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Category: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts  -- See latest WWII news here.
Few leaders have been the targets of so many assassinations attempts; historians have discovered 42 plots on Hitler's life.
See also 'Nazi Memorabilia',   'Last days of Adolf Hitler',   'Nazi relics',   'Fuhrerbunker',   'Watches Hitler presented to nazi leaders'.

Last Adolf Hitler bomb-plotter Philipp von Boeselager dies at 90
A German army officer involved in 2 plots to kill Adolf Hitler but who remained undetected until the end of WW2 has died aged 90. Philipp von Boeselager was one of 8 officers who planned to shoot Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in March 1943, but the plot was called off after Himmler decided not to come. He was also one of 200 persons involved in a July 1944 attempt when a bomb was planted under a table in Hitler's eastern headquarters. The bomb exploded but Hitler escaped with slight injuries. Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg and others involved were executed, but von Boeselager escaped detection.     [ nytimes :: 2008-05-02 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

Documentary: Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot To Kill Hitler
The 70min "Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot To Kill Hitler" has 1.5 hours of "Essential Extras," and a 52min HD broadcast version. Based on the biggest collection of eye-witness accounts and produced with the official German Resistance Foundation devoted to the memory of the conspirators, the documentary features interviews with Philipp Baron von Boeselager (the last living conspirator who escaped Hitler's wrath) as well as the man who procured the explosives for Claus von Stauffenberg. With over 20 interviews, it features leading scholars and historians on the conspiracy.     [ worldscreen :: 2008-04-07 :: Claus von Stauffenberg ]

What if Adolf Hitler Had Been Assassinated
In 1936 Helmut Hirsch went to Nuremburg to blow up Hitler; he was sent by Otto Strasser, one of the remaining challengers to Hitler in the Nazi Party. In 1937 Josef Thomas plotted to shoot Hitler and Goering, and in 1938 Maurice Bavaud made attempts to shoot Hitler but failed. Once WWII started in 1939 matters shifted to those who were in a much better position to kill Hitler - the military. Many attempts were cramped by soldiers' unwillingness to break their oath to Hitler and by the fact that when it looked like Hitler was about to fail, he succeeded. Many of the conspirators were from noble families, maybe they found it easier to kill the working class Hitler.     [ rooksmoor :: 2007-12-15 ]

The 'Myth' of the Would-Be Hitler Assassin Claus Graf von Stauffenberg
Claus Graf von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill Adolf Hitler with a bomb on July 20, 1944, is everywhere. But does he deserve all the attention? His assassination attempt, in the Führer's HQ known as the "Wolf's Lair," was "an act of liberation..." forming a model for today's military: The men of July 20, 1944 obeyed "responsibility, honor and conscience," Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said. But not everybody is happy with the overblown idolization of Stauffenberg. Peter Steinbach, head of the German Resistance Memorial Center, warned against "myth formation" noting that Stauffenberg only gradually turned against the nazi regime 1942-1943.     [ spiegel :: 2007-11-17 :: Claus von Stauffenberg ]

Military historian poses the question: what if they had killed the Fuhrer?
In 1944 Hitler commended the author of a plan. "Finally, a general staff officer with imagination and intelligence!" Fuhrer was delighted to meet one officer who knew what he was doing. And von Stauffenberg did, he was planning to kill Hitler. On July 20, 1944, at the Fuhrer's HQ at Rastenburg, he detonated a bomb, of which Baron Justus Delbruck said: "I think it was good that it happened, and good too, perhaps, that it failed." Panzer commander von Manstein, invited to join a conspiracy, said: "Prussian field marshals do not mutiny! Count me out. That would destroy the army." Had Hitler died, it's hard to believe that Himmler, Goering or Doenitz could have persuaded Wehrmacht to sustain resistance in the West...     [ dailymail :: 2007-09-09 :: Fiction and What-If Alternate History books ]

Introducing conspirators of ill-fated plan to blow up Adolf Hitler
Their stern faces reflect the gravity of their mission. Dressed in German uniforms, Tom Cruise's character Count Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators look over their plan to kill Adolf Hitler. They form the core of the Nazi resistance in the film Valkyrie, which depicts the plan to blow up the nazi dictator on July 20, 1944. -- General Ludwig Beck: One of the only officers to stand up to Hitler in the early days. He was allowed to commit suicide but managed to blind himself instead. He was killed by a Nazi stormtrooper. -- Henning von Tresckow: planned several assassination plots, but all failed. "Hitler is a dancing dervish. One must shoot him."     [ dailymail :: 2007-09-06 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

To kill the Fuhrer - Claus von Stauffenberg almost changed history
Claus von Stauffenberg was executed in 1944 after a bomb that he placed almost killed Adolf Hitler. His oldest son Berthold explains how his father almost changed history... Name Stauffenberg is fairly well known. But Axel von dem Bussche or Ewald von Kleist? These men also prepared to risk their lives in plots to assassinate Hitler. It is hoped that an accurate portrayal of the July Plot - Operation Valkyrie - will, in the words of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck "do more for the image of Germany than ten football World Cups." Few periods in history have been so obsessed about as Nazi Germany. But only a minority is aware of its resistance movement.     [ timesonline :: 2007-08-24 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

World stage beckons for German resistance to Adolf Hitler
More than 60 years after a group of Wehrmacht officers tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler, international recognition that has eluded them may soon be on its way - despite resistance from Germany. Some commentators have struggled to grasp why a German ministry denied the film producers access to historical sites because of Cruise's links to Scientology, tempting accusations the country has not learned from its past. Codenamed "Operation Valkyrie," the officers' plan to topple the Nazi leadership hinged on killing Hitler in his "Wolf's Lair" bunker. A briefcase bomb planted by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg killed 4, but Hitler escaped largely unhurt.     [ washingtonpost :: 2007-07-21 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

Replica of Hitler's secret wartime HQ built for Cruise film near Berlin
A replica of Adolf Hitler's secret wartime Headquarters was being built near Berlin with just a week to go before filming of a Tom Cruise movie begins, a civic official said. Cruise is to play the chief plotter in the true story about a bid to assassinate Hitler with a bomb under a table at the Wolf's Lair in 1944. The film team have been banned from the Berlin building where the plotter, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, was executed by Nazi firing squad. Officially because of fears that filming would lower the dignity of a memorial.     [ earthtimes :: 2007-07-13 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

Georg Else - The man who tried to kill Adolf Hitler
In autumn 1938 Georg Else started stealing small amounts of explosives from the factory. He knew that Adolf Hitler visited the Buergerbraukeller pub in Munich every year on 8th and 9th Nov to celebrate the anniversary of the Nazi putsch of 1923. He went to Munich, inspected the pub and saw Hitler arrive and then returned home. In March 1939 Georg resigned from his job. From 5th August until 6th November he ate at the Buergerbrau. At closing time he hid in a cupboard. He was able to work for 4 hours, then left with the arrival of the first customers. In 3 months, he had hollowed out a pillar big enough to house a time bomb...     [ infoshop :: 2007-07-11 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

Marion Yorck aided Hitler assassination conspiracy in Kreisau Circle
Marion Countess Yorck Von Wartenburg, who died at 102, was among the last survivors of the Kreisau Circle, the group opposed to Adolf Hitler from which sprang the attempt to kill him with a bomb in July 1944. The circle derived its name from having met at the country estate of Helmuth Count Moltke. Yet though Moltke was the Kreisauers' driving force, they owed their harmony to Peter Count Yorck von Wartenburg, Marion Yorck's husband, and it was at their Berlin apartment that the group gathered in the later years of the war. Her husband felt that the plot was likely to fail, but that it was worth the sacrifice to show that not all Germans were under Hitler's sway.     [ nysun :: 2007-05-18 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

How Adolf Hitler cheated death in 1943 coup... thanks to the Allies
Der Führer Adolf Hitler ist tot. The sentence was part of a draft by German officers who hatched a plot to the Nazi leader kill Adolf Hitler and then use a secret army to seize control of key sites. Major General Henning von Tresckow created a force of 20,000 troops, telling High Command it was needed to protect against a potential revolt. Tresckow then organised a 'fashion parade' at which Hitler was to inspect new uniforms - with model one was a suicide bomber. Once the Führer was dead, Tresckow planned to blame rogue SS elements. But the putsch was foiled: The uniforms were lost because of RAF bombing raids on Berlin, so the plot was abandoned.     [ scotsman :: 2007-04-22 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

The colonel who took on Hitler's regime - Claus von Stauffenberg
Since I was a teenager in the 1950s, I had been fascinated by the July 20 bomb plot to kill Adolf Hitler. The plot's mainspring was Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a highly decorated Wehrmacht colonel. My visit to Berlin would allow me to make a pilgrimage of sorts to the 7-story Bendlerbiock, in 1944 German Home Army Headquarters and today the German Resistance Memorial Center. There von Staufferberg had come within an ace of toppling the Nazi regime, only to be shot by a firing squad. Though there had been numerous attempts on Hitler's life, faulty timing switches, assassins' loss of nerve, and the Fuhrer's sudden schedule changes caused them to fail.     [ bensonnews-sun :: 2007-03-01 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

MI5 stopped the spy who offered to blow up Adolf Hitler
A British secret agent who offered to blow up Adolf Hitler at the height of WW2 was dissuaded from carrying out the assassination by MI5, according to wartime archives. The offer to kill Führer in a suicide mission was made by Eddie Chapman, a safe-breaker who was trained by the Nazis as a spy and went on to become one of Britain's most successful double agents, codenamed Agent Zigzag. He was serving a sentence in Jersey prison when the Nazis invaded the Channel Islands in 1940. He was recruited by the Abwehr, German military intelligence, and parachuted into Britain in Dec 1941. He defected to MI5, the British security service.     [ timesonline :: 2007-01-09 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

Killing Hilter - The numerous attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler
Few leaders have been the target of so many assassination attempts. Hitler's almost 50 would-be assassins ranged from simple craftsmen to high-ranking soldiers, from Resistance fighters to patriotic Wehrmacht officers, and from enemy agents to his closest associates. Explaining why the British at one time declared that assassinating Hitler would be "unsporting," and why the ruthless Joseph Stalin was unwilling to order his death. It is also the remarkable story of the survival of a tyrant against all the odds, a dictator whose repeated escapes from almost certain death convinced him that he was invincible.     [ randomhouse :: 2006-05-03 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

German loner's bomb had shot at killing Hitler
George Elser taught himself bomb making, stealing explosives from the armaments factory where he worked, and doing repeated tests of a crude exploding mechanism that he designed himself. Finally satisfied with his handiwork, he traveled back to Munich. For more than a month, he spent his evenings surreptitiously carving a hole in a pillar next to the dais for his makeshift bomb. On Nov. 6 he hid the bomb in the pillar and after checking it the next day, even pressing his ear to the pillar to hear the bomb ticking, he left for Switzerland...     [ OregonLive :: 2005-11-07 :: Resistance & Opposition: Anti Nazi ]

The July 20 Plot was an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler
The July 20 Plot was a failed attempt to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944. Groups planning a coup had existed in the German Army and the military intelligence (the Abwehr) since 1938. Early leaders included Hans Oster, General Ludwig Beck, and Erwin von Witzleben. In 1941 a new group was formed, led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of the staff of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock (commander of Army Group Centre). Tresckow recruited oppositionists to the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of the Army resistance. On 20 July Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg flew to Rastenburg for Hitler's military conference, with a bomb in his briefcase.     [ wikipedia :: 2000-01-12 :: Killing Hitler: Assassination attempts ]

Few leaders have been the targets of so many assassinations attempts; historians have discovered 42 plots on Hitler's life.
See also

'Nazi Memorabilia'

'Last days of Adolf Hitler'

'Nazi relics'

'Fuhrerbunker'

'Watches Hitler presented to nazi leaders'.

What's new - recent & interesting categories.

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