July Plot: A Failed Attempt to Assassinate Adolf Hitler
Learn about the July Plot of 1944, in which Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg, and others tried to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime.
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Transcript
NARRATOR: July 20, 1944 - assassination attempt on Hitler. He planted the bomb - Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Germany is in the fifth year of war. Doubt is growing in the heavily bombed cities. The defeat at Stalingrad has weakened belief in Hitler's propaganda of victory. Reports of the horrors at the front arouse concern and call for resistance. But who will resist this dictator?
PHILIPP VON BOESELAGER: "Though it was a stronger movement, the civil resistance needed more time to grow. Thus, the military resistance was the more decisive, because only the military had the power to depose Hitler."
NARRATOR: July 20, 1944 - the assassins make their way to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia, a high-security zone. In his briefcase, Stauffenberg is carrying a time bomb. His co-conspirators are in full agreement: the overthrow can only be successful upon Hitler's death. Their goal: a new civil government, which should end the war and its crimes. For Stauffenberg the result is clear. Hitler could not have survived. He flies back to Berlin to lead the coup d'etat. But the dictator is not dead.
KURT SALTERBERG: "It was almost 10 minutes before Hitler came stumbling out of the barracks in the arms of two others. He made it about 10 meters and then stopped and turned around, standing there motionless for a while looking at the scene. His trousers were in tatters, up to here everything was in tatters, his hands were bloody."
NARRATOR: The regime retaliates. In Berlin, troops loyal to Hitler regain control of the government quarter. They soon take control of the conspirators' base of operations in Bendlerblock. The revolt collapses. In the same night a commando unit of infantry is deployed to Bendlerblock.
HELMUT SCHMIDT: "It may not have been successful, but it showed the world posterity, and Germans living today that not the entire German people had fallen under the spell of Hitler."
NARRATOR: Stauffenberg and three co-conspirators are shot during the night. Soon after some 200 members of the resistance will also die. The war continues for another nine months, with millions dying on the front and in the death camps of the regime - precisely what the resistance wanted to avert.
PHILIPP VON BOESELAGER: "Though it was a stronger movement, the civil resistance needed more time to grow. Thus, the military resistance was the more decisive, because only the military had the power to depose Hitler."
NARRATOR: July 20, 1944 - the assassins make their way to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia, a high-security zone. In his briefcase, Stauffenberg is carrying a time bomb. His co-conspirators are in full agreement: the overthrow can only be successful upon Hitler's death. Their goal: a new civil government, which should end the war and its crimes. For Stauffenberg the result is clear. Hitler could not have survived. He flies back to Berlin to lead the coup d'etat. But the dictator is not dead.
KURT SALTERBERG: "It was almost 10 minutes before Hitler came stumbling out of the barracks in the arms of two others. He made it about 10 meters and then stopped and turned around, standing there motionless for a while looking at the scene. His trousers were in tatters, up to here everything was in tatters, his hands were bloody."
NARRATOR: The regime retaliates. In Berlin, troops loyal to Hitler regain control of the government quarter. They soon take control of the conspirators' base of operations in Bendlerblock. The revolt collapses. In the same night a commando unit of infantry is deployed to Bendlerblock.
HELMUT SCHMIDT: "It may not have been successful, but it showed the world posterity, and Germans living today that not the entire German people had fallen under the spell of Hitler."
NARRATOR: Stauffenberg and three co-conspirators are shot during the night. Soon after some 200 members of the resistance will also die. The war continues for another nine months, with millions dying on the front and in the death camps of the regime - precisely what the resistance wanted to avert.
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