6th May – 1st July 1943 – Germany – Targeting Hitler
Hitler and the Wehrmacht had always had something of an ambivalent relationship. Hitler’s willingness to pour almost unlimited resources into rearmament had certainly won him support from the military professionals, however many continued to regard him as a ‘jumped up little Corporal’ and felt that he should leave strategic matters in their hands, which Hitler never had any intention of doing. The situation escalated to a point where the Heer actively considered his overthrow in 1938, Ludwig von Beck went so far as the resign his post as Chief of staff and was involved in the plot but abandoned it when it seemed that Hitler might suspect the Heer was planning to move against him and the momentum for action completely dissipated in the aftermath of the Munich Agreement. A year later and the Wehrmacht raised only muted objections to Hitler’s renewed plans to go to war, the only meaningful attempt to remove Hitler from power at this time was the bomb planted by Georg Elser in November 1939, an attempt thwarted only by Hitler’s decision to depart the Bürgerbräukeller where it was planted far earlier than anticipated. From 1940 through 1942 the Wehrmacht was remarkably supine. Some outside the regime certainly did attempt to stir opposition, such as the White Rose group, and all too often paid with their lives. Such principled opposition remained rare in Germany, and even more so within the ranks of the Wehrmacht. The idea that the officers Heer in particular were somehow a group of apolitical soldiers who simply did their duty and obeyed their oaths was one that those officers certainly did their best to promote after the war but the death of millions of Soviet POWs and the organized looting of food under the Hunger Plan were actions in which the Heer was directly complicit and to which few if any objections were raised. Only when it became clear that Germany was losing the war and that their own personal survival and the survival of the nation was at stake did some among the ranks of the Wehrmacht decide to finally take concrete action and even then, much of their preparation was marked by hesitation and a reluctance to translate planning into action. Even in 1943 there were still some who entertained the idea it might be possible to retain Hitler as a figurehead stripped of his power, or even that if only the inner circle of cronies around him could be removed, especially the quack doctors who plied the Fuhrer with all manner of dubious concoctions, he could be restored to his old self and put the conduct of the war back on a sensible footing. A few were clearer sighted and realized that only the death of Hitler could save Germany, and some chose to take matters into their own hands without worrying about what might come after the death of Hitler [1].
The early months of 1943 saw multiple independent schemes hatched to kill Hitler, and yet the same perverse luck that had saved him at the Bürgerbräukeller still seemed to be with him, ‘The devil protects his own’ as one exasperated would-be assassin commented. A disillusioned army officer Henning von Tresckow tried to place a bomb aboard Hitler’s personal aircraft during a visit to Smolensk. The bomb was in a package supposedly containing two bottles of brandy and von Tresckow gave it to a member of Hitler’s staff as supposed gift for the Fuhrer. The staffer accepted it and thirty minutes later the bomb went off, in a deserted corner of a hanger on the airfield. The staffer later profusely apologized to von Tresckow for being in a hurry and forgetting to load the package aboard, promising to ensure the delivery of the brandy if von Tresckow sent it on. As tempting as it may have been to try again von Tresckow chose to send the brandy on this occasion [2].
Rudolf von Gertsdorff was another army officer, and one willing to sacrifice his own life to end Hitler’s. Only days after the failure of the von Tresckow attempt von Gertsdorff also planned to kill Hitler with a bomb, this time intended to be planted at an exhibition of captured Soviet battle flags that the Fuhrer was scheduled to attend. Discovering that security at the exhibit was too tight to plant the bomb on the premises von Gertsdorff chose to secret the bomb on his person and get close to Hitler before it went off and killed both of them. What thwarted the plan was the fact that the bomb had a time fuse and despite von Gertsdorff’s best efforts Hitler chose to leave before the fuse reached ran down its ten-minute delay. This left von Gertsdorff to hastily find a quiet bathroom and disarm the device [3].
There may have been an element of black comedy in these accounts, but both had come remarkably close to killing Hitler and demonstrated that the security around the Fuhrer was anything but airtight. Both attempts contained the obvious flaw already mentioned that even if they had succeeded in eliminating Hitler neither von Tresckow nor von Gertsdorff had any plans for securing the transition of power after Hitler’s demise. Without such a plan for the more ‘rational’ elements of the Heer to swiftly fill the power vacuum it was more than likely that Goering or Himmler would seize control, outcomes which were unlikely to improve Germany’s situation, especially as both of them would inevitably unleash a deadly and wide-reaching vengeance on anyone even suspected of colluding in the death of Hitler [4].
Such considerations explain why some of those conspiring to kill Hitler were hoping the Allies might be persuaded to do the deed and allow them to maintain a certain plausible deniability, especially if yet another attempt were to fail and the Fuhrer was looking for a culprit to punish. The idea of killing Hitler had certainly been considered by the Allies, with MI6, SOE, the OSS, and even the Free French all having devised plans of varying complexity. The circuitous approaches to the Allies from inside Germany led to some of these ideas being re-examined but they were soon quashed at the very highest level. Churchill vetoed the idea after some discussions with Roosevelt and his reasoning for opposing an assassination was sound. Firstly, there was the question of how reliable these contacts in Germany were, there had after all been multiple occasions when the Wehrmacht appeared on the brink of turning on Hitler only to baulk at the last minute. There was no reason to suppose this time would be any different, and if the Allies were to target Hitler why risk trusting a group of Heer officers who might be acting as agent provocateurs, seeking to expose Allied intelligence assets in Western Europe? More fundamentally there was the question of whether killing Hitler would be a net benefit to the Allies. It might, only might, have slowed the dreadful toll of the death camps, if the plotters could take power and kept their promises to put an end to the Judaeocide, something that no one in Whitehall was willing to place much faith in. On the other hand, without Hitler’s interference the German ability to prosecute the war might well be considerably enhanced, which was indeed something the plotters were hoping for, and an assassinated Hitler might well become a martyr and create a legend akin to the ‘stabbed in the back’ mythos that had helped the rise of the Nazis. Since no one in the Allied High Command had any interest in drawing out the war, or fighting Germany again in another twenty years, the Allies decided that whatever the moral issues they were better off with Hitler in charge of Germany [5].
After his failure in March von Tresckow soon became involved in a new and far more elaborate plan to not only kill Hitler but to take control of Germany away from the Nazi regime altogether, with Himmler, Goering, Speer, and others in the inner circle taking the fall for the assassination and leaving the plotters clear to take control of Germany and seek some reasonable terms from the Allies, meaning the Western Allies. This was Operation Valhalla and ironically it had not originally been created to overthrow the Nazi regime, but to preserve it if some disaster befell the Fuhrer. Valhalla was a piece of contingency planning on the part of Hitler and his inner circle that recognized that in the eventuality of Hitler’s death it would be vital for the Wehrmacht to move to ensure stability and continuity, especially if the Fuhrer’s death was the result of hostile action. The importance of the plan for Hitler and his inner circle was emphasized by the assassination of Mussolini and the cracks that had opened in the Fascist government in the aftermath of his death, such disorder in the Reich was simply unthinkable. The framework of Valhalla allowed those plotting Hitler’s downfall to layout their plans for the aftermath of his assassination almost in plain sight. There were even areas where the conspirators agreed with Hitler’s strategic plans, for example they had no intention of budging one inch in the east and were instead committed to withdrawing troops from places such as Denmark and Norway and shipping them to the USSR to shore up the defence against the Red Army, and it would be a defence, the Valhalla plotters diverged from Hitler’s vision in their recognition that further conquest in the East were impossible, better to stand on their gains and force the Soviets into bloody and exhausting offensive action [6].
Such ambitions for the future of the Reich of course required that the plotters have a workable plan to kill Hitler in the first instance and despite the previous failures the Valhalla conspirators once again chose planting a bomb as the best option. Using a knife or gun to assassinate the Fuhrer, assuming that one was allowed to carry such a weapon in Hitler’s presence after the fate of Mussolini, carried too much uncertainty, and it would be completely impossible to hide the identity of the perpetrator in such a personal attack, making it difficult to pin the blame for the Fuhrer’s death on one of the other parties the conspirators wished to be rid of. Poison would allow the murder to be carried out from a distance, but von Trescow’s prior experience persuaded the plotters that anything that had to pass through multiple hands outside of the circles of Valhalla was too haphazard, and what if some other party sampled the poisoned food or drink before Hitler? So, a bomb planted in a location Hitler would be visiting was still the best option in spite of all prior experience. Translating this basic idea into a detailed plan proved a fraught business. Finding a suitable opportunity, and someone reliable willing to carry the bomb into Hitler’s presence was no easy feat. The issues were compounded by the skittishness of some of those involved, any hint that Hitler, the SS, or the Gestapo might suspect something was afoot was enough to induce paralysis that saw weeks go by as the plotters sought to lay low. There were, even after having apparently deciding that Hitler must go, those who questioned whether they should rush to carry out the plan. After all, if Operation Citadel succeeded and/or the Allied landing, wherever and whenever it took place, failed as Dieppe had the previous year then Germany’s strategic situation would be radically changed regardless of who was in charge and events in the Mediterranean did nothing to encourage their plans [7]. This was wishful thinking but given that hesitation had carried the planning for Valhalla into June there was a very real fear that if the Allies landed while the conspirators were still trying to secure their hold over Germany, or Berlin at least, then it would all too easy for others to brand them as turncoats. There was also the problem that if the Wehrmacht were caught up in the chaos of a coup when the Allies landed, then they might well achieve their objectives in Western Europe without the need to deal with the new leadership in Berlin. All this handwringing meant that the days continued to tick down to the launch of Operation Citadel and Operation Millennium with Hitler still firmly in charge. Only after the disastrous outcomes for Germany of the renewed fighting in the east and the west would the Valhalla plan finally be put into effect [8].
Even if Valhalla had been put into effect in May, or if any of the earlier attempts of 1943 had succeeded there was little chance of the death of Hitler achieving any of the would-be assassin’s goals beyond his death. The Allies hadn’t rejected plans to kill Hitler simply because they saw him as impeding the German war effort. They had also concluded that to ensure the peace of Europe in the future Germany would have to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch, and there were those arguing against any rebuilding, preferring to ‘salt the earth’ and destroy Germany as an industrial nation. A successful Valhalla would have been met with the same simple, stark response to any request for terms from the Allies, the only acceptable terms were the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany [9].
[1] I don’t have a very high opinion of the OTL Valkyrie plot, half-assed and largely carried out to try and save Germany from the consequences of its actions.
[2] The plan here is authentic, just a slightly different failure mode.
[3] This one however is precisely as per OTL, Hitler’s randomness seems to account for most of his luck in avoiding assassination attempts.
[4] Both plans seem to have been fuelled by personal animosity towards Hitler rather than any larger political objective.
[5] It’s cold-blooded logic, but it’s sound logic.
[6] Fundamental problem for the plotters is how to create a situation where someone will be willing to make peace.
[7] What events? That will be revealed shortly.
[8] So no assassination attempt yet by the Valhalla plotters and other things will get in the way too.
[9] The Allies might not have formalized everything yet, but unconditional surrender is pretty much all they will offer.