For those interested in more information:
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/20_July_plot.html
Some interesting comments from one the last survivors of the 20 Juli affair. Interview was made two years ago:
Amazing how Hitler survived 42 assassination attempts. My theory is that God was taking mercy on Satan with the delay to make up for the excess of the leftists that hell is getting flooded with now.
Last plot survivor died in March;
“They try; man, how they try!”
4,981 if you add Rommel. A personnel guy tried to save his own neck and "implicated" Erwin. The dye was cast and whether suicide or some one else's hand, he was a marked (and doomed) man.
I actually had to set down Schlabrendorff’s book to write this reply. After the D-Day invasion, the long-planned assassination seemed useless to attempt now, since the unconditional surrender demands of the Allies and strong Allied position did not bode well for stabilizing a Germany and negotiating a peace. Stauffenberg sent an emissary to von Tresckow asking if there was still any point in risking their lives. von Tresckow replied:
“The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be undertaken. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance movement dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.”
these germans had the right idea to get rid of their tyrannical dictator...
Stauffenberg was, by all accounts, an amazing man. Not only in his courage to attempt the assassination, but in even surviving his 1943 injuries that would have killed most men, much less being able to stay in the Wehrmacht in a staff position.
He and his incredible bravery were not served well by the senior figures in the July Plot. Their planning was slipshod and amateurish even accounting for the Gestapo lurking around every corner. No thought of seizing the Rundfunkhaus or telegraph exchange so the Nazis could not broadcast that Hitler had survived? Goebbels said it best afterward, “my daughter would have thought of that!”
}:-)4
It’s too bad the Germans didn’t succeed in overthrowing that nut.The war in Europe would have ended much sooner.