The Day Germany Tried to Kill Hitler
Remembering the July 20, 1944 Assassination Plot
I have always loved history.
Perhaps that is because history allows me to step outside my own time and look at the lives, decisions, mistakes, ambitions, and tragedies of people who lived before me.
Some historical events are especially fascinating because they remind us that the future is not always as inevitable as it appears in hindsight.
The attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, is one of those events.
I first learned about this remarkable plot many years ago in a history class at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, listening to lectures by Dr. Macky. The story stayed with me. Over the years, I encountered it again in history books and in documentaries and historical programs.
But forty years is a long time.
Details that once seemed firmly planted in my memory can become scattered. Names, dates, places, and circumstances can fade even when the overall story remains.
So I decided to go back and study it again.
I used ChatGPT to help me gather historical information, check major facts, and organize the material into an account I could study. What follows is therefore both a history essay and a personal journey back to something I learned many years ago.
And the more I remembered, the more fascinating the story became.
Germany in 1944
By the summer of 1944, Adolf Hitler's Germany was facing catastrophe.
German armies had suffered enormous losses on the Eastern Front. On June 6, 1944, the Western Allies had landed in Normandy and begun pushing their way into occupied France.
The war Hitler had started was turning against him.
Within Germany, a group of military officers and civilians had concluded that Hitler had to be removed.
Their reasons were not all the same.
That is an important point to remember.
It is tempting, when looking backward at Nazi Germany, to divide everyone neatly into heroes and villains. But history is rarely that simple.
The men involved in the July 20 conspiracy had different political beliefs and different motivations. Some had become deeply opposed to Hitler's crimes and policies. Others were increasingly convinced that Hitler was destroying Germany through a war that could no longer be won.
Some of these men had served Hitler and the German military machine for years.
Their opposition came late.
That does not make the story less important.
To me, it makes it more human—and more complicated.
Claus von Stauffenberg
At the center of the final assassination attempt was Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.
Stauffenberg had been severely wounded during the war. He lost his right hand, two fingers of his left hand, and his right eye in an Allied air attack in North Africa.
Eventually, he became one of the leading figures in the conspiracy against Hitler.
The conspirators understood that simply killing Hitler would not be enough.
They needed a plan for what would happen afterward.
That plan became known as Operation Valkyrie.
Valkyrie had originally been designed by the German military as an emergency plan for maintaining order inside Germany. The conspirators secretly modified it so it could be used to seize control of the government after Hitler's death.
They intended to occupy important buildings, arrest Nazi officials, disarm SS forces, and establish a new government.
Everything depended upon one thing:
Hitler had to die.
July 20, 1944
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg traveled to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia.
The headquarters was called the Wolf's Lair.
Hitler was meeting with senior military officers to discuss the increasingly desperate military situation.
Stauffenberg entered the conference room carrying a briefcase.
Inside was a bomb.
He placed the briefcase beneath the conference table near Hitler.
Then he left the room.
At approximately 12:42 p.m., the bomb exploded.
The conference room was torn apart.
Several people were killed and others were wounded.
But Hitler survived.
And here is where one of the great accidents of twentieth-century history occurred.
After Stauffenberg left the room, someone moved the briefcase. It ended up on the other side of one of the massive wooden supports beneath the conference table.
That support helped shield Hitler from the blast.
There was another problem.
Stauffenberg had brought enough explosive material for two charges but had only been able to arm one of them before entering the conference room.
Only one bomb exploded.
Hitler lived.
When I think about that moment, I find myself wondering how differently the twentieth century might have unfolded if the briefcase had remained in its original position—or if the second explosive charge had been used.
Sometimes history turns on remarkably small circumstances.
The Coup Begins
Stauffenberg believed Hitler was dead.
He returned to Berlin to help put Operation Valkyrie into action.
The conspirators began issuing orders.
Military units were mobilized.
Government buildings were to be secured.
Nazi officials were supposed to be arrested.
For a brief period, the conspiracy was in motion.
But there was one enormous problem.
Hitler was alive.
As word spread that Hitler had survived, the conspirators lost the advantage of surprise.
Conflicting orders were issued.
Some officers hesitated.
Others refused to participate.
The military operation began to collapse.
By evening, the attempt to overthrow Hitler had failed.
The Consequences
Stauffenberg and several other conspirators were arrested at the Bendlerblock in Berlin.
That same night, Stauffenberg and several of his colleagues were executed by firing squad.
General Ludwig Beck, another important figure in the conspiracy, attempted suicide and was subsequently killed.
But Hitler's revenge was only beginning.
The Nazi regime launched a massive investigation.
Thousands of people were arrested, and approximately 4,900 people were eventually executed in connection with the conspiracy and its aftermath.
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The regime wanted to make an example of anyone who had dared to challenge Hitler.
The conspirators had failed to kill the dictator.
Now the dictatorship would attempt to destroy everyone connected with them.
The Question That Fascinates Me
This is the part of the story that has fascinated me since I first encountered it in my history studies.
What if Hitler had died that afternoon?
That question has no certain answer.
Would Germany have surrendered?
Perhaps.
Would the war in Europe have ended earlier?
Possibly.
Would millions of lives have been saved?
It is conceivable.
Would the Holocaust have ended sooner?
We cannot know.
Would the Soviet Union have occupied as much of Eastern Europe?
Perhaps not.
Would Germany have been divided after the war?
Maybe the map of Europe would have looked very different.
And what about the Cold War?
Even that might have developed differently.
These are fascinating questions, but I have to remind myself that they belong to counterfactual history.
We can ask what might have happened.
We cannot turn possibilities into facts.
What we know is that Hitler survived.
Nazi Germany continued fighting.
Hitler eventually killed himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, only days before Germany's final collapse.
History Is More Complicated Than We Sometimes Think
The July 20 plot also reminds me of something I have learned from studying history over the years:
Human beings are complicated.
The conspirators were not all identical.
Some had opposed Hitler earlier.
Some had supported aspects of his government.
Some became convinced that Germany could not survive under Hitler.
Some were motivated by military considerations.
Some were responding to the terrible crimes being committed in the name of Germany.
I don't think we should turn complicated historical figures into cardboard heroes simply because they eventually opposed Hitler.
At the same time, I don't think their imperfections should cause us to ignore the courage required to turn against one of the most powerful dictators in history.
They knew what failure could mean.
And they were right.
Failure meant death.
Returning to an Old History Lesson
As I look at this story today, I realize that I am not studying it in quite the same way I did when I first heard it at Lamar University.
Back then, I was a student listening to a professor explain events that had happened before I was born.
Now I am returning to the same history after many decades of living, reading, thinking, and experiencing the world.
The facts have not changed.
But perhaps I have.
That is one of the things I love about history.
We can return to the same story at different points in our lives and see something we did not see before.
When I first learned about July 20, 1944, I was fascinated by the assassination attempt.
Today I am equally fascinated by the human decisions surrounding it.
I wonder why some people recognized Hitler's danger early while others recognized it only after Germany was already being destroyed.
I wonder how much courage it required for a German officer to decide that obedience to his government had become impossible.
And I wonder how many people throughout history have waited too long before deciding that something must be done.
A Lesson From the Twentieth Century
The July 20 plot is ultimately a story about a bomb that failed.
But it is also a story about choice.
Hitler survived because of a combination of circumstances, including the position of the briefcase and the fact that only one explosive charge was successfully prepared.
The conspirators failed.
The war continued.
But for a few extraordinary hours on July 20, 1944, the future of Germany hung in the balance.
That is what makes the story so fascinating to me.
We often look backward at history and imagine that everything happened exactly as it was destined to happen.
It didn't.
History is made by human beings making decisions under extraordinary circumstances.
Sometimes those decisions succeed.
Sometimes they fail.
And sometimes the difference between them can be measured in inches.
Author's Note
I wrote this essay primarily as study material for myself.
I first learned about the July 20 assassination plot approximately forty years ago in a history class at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, during lectures by Dr. Macky. I believe I encountered the story again through books I have read and through historical documentaries and programs, including the History Channel.
As the years passed, I wanted to refresh my memory of this remarkable episode of World War II.
For this essay, I used ChatGPT as a research and organizational tool to gather historical information, check important details, and help assemble the material into a coherent study essay. I did not intend for ChatGPT to replace the history books I have read or the education I received. Instead, I used it much as I might use a research assistant—to help me return to a subject I had studied long ago.
That, to me, is one of the most interesting possibilities of artificial intelligence.
It can help us remember, investigate, question, and learn.
I am sharing this essay because I have enjoyed returning to this part of twentieth-century history, and because I think others may enjoy thinking about it as well.
Most of all, I find myself returning to that fascinating question:
How might the history of the twentieth century have changed if Hitler had died in that conference room on July 20, 1944?
We will never know.
And perhaps that is precisely why the question remains so compelling.
— James Stephen Welborn
