Claus von Stauffenberg

On 20 July 1944 Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg placed a briefcase of explosives under the conference table at Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair. The blast killed four people but Hitler was only slightly wounded, shielded by the table's heavy leg. Stauffenberg flew back to Berlin to launch the coup, but Goebbels announced on the radio that Hitler had survived and the coup collapsed. That night in the Bendlerblock, General Fromm held an improvised court martial. Stauffenberg and three others were shot in the courtyard, lit by truck headlights, before 1 a.m. on 21 July. His reported last words were a cry of Long live sacred Germany. The SS exhumed his body, stripped his medals and cremated it. At 1 a.m. Hitler told the nation that the plotters were a very small gang of criminal elements.

The regime used the plot as a pretext to purge opponents. More than 200 people were condemned in show trials, and over 20,000 were killed or sent to camps. Stauffenberg's wife Nina was arrested, and their children were placed in a foster home, forced to take new surnames, and the family name was treated as taboo. After the war the courtyard where he was shot became a memorial. In 1980 West Germany opened a memorial to the resistance in the Bendlerblock, and the street outside is now Stauffenbergstrasse. His eldest son, Berthold, became a major general in the Bundeswehr. Historians still debate the conspirators' motives.