Late in the night of July 20, 1944, four men were led out into a courtyard in Berlin and shot by a firing squad. Executed by their own countrymen, these four German soldiers had risked their lives in an attempt to pull off one of the most daring military coups in history: Operation Valkyrie, which would, had it been successful, meant the deaths of Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler, as well as a complete takeover of the military and government.
Commemoration of Stauffenberg and the German Resistance
The four men were First Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, Colonel Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, General Friedrich Olbricht, and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Two other masterminds behind the plot, Major General Henning von Tresckow and General Ludwig Beck, committed suicide shortly after the coup failed.
With the 64th anniversary of the attempt to kill Adolf Hitler in East Prussia approaching, Germany is preparing for the annual commemoration ceremony. A German government official will make a speech, referencing the event and the resistance in general. The ceremony will take place, as it does every year, at the Memorial to German Resistance in Berlin, known as the Bendlerblock in German. During Stauffenberg’s time as a soldier, the Memorial was the army headquarters of the Third Reich. When he set the bomb at the East Prussian headquarters known as the Wolf’s Lair, he went against a vow he had taken as a soldier. Stauffenberg knew that the result of this betrayal would, if they failed, almost certainly result in a death sentence for himself and his accomplices.
Stauffenberg Before the Plot
Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was born on November 15, 1907, in southern Germany. The member of an aristocratic family (indicated by the “von” in his name), Stauffenberg held the title of Count. He joined the German military in 1926, and married Nina von Lerchenfeld in September of 1933. They had five children, the fifth of which was born after Stauffenberg’s death.
Evidence of Stauffenberg’s disillusionment with the Nazi regime dates back to the mid-1930s. Stauffenberg was, originally, enthusiastic about Hitler’s promises to Germany, though he was never a member of the Nazi party. Like every other German soldier, he took an oath pledging his loyalty to Hitler and to Germany. Stauffenberg, along with several other soldiers, began to feel that Hitler was dragging Germany down into disaster, and was disturbed highly by reports of Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front.
A quote of Stauffenberg’s on display at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin sums up his sentiments toward Hitler, “No one is obliged to observe his oath of service towards a person who has broken the oath a thousand times over.”
Today Claus von Stauffenberg serves as one of the symbols of the German resistance to Hitler, one of many Germans who had the courage to go against an evil regime.
References and Further Reading
For an excellent biography of Stauffenberg and his brothers, see Peter Hoffmann’s Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944. To learn about the July 20 plot, Joachim Fest’s Plotting Hitler’s Death is an excellent narrative of the events. Within Ian Kershaw’s Hitler biography, Hitler: 1936-1945, Nemesis (pages 681-683), is a moving account of what happened in the final moments of Stauffenberg’s life and the lives of the officers who died with him. The Memorial to German Resistance’s website also has biographies of the resisters, as well as information about resistance-related research and commemorations.
Suzanne Swartz - During college, Suzanne spent a semester in southwest Germany. After receiving her B.A. in History and German Studies, she went back to ...
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