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Europe, 1944:

The Second World War is getting closer and closer to its end.

Across Eastern Europe, after years of bitter fighting, the Red Army continues to smash the retreating Wehrmacht as they approach Poland and the borders of Germany itself. Army Group Center, once a formidable force, melts away under the crushing blows of Operation Bagration. In the West, the invasion of the Allies in Normandy continues to smash through the German defenses after a month of furious battles, and it is only a matter of time for the entire front to face virtual collapse. In Italy, Kesselring and his men continue to block a potential allied thrust into Southern Germany while Mussolini lives the final days of his regime, but they will not resist forever. And across the skies, the situation is equally hopeless as allied bombing burns whole cities to the ground while the mortally wounded Luftwaffe attempts a desperate resistance.

For Germany, the war is lost.

While on different levels, most of the Army and the Nazi elite recognize the despair of the situation, and even if some continue to hold out in hope of the Wunderwaffen to save Germany from ruin, others believe an alternate method is possible. Those men, an oath of loyalty aside, believe the time is now, or never. The mission they chose: to kill Adolf Hitler and bring down the Nazi regime to achieve a negotiated peace. Misguided, naïve, perhaps even blind to reality in some levels, the conspirators are nonetheless desperate enough to risk everything on a last roll of the dice, many of them emboldened and inspired by the courage of a young Colonel: war hero and Reserve Army Chief of Staff Claus von Stauffenberg.

Their plans for a coup, drawn from the eventuality on an uprising of some sort by foreign workers or other disruptive elements, are codenamed Operation Valkyrie. After a number of close calls, mistakes and miraculous instances of survival by the Führer, it seems the last opportunity has arrived before the coup falls apart, as the Gestapo seems to have picked the trail and arrests are getting too close to the main group. On the morning of July 20th, 1944, von Stauffenberg arrives on the Wolf’s Lair at Rastenburg for a meeting with Hitler and several other generals, determined to see the assassination plot through.

In the timeline we know, Stauffenberg failed to kill Hitler and Operation Valkyrie (a flawed plan at best) crashed down in flames once his survival was known. But what if...?
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