The story
On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, perpetrated by Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. This event has become known by the misnomer Operation Valkyrie which was the planned coup d'etat that took place immediately after the attempted assassination.
The apparent purpose of the assassination attempt was to seize political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the SS) in order to obtain peace with the western Allies as soon as possible. The underlying desire of many of the involved high ranking Wehrmacht officers was apparently to show to the world that not all Germans were like Hitler and the Nazi Party.
The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown, but they likely would have included demands to accept wide-reaching territorial annexations by Germany in Europe. The plot was the culmination of the efforts by several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government. The failure of both the assassination and the military coup d'état which was planned to follow, led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo. According to records of the Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 of these were executed.
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You have arrived at just one small part of Back to Normandy — a personal project dedicated to preserving stories, images, music and memories of the Second World War.
Every record is a doorway to a larger story. Explore Back to Normandy to discover more, or visit Fred Vogels' personal website to learn about the person and the projects behind it.