It is said that Hitler escaped as many as 40 attacks, but this was probably an inflated figure to give a sort of divine aura of immortality to the Fuhrer. Instead, it went down in history as the greatest act of military resistance against Hitler during the Third Reich Operation Valkyrie, a real military plot that had the objective of physically eliminating Hitler, then taking command and negotiating a surrender with the enemy in an already lost war that was inflicting heavy military and civilian casualties. The idea of deposing the dictator began to emerge among some senior officers including Colonel Henning von Tresckow, who became a sort of leader of the conspiracy when the German army suffered its first military defeats in 1942.
In the first months of 1943 three different attacks were organized, none of which were successful. In the summer of 1943 the conspirators were joined by lieutenant colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a man of Catholic faith and conservative ideology, who lost a hand and an eye in the war in Africa.
The conspirators decided that if they succeeded in eliminating Hitler, they would seize power through the Valkyrie plan, convincing General Friedrich Fromm to join them. The location set for the attack was the so-called Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s headquarters located in Rastenburg, in East Prussia (today in Poland). It was a system of eighty bunkers connected by various tunnels and protected by minefields, barbed wire and anti-aircraft artillery emplacements. Furthermore, there was a railway station, a small airport to allow connections with the homeland and a direct telephone connection with Berlin. The buildings were camouflaged by thick vegetation and the place was constantly shrouded in darkness.
The plan called for Stauffenberg to attend a meeting with Hitler and other military personnelwould have placed a bag containing two bombs in the room, and then left with an excuse and quickly return to Berlin. After the explosion, the other conspirators, warned by one of their collaborators at the Wolf’s Lair, would have put the Valkyrie plan into action. Once the Nazi government was overthrown, Carl Goerdeler would assume the position of chancellor and General Beck that of head of state.
On 20 July 1944 during the meeting he only had time to activate one of the two bombs and furthermore, due to the heat, the meeting was held in a room with open windows instead of in a bunker, in which the effect of the explosion would have been stronger. Stauffenberg placed the bag with the bomb not far from Hitler, and walked away. At 12.42 the bomb exploded: the explosion killed three officers and a stenographer, but Hitler, who was far from the bomb, remained virtually unharmed.
Stauffenberg, convinced of the success of the attack, reached Berlin with his personal plane and tried to start the Valkyrie plan. General Fromm, advised that Hitler had survived and refused to join the conspirators and in an attempt to exonerate himself he had Stauffenberg and other soldiers arrested and shot; still others committed suicide, or were forced to commit suicide. The retaliation continued in the following weeks when the Gestapo arrested around 5000 people, many of whom were only indirectly involved in the conspiracy: around 200 of those arrested, including Fromm himself, were executed after “show trials”.
Among those forced to take their own lives as a result of the attack was Erwin Rommel, the most famous German general, who had not taken part in the plot, but was aware of it.
Von Stauffenberg’s family was split: the four children, all under 10 years old, were locked up under a false name in an orphanage, his wife Nina, pregnant with their fifth daughter, Konstanze, who was born on 17 January 1945, in Frankfurt am Oder, then remained a prisoner at Lake Braies in the province of Bolzano. While the Colonel’s older brother was executed. Only when the allied troops arrived was the family able to reunite. Nina died in 2006.
Hitler finally left the Wolf’s Den on 20 November when the Soviet advance reached Angerburg (now Węgorzewo), just 15 kilometers away. Two days later the order was given to destroy the complex. However the actual demolition was not carried out until the night of 24-25 January 1945, ten days after the start of the Vistula-Oder offensive. Despite the use of tons of explosives (one bunker required around 8 tons of TNT) most of the buildings were only partially destroyed due to their reinforced structures and enormous size. Only in 1955 was the area surrounding the installation completely demined (around 54,000 mines were removed), and later transformed into a tourist attraction.
