Operation Valkyrie — An Attempt to Assassinate Hitler
Written by Suhani Prakash and edited by Aishwari Krishna
On July 20th, 76 years ago, a group of German elites attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in hopes of provoking a coup d’etat.
Why did these elites want to kill the Führer? How did they do it? Why did they fail?
Though Hitler faced several assassination attempts, Operation Valkyrie, also known as the July Plot, is by far the most infamous. The operation was led by German high-ranking officials including Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, former chief of the army general staff, Colonel-General Friedrich Olbricht, Major-General Henning von Tresckow, and Lieutenant-Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, chief of staff of the reserve army.
The idea behind the operation was simple: once Hitler was killed, the German military would claim that the assassination was part of an attempted coup by the Nazi Party. Well within their rights, the Reserve Army would take control of most key installations in Berlin and arrest high-ranking Nazi officers in an attempt to subdue Nazi influence.
The government which would hopefully soon replace Hitler would be established with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler as Chancellor of Germany and Ludwig Beck as President. Seeing that Germany was losing the war, this government aimed at negotiating an end to World War II, rather than using the Nazi-preferred method of force.
On July 20th, 1944, Hitler attended a meeting in Wolfsschanze headquarters in Northeast Poland. The meeting was supposed to take place in an underground steel bunker with no windows. Hence, the two bombs arranged for by Stauffenberg and the others, when detonated, would kill anyone in proximity of the explosive.
Unfortunately, the July Plot faced many hurdles on the scheduled day.
Firstly, the day of the meeting was unexpectedly hot. The gathering was shifted to a wooden bunker with several windows, where the bomb would be significantly less impactful than in the underground bunker. Still, it would be enough to kill Hitler.
However, due to an unexpected phone call and repeated knocking on the bathroom door, Stauffenberg was able to arm only one of the two explosives.
With this and the sudden shift in venue, it became imperative that in order to successfully kill the Führer, Stauffenberg must sit close to him.
Stauffenberg had reserved a seat closest to the Führer, citing the pretext of hearing issues. However, while Stauffenberg was in the bathroom arming the bombs, another official had taken his seat. Though the bomb detonated, Hitler survived the explosion, leaving the site with superficial injuries — scrapes and a perforated eardrum.
Most of the people involved with Operation Valkyrie were executed. Nevertheless, the July Plot has gone down in history as one of the most famous assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler.
Perhaps if the plan had succeeded, we would not have witnessed the absolute destruction caused by Nazi Germany on the Jewish community, and on the world.
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Bibliography
- Hasic, Albinko. “Why Operation Valkyrie-the July Plot to Kill Hitler-Failed.” Time, Time, 19 July 2019, time.com/5629999/operation-valkyrie-july-plot/.
- Palek, Stephanie. Operation Valkyrie 1944, 27 Apr. 2015, www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/germanic-collections/about-collections/spotlight-archive/operation-valkyrie.
- History.com Editors. “July Plot.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 9 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/july-plot.