Beck, General Ludwig (1880–1944): An upright soldier of the old school and probably the most technically brilliant staff officer in Germany, Beck’s movement from strong sympathy for National Socialism to outright opposition is symptomatic of many of the military conspirators. Even before the advent of Hitler to power, he defended a trio of Nazi officers accused of spreading party propaganda in their barracks, and sympathised with the Nazi re-armament programme after he became chief of the General Staff in 1935. He believed, however, that Hitler’s rush to war over Czechoslovakia was too precipitate, and resigned following his failure to organise a ‘Generals’ Strike’ in protest in 1938. In retirement he devoted himself full-time to conspiracy and was persuaded of the need to eliminate Hitler physically. Named as head of state in the post-putsch government that would have followed the events of 20 July, he spent the day in the Bendlerblock trying to shore up support for the failing coup, and died in a forced and botched suicide that night.
Boeslager, Freiherrs Georg von (1915–1944) and Philipp von (1917–2008): Scions of an aristocratic Catholic family, the Boeslager brothers were cavalry officers who became involved in various abortive plots to assassinate Hitler associated with Henning von Tresckow at the Army Group Centre headquarters. Georg helped to obtain the explosive used by Stauffenberg in his bomb on 20 July. The following month, Georg was killed in action on the Russian front. Philipp was marching his unit to support the putsch in Berlin on 20 July, standing them down only when he heard of the plot’s failure. One of the conspiracy’s last survivors, he published his memoirs the year before he died.
Bussche-Streithorst, Baron Major Axel von dem (1919–1993): A highly decorated and much-wounded aristocratic officer, von dem Bussche was horrified when he witnessed the mass shooting of Jewish civilians at Dubno in 1942 and resolved to join the Resistance. He volunteered to blow Hitler up with grenades while modelling an army greatcoat, but the event was cancelled after the coats were destroyed in an Allied air raid. Soon afterwards, von dem Bussche lost a leg in action and was hospitalised for most of the rest of the war.
Canaris, Admiral Wilhelm (1887–1945): A strongly nationalist career naval officer, Canaris became involved in right-wing conspiratorial activity against the Weimar Republic, and initially sympathised with the Nazi regime. In 1935 he became chief of the Abwehr military intelligence service. Increasingly critical of the Nazis and horrified by Hitler’s reckless aggression, he allowed the Abwehr to become a nest of anti-Nazi conspiracy, while appearing to serve his Nazi masters in a risky double game. Oster, Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer and other Abwehr plotters were arrested in 1943, and Canaris fell under suspicion, finally being sacked in February 1944. Arrested after 20 July, he was executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp in the last days of the war.
Dohnanyi, Hans von (1902–1945): Married to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sister, Dohnanyi was a lawyer and jurist attached to the Abwehr. He played a leading role in Oster’s abortive coup plans in September 1938. He also gathered information on Nazi atrocities and war crimes for use in future prosecutions, and acted as link man between the Abwehr and the military conspirators.
During the war he helped Jews evade Nazi persecution and was arrested, initially for currency offences, in 1943. Brutally tortured, he deliberately infected himself with toxic bacillae in an effort to evade his tormentors. Some of the documents he meticulously assembled were discovered after 20 July and provided damning evidence against his co-conspirators. He was executed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in April 1945.
Fellgiebel, General Erich (1886–1944): A signals specialist, he was appointed head of the Signals Corps in 1938. A close friend of Beck and Stülpnagel, Fellgiebel’s independent views attracted Hitler’s suspicion, but the Führer needed his expertise. On 20 July, he was tasked with cutting off the Wolfschanze’s communications with the outside world, and met Stauffenberg before the bombing. He was arrested at Rastenburg that night. Bravely defending himself before Judge Freisler in the People’s Court, Fellgiebel was condemned on 10 August and executed on 4 September.
Freisler, Judge Roland (1893–1945): As a prisoner of war in Russia in the First World War, Freisler became a Bolshevik. He studied law and switched allegiance to the Nazis in 1925, rising through the Third Reich’s legal hierarchy to be appointed president of the People’s Court in 1942. Briefed by Hitler to bully and humiliate the defendants, Freisler’s conduct of the ‘trials’ that followed the July plot became notorious thanks to the films made of the early hearings. He delighted in taunting and sadistically sentencing his victims to death, and it seemed to many a judgement of God when he was killed in an Allied air raid in February 1945 while conducting the trial of Fabian von Schlabrendorff.
Fromm, General Friedrich (1888–1945): Chief of the Wehrmacht’s armaments until 1944 when he was appointed head of the Reserve Home Army. Mistrusted by Hitler, Fromm knew of the plans being hatched around his office in the Bendlerblock to overthrow the regime, but cynically and deliberately held aloof until the outcome became clear. Briefly detained by the plotters on 20 July, Fromm was freed and had Beck, Stauffenberg, Mertz and Werner von Haeften condemned to death and immediately shot – not least to cover up his own complicity and duplicity. The act angered the Nazis and Fromm too was arrested, tortured, and court-martialled for cowardice and dereliction of duty. He was executed by firing squad – one of Hitler’s least mourned victims.
Gersdorff, Baron General Rudolf Christoph von (1905–1980): An intelligence officer at Army Group Centre in 1941, Gersdorff tried unsuccessfully to recruit Field Marshal Manstein to the Resistance. On 21 March 1943 he attempted to blow up Hitler (and himself) in a suicide bombing while guiding the Führer around an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry at the Berlin Armoury. Undetected, he rose to be Chief of Staff to the Seventh Army in 1944–45 and survived the war.
Gisevius, Hans Bernd (1904–1974): A legal official at the Prussian Police Ministry, Gisevius left the service in disgust after the Night of the Long Knives and devoted himself to conspiracy. He played a leading role in Oster’s abortive 1938 coup, becoming an early advocate of assassinating Hitler, and the following year joined Canaris’s Abwehr.
From 1940–44, he headed the Abwehr station in Switzerland and made contact with his opposite number Allen Dulles of the OSS (forerunner of the CIA). Gisevius met and quarrelled with Stauffenberg, but he was at the Bendlerblock on 20 July. He managed to escape and went underground, fleeing to Switzerland in disguise. His memoir To The Bitter End is an important and rare – but not always reliable – personal account from inside the Resistance.
Goerdeler, Carl Friedrich (1884–1945): An ultra-conservative economist and politician, Goerdeler was mayor of Leipzig from 1930, and commissioner for price control in the dying days of Weimar and the early days of the Nazi regime. He resigned as Leipzig’s mayor in 1937 for refusing to remove a statue of the Jewish composer Mendelssohn. Thereafter he became actively opposed to the Nazis, tirelessly travelling at home and abroad in his efforts to build support against Hitler, who had ignored his many memos advising him on policy.
Garrulous, indiscreet and a bad judge of character, Goerdeler was absurdly optimistic about removing Hitler peacefully and always opposed his assassination. He favoured a compromise peace with the West that would allow Germany to keep many of the Nazis’ territorial gains – another example of his poor grasp of reality.
He drew up many blueprints for a future post-Nazi Christian Germany and was the conspirators’ candidate for chancellor in a post-Nazi regime. Warned of his impending arrest, he went underground just before 20 July, but was recognised and arrested in August. Sentenced to death by the People’s Court in September, he was kept alive for five months because he ‘named names’ in a misguided attempt to show the Nazis how unpopular they were. He was finally hanged in February 1945.
Haeften, Hans-Bernd von (1905–1944) and Werner von (1908–1944): A member of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church and a diplomat, Hans-Bernd von Haeften was Stauffenberg’s man in the Foreign Office and would have become Foreign Office state secretary in a post-putsch government. He was hanged in Plötzensee Prison on 15 August. His younger brother Werner, a Berlin legal banker in peacetime, was severely wounded in Russia and joined the Home Reserve Army, where he became Stauffenberg’s friend and aide-de-camp in late 1943. He accompanied Stauffenberg to Rastenburg on 20 July, helped him prime the bomb, returned with him to the Bendlerblock and was executed alongside him that night.
Halder, General Franz (1884–1972): Succeeding Beck as chief of the General Staff in 1938, although he shared Beck’s view that Hitler’s war policy was madness, Halder lacked the resolution to take effective action to stop it. Claiming that he often carried a loaded pistol into conferences with the Führer, Halder showed no sign of using it, and went along with the invasions of France and Russia as a professional soldier. Dismissed in September 1942 for opposing Hitler’s military decisions, he took no active part in the July plot, but was arrested anyway, and confined to a concentration camp. He was one of the convoy of ‘Prominenten’ prisoners who were lucky to survive the war, and gave evidence before the Nuremberg Tribunal. Halder worked with the US Army in post-war Germany, and published both his own wartime diaries and a book attacking Hitler’s qualities as a military leader.
Hase, General Paul von (1885–1944): Berlin’s military city commandant on 20 July, and a conspirator since 1938, Hase sent Major Otto Remer’s Grossdeutschland Guards Battalion and other troops to seal off Berlin’s government quarter without ascertaining where their true loyalties lay. After Remer’s defection, Hase went to see Goebbels to parley and was arrested. He was tried with the first group of conspirators before the People’s Court on 8 August and executed that afternoon.
Heinz, Friedrich Wilhelm (1899–1968): A shadowy figure but a born survivor, Heinz was a First World War army officer active in the violently right-wing Ehrhardt Freikorps, responsible for assassinating left-wing figures in the Weimar Republic. Heinz joined the early Nazis as a journalist, but – like many ex-Freikorps activists – fell foul of the party and was expelled, joining the nationalist paramilitary Stahlhelm movement. Recruited by Oster to the Abwehr, Heinz was tasked with leading the commando unit attacking the Chancellery and killing Hitler in the abortive September 1938 coup. As an army officer in 1941 he commanded the 4th Regiment of the Brandenburg Division. Once again, he was to have led a task force in Berlin on 20 July, and appeared at the Bendlerblock. He escaped in the aftermath of the putsch’s failure and hid out in Berlin until the end of the war. A local politician in Soviet-run East Berlin after the war, he re-emerged in the west to play a mysterious part in West Germany’s intelligence service.
Helldorf, Count Wolf Heinrich von (1896–1944): Like Heinz, Helldorf was a former Freikorps fighter and Nazi who fell out with his party. Joining the NSDAP in 1925, he became the SA leader in the Berlin–Brandenburg Gau, and survived the 1934 purge to become Berlin’s Police President in 1935. Notoriously corrupt, he took cash bribes from persecuted Jews to get them exit visas. The atrocities of Kristallnacht in November 1938, however, proved a pogrom too far and Helldorf joined the opposition. Arrested after 20 July, he was tortured, tried before the People’s Court and executed on 15 August.
Hoepner, General Erich (1886–1944): Prepared to lend his troops’ support to the abortive September 1938 coup, Hoepner took part in the invasion of Russia. However, he seriously annoyed Hitler by disobeying a direct ‘Führer-order’ not to withdraw his tanks during the battle for Moscow in the winter of 1941/2. He was sacked in disgrace and forbidden to wear his uniform. Embittered, he joined the plot, though probably as much out of personal pique as principle. Appointed by the conspirators to succeed his friend Fromm as commander of the Home Reserve Army, Hoepner arrived at the Bendlerblock with his uniform in a suitcase and changed in Olbricht’s office toilet. When the putsch failed he was arrested with the other leading conspirators, but successfully pleaded for his life with Fromm, who reprieved him from the firing squad that killed Stauffenberg and sent him to jail instead. Brutally tortured and possibly drugged, he cut a sorry figure before the People’s Court in a shabby cardigan, and was among the first of the conspirators to be hanged on 8 August.
Hofacker, Colonel Casar von (1896–1944): A lawyer, a nationalist and a cousin of Stauffenberg, Hofacker was a prisoner of war in France in the First World War, afterwards joining the Stahlhelm paramilitary nationalist group. Called to the colours in 1939 as a Luftwaffe officer, he was posted to Paris where he became personal aide to France’s military Governor, Stülpnagel. The main liaison man between the plotters in Berlin and the conspirators in France, Hofacker was at Stülpnagel’s side as he vainly tried to persuade Field Marshal Kluge to join the plot on 20 July. He went into hiding but was discovered, arrested and condemned to death by the People’s Court. Under prolonged torture, he revealed Rommel’s peripheral role in the plot. He was finally hanged on 30 December 1944.
Kaltenbrunner, Ernst (1903–1946): An Austrian, hailing from the same area as Hitler, Kaltenbrunner was a lawyer who joined Austria’s Nazis and SS in 1932. Imprisoned after the unsuccessful Nazi putsch in Vienna in 1934, he played a prominent part in the Anschluss and was promoted by Hitler. A tall, gaunt forbidding figure with a scarred face, Kaltenbrunner succeeded Heydrich as head of the SD after the latter’s assassination. He was in overall charge of the investigation into the aftermath of the July plot. Arrested at the war’s end, he unconvincingly denied his role in such enormities as the Holocaust and atrocities against prisoners, and was condemned to death and hanged at the Nuremberg Tribunal in October 1946.
Keitel, Field Marshal Wilhelm (1882–1946): After a brave but undistinguished early military career, culminating in being Field Marshal Blomberg’s office manager, Keitel was plucked from obscurity by Hitler to be chief of the newly created OKW, the Armed Forces High Command. Thereafter he slavishly obeyed his master’s every wish, earning the derision of his fellow officers and the nicknames ‘Nickesel’ (‘Nodding Donkey’) and ‘Lakeitel’ (‘Lackey’) for his supine behaviour. As ever, at Hitler’s side when Stauffenberg’s bomb exploded, it was the burly Keitel who helped the injured Führer from the devastated conference room, and who told the outside world by phone that Hitler had survived the attack. Keitel was arrested after signing Germany’s military surrender in 1945 – he was tried at Nuremberg for war crimes, condemned to death and hanged.
Kleist-Schmenzin, Ewald von (the elder) (1890–1945) and Kleist-Schmenzin, Ewald Heinrich (the younger) (1922– ): Descended from an old and distinguished Prussian family, the Kleist-Schmenzins, father and son, were both outright opponents of Hitlerism. The elder Ewald, a conservative landowner, travelled to London and met British leaders in an abortive effort to enlist support for Oster’s September 1938 coup. He remained in the Resistance, supported Stauffenberg’s intention to kill Hitler, and would have played a prominent part in a post-putsch government. Arrested after the plot’s failure, he was tried and executed.
His son, also named Ewald, was one of the young officers who volunteered – with his father’s approval – to kill Hitler. Although at the Bendlerstrasse as an adjutant to the putschists on 20 July, he managed to survive the subsequent purge while serving at the front. At the time of writing he is still alive in Munich – the very last of the July plotters.
Kluge, Field Marshal Günther ‘Hans’ von (1882–1944): Succeeding Bock in command of Army Group Centre in Russia in December 1941, Kluge dithered after coming under pressure from his aide Henning von Tresckow to join the anti-Hitler plot. His career in Russia was brought to an end when he was severely injured in a car crash in 1943. On recovering, he was appointed to succeed Rommel as commander of the Army Group B fighting the Normandy campaign in France in mid-July 1944. On 20 July he again hesitated when asked by Beck to join the putsch, before dramatically coming out against the plot when he realised that Hitler was alive. Mistrusted by Hitler, he was relieved of his command a month later and recalled to Germany to face investigation, being succeeded in Normandy by Field Marshal Walter Model. Like Stülpnagel, Kluge attempted suicide close to the battlefield of Verdun, where both men had fought in the Great War. Unlike Stülpnagel, Kluge succeeded – biting a cyanide capsule during a roadside picnic.
Mertz von Quirnheim, Ritter Albrecht (1905–1944): An army friend and contemporary of Claus von Stauffenberg, Mertz soon repented of an early sympathy for the Nazi regime. He succeeded Stauffenberg as Chief of Staff to Olbricht in the Home Reserve Army, by which time he was a convinced conspirator. Mertz was the man who issued the Valkyrie orders from the Bendlerblock. He was arrested by Fromm and executed with Beck, Stauffenberg, Olbricht and Werner von Haeften on the night of 20 July.
Moltke, Count Helmuth James von (1907–1945): A descendant of one of Prussia’s great military families and with an English mother, Moltke was a lawyer who had practised in London and had many British ties. After war began, he worked as a legal adviser to OKW Intelligence, arguing for the humane treatment of prisoners. His Kreisau estate became the centre of an ever widening circle of dissent, ranging from Social Democrats and trade unionists to conservative aristocrats and churchmen. The Kreisau Circle drew up plans for a non-Nazi post-war Germany and a united Europe, but Moltke refused to approve assassinating Hitler. Arrested in January 1944, he was tried before the People’s Court, and after verbally duelling with Freisler, was condemned to death and executed in January 1945. His letters from his cell to his wife Freya are among the most moving documents to have come from the Resistance.
Nebe, Arthur (1894–1945): After serving and being wounded in the First World War, Nebe joined the Berlin police and, in 1930, the Nazi party and the SS. Rising to the rank of SS Gruppenführer, he was appointed head of the Criminal Police and led the investigation into Georg Elser’s bombing. But Nebe’s attitude was ambiguous in the extreme – he was on the fringes of the Oster conspiracy in 1938, and was finally disillusioned with the regime after witnessing atrocities following the invasion of Russia. At the same time, Nebe himself led the Einsatzgruppen B murder squad, responsible for some 45,000 civilian deaths. On 20 July, along with his similarly ambiguous police colleague Count von Helldorf, he was ready to support the putsch, but never received the order from the Bendlerblock to move his men. He went into hiding on a wooded island in Berlin but was betrayed by a mistress, tried and condemned, and executed in March 1945. Reports that he survived the war are apparently groundless.
Oberg, Carl-Albrecht (1895–1965): A failed businessman, his career was rescued by the SS and in 1942 he became senior SS commander in occupied France. As such, he was responsible for deporting French Jews to their deaths and for repression and reprisals against the French Resistance. Briefly arrested by the conspirators on 20 July, Oberg then interrogated Stülpnagel, the man who had ordered his detention, after the latter had blinded himself in a suicide bid. After the war, he was condemned to death in Germany in 1946, and in France in 1954, escaping the extreme penalty on both occasions. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1958 but he was released on health grounds in 1965, the year of his death.
Olbricht, General Friedrich (1888–1944): A backroom boy, but technically very able, the self-effacing Olbricht used his position as Chief of Staff to Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, to plan a putsch under cover of the Valkyrie plan for putting down a revolt in the Reich. A convinced opponent of Nazism from the outset, Olbricht visited Stauffenberg in hospital after he was wounded in Tunisia in 1943, and arranged for him to be appointed his Chief of Staff in October 1943. Working together they refined Valkyrie, but made no allowance for Hitler surviving an assassination attempt. On 20 July Olbricht fatally delayed putting Valkyrie into effect until Stauffenberg’s return from Rastenburg, although he was happy to approve when Mertz issued the orders. Arrested with Beck, Stauffenberg, Mertz and Haeften, Olbricht was executed on Fromm’s orders that night. His widow Eva inaugurated the memorial at the Bendlerblock after the war.
Oster, General Hans (1888–1945): Oster was effectively Canaris’s deputy in the Abwehr and a convinced and very active opponent of Nazism, which he regarded as the negation of Germany’s Christian traditions. He was chiefly responsible for organising the first serious military conspiracy against Hitler in September 1938, when senior officers feared that Hitler’s intentions to risk a war over the annexation of Czechoslovakia would involve Germany in a conflict she could not win. However, the plotters’ plans to overthrow Hitler in a putsch and kill him in the confusion, were aborted after the Western Allies caved in to the Führer’s demands at Munich. Oster graduated from conspiracy to treason when he informed the Norwegian and Dutch military attaches of Hitler’s plans to attack their countries – he was not believed. Oster fell under suspicion and was detained with his aide Dohnanyi in 1943, and placed under house arrest. Picked up on 21 July 1944, he was executed with Canaris, Bonhoeffer and other Abwehr plotters at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945.
Remer, Major Otto Ernst (1912–1997): Remer was a fanatical Nazi soldier, highly decorated and much wounded on the Eastern Front. Appointed commander of the Grossdeutschland Wach Battalion, a unit charged with ensuring security in Berlin, on 20 July he received orders from the city commandant, General Paul von Hase, to seal off the central government area with his men. His suspicions fanned by a Nazi education officer attached to his unit, Remer sought out Goebbels, who connected him by phone to Hitler at Rastenburg. Hitler promoted Remer to full colonel on the spot and put him in temporary charge of all troops in Berlin with orders to put down the putsch at any cost. Remer did this, surrounding the Bendlerblock with his men. In the meantime, loyalist Nazi officers inside the Bendlerblock had staged their own counter-coup, arrested Stauffenberg and his closest confederates, and shot them. Eventually reaching the rank of Major-General, Remer fought on the Eastern Front and in the Ardennes with a notable lack of success, his unit incurring heavy casualties for little gain. A prisoner of the US army until 1947, in 1950 he founded a neo-Nazi group, the Socialist Reichs Party, which gained some local electoral successes in Saxony and Bremen before it was dissolved in 1952. Remer regularly spoke out against the July plotters as ‘traitors’ and was a prominent Holocaust denier. An unrepentant Nazi, he fled to Spain, Syria and Egypt in 1994 to avoid imprisonment for his Holocaust denial in Germany. He died in exile.
Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin (1891–1944): A brave and talented infantry officer on the Italian front in the First World War, Rommel became the most celebrated German commander of the Second, with his élan, dash and mastery of tank tactics. His armoured columns were in the vanguard in the invasion of France in 1940, but his fame reached its height when he was made commander of the Afrika Korps in Libya and Egypt. At first Rommel carried all before him, taking Tobruk and threatening Cairo. However, checked at El Alamein, he was defeated there in 1942, and beat a fighting retreat to Tunisia, where, starved of supplies by Allied air power, he fell sick and was evacuated, leaving his army to be captured. Appointed commander of Army Group B in France, he prepared to meet the Allied invasion, but despaired of victory, and, influenced by his Chief of Staff and fellow Swabian, Hans Speidel, he drafted a letter to Hitler appealing to him to make peace. On leave in Germany on D-day, he returned to the front, only to be seriously injured when his staff car was strafed from the air. He was thus out of action on 20 July. After Casar von Hofacker, under torture, had implicated Rommel in the plot, the Nazis offered him a stark choice between committing suicide and a humiliating People’s Court trial and execution. It was announced that he had died of his wounds, since it was thought that putting a popular hero like Rommel through the Freisler experience would be bad publicity. Compelled to swallow a cyanide pill near his home in October, Rommel was buried with full military honours in a funeral attended by his widow and son. The full truth about his death only emerged after the war.
Schlabrendorff, Fabian von (1907–1980): A conservative lawyer before the war, he became Henning von Tresckow’s adjutant at Army Group Centre and his first lieutenant in conspiracy. He acted as contact man between the front and the plotters in Berlin and was the key figure in the ‘bottle bomb’ plot to destroy Hitler in the air. He was arrested after 20 July, then interrogated and tortured at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. He eventually went on trial at the People’s Court. Miraculously, Judge Freisler was killed in an air raid while hearing Schlabrendorff’s case. Freisler’s successor – also miraculously – acquitted him on the grounds that he had been tortured, but he was immediately re-arrested and held in concentration camps. Incredibly, he survived the war to write one of the earliest histories of the Resistance and resume his legal career. He was a judge of West Germany’s constitutional court between 1967 and 1975.
Schulenberg, Count Fritz-Dietlof von der (1902–1944): A lawyer and member of the Nazi party and regional government in the 1930s, Schulenberg was later expelled from the party on grounds of political unreliability. In 1940 he joined the Kreisau Circle and became a contact man between various oppositon groups. A close friend of Stauffenberg, he was arrested after 20 July and hanged on 10 August.
Stauffenberg, Colonel Count Claus Schenk von (1905–1944): With his older twin brothers Alexander and Berthold, he was influenced by the mystical poet Stefan George in his youth, but soon decided on a military career, as suiting his active and dynamic personality, and joined a cavalry regiment. A conservative nationalist in keeping with his aristocratic antecedents, he had high hopes of the Hitler regime but soon became disillusioned with the violence and vulgarity of the ‘brown plague’. He took part in the occupation of Czechoslovakia and the Polish and French campaigns where his abilities as a staff officer and charismatic manner won him great respect.
Angry at Hitler’s inept conduct of the Russian campaign, he began to voice his opinions among his wide circle of well-connected military family and friends. Transferred to Tunisia in 1943 he was severely wounded when his staff car was strafed from the air, losing an eye and a hand and two of the fingers on his remaining hand. Evacuated, he made a swift recovery and joined the staff of the Reserve Home Army in Berlin with the explicit intention of staging a putsch to eliminate Hitler – telling friends that he was knowingly committing high treason. His energy and charisma re-vitalised the conspirators and plans for the Valkyrie putsch were re-vamped. After attempting to recruit several junior officers as assassins, Stauffenberg decided to do the job himself after his promotion to Chief of Staff to Fromm gave him regular access to the Führer. After two abortive attempts, he succeeded in detonating the bomb at Rastenburg on 20 July, and immediately flew back to Berlin and attempted to launch Valkyrie by telephone. After the failure of the putsch, he was wounded in a gun battle with loyalist Nazi officers and arrested. He and his aide-de-camp Werner von Haeften, along with Generals Beck and Olbricht and his friend Mertz von Quirnheim, were hastily condemned and shot by firing squad in the Bendlerblock’s courtyard on the orders of Fromm. Since his death Stauffenberg has become the central icon of the German resistance to Hitler: ‘The head, heart and hand of the conspiracy’.
Stieff, General Hellmuth (1901–1944): The youngest general in the German army – and also probably the shortest – Stieff won early promotion thanks to his exceptional organisational abilities. Despite Hitler’s dislike for him – the Führer called him the ‘Giftzwerge’, or ‘poison dwarf’ – Stieff was attached to his headquarters. A late recruit to the Resistance – he was the unwitting recipient of Schlabrendorff’s ‘bottle bomb’ – Stieff initially agreed to assassinate Hitler after much hesitation – then changed his mind again. Clearly a timid man, he attempted to dissuade Stauffenberg from carrying out the assassination himself.
Arrested on the night of 20 July, he was brutally tortured, but stood up well to his tormentors and to Judge Freisler’s bullying in court. He was among the first to be hanged on 8 August. His letters to his wife are a moving record of the Resistance.
Stülpnagel, General Karl-Heinrich von (1886–1944): An early veteran of the military conspiracy, he was ready to move against Hitler in 1938 along with his old friend Beck. He succeeded his cousin Otto von Stülpnagel as military commander of occupied France in 1942. Helped by Hofacker, Stülpnagel’s Paris command was the only place on 20 July where the Valkyrie putsch was completely successful, and the entire SS and SD staff of Paris were rounded up in a bloodless coup on Stülpnagel’s orders. However, after the news of Hitler’s survival came through, Stülpnagel failed to persuade his superior, Field Marshal Kluge, to join the putsch and he was compelled to release the SS/SD detainees. Sacked on the spot and recalled to face the music, he attempted to shoot himself near Verdun, where he had fought in the First World War, but only succeeded in blinding himself. He was patched up, tried before the People’s Court and hanged on 30 August.
Tresckow, Brigadier-General Henning von (1901–1944): This chief conspirator was son-in-law of General Erich Falkenhayn, the commander of Germany’s armies in the middle period of the First World War. Like many of his brother officers he initially supported Hitler’s regime, but swiftly turned into a bitter and determined opponent. In his key position as Chief of Staff at Army Group Centre’s headquarters in Russia he recruited a team of young officers as keen as he to rid the world of Hitler – and made repeated attempts to do so. In 1943, he briefly returned to Berlin and helped Stauffenberg draw up the Valkyrie II plan for a covert coup. Posted again to the Eastern Front, he continued to assert – not least to Stauffenberg – the necessity of killing Hitler for the moral rebirth of Germany. He killed himself with a rifle grenade in the front lines on 21 July after learning of the failure of the putsch.
His body was disinterred by the Nazis when they realised the extent of his plotting and cremated at Sachsenhausen concentration camp before the horrified eyes of his former adjutant Fabian von Schlabrendorff. Now regarded, along with Stauffenberg and Oster, as the most effective and morally focussed of all the conspirators.
Wagner, General Eduard (1894–1944): Quartermaster general of the German army, responsible for supplying the troops on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, Wagner lent his personal plane to Stauffenberg to fly to Rastenburg and make the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July. After the failure of the plot, expecting arrest, Wagner took his life on 23 July by shooting himself simultaneously with two pistols.
Witzleben, Field Marshal Erwin von (1881–1944): As commander of the Berlin military district in 1934, he approved the bloody purge of the SA, but swiftly recanted and became an outspoken opponent of Hitler, ready to use his troops to support the September 1938 coup attempt. In 1940 he was promoted to Field Marshal and commanded an army group in the invasion of France. From 1941–42 he commanded in France and planned to kill Hitler in Paris, but the Führer never came and Witzleben retired on grounds of ill-health.
Witzleben joined the military conspiracy in Berlin and agreed to put his name to the putsch proclamation, and to head the Wehrmacht under the post-putsch government. He appeared briefly at the Bendlerblock late in the day on 20 July, only to loudly denounce the bungled coup in parade-ground terms. He then went home, where he was arrested the next day. Among the first conspirators to be tried, he was deliberately humiliated by Freisler, who ordered the removal of his dentures, belt and braces, forcing him to hold up his trousers throughout his trial. The first of the plotters to be hanged, he went to his death with dignity and courage.
Yorck von Wartenburg, Count Peter (1904–1944): A cousin of Stauffenberg, Yorck was a lawyer and economist. Unlike other members of the Kreisau Circle, he was an early proponent of the necessity of killing Hitler. Slated to become state secretary in the Chancellery in the post-putsch government, he appeared at the Bendlerblock on 20 July and was arrested there. He was among the first group of conspirators to be tried before the People’s Court and executed on 8 August.