Claus von Stauffenberg

1. Lead

Claus von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was the German army officer who, on 20 July 1944, carried a bomb in a briefcase into Adolf Hitler’s headquarters — the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia — and placed it under the table at which Hitler was holding a military conference.

The bomb exploded at 12:42, killing four men and wounding many others, but Hitler survived, shielded by the heavy oak table and by the fact that the conference had been moved, at the last moment, from a concrete bunker to a wooden hut.

Stauffenberg, believing that Hitler was dead, flew back to Berlin to launch Operation Valkyrie — the coup that was to overthrow the Nazi regime and to end the war — but the coup failed, because Hitler was alive, and because the conspirators in Berlin hesitated.

By midnight, Stauffenberg and three of his fellow conspirators had been shot by a firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, the army headquarters in Berlin, and by the end of the week hundreds of their associates had been arrested, tortured and executed. Stauffenberg’s attempt was the closest any German came to killing Hitler, and it remains the most famous act of resistance inside the Third Reich.

Stauffenberg’s life and death raise questions that have been debated ever since. He was not, at first, an opponent of the regime: he was a conservative aristocrat, a Catholic, and a professional soldier who had welcomed the revival of German military power in the 1930s, and who had served with distinction in Poland, in France and in North Africa.

He turned against Hitler slowly — because of the crimes he saw in Poland and in Russia, because of the persecution of the Jews, and because of his conviction that Hitler was leading Germany to destruction — and he did not join the conspiracy until 1943, after he had been gravely wounded in Tunisia.

His attempt on Hitler’s life was, in the end, a failure, and the men who planned it were, for the most part, conservatives who wanted to restore the old Germany rather than to create a new democracy. But Stauffenberg’s courage — the courage of a man who had lost an eye and a hand in the war and who carried a bomb into Hitler’s headquarters knowing that he would almost certainly die — is beyond dispute, and it is the reason why he is remembered, in Germany and in the world, as the face of the German resistance.

This article tells his story: the aristocrat, the soldier, the conspirator, and the man who, on 20 July 1944, tried to change the course of history.

2. Key Facts

Born	15 November 1907, Jettingen, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Died	21 July 1944 (aged 36), Berlin, Germany (executed by firing squad)
Nationality	German
Role / Office	Staff officer, 10th Panzer Division (North Africa, 1943); Chief of Staff, Reserve Army, Berlin (1943–1944); leader of the 20 July Plot
Known for	The bomb in the briefcase at the Wolf’s Lair, 20 July 1944; Operation Valkyrie; execution at the Bendlerblock
Spouse / Family	Nina von Lerchenfeld (married 1933); five children; brother Berthold von Stauffenberg, also executed in 1944
Military rank	Oberst (Colonel)
Wounds	Lost his left eye, his right hand and two fingers of his left hand in Tunisia, 7 April 1943

3. Early Life and Education

An Aristocratic Childhood

Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was born on 15 November 1907 at Jettingen, in Bavaria, into one of the oldest aristocratic families of southern Germany. The Stauffenbergs were Swabian counts, with a history that went back to the Middle Ages, and Claus was raised in the world of the old German aristocracy: at the family castles in Bavaria and in Württemberg, in the company of his twin brother Berthold and of his younger brother Alexander, and in the Catholic faith that would shape his whole life.

He was educated at the Gymnasium in Stuttgart, where he was a brilliant student — of literature, of history, of music and of classical languages — and where he became, with his brothers, a member of the circle around the poet Stefan George, the charismatic literary figure whose ideas of a spiritual aristocracy and of a Germany renewed by its elite had a deep influence on the young Stauffenberg.

He was, from an early age, a man of strong convictions: he believed in Germany, in the monarchy, in the army, and in the duty of the aristocracy to serve the nation — and he believed, as he would later write, that a man who saw evil and did nothing was himself guilty.

Soldier and Staff Officer

In 1926 Stauffenberg joined the army, as an officer cadet in the 17th Cavalry Regiment at Bamberg, and he was commissioned in 1930. He was, from the beginning, a soldier of unusual ability: he was intelligent, he was hard-working, and he was, in the words of one of his superiors, “the most gifted officer of his generation”.

He attended the War Academy in Berlin, where he was trained as a staff officer, and he served, in the 1930s, in a series of staff appointments, in which he impressed his superiors with his grasp of operations and with his willingness to speak his mind.

He was, at first, sympathetic to the Nazi regime: like many conservative officers, he welcomed the revival of German military power, he approved of the reoccupation of the Rhineland and of the annexation of Austria, and he believed that Hitler had restored Germany’s greatness.

He was not a member of the Nazi Party, and he was not, in the 1930s, a critic of the regime — but he was, even then, a man who believed that the army’s loyalty was to Germany, not to a party, and that belief would, in time, put him on a collision course with Hitler.

4. The Road to Resistance

Poland and the Crimes of the Regime

Stauffenberg’s turn against the regime began in Poland, in 1939 and 1940, where he served as a staff officer in the invasion and in the occupation that followed. He saw, at first hand, the murder of Polish civilians, the persecution of the Jews, and the brutality of the SS, and he was, by his own account, horrified by what he saw.

He wrote to his wife, in 1939, that the treatment of the Poles was “a disgrace”, and he told his fellow officers that the army’s honour was being destroyed by the crimes of the regime. His disillusionment deepened in Russia, in 1941 and 1942, where he served on the staff of the army group that invaded the Soviet Union, and where he saw the mass murder of Soviet prisoners and of Jews, and the starvation of Soviet civilians.

He was, by 1942, a convinced opponent of Hitler, and he was in contact with the circle of officers around General Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler who were planning to overthrow the regime — but he was, at first, reluctant to take part in an assassination, because he believed that Hitler should be arrested and tried, not murdered, and because he believed that the army should not kill its commander-in-chief.

Wounded in Tunisia

The decisive moment in Stauffenberg’s life came on 7 April 1943, in Tunisia, where he was serving as a staff officer with the 10th Panzer Division in the fighting against the British and American armies. His staff car was attacked by Allied fighter-bombers, and he was gravely wounded: he lost his left eye, he lost his right hand, and he lost two fingers of his left hand, and he was, for a time, not expected to live.

He recovered, after months in hospital, and he returned to duty in the autumn of 1943, as Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army in Berlin — a post that gave him access to Hitler’s headquarters, because the Reserve Army’s commander, General Friedrich Olbricht, was one of the leaders of the conspiracy, and because Stauffenberg, as Olbricht’s chief of staff, was regularly summoned to brief Hitler on the state of the Reserve Army.

The wounds changed Stauffenberg: he was, in the words of his wife Nina, “a different man” after Tunisia — more determined, more impatient, and more willing to act. He had, he told his fellow conspirators, “lost enough”, and he was now prepared to kill Hitler himself, because no one else would do it.

5. The 20 July Plot

Operation Valkyrie

The plan that Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators devised was based on Operation Valkyrie — a contingency plan, drawn up by the army itself, for the mobilisation of the Reserve Army in the event of an uprising by foreign workers in Germany, or of a breakdown of order after an Allied bombing raid.

The conspirators’ idea was to use the Valkyrie orders, after Hitler’s assassination, to mobilise the Reserve Army, to arrest the SS and the Nazi leadership, and to seize control of Berlin and of the other military districts. The plan was, in theory, sound: the Reserve Army was a real force, the orders were genuine, and the officers who would carry them out did not need to know that they were part of a coup.

In practice, the plan depended on two things: that Hitler was dead, and that the conspirators in Berlin acted quickly and decisively. Both conditions failed on 20 July 1944, and the failure was, in the end, the reason why the coup collapsed.

Stauffenberg himself was to be the assassin and the driving force of the coup: he would plant the bomb, fly back to Berlin, and take command of the Reserve Army’s headquarters, directing the coup from the Bendlerblock.

The Bomb at the Wolf’s Lair

On 20 July 1944 Stauffenberg flew to the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, carrying a briefcase with two blocks of plastic explosive and a time fuse. He had been summoned to brief Hitler on the state of the Reserve Army, and he was, as a wounded officer who could not use his right hand, able to carry the briefcase without suspicion.

In the anteroom, with the help of his adjutant, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, he armed one of the explosive blocks — he could not, with his three remaining fingers, arm the second — and he placed the briefcase under the conference table, close to Hitler, and then he left the room, on the pretext of a telephone call, and drove to the airfield. At 12:42 the bomb exploded.

It killed four men — General Günther Korten, the Luftwaffe chief of staff; Colonel Heinz Brandt, who had moved the briefcase away from Hitler with his foot; and two stenographers — and it wounded many others, including Hitler, who suffered a perforated eardrum, burns and splinters in his legs.

Hitler survived, for two reasons: the conference had been moved, at the last moment, from a concrete bunker to a wooden hut, whose windows blew out and dissipated the blast, and the briefcase had been moved by Brandt, so that it was behind the heavy oak table leg, between Hitler and the explosion.

Stauffenberg, who had seen the explosion from a distance and who believed that Hitler was dead, flew back to Berlin, arriving at about 16:00, to launch the coup.

The Briefcase

The briefcase itself has become one of the most famous objects of the war, and its story is a reminder of how much depended on chance. Stauffenberg had planned to use two blocks of explosive, which would, together, have been enough to kill everyone in the room, but he could not, with his three remaining fingers, arm the second block in the time available, and he left it in the anteroom.

The single block that exploded was powerful enough to kill, but not powerful enough to kill through the oak table. Colonel Brandt, who did not know what was in the briefcase, moved it with his foot, because it was in his way, and in doing so he put the table leg between the bomb and Hitler — and he paid for it with his life.

The bomb, in the end, failed because of a series of small accidents: the move from the bunker to the hut, the single block, the movement of the briefcase. It was, as one historian has written, “a plot that failed by inches”.

6. The Failure of the Coup

Hesitation in Berlin

When Stauffenberg arrived in Berlin, at about 16:00, he found that the coup had not yet begun. His fellow conspirators — General Olbricht, General Ludwig Beck, and the others in the Bendlerblock — had hesitated, because they had heard, from the Wolf’s Lair, that Hitler had survived, and because they were waiting for confirmation that he was dead.

Stauffenberg insisted that Hitler was dead — he had, he said, seen the explosion with his own eyes — and he ordered the Valkyrie orders to be issued, and the Reserve Army to be mobilised. For a few hours, the coup seemed to be working: troops occupied the government quarter in Berlin, the SS headquarters were surrounded, and the radio stations were seized.

But the conspirators had lost the initiative: Hitler, who had survived, was on the telephone to Berlin, ordering the coup to be crushed, and the officers who had been ordered to arrest the Nazi leadership began to doubt, and to wait.

The decisive moment came in the evening, when Major Otto Ernst Remer, the commander of the guard battalion in Berlin, who had been ordered by the conspirators to arrest Joseph Goebbels, was persuaded by Goebbels to speak to Hitler on the telephone, and Hitler ordered him to crush the coup. Remer obeyed, and the coup collapsed.

The Bendlerblock / Bendlerblock

By midnight, the Bendlerblock had been retaken by troops loyal to Hitler, and Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Haeften and another conspirator, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, were arrested. They were, on the orders of General Friedrich Fromm, the commander of the Reserve Army — who had known about the conspiracy and who was trying to save himself by executing the conspirators before they could implicate him — taken to the courtyard of the Bendlerblock and shot by a firing squad.

Stauffenberg is said to have shouted, as he was shot, “Long live sacred Germany!” — Es lebe das heilige Deutschland! — though the exact words are, like many of the details of that night, a matter of legend rather than of record.

His body, and the bodies of his fellow conspirators, were buried in the cemetery at the Matthäus Church in Berlin, and then, on Hitler’s orders, exhumed, cremated, and their ashes scattered, so that there would be no grave to become a place of pilgrimage.

General Beck, the former Chief of the General Staff, who was to have been the head of the new government, shot himself in the Bendlerblock, and died of his wounds. The coup was over, and the reprisals were about to begin.

7. The Reprisals

The People’s Court

The reprisals for the 20 July Plot were among the most savage of the Nazi regime. Hitler ordered that the conspirators and their families should be destroyed, and the Gestapo arrested, in the weeks that followed, some 7,000 people, of whom about 200 were executed — including, in addition to Stauffenberg and his fellow officers, the civilian leaders of the conspiracy: Carl Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, who was to have been Chancellor; and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, who was to have been commander-in-chief.

General Ludwig Beck, the conspiracy’s intended head of state, was not among them: he had taken his own life at the Bendlerblock on the night of 20 July. The trials were held before the People’s Court, under its president, Roland Freisler, who screamed at the defendants, humiliated them, and sentenced them to death by hanging — a death that was, deliberately, slow and degrading, with the victims hanged from meat hooks with piano wire, and the executions filmed for Hitler’s viewing.

Stauffenberg’s brother Berthold was among those executed, in August 1944, and his wife Nina was arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where she gave birth to their fifth child, Konstanze, in January 1945. The children were taken from their families and given new names, in an attempt to erase the Stauffenberg name from history.

The attempt failed: the name is remembered, in Germany and in the world, as the name of the man who tried to kill Hitler.

The Fate of the Families

The fate of the conspirators’ families was, in itself, a crime. The wives and children of the executed men were arrested under the principle of Sippenhaft — “clan liability” — the Nazi idea that the family of a traitor shared his guilt, and they were sent to concentration camps, or to children’s homes, where they were given new names and told that their fathers were criminals.

Nina von Stauffenberg survived the war, and she was reunited with her children in 1945, and she lived until 2006, telling, in her old age, the story of her husband and of the conspiracy. The children of the conspirators, who had been taken from their families, grew up to become, in many cases, public figures in post-war Germany — including Stauffenberg’s son Berthold, who became a general in the Bundeswehr, and his daughter Konstanze, who became a historian and who wrote about her father’s life.

The Sippenhaft was, in the end, a failure: it did not erase the conspirators, and it did not deter resistance, and it is remembered, today, as one of the most shameful policies of the regime.

8. Stauffenberg’s Motives

Why He Acted

Stauffenberg’s motives have been debated ever since his death, and they are, in the end, a matter of his own words. He was, as he told his fellow conspirators, motivated by his conviction that Hitler was leading Germany to destruction, by his horror at the crimes of the regime — the murder of the Jews, the murder of Soviet prisoners, the persecution of the churches — and by his belief, as a Catholic and as a soldier, that a man who saw evil and did nothing was himself guilty.

He was not, as some have suggested, motivated by a desire for power, or by a wish to save himself: he knew, when he planted the bomb, that he would almost certainly die, and he told his wife, on the morning of 20 July, that he was going to Berlin to do “something that must be done”.

He was, in the words of his brother Berthold, “a man who had decided to act, whatever the cost”. His motives were, in short, moral and patriotic: he wanted to save Germany from Hitler, and he wanted to save the honour of the German army, which he believed had been destroyed by the crimes of the regime.

The Limits of the Conspiracy

The conspiracy of which Stauffenberg was a part was, however, limited in its aims. Its leaders were, for the most part, conservatives — generals, aristocrats, civil servants and diplomats — who wanted to overthrow Hitler, to end the war, and to restore the old Germany: a Germany ruled by the army and by the traditional elites, not by the Nazi Party, but also not, for the most part, by a democracy.

They did not, for the most part, intend to restore the Weimar Republic, and they did not, for the most part, intend to give power to the Social Democrats or to the trade unions. Their plan for a new government was, in the words of one historian, “a government of generals and of civil servants, not a government of the people”.

This does not diminish Stauffenberg’s courage, but it is a reminder that the resistance inside Germany was, for the most part, a resistance of the old elites, and that its aims were, by modern standards, limited. Stauffenberg himself was, by 1944, more radical than his fellow conspirators: he had come to believe that Germany needed a new beginning, and that the old order could not be restored, but he did not live to put his ideas into practice.

9. Legacy of Claus von Stauffenberg

The Face of the German Resistance

Stauffenberg’s legacy is that of the face of the German resistance, and it is a legacy that has grown with time. In the immediate post-war years, the men of 20 July were, in Germany, regarded with suspicion: they were seen, by many Germans, as traitors who had broken their oath to Hitler, and as men who had acted too late.

It was not until the 1950s and 1960s, when the Federal Republic of Germany began to confront its past, that Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators were rehabilitated as heroes, and that the Bendlerblock — where they were shot — became a memorial, the German Resistance Memorial Centre, which is today one of the most visited museums in Berlin.

Every year, on 20 July, the German government holds a ceremony at the Bendlerblock, in memory of the conspirators, and the Bundeswehr swears in its new recruits on that day, in honour of Stauffenberg and of the tradition of resistance that he represents. His name is, in Germany today, a byword for courage and for conscience.

Stauffenberg in Film and Memory

Stauffenberg’s story has been told in books, in films and in television dramas, most famously in the film Valkyrie (2008), in which he was played by Tom Cruise, and which brought his story to a worldwide audience. The film, like the books before it, has been criticised by historians for simplifying the story — for presenting Stauffenberg as a lone hero, and for omitting the other conspirators and the limits of their aims — but it has also kept his memory alive, and it has made the 20 July Plot one of the best-known episodes of the war.

In Germany, Stauffenberg is remembered in schools, in streets, and in the Bendlerblock memorial, and his children and grandchildren have, in their own lives, carried on his legacy: his son Berthold became a general in the Bundeswehr, and his daughter Konstanze has written about her father’s life and about the conspiracy.

The memory of Stauffenberg is, in the end, a memory of a man who tried, and who failed, and who died for trying — and that, for many Germans, is enough.

10. Assessment by Historians

The Attempt and Its Meaning

Historians assess Stauffenberg’s attempt as the most serious attempt on Hitler’s life, and as the closest any German came to killing him, but they also assess it as a failure — a failure of planning, of execution, and of nerve.

The bomb failed because of chance, the coup failed because of hesitation, and the conspiracy failed because it was, in the end, too narrow, too late, and too dependent on a single man. The most balanced assessments — including those of the historians Peter Hoffmann, the author of the standard history of the German resistance, and Joachim Fest — present Stauffenberg as a brave and determined man, whose attempt was, in the circumstances, the best that could have been done, but whose failure was, in the end, inevitable: the regime was too strong, the conspirators were too few, and the German people, by 1944, were too committed to the war to support a coup.

The attempt, in this view, was not a missed opportunity to end the war, but a moral act — an act that showed that there were Germans who were willing to die to stop Hitler, and that, for the Germany that came after the war, was a foundation on which a new democracy could be built.

Stauffenberg’s Place in History

Stauffenberg’s place in history is secure, and it rests on his courage and on his moral clarity. He was, as the German Resistance Memorial Centre puts it, “a man who, in the darkest hour of German history, stood up and said no” — and he paid for it with his life.

He was not, as some have suggested, a democrat, and he was not, as others have suggested, a saint: he was a conservative aristocrat, a Catholic, and a professional soldier, who had, for many years, served the regime he later tried to overthrow, and who had, for many years, shared its nationalist aims.

But he was also a man who saw the crimes of the regime, who was horrified by them, and who acted — at a time when almost no one else in Germany was willing to act. That, in the end, is his place in history: not as a perfect hero, but as a flawed and courageous man, who tried to kill a tyrant, who failed, and who died for trying.

The Germany of today honours him, not because he succeeded, but because he tried.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Claus von Stauffenberg?
Claus von Stauffenberg (1907–1944) was a German army colonel who planted a bomb in a briefcase at Hitler’s headquarters on 20 July 1944, in the most famous attempt to kill Hitler. He was executed by firing squad the same night at the Bendlerblock in Berlin.

What happened on 20 July 1944?
Stauffenberg placed a bomb under the conference table at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia. It exploded at 12:42, killing four men, but Hitler survived, shielded by the heavy oak table and by the fact that the conference had been moved from a concrete bunker to a wooden hut.

What was Operation Valkyrie?
Operation Valkyrie was a contingency plan for the mobilisation of the Reserve Army in an emergency. The conspirators intended to use it, after Hitler’s assassination, to arrest the Nazi leadership and to seize control of Germany. The coup failed because Hitler survived and the conspirators in Berlin hesitated.

How was Stauffenberg wounded?
On 7 April 1943, in Tunisia, his staff car was attacked by Allied fighter-bombers. He lost his left eye, his right hand and two fingers of his left hand. He was able to carry the bomb in his briefcase because, as a wounded officer, he was not searched.

What happened to Stauffenberg’s family?
His wife Nina was arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where she gave birth to their fifth child in January 1945. His brother Berthold was executed in August 1944. Nina survived the war and was reunited with her children in 1945.

Where is Stauffenberg remembered today?
At the German Resistance Memorial Centre in the Bendlerblock in Berlin, where he was shot. Every year on 20 July the German government holds a ceremony there, and the Bundeswehr swears in new recruits in his honour.

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Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Claus von Stauffenberg” — life, the 20 July Plot, Operation Valkyrie and execution.
2. Peter Hoffmann, Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905–1944 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003) — the standard scholarly biography.
3. Peter Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996) — the standard history of the resistance, including the 20 July Plot.
4. Joachim Fest, Plotting Hitler’s Death: The German Resistance to Hitler, 1933–1945 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996) — the conspiracy and its failure.
5. German Resistance Memorial Centre, Berlin — the Bendlerblock memorial, Stauffenberg’s life and the 20 July Plot.
6. Nina von Stauffenberg, memoirs and interviews — the account of Stauffenberg’s wife.
7. Valkyrie (film, 2008) — a dramatisation of the 20 July Plot; to be used with care, as it simplifies the story.