrors they were witnessing during the war, and they sought to control the situation and negotiate peace terms with the Allies.
On the other hand, Fuhrer’s plans would have been more grandiose, had he not lost the war and killed himself. He realized that he was already in his 40s and developing certain health problems, he had little time to achieve his objectives and consequently intensified his encroachments across Europe.
Two key characters come to prominence because their plots came closest to assassinating the Fuhrer, and they are:
1. Major General Henning Hermann Karl Von Treskow (January 10, 1901-July 21, 1944).
“The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.”
“It is almost certain that we will fail. But how will future history judge the German people, if not even a handful of men had the courage to put an end to that criminal?”
- Henning von Tresckow, 1944.
“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. When, in a few hours’ time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if just ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope that for our sake God will not destroy Germany. No one among us can complain about his death, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man’s moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions.”
— Henning von Tresckow, July 21, 1944.
By Joachim Fest, “Plotting Hitler’s Death”, p.289–290.
By Marcel Stein, Field Marshal Von Manstein, “A Portrait, p.247
https://quotepark.com/authors/henning-von-tresckow/quotes-about-men/
Major General Henning Hermann Karl Von Treskow (January 10, 1901-July 21, 1944), was an officer in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassinate Hitler on 13 March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie Plan for a coup against the German government. He was described by the Gestapo as the “prime mover” and the “evil spirit” behind the plot of 20 July 1944 to assassinate Hitler. He committed suicide at Królowy Most on the Eastern Front, upon the plot’s failure.
Henning Hermann Karl Von Treskow joined the German Army during WW1, and by the end of the war, he became a junior officer. He left the army after the war to pursue a stockbroker career. In 1924, he rejoined the army. By 1939, he had attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and was serving on the staff of his uncle, Fedor Von Bock at AG Centre Headquarters. In the same year, he joined the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Appalled by the brutal actions of the Schutz Staffeinel (SS) and the Gestapo in the occupied territories, and the random killing of captured soldiers of the Red Army in 1941, he determined that the Nazi Government had to be overthrown.
In 1942, he was promoted to general staff officer in the high command of the Army Group Centre. He used his access to senior army officers to recruit an elite few to join his conspiracy to overthrow Hitler’s government. Fedor von Bock, Gunther von Kluge, Erich von Manstein, and Gerard von Rundstedt were approached, but they all refused. However, they chose not to inform the Gestapo of his plot. Finally, the leaders of the plot included retired Colonel General Ludwig Beck (formerly chief of the general staff), Colonel General Friedrich Olbricht, and several other top officers. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, one of Germany’s most prestigious commanders, agreed with the conspirators that Hitler should be removed from power, but he was not in favor of an assassination and took no active part in the attempt. The most stalwart conspirator was Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who personally carried out the assassination attempt.
On March 14, 1943, Tresckow and his adjutant, Fabian Schlabrendorff, placed a bomb on a plane carrying Hitler to Smolensk. The detonator malfunctioned and the bomb failed to explode. They remained undetected, but Hitler became increasingly suspicious. He became more difficult to access, and often abruptly changed his schedule, thus thwarting a number of other attempts on his life.
On July 20, 1944, Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow organized a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. His objective was to seize control of the government. The coup plan was code-named Walküre (“Valkyrie”). It was set in motion in late 1943 by Tresckow. The following September, Tresckow was made Chief of Staff of the Second Army. He recruited Claus von Stauffenberg (the story unfolds below). Tresckow received news that his latest plot failed, he bid his fellow conspirators goodbye, drove to the Eastern Front, and in typical German pride, blew his head off with a hand grenade.
2. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, (November 15, 1907 — July 21, 1944).
Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg, entered the German army in 1926 and won distinction as a staff officer with a panzer (armored) division in the campaigns in Poland and northern France (1939–1940). He was later transferred to the front in the Soviet Union. He became disillusioned with the German occupation’s brutal policies toward Slavs and Jews. At his own request, he was transferred to the North African campaign, where he was a staff officer in another panzer division. In that campaign, he was severely wounded (losing his left eye, right hand, and two fingers of his left hand) in April 1943.
While convalescing from his wounds, Stauffenberg decided that Hitler must be eliminated. In the ever-widening conspiracy of army officers against Hitler, he assumed a leading role and reserved for himself the pivotal task of carrying out the proposed assassination. His opportunity came in July 1944, after he had been promoted to Colonel and reassigned to the post of Chief of Staff to the Reserve Army Command on July 1, 1944. This post gave him access to situation conferences personally attended by Hitler. After two preliminary attempts, Stauffenberg succeeded in placing a bomb in Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg (July 20, 1944), with a planned simultaneous coup in Berlin. He became the chief conspirator of what became referred to as the July Plot (July 20, 1944), the closest attempt at killing the Fuhrer.
Stauffenberg carried the bomb in his briefcase to a conference room at the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) field headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia, where Hitler was meeting with top military aides. He placed his briefcase on the floor, while he slipped from the room to make a call. He witnessed the explosion at 12:42 p.m. An attending officer had nudged the briefcase containing the bomb out of his way to the far side of the massive oak support of the conference table, which shielded Hitler from the full force of the explosion. A stenographer and three officers died. Although Hitler was saved, his right arm was badly injured. Convinced that Hitler was killed, Stauffenberg flew to Berlin to join the other plotters, who were ready to seize the Supreme Command Headquarters there. Unsure whether Hitler was dead, they had failed to act until Stauffenberg landed near Berlin more than three hours later.
News of Hitler’s survival melted the resolve of many of the key officers. It was the final attempt to eliminate him. In the countercoup at the Berlin headquarters, General Friedrich Fromm, (who had known about and condoned the plot), sought to prove his allegiance by arresting a few of the chief conspirators: Stauffenberg, Olbricht, and two aides who were summarily executed at gunpoint, shortly after midnight on July 21, 1944, in Berlin. Beck chose to honorably commit suicide.
Hitler’s police rounded up the remaining coconspirators, many of whom were tortured by the Gestapo to reveal their confederates and hauled before the Volksgericht (People’s Court) to be excoriated by the dreaded Nazi judge Roland Freisler. About 180–200 plotters were shot or hanged or, in some cases, viciously strangled, or hung up on great meat hooks. Fromm himself was eventually arrested, tried, and executed. In Hitler’s suspicious paranoia, they were the first of the several thousand who ultimately died in the bloody aftermath of this conspiracy.
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