In 1944, some high ranking government officials plotted to assassinate Hitler. Why did they plot to kill him? What was the plan? Did it work out?

Roughly 200 German resisters participated in “Operation Valkyrie,” the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. To this day, historians debate what motivated these “men of July 20.” At least initially, Hitler’s authoritarianism, anti-Semitism and predilection for mass murder didn’t necessarily put them off. Yet as World War II rolled on, they came to share a belief that the Führer was disgracing Germany and leading it to ruin.

Hitler largely took power through the democratic process, but he quickly established a dictatorship in which dissent was not tolerated. Hundreds of thousands of perceived opponents found themselves imprisoned in concentration camps, while others were killed outright. Even the slightest provocation risked incurring Hitler’s wrath.

Given this hostile climate, most Germans who had voted against him kept a low profile, explains Peter Hoffmann, a history professor at McGill University who specializes in the German resistance movement during World War II.

Nonetheless, a small minority remained relatively uncowed. These dissidents, though never “a statistically relevant” percentage of the German population, actively “tried to bring down Hitler’s government,” Hoffmann says. To that end, they hatched more than 40 assassination plots.  

The best-known among these plots—and the one that arguably came closest to succeeding—occurred on July 20, 1944, when Claus von Stauffenberg (played by Tom Cruise in the movie Valkyrie) snuck a briefcase bomb into a meeting with the Führer.

uncle sam would be tossing and turning in his grave : *)