On the afternoon of July 20, 1944, a bomb exploded inside the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s heavily guarded headquarters in East Prussia. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg had placed the device in a briefcase beneath a conference table, and when it detonated, the room was torn apart. Yet Hitler survived, shielded by the heavy oak table leg and escaping with little more than torn trousers and a damaged eardrum. That single twist of fate doomed Operation Valkyrie, the most ambitious conspiracy yet mounted by Germans against their own dictator, and set in motion a savage reckoning that consumed some of the most senior officers in the Wehrmacht.
The plot had been years in the making. By 1943, a loose network of generals, intelligence officers, and civilians had concluded that only the physical removal of Hitler could save Germany from ruin. Leading them was Ludwig Beck, a man who had once served the regime faithfully. Beck had risen to become Chief of the General Staff in 1935, and in the early years he supported rearmament as the necessary restoration of German military strength after Versailles.
But his loyalty cracked as he watched Hitler pursue what Beck regarded as reckless, aggressive expansion. During the Sudetenland crisis of 1938, Beck argued openly against plans to invade Czechoslovakia, warning of catastrophic consequences. When his counsel was ignored, he resigned in protest. That resignation marked the turning point in his life, transforming a dutiful officer into a covert enemy of the Nazi state.
By 1943 he had joined the inner circle of conspirators, and the plotters intended him to become head of state in the government that would follow Hitler’s death. Beck’s conversion reflected a pattern repeated across the German officer corps. Many had initially welcomed Hitler as a stabilizing force. Hans Oster, a major general in the Abwehr, the military intelligence service, was among them.
His disillusionment came early, triggered by the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, when the SS brutally purged the leadership of the SA along with political adversaries. Among those murdered were General Kurt von Schleicher, the second-to-last chancellor of the Weimar Republic, and Major General Ferdinand von Bredow, a former head of the Abwehr. For Oster, the regime’s willingness to kill its own generals was a decisive revelation, and he began working against it. In 1938, Oster met Beck, and their collaboration produced the first serious attempt to topple Hitler.
Known as the Oster conspiracy, the plan was hatched in September of that year as Hitler pushed for war against Czechoslovakia. The conspirators intended to kill Hitler, neutralize the leading figures of the Nazi regime, and install a provisional government that would negotiate peace with the Western powers. Oster’s role was pivotal, but the coup collapsed before it could begin. Key military commanders refused to commit, and Hitler’s diplomatic maneuvering at Munich averted the immediate conflict, removing the crisis on which the conspiracy depended.
Despite the failure, Oster continued his resistance work, providing intelligence, coordinating with other conspirators, and helping to shape the post-coup government structures that the 1944 plotters would later resurrect. Others reached the resistance through their own paths. Erich Hoepner had been an outspoken critic of Hitler from an early stage and joined the Oster conspiracy as well. His task was to lead the First Light Division toward Berlin and seize key objectives from the SS in the city, a plan that evaporated once the Munich agreement defused the Czechoslovak crisis.
Hoepner had built a strong reputation as an advocate of armored warfare. He led troops through the invasions of Poland and France, and later commanded the Fourth Panzer Group on the Eastern Front during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. His record there was darkly contradictory. He had resisted the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war in Poland, yet in Russia he advocated a war of extermination.
Under his command, units collaborated closely with the Einsatzgruppen and enforced the Commissar Order, which directed Wehrmacht forces to execute Red Army political commissars immediately upon capture. Hoepner’s military career ended in disgrace in January 1942. His forces were overstretched on the Eastern Front, and when he sought permission from Field Marshal Günther von Kluge to withdraw, Kluge told him he would raise the matter with Hitler and advised him to prepare for the possibility. Assuming approval was imminent, Hoepner ordered the withdrawal on January 8.
When Hitler learned of it, he flew into a rage. Hoepner was dismissed from the Wehrmacht the same day, stripped of his pension and forbidden to wear his uniform or medals, a punishment that violated both law and military regulation. Hoepner sued the Reich to reclaim his pension and won, because judges at the time could not be dismissed even by Hitler. That legal victory would not protect him from the consequences of the 1944 plot, in which he took part, expecting to play a role in the new government.
After the coup failed, he was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, given a summary trial, and condemned to death. On August 8, he was hanged at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. Henning von Tresckow came to the resistance by another route. Initially he supported Hitler because he opposed the Treaty of Versailles, but the Night of the Long Knives and the regime’s violence against Jews quickly turned him against Nazism.
The Blomberg-Fritsch affair of 1938 and the pogrom of Kristallnacht deepened his conviction. He joined the Oster conspiracy in the late 1930s and dedicated himself to eliminating Hitler, convinced that the removal of the dictator was the only way to end the war and spare Germany from destruction. He confided to fellow conspirator Fabian von Schlabrendorff that both duty and honor demanded they do their best to bring about the downfall of Hitler and National Socialism, to save Germany and Europe from barbarism. Tresckow was instrumental in the planning of Operation Valkyrie, though he was not in Berlin on the day of the assassination attempt.
When Stauffenberg’s bomb failed to kill Hitler and the coup collapsed, Tresckow was at the front near Białystok. On July 21, he chose to end his life, firing his pistols first and then detonating a grenade under his chin, staging the scene to look like a partisan attack in order to protect his fellow conspirators. In a farewell letter, he expressed his belief that the struggle against Hitler would one day be vindicated and that Germany would be reborn in freedom and honor. He was buried at his family home in Wartenberg, but when the Nazis uncovered his role in the plot, they dug up his body and sent it to the crematorium at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Erwin von Witzleben’s opposition traced back to 1934, when he joined Erich von Manstein, Wilhelm von Leeb, and Gerd von Rundstedt in demanding an investigation into the murders of von Schleicher and von Bredow. His criticism of Hitler’s treatment of Werner von Fritsch during the Blomberg-Fritsch affair led to his temporary forced retirement, though he was recalled as war approached. By 1944, the conspirators saw him as central to their plans. He was to assume command of the Wehrmacht and impose martial law to stabilize Germany after Hitler’s death.
When the plot failed, he was arrested quickly. On August 8, he was tried before Roland Freisler’s People’s Court, a show trial where he was denied a proper defense and humiliated. His last words addressed Freisler directly: “You can turn us over to the executioner in three months. The outraged and tormented people will call you to account and drag you through the filth in the streets alive.
” He was executed that same day at Plötzensee Prison. The dramatic courtroom scenes were filmed for the German newsreel, but Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels decided to shelve the footage, fearing that Freisler’s abusive outbursts might create sympathy for Witzleben’s cause. The material was locked away and classified as secret. The crackdown that followed the failed plot was swift and merciless.
Beck, who was in Berlin awaiting the outcome, was arrested. Facing the humiliation of a show trial and inevitable execution, he attempted to take his own life, but the first shot only wounded him. He was subsequently shot by a soldier on orders from General Friedrich Fromm. Oster was apprehended the day after the failed assassination.
On April 4, 1945, the discovery of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris’s diaries provoked a furious response from Hitler, who ordered that all current and former conspirators, including Oster, be executed. On April 8, Oster, Canaris, and others were convicted and sentenced to death by an SS drumhead court-martial. At dawn the next morning, Oster was hanged at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, days before the war in Europe would end. The July 20 plot had failed to kill Hitler, but it exposed the depth of opposition within the German military elite.
In the months that followed, thousands were arrested, tortured, and executed, and the conspirators were left to die without honor in the eyes of the regime they had tried to overthrow. Yet their failed rebellion, and the brutal reprisal that answered it, became a fixed part of the historical record of the Third Reich’s final years.