20 July plot


The 20 July plot, sometimes referred to as Operation Valkyrie, was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of Germany, and overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944. The plotters were part of the German resistance, mainly composed of Wehrmacht officers. The leader of the conspiracy, Claus von Stauffenberg, tried to kill Hitler by detonating an explosive hidden in a briefcase. However, due to the location of the bomb at the time of detonation, the blast only dealt Hitler minor injuries. The planners' subsequent coup attempt also failed and resulted in a purge of the Wehrmacht.
As early as 1938, German military officers had plotted to overthrow Hitler, but indecisive leadership and the pace of global events stymied action. Plotters gained a sense of urgency in 1943 after Germany lost the Battle of Stalingrad and Soviet forces began to push towards Germany. Under the leadership of Stauffenberg, plotters tried to assassinate Hitler at least five times in 1943 and 1944. With the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, closing in on the plotters, a final attempt was organised in July 1944. Stauffenberg personally took a briefcase containing a block of plastic explosive to a conference in the Wolf's Lair. The explosives were armed and placed next to Hitler, but it appears they were moved unwittingly at the last moment behind a table leg by Heinz Brandt, inadvertently saving Hitler's life. When the bomb detonated, it killed Brandt and two others, while the rest of the room's occupants were injured, one of whom, Rudolf Schmundt, later died from his injuries. Hitler's trousers were singed by the blast, and he suffered a perforated eardrum and conjunctivitis, but was otherwise unharmed.
The plotters, unaware of their failure, then attempted a coup d'état. A few hours after the blast, the conspiracy used Wehrmacht units to take control of several cities, including Berlin, right after giving them disinformation on the intention of the orders they were given. This part of the coup d'état attempt is referred to by the name "Operation Valkyrie", which also has become associated with the entire event. Within hours, the Nazi regime had reasserted its control of Germany. A few members of the conspiracy, including Stauffenberg, were executed by firing squad the same night. In the months after the coup d'état attempt, the Gestapo arrested more than 7,000 people, 4,980 of whom were executed. Roughly 200 conspirators were executed.
The apparent aim of the coup d'état attempt was to wrest political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party and to make peace with the Western Allies as soon as possible. The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown, but they would have included unrealistic demands for the confirmation of Germany's extensive annexations of European territory.

Background

Since 1938 there had been groups plotting an overthrow of some kind within the German Army and in the German Military Intelligence Organization. Early leaders of these plots included Major General Hans Oster, the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office; Colonel General Ludwig Beck, a former Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command ; and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, a former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command in the West. They soon established contacts with several prominent civilians, including Carl Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, and Helmuth James von Moltke, the great-grandnephew of Moltke the Elder, hero of the Franco-Prussian War.
Groups of military plotters exchanged ideas with civilian, political, and intellectual resistance groups in the Kreisauer Kreis and in other secret circles. Moltke was against killing Hitler; instead, he wanted him placed on trial. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle it". Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical: Hitler and National Socialism had turned wrongdoing into a system, something which the resistance should avoid.
Plans to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 1938 and 1939, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army General Franz Halder and Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, and the failure of the Western powers to oppose Hitler's aggression until 1939.
In 1942 a new conspiratorial group formed, led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's staff, who commanded Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa. Tresckow systematically recruited oppositionists into the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of the army resistance. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him.
During 1942, Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective resistance network. Their most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units throughout Germany. Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created a viable coup apparatus.
In late 1942 Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and stage an overthrow during Hitler's visit to the headquarters of Army Group Centre at Smolensk in March 1943, by placing a bomb on his plane. The bomb failed to detonate, and a second attempt a week later with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin also failed. These failures demoralised the conspirators. During 1943 Tresckow tried without success to recruit senior army field commanders such as Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to support a seizure of power. Tresckow, in particular, worked on his Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, to persuade him to move against Hitler and at times succeeded in gaining his consent, only to find him indecisive at the last minute. However, despite their refusals, none of the Field Marshals reported their treasonous activities to the Gestapo or Hitler.

Motivation and goals

Opposition to Hitler and to Nazi policies

While the primary goal of the plotters was to remove Hitler from power, they did so for various reasons. The majority of the group behind the 20 July plot were conservative nationalists—idealists, but not necessarily of a democratic stripe. Martin Borschat portrays their motivations as a matter of aristocratic resentment, writing that the plot was mainly carried out by conservative elites who were initially integrated by the Nazi government but during the war lost their influence and were concerned about regaining it. However, at least in Stauffenberg's case, the conviction that Nazi Germany's atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war were a dishonour to the nation and its military was likely a major motivating factor. Historian Judith Michel assesses the circle around the 20 July Group as a diverse and heterogeneous group that included liberal democrats, conservatives, social democrats, authoritarian aristocrats, and even communists. The common goal was to overthrow Hitler's regime and bring the war to a swift end. There is evidence of the plot encompassing a broad spectrum of plotters which included communists. That April, before the attempted coup, Stauffenberg agreed to cooperate with the Operational Leadership of the KPD remaining in Germany. Contacts were established through the Social Democrats Adolf Reichwein and Julius Leber.

Territorial demands

Among demands initially countenanced by the plotters for issue towards the Allies were such points as re-establishment of Germany's 1914 boundaries with Belgium, France and Poland and no reparations. Like most of the rest of German resistance, the 20 July plotters believed in the idea of Greater Germany and as a condition for peace demanded that the western allies recognise as a minimum the incorporation of Austria, Alsace-Lorraine, Sudetenland, and the annexation of Polish-inhabited territories that Germany ceded to Poland after 1918, with the restoration of some of the overseas colonies. They believed that Europe should be controlled under German hegemony.
The overall goals towards Poland were mixed within the plotters. Most of the plotters found it desirable to restore the old German borders of 1914, while others pointed out that the demands were unrealistic, and amendments had to be made. Some like Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg even wanted all of Poland annexed to Germany.
To Poland, which was fighting against Nazi Germany with both its army and government in exile, the territorial demands and traditional nationalistic visions of resistance were not much different from the racist policies of Hitler. Stauffenberg, as one of the leaders of the plot, stated five years before the coup in 1939 during the Poland campaign: "It is essential that we begin a systemic colonisation in Poland. But I have no fear that this will not occur."

Political vision of post-Hitler Germany

Many members of the plot had helped the Nazis to gain power and shared revisionist foreign policy goals pursued by Hitler, and even at the time of the plot were anti-democratic, hoping to replace Hitler with a conservative-authoritarian government involving aristocratic rule. They opposed popular legitimation or mass participation in governance of the state.

Political program

The political program of the [|planned government] was outlined in a draft for a government policy statement, consisting of twelve points:
  1. Restoration of the rule of law, independence of the courts, protection of personal and property security, dissolution of concentration camps, prevention of lynch law,
  2. Combating corruption, restitution of looted works of art, ending the persecution of Jews, punishment of war crimes,
  3. Dissolution of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and an end to propaganda reporting on the course of the war,
  4. Separation of church and state, a Christian mindset as the basis for policies, freedom of the press,
  5. Restoration of Christian education by parents
  6. Reduction of bureaucracy, examination and possible punishment, dismissal or transfer of all officials appointed and promoted from 1 January 1933, especially Nazi party members
  7. Transformation of the provinces of Prussia and states into Reichsgaue, local self-government for the Reichsgaue, districts and municipalities under the supervision of Reichsstatthalter,
  8. Restoration of full economic freedom after the war, protection of private property, planned economic measures only under conditions of war-related shortages,
  9. Responsible and conscientious social policy in the hands of Reichsgaue and trade unions
  10. Ending national debt through tax increases and austerity policies, international agreement on debt repayment
  11. Continuation of the war for defence purposes only,
  12. Commencement of peace negotiations with the Western Allies, punishment of those Germans responsible for the Second World War.