Dan Snow's History Hit - The Top Assassination Attempts on Hitler

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

What does it take to kill a dictator? In this episode, we explore the most dramatic assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler. From Georg Elser, the lone-wolf carpenter who built a bomb by hand, to the Polish underground’s relentless plots under occupation, and finally Claus von Stauffenberg, the one-eyed officer whose briefcase bomb nearly took out the Führer.Joining us for this is Roger Moorhouse, author of 'Killing Hitler'.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adolf Hitler survived an astonishing 42 assassination attempts and plots against his life whilst he was the Fuhrer. Today, we're going to be looking at the top four of those near misses, each one of which would have changed the course of history, whether it's the Polish conspirators in a smashed Warsaw, the lone craftsman in the Munich Beer Hall, the circle of Vermarked officers on the Eastern Front, and finally, and most famously, that one-armed staff officer, carrying that briefcase into the wolf's lair. This is the story of how resistance formed under a tyrannical regime of meticulous plans that were defeated by the weather, the wood and just bad luck, and by people who decided that failure was worth the risk.

For this, we are joined by a great friend of the podcast, Roger Morehouse, brilliant historian, and author specialising in modern German and Central European history. He's been on many times before. he is the author, among many other books, of killing Hitler, the plots, the assassins and the dictator who cheated death. Let's get into it. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God saves the king.

No black-quite unity till there is first than black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift-off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Roger, good to see on the pod. Thanks for having me, Dan. Well, it's always great to have you on. Roughly speaking, how many attempts are you think to kill Hitler? Well, there's a difference between attempts and plots, I suppose.

Now, there's a German book on this that gave 42 plots. In terms of actual attempts, it's probably less than 10. But that's tribute in a way to Hitler's security, which was absolutely state-of-the-art. But that's still substantial. I think he's one of the most targeted statesmen in history, probably up there with Castro. And a couple of very near misses. Absolutely, yeah, which we'll talk about. Right.

Okay, where do we start? Well, let's start with, I suppose Georg Elsa, I think he's one of my favourites. Okay. Georg Elsa is a fascinating character for a long time post-war was sort of forgotten in this rather small pantheon of Hitler's would-be assassins. I mean, Stalfenberg looms large. We're going to talk about him. And in a sense, he sort of obscures all the others because he has been such a big figure. And part of, you know, my intention with writing about this was to try and look at the other figures as well.

And Elsa was one that jumped out of me pretty much straight away when I started the research on this. And he's a fascinating character because he's a lone wolf. He's the ultimate lone wolf. And he's a craftsman. He's from Swabia, southwestern Germany, very ordinary German. You know, he had a very working class upbringing. His parents ran a mill. He himself is trained as a cabinet maker initially and a carpenter. And he's not really political. He's kind of instinctively left, but not really in any sort of doctrinal way. He's not interested in ideology and stuff like that. But he sort of quite instinctively hates the Nazis, which is quite interesting.

Yeah, he just got it. Yeah, he got it. He saw through them, effectively, in a way that perhaps millions of ordinary Germans like him didn't. But he did. And I sort of speculate that it might be that, you know, Hitler's bombast, if you like, kind of reminded him of his father. His father had been quite an abusive father, you know. So I think there's a possibility that there's that element in his makeup.

But he sees through it all. You know, so there's a wonderful scene pre-war, which is recorded by contemporaries where there's a parade of the SA, you know, the stormtroopers, the brown shirts, through his small town in Swabia. And everyone stands out on parade and puts their arm out in salute. And he turns his back. And he says, you can kiss my backside. So he's just one of these people who is, I'm not playing along. He's strong enough to say that. But how does he go from there to this astonishing and risky and sophisticated attack?

Yeah, it's quite astonishing. And as I said, he's kind of politically left, but it's not really politically motivated. It seems to be a very personal thing. He takes a visceral personal dislike to Hitler. And he goes in 1938, he goes to Munich. I mean, the problem is always, even in those days, actually getting access to Hitler. And he's reasonably accessible still pre-war. That all changes with the outbreak of war, of course.

But he's reasonably accessible. So what Elsa decides to try and do is to find out where he's, going to be, you know, in sort of set piece events and see if he's targetable. And he decides to go and watch the commemorations of the beer hall putch in Munich in 1938, November 38. So every year, Hitler goes back to his old stomping grounds where he launched that abortive attempt to take over Germany. Ridiculous. Fizzled out almost immediately.

1923. He was a bit of a nobody, but it becomes part of his sort of legend. Yeah, it's his own sort of foundation myth, effectively. And he goes back every year to that same beer hole and makes big speech. gives big speeches, there's parades through the streets and so on. It's really one of the highlight events of the Nazi calendar. So there's lots of spectators and so on. So it's not unusual for him to, someone like him, to go and watch that.

And he watches the proceedings. And he basically sees that probably the best place to hit Hitler is during that set piece speech at the Bergerbrookela, which is where the original putt kind of originated from. It's a beer hall. He saw the opportunity to plant a bomb in there somehow. And that was what he plans to do. the following year in 1939.

So he has a year then to sort of plan his attempt, which he does. And he's a complete lone wolf. So he's just operating on his own. He's sort of going out to the countryside and testing explosives. He's testing detonators, making everything himself because he's such a... So there's no weak link. So there's no chance that any intelligence agency is going to intercept this. No, exactly.

I mean, he's a really remarkable man. So he goes back to Munich in the summer of 1939. Of course, that tempestuous summer where we know what's coming, he didn't. He's there from August 39 onwards, preparing for this attempt, which is going to be in November, right? And he goes to the burger Borrekela every night and basically starts, first of all, sort of casing the joint to see what's possible. And this is months before, so there's no security. It's just like someone locks up and goes out. Exactly.

So he just used to turn up. He'd turn up in the evening. He'd have his evening meal. He'd have a glass of beer. And he'd stay there reading a book or whatever. all closing time. And then just before closing time, he disappeared to the loo. And then he hired in the loo while they locked up and he'd stay there for about half an hour. And when it's all locked up and everyone's gone, he'd come out again. And he had his tools with him and so on.

No burglar alarms. No burger alarms. And he started basically, you know, found that there was a pillar near where the lectern, he knows where the lectern's going to be. So there's a pillar just behind it. He starts hollowing it out, pulling out the bricks one by one. And of course, every morning. So he does this through the night. And he's hiding the sounds of, you know, him chisling out bricks to sort of time it with the passing trams and so on so that no one will know he's ever there. And then all of the dust that he's making and all the debris he gets rid of. And then he sneaks out in the morning before they turn up. So it's an astonishing story in itself. And he does this night after night and hollows out this sort of chamber in the pillar

behind the lecter, where the lectern's going to be. And it's all sort of lined with cork and so on so that no one would know it was there. There's a wooden panelling on it. So he creates this flush wooden door as well. I mean, it's an astonishing piece of work. And by the time Hitler's standing there on the 8th of November, you know, he's ready to go and he's created this detonator and he's created a timing mechanism because he wanted to be in Switzerland by the time it went off. But he did.

Because he's wise like that. So he built his own timing mechanism with a couple of clock mechanisms that would run for 144 hours. So it gave him time to go. And it's supposed to go off in the middle of Hitler's speech. So what happens? Well, a couple of things. happen. The first thing is that Hitler himself at that point in November 39, he's just defeated Poland

to great success. He's at war with the Western powers. He's planning his invasion of France for the next spring. So he has a sort of high-level meeting with his military staff the following morning. So he said, well, I really have to be back in Berlin. Can't stay the night in Munich. So that influences his travel plan. So it means he cuts his speech short. So he's got to get back on his train to go back further north to Berlin, can't fly because there's fog, so he's on the train. Speech is cut short, so that is going to have an impact. The other thing is that Elsa, who is now trying to cross the Swiss frontier, between November 39 and November 38, obviously the world has changed. So for him, where he sort of wrecked this in November 38, it was a pretty

open border, it wasn't that difficult. Now it's heavily fortified, you know, crawling with agents and troops and everything else. And he's waiting to cross the frontier and he's potentially in trouble. So anyway, that night Hitler starts giving his speech. He's surrounded by the, if you like, the great and the good of the Nazi movement, lots of SA men, lots of SS men, lots of politicians and so on. And they're all sitting there listening to him giving forth about how successful the Nazi revolution is and how successful the Nazi Reich is and all the rest of it. And he sort winds up slightly earlier than usual because he's got to get back to Berlin. And 13 minutes, after he's left the room.

So they're all sort of clearing up, you know, the band are there and their staff are clearing the glasses and so on. And a few of the hardcore are finishing up their beers and all the rest of it. It's all sort of trestled tables like, you know, beer hauls are. Else's bomb explodes. Bang on time, incidentally. So everything had worked. The timers have worked and the detonators have worked.

It goes off, shatters that pillar, which is holding down most of the ceiling. So the ceiling comes down. It makes an absolute mess, absolute shambles of the room. Eight people are killed in that room, incidentally. So more than 50 injured. It's a serious thing. Had Hitler been standing in front of that pillar where the lectern was, it absolutely, I think 100% would have been killed without question.

But the fog on his return to Berlin essentially changed history. And what about Elsa did he, he didn't make it across the border? Elsa does make it across the border, but he is taken by Gestapo on the border. And the problem he has is that we think, essentially he had various items in his pockets which looked to me like he was planning a sort of a confession to the Swiss authorities

to basically be able to say when the news of the bomb in the Bourga Borrekele breaks he would be able to say empty his pockets he had for example some fuse wire a postcard of the burger burghurkela various other bits in his pockets is basically so that he can say by the way I did this

right that was his The problem is... First and only mistake. Yeah. The problem is he's picked up by the Gestapo who basically say, what are you doing here? And he sort of stammered some response,

but it's not very convincing. So they pull him in an empty his pocket. Right on the border. Exactly. So the problem is he's confessing to the wrong set of border guards. He's picked up by the Gestapo, taken away,

is tortured, is interrogated. Of course, the Germans have to believe, to some extent, that he's an agent of foreign powers rather than being a lone wolf. So they're constantly trying to press on him that he was linked to, you know, the British intelligence and all of that. Sure, vast conspiracy.

Absolutely. It has to be a vast conspiracy. And he's essentially kept in isolation in a series of concentration camps until 1945. Almost survives the war. Almost survives the war. April 45. He's in Dachau. In isolation.

They kept him in really good conditions, actually, because they knew, you know, he's a craftsman. They allowed him to have, you know, tools and a sort of workshop and stuff to keep himself busy. But always in isolation. So he never allowed to speak to anybody. Which for him, because he was a bit of a lot of. loner. I mean, probably wasn't that onerous. I think for the rest of us, it might have been. Yeah, in April 45, he's, you know, the order comes that essentially this man cannot be allowed to survive the war, and he's taken out and shot in the back of the head. Wow, that was

an astonishing story. You mentioned British intelligence there. Well, there's not really an assassination attempt, but there's a sort of hint at one, which I love, before the war. Could you tell me about the British. Well, one particular considers, well, he works out he could get rid of Hitler. Yes, this is the British military. Attached to Berlin. His name was Noel Mason McFarlane. Wonderful character. So he's a soldier. Absolutely. But he's working in the... So he's a bit of... So First War Soldier, you know, very upright, stiff as a ramrod kind of type. And he's in the, working in the out of the British Embassy in Berlin. He actually witnesses, he's one of the guests

at Hitler's birthday parade in April 39, which is a massive thing. You know, it's like an eight-hour military parade. It's a show of strength of the Third Reich. Cheering crowds, you know, endless tanks and sort of searchlight units and artillery unit, endlessly. Authoritarians love that. They love that. And Mason McFarlane watches that whole spectacle and he minutes back to Whitehall, to his masters in Whitehall

and essentially says, I could take this guy out. You give me a rifle, I could take this guy out. Because there's going to be a birthday parade each year, I know I could... Exactly. He will have an opportunity. And the line that comes back, bear in mind this is, of course, pre-war. It's just pre-war. So the tensions are there, you know, all the signs are there that the Third Reich is, you know, that sort of nefarious force that we know it to be now.

But still it's pre-war. But the reply that comes back from Whitehall is quite telling because the line is, after he's suggested an assassination attempt, albeit obliquely, they come back and say, you know, we're not yet at that stage in our diplomacy where we have to resort to assassination. Yes, darling. What do you think? Of course, which is, I think, is a lovely line. What were they thinking?

All right. And it was all happening for Hitler. Little did you know at this period because whilst El, Plot was underway. There was a quite a serious plot in Poland, wasn't there? Yes, yeah. So I like including the Poles in this. The Poles try a couple of times. Actually, Polish Underground is one of the most remarkable stories of World War II. And it's one that really deserves to be better known. And the first attempt that they make, there is a later one where they try and hit Hitler's train in, I think, 1942. But this one in

1939, so the Poles have just been defeated. Poland was invaded, of course, on 1st of September. There's an excellent book about the invasion of Poland. It's a very good book about it. I tell you it's a classic. First to fight, thank you very much. First to fight, written by Roger Moyette. And what's interesting in this respect is that the polls, although defeated in the field, never actually surrender.

So there's a message that is sent from exile, so that various politicians and so on, including the president, had escaped initially into Romania and then later on they've resurfaced in France and then in London. But in the end of September, I think 28th of September. So Warsaw is still being surrounded and besieged, but they send this messenger in who brings the message from the president saying, Warsaw is permitted to surrender, gives permission to them to surrender, but it also gives the order to set up the Polish underground. And the Polish underground is initially to sort of gather weapons, create weapons stashes and so on, so that they can resurface as a military force at some point in the future. So initially it's quite kind of almost defensive in nature because the opportunity isn't necessarily there.

But a key strand of what is the thinking at the beginning is sabotage. And there's a couple of interesting characters involved in this, one of whom has the impossible name of Mikhail Karasiewiczewicz, Tokajevsky. Well, he pulled that off. Thank you very much. Who is essentially in charge of that sort of nascent underground organisation. and one of his deputies who is initially involved with this particular operation was called Franchisek Niepokutsky. Oh my goodness.

I think it's even worse than the previous. I think you're showing off now. I am showing off. I'm sorry. His codename is Theodore. They all had pseudonyms, obviously, for the underground. His co-name was Theodore. So we'll call him Theodore for now.

But in his operation, he decided, you know, this is a good opportunity because Hitler might well be coming to Warsaw to sort of have a parade. This is his first big victory. And that's what comes to pass. On the 5th of October, he comes to Warsaw. The streets are sort of cleared of rubble because it had taken a bit of a hammering. And he oversees this sort of big parade. I mean, you can see the footage of that parade still on YouTube if you look for it. Overseas this big parade.

And Niebu Kulchitsky and his fellow underground conspirators decide, well, there's that main intersection in Warsaw where, in a sense, almost whatever direction Hitler's coming from, he's kind of got to pass over that intersection. So in amongst the rubble and everything else and the roads, have been repaired and so on, they basically hide about half a ton of explosives, along with mortar shells and bits of whatever they can find. Anything vaguely explosive they put in there, with a spotter to see when the convoy is coming past, and somebody hidden away that can press

the button. So it's a proper detonator job. When they see the car in the right place. Wow. So it's a brilliant plan, and actually, again, could have worked. We don't know why it didn't. The records on this are pretty scant, partly because... of the ravages of the German occupation and then the Soviet period in Polish history. So we don't know exactly why it didn't happen. It could well be that with the sort of the chaos of the aftermath of the parade

and the sort of the number of people on the streets, perhaps the spotter was unsighted at the right moment and essentially the order was never given and the button was never pressed. But Hitler drove over that spot and it never happened. So he came very close to being killed in October and November 1939. I mean, he knew about the second one.

He didn't know about the first one. Wow. But the Poles try very hard. And actually, going forward, Polish underground is remarkably good, both at sabotage and actually at assassination. So they actually kill the SS commander of occupied Warsaw in 1944. It's held up on the street and assassinated. And there are other examples.

So they actually prove themselves to be pretty good at this stuff. You listen to Dan Snow's history yet. There's more coming up. So there's plenty of plots. What's the next attempt you think had a reasonable chance of success? Next one, I think, is we jump forward to 1943. The German resistance, the military resistance against Hitler, is something that when people think of this subject at all,

they probably alight on Operation Valkyrie and Stalfenberg, and that's the July plot of 44, which we're going to come to. Which we're coming to. But that particular effort has a sort of longer tail, if you like, than we, I think, traditionally think it does. And one of the key figures in this, in that longer tale, is a chap called Henning von Trescoe, who is another military man who's a colonel, mainly serving on the Eastern Front in World War II. And where Stalfenberg, he's a bit of a Johnny Come Lately to the military resistance.

So whereas he is a Johnny come lately, Tresco really isn't. So Tresko is someone who kind of sees, with a surprising degree of clarity, very early on, that essentially Hitler's a wrong and the Third Reich is going to lead German. to its doom, is actually an element where he sees this already in 1934, so astonishingly early. One of his former superior officers was a chap called General von Bredo, who was actually murdered during the night of the long knives. And this was the moment that sort of opened Tresco's eyes, that for a lot of people like him, with military background, very patriotic and all of that, in those early days of the Third Reich, they'd kind of been seduced by the rhetoric of, you know,

we're going to put Germany back on its feet, we're going to restore German honor, all of that stuff. and generations of men like Tresco would have gone, this sounds great. But then when they murder his friend and former superior officer in 1934, then it's like the scales fall from his eyes. And suddenly it's like, oh my God, what have we done? So he has a very long tale in terms of just seeing with a degree of clarity what the Nazis are all about.

So it becomes a really important player in the growth of the military resistance long before Stalfenberg kind of has even entered the frame. And what Trescoe used to do very effectively was to sort of have these sort of illicit conversations with people that he thought perhaps because they've raised an eyebrow at the right moment in a conversation, people that he thinks are going to be sympathetic. So he would start to have a conversation with them in private and say, what do you think? What do you think about this? Do you think we're going in the right direction? And he would sound people out quite cautiously. And he's actually the author ultimately of something like five attempts on Hitler's life, usually through people.

proxies. But the first one we're going to talk about, which is in March of 1943, was himself. He did it himself. So he's a really influential character in everything that comes later on with the military resistance and ultimately was Stalfenberg. But this attempt in March 43 is his own. So he was a staff officer with the Wehrmacht and he was based in Smoliensk in Western Russia. Just after the Battle of Stalingrad, things are clearly going to go very badly for the German army at this point. Yeah, so this is the spring of 43. which is the moment at which essentially, for those with eyes in their head, it's pretty clear that Germany might not have yet lost.

And they, of course, are still deep in Russia. But essentially it's like 1918 or over again, right? The realisation must have been for many people at that moment, maybe going into the summer of 43, but the realisation is growing that, all right, we haven't lost yet, but we kind of can't win. So this opens the question, what do we do about that? So he's one of the first to really think about this. And he, in March of 43, he arranges.

He's constantly trying to get Hitler to come to the Eastern Front so that he can be targeted. And he's trying to persuade his fellow officers, senior officers, to come on board and to get involved with an assassination attempt. And a lot of them, most of them, are not interested. They cannot possibly even imagine it. Even if they feel the same way as him, they can't make the jump to actively targeting their commander in chief. But he can. And he says, well, essentially, if they're not going to do it, I'll do it myself. So he arranges an invitation for Hitler to come to Smoliansk, which he does.

They have essentially like a sort of state visit. He's presented to all of the senior staff. He has lunch. Obviously, Hitler's is a vegetarian kind of slop that he used to eat. He used to eat the same food as everyone else just with the meat taken out. So he had this vegetarian lunch with them. And then he goes to leave. And Tresko has a package which he wants to be taken back to a colleague of his,

who is based at the Wolfshanza, Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. And he gives it to one of the colonels in Hitler's entourage and said, would you mind taking this back to Colonel So-and-So? It is shaped like a bottle of brandy. It's actually two British clam charges with a fuse ready to go. You say British, supplied, by the way? Yes, they were supplied actually from, yes, curious story, because the same bombs, effectively, crop up all the way through.

And they're the same ones that Stalfenberg uses in 1944. And they'd actually been captured from British intelligence circuits in Holland supplied to the Dutch underground in 1940, they'd been rolled up by German security forces after 1940, and a lot of this material had found its way then into the hands of the ABA, German military intelligence. And of course, there's a crossover between the German military intelligence

and the military resistance. So it ends up in the hands of Penny Fontresco, peculiarly, right? So each of these clam charges, it's about the size of a sort of, I suppose, a hardbacked book. What they're meant for is to essentially be clamped onto railway lines, for example. Imagine the sort of size of it, clamped onto a railway line, so it would then blow the tracks. But this became the method used to try and assassinate Hitler, not once but three times

towards the end of the war. So the first outing for this thing is this brandy bottle bomb. So they're sort of clamped together, wrapped up with paper. It's dressed up like a bottle in a box. Please, can you take this to the Volfshanza? Of course I will. Take it on Hitler's plane. And it has a detonator in it, ready to go.

Tresco, of course, is on tenter hooks waiting for the news that Hitler's plane has been blown out of the sky. After a couple of hours, the message comes back that Hitler has landed safely at the Wolfshanza. Not only does he know that he's failed in his attempt, but then he also knows that the brandy bottle is going to be delivered to its recipient who will very quickly discover that it's not a brandy bottle, right? So he has to dispatch his adjutant, a chap called Fabian von Schlabrendorf, who then hurries to the Volshavenza. I bet he hurries. Makes all of his excuses and makes loads of apologies on behalf of Tresco and says,

very sorry, but we've given you the wrong brandy bottle. Please can I have it back? And then hurries back and takes it back to Trescoe, but they get away with it. Remarkably, they get away with it. Only a week later, Tresco tries it again with one of his men that he'd kind of persuaded, who's a chap called Rudolf von Gersdorf, who's another German officer, similarly convinced of the necessity to get rid of Hitler. And Hitler then, again, this is still mid-March, 1993,

was in Berlin to sort of inspect a collection of captured Soviet weaponry, which was all on display in the armoury in Berlin. And they chose this officer Gersdorf as his guide, because he was an experienced Wehrmacht officer. He had been put forward, of course, by Tresco and others. And he was there with these two clam charges in his... tunic pockets ready to go. So he was going to show Hitler around the exhibition, which he does. And at the right moment, he sort of pushes the fuses into them, their time pencil fuses. So breaks the

time pencil fuses. He's essentially got 10 minutes. I mean, he would have been history's first suicide bomber. Wow. Remarkable man. And then he's sort of showing Hitler around the exhibition. Hitler appears to have had something of a sixth sense for his own safety, because he got spooked. He evidently was spooked. And sort of rushed through. He wasn't particularly interested in the exhibits. He wasn't particularly interested in what Gerstorff had to say to him. It may just be that Gerstolf was perhaps sweating a bit too much.

Yeah, I bet he was. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, Hitler sort of ran through the exhibition and out through the back door within about five minutes. And Gerstolf had a 10-minute fuse. After Hitler's gone out the back door, that essentially he can't follow him. So it has to abort mission. He takes himself to the toilet, pulls out the fuses, throws him down.

down the toilet, manages to defuse himself. And crucially, those clam charges get recycled back into the resistant circles. And they resurface the next summer in July 1944 with Stalfenberg. They're not the same actual... The same clang charges. Hang on, but those aren't the ones that were in the brandy bot? Yes. Those actual physical bombs are used three times.

Come on. And finally exploded with Shatheberberg in 44. That is amazing. This is Dan Snow's history here. more after this. Right, well, let us come to July 1944 with the most famous Operation Valkyrie. By this stage, the war is going astonishingly badly

for the Germans. Defeat is now months away, potentially. Is that what causes Stalfenberg to act at this point? A very good question. I think it's more than that. I think that's the traditional view is that essentially this is a slightly craven defeat is looming, we must do something to salvage something from the wreckage kind of mentality.

There is a degree of that, of course, and particularly in the wider conspiracy, the way they managed to convince other people who might have wavered a year before, but by 44 it's pretty obvious the writing's on the wall. So I think there's an element of that, but actually in those that are most motivated, like Trescoe, who I mentioned earlier on, and like Stalfenberg as well, there's a much more of a strong moral element to what they're doing. They know about the Holocaust because they've seen the reports coming from the Eastern Front, the Ainsatz's Gripen Killings, for example. In small details, they know about the Holocaust, but they know that to them it's a sort

of a besmirching of Germany's name. They see it as a shameful aspect of what the Nazis are doing that cannot be assuaged. It can't be wished away. It can't be explained away. So in a sense, Andresko says as much in the run-up to Staufenberg's attempt in 44, he says, we have to do this, even if it costs us our. own lives. We have to do this. And the line that he uses is to show that there was another Germany. That there wasn't just these Nazis. There were other Germans who thought differently.

So there's a sort of a moral clarity about, you know, what they're doing as well, moral aspect. So it's not just a sort of craven defeat is looming. Let's chuck the pilot over the side and hope that we can salvage something. Yeah, it's not just that. There's a more moral strand to it than that. But anyway, by the time that Stalfenberg is in place, I mean, he's interesting character. In 43, he'd been in North Africa, I've been in the Tunisian campaign, and had been very, very badly injured in an Allied strafing attack on his column. He was standing up in his Jeep, kind of directing the column through a pass,

and then they'd been attacked. Lost an eye? Yeah, he lost an eye. A hand? Yeah, so he had left three fingers on his left hand, basically that. That's all he had left. Lost an eye and a hand as well. And, you know, he had various shrapnel injuries as well.

So it was touch and go in 43 as to whether he'd survive at all. So invalided out, that's part of his conversion. He had been dabbling in sort of nationalist circles. He'd been one of those that perhaps was raising an eyebrow when Treska would sort of seek out. But he wasn't yet fully on board. I think it took that injury, the months of convalescence and the various operations that he had, that sort of soul-searching period that he really converted, if you like. I would just add that he is a bit of a Johnny come lately.

I'm a big fan of Trescoor I think Tresco is really interesting character and it has that moral clarity it's less clear with Stalfenberg I mean he's tremendously brave on a personal level he does make the moral jump that's necessary but he's a late comer earlier on in the war he'd written some

very dreadful things about the polls and you know so that element of the history He went on a journey he had a journey absolutely right which is what makes him interesting for filmmakers and the rest of it of course there's a narrative art there but anyway he is brought back to work

within the home army, if you like, the sort of domestic arm of the Wehrmacht, which is responsible, particularly for sort of training of recruits and for maintaining security on the home front. So they then see a possibility with this Operation Valkyrie, which initially is a legitimate, official German plan to deal with a revolt on the home front, which might be by forced labourers or sort of, you know, those sorts of people within Germany. So this is an official plan to seize key institutions, key locations in the event of domestic unrest. And what the plotters around Staufenberg do in the early months of 94 is to turn Valkyrie from an official plan into an unofficial plan whereby they could, first of all, try their assassination attempt, which needed access,

and that's where Stalfenberg himself comes in later on. But then crucially, at the same time, they can affect a coup against the Nazi government. Using the pre-existing plans. Using the pre-existing Very German, that. It is very German. We're going to get the piece of paper out that says what to do in the event, but we've been doing it with a different intent. But this shows you how complex, I suppose, their deliberations had become by 1984,

because it was no longer enough just to kill Hitler. If you just kill Hitler in 1944, all you do is accelerate the Soviet advance and accelerate the Bolshevization of Germany, which is everything that they didn't want. So they needed to kill Hitler and at the same time take power. So the whole job of assassination has got that much more complex. in the year between Smoliensk and Stelfenberg in 44.

So Staufenberg is key to all of that because he has access, because in his role in that was known as the replacement army, in his role as key personnel in the replacement army, he has to report to Hitler. Right. So he then is the man that has access. So he initially sees Hitler in Bechtesgarten, in the middle of July, on the Ober Salzburg.

He has the bomb with him again. Oh, really? Yes. Those same. Those same clam charges. He asks for permission to set it off. The wider conspiracy basically come back and say, no, because there weren't enough Nazi bigwigs in the room.

So they wanted to knock out as much of the hierarchy as possible. Wow. The following week... That's a what if? Yeah, absolutely. So he doesn't detonate it. He does his presentation to Hitler. He goes away again.

He said himself, you know, this is a road you only go down once. Because of the nervous toll that it took on him. Next time, essentially, I have to do it. because I can't go down that sort of stressful road again. A week later, he's summoned again to the Volshanza to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia to present something to Hitler in a situation conference. Again, he goes with his adjutant, with the bomb, ready to go. And he's due to go and see Hitler, I think, around midday.

So he's there, preps the bomb. He makes a point, I think, of, and this becomes significant, he makes a point of priming the bomb himself. and if we bear in mind that he only has these fingers left, this is perhaps unwise. But I think this is about him taking ownership of the attempt, essentially. His adjutant is with him, Werner von Hefton, who has all ten fingers, but it's Dauphinberg who primes the bomb.

In his stressed state, as you can imagine, as I said, he only wanted to go down that road once. In his stressed state, he has two charges. He primes one of them as he's being summoned to go and see Hitler. the second one he doesn't prime and he doesn't even put the charge in the briefcase. So essentially the bomb that he's got in his briefcase is half what it should have been, right?

So he goes into this room, it's very hot day, it's a wooden and plywood kind of briefing room rather than a bunker. So it's a little bit more flimsy because of the heat. They had the windows thrown open and so on. He's in there, there's about 20 other officers in there, members of the entourage, other visiting people like him, And he had asked for a place next to Hitler because he says he's deaf in one ear from his maiming, which is quite convincing.

So he says, can I have a place next to Hitler? He's given a place next to Hitler. He comes in, puts his briefcase down and says, I would just have to make a phone call and disappears. What happens next, of course, is crucial because they've got this huge oak briefing table which dominates the room. Maps all over it. It's all over it. Absolutely. Everyone's seated around.

Hitler's leaning over the table as you can imagine kind of gesticulating and making all sorts of... Coming up with terrible ideas. Indeed, indeed. And of course, Staufenberg's briefcase is underneath the table.

Stalfenberg is making his mock phone call within eyesight of the building and then he sees the explosion. In the meantime, his bag has actually been moved because someone trips over it. So they've moved it to the other side of a sort of heavy slab oak leg.

So it's been moved essentially away from where Hitler was. It's been moved away that way. So any resulting blast, of course, is going to go in the other direction, which is what happens. So the bomb goes off. Staufenberg watches it from a distance. Ultimately, it kills four people in that room, who are the four that were seated around the far end of the table. So it had its effect, right?

Hitler has, I think, something like 300 oak splinters in his legs, that famous picture of his trousers, which had been completely shredded. That was the state of his legs. Burst in the eardrum, you know, various sort of contusions and bruising. essentially he's saved not only by the bag being moved, but also by the oak table. He's leaning over the oak table, so all of his vital organs are protected by that. So Hitler's quite battered and bruised, but essentially walks out of the room. Staufenberg thinks he's done the job.

He watched the explosion, thinks the job is done, starts to make his exit, bluffs his way out past the guards, who are all flustered, they don't know what's happened. Is it an air raid? Has a mind gone off? What is it? Nobody knows what's happened. he utilizes that sort of chaos to escape, get back on his plane, get back to Berlin, because he has to lead that wider coup that we mentioned.

It's not enough just to kill Hitler. You have to take power as well. So he's going back to Berlin believing that he's killed Hitler. But he hasn't. But he hasn't. No. So he arrives back in Berlin. His co-conspirators are a little bit nervy.

They don't really know what's happened in Rastonburg. They don't have the sort of instant information that we have. So there's lots of conflicting reports. Is Hitler dead? Is he not dead? Staffenberg lands. He said, of course he's dead. I saw it. It all happened.

No, we could survive that blast. Of course. So that was his mindset. And he galvanises the sort of wider conspiracy. And they do try and take the Ministry of Interior, for example, and Goebbels is propaganda ministry. They try and take them using compliant troops that think this is operation about, the official operation of Berkeley.

They're not in on the plot. They think this is a rising of, actually, soldiers, as a rising of the SS, peculiarly. But they're acting in good faith. They don't know that Valka has been co-opted. Of course, once word comes that Hitler has survived, later on that evening, they have a radio crew in there. They broadcast on German radio, Hitler's speech,

saying that this clique of bandits and adventurers has tried to kill me and Providence has preserved me for the, all that stuff. All that stuff. It gives this speech. And of course, at that moment, it's like the spell is broken. The troops that have been operating unwittingly in the service of the conspiracy, essentially melt away, so we're not doing that. Those that have been wavering suddenly, okay, maybe we need to save our own skins.

And Staufenberg is effectively left, along with a hard core of other conspirators, but they're essentially left high and dry. And by the end of the evening, he'll be put up against a wall and shot. Yeah, quick. So, Hitler unbelievably lucky to survive as long as he did. Yeah. Lastly, Roger, why is it that the British, the Americans, I mean, it sounds like the polls have the right idea, they tried to kill it, or whenever they get a chance? Were the British

and Americans sort of unwilling to go for Hitler, or do they just think, look, it's too hard, or was there something that was still holding them back? Yeah. The British particularly, I think there are too many sort of political and moral scruples to some extent. You know, this was never less than controversial, interestingly. I mean, you would have imagined that the assassination of Hitler, you can understand Mason McFarlane and 39, before the outbreak of war, you can understand why, why, you'll say, steady on old shot. That's not the way we do things.

You can understand that. But once the war's broken out and certainly into the second half of the war, you can see that there would have been some realization that this is a bad regime and this is a bad man and surely the best thing to do to get rid of him. There's a sort of moral element there because it sets a precedent, of course. If you're going to do that to your enemy, what's stopping the enemy trying to do that to you? So there's a moral element which does loom large in the discussion. So the British had this thing called Operation Foxley,

which was a really interesting planning document of how to assassinate Hitler. If you're going to do it, how do we do it? And it's a really thorough document. It's all in the National Archives. But Operation Foxley was never put into the operational phase. It was never made operational. So they never assigned a sniper or they never got the teams together to do it. It's purely a paper exercise.

But a really interesting one. And a lot of the discussions are about, morality, crucially, about setting a precedent. You know, is this what we want to put our names to? We're supposed to be the moral ones, right? Okay. But also, by the second half of the war, there's a very sort of hard-headed view, which is that Hitler's doing a pretty good job of messing up the German war operation. Okay. Right? By meddling, by constantly telling his forces to stand fast when they really need to be executing a tactical retreat, for example. So there's a hard-headed realisation actually leaving him in place is probably the best idea. Wow. So it's a much more

complex set of justifications essentially for doing nothing. Well, what a tour to force. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My great pleasure. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We really hope that this has helped you better understand what's going on, give me a bit of context. And if you think your friends, family, colleagues would enjoy that, then please, please do share with them. Whatever your podcast player, whatever you're listening on, it will let you share this as a link or even a WhatsApp message. That sharing is the life plan of this podcast and what keeps us going. So thank you for listening and thanks for sharing. Show us next time for another episode of Dan Snow's Historyhead.