Show Notes
Send us Fan Mail In February 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, students calling themselves ‘The White Rose’, were arrested for distributing leaflets calling for peace. The Nazis tried them for treason – and they were executed. In March 1943, in ‘Operation Flash’, conspirators made several attempts to assassinate Hitler. This culminated when they secreted an armed bomb onto his plane when he took off from Smolensk, in Russia. The failure of the bomb to explode remains a mystery. The following week...
More from TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the plot to kill Hitler
Send us Fan Mail Once the coup collapsed, the Nazis outdid themselves in their fury. It remained to be seen who would be caught in their net. Some conspirators committed suicide. Some managed to escape. Thousands were rounded up. The Gestapo tortured their victims, placed them on show trials, and hanged them. At their trials before the Nazi ‘People’s Court’, with nothing left to lose, the July plotters proved remarkably difficult to cow. Relatives of conspirators were also arrested and impris...
Send us Fan Mail Once the coup collapsed, Fromm hesitated, then returned to his office, where Stauffenberg, Beck, Olbricht, Mertz and Hoepner were held under guard. Beck tried to shoot himself. He only succeeded in badly wounding himself, and was later finished off. Hoepner asked to be sent for a trial, and Fromm agreed. By now the forces suppressing the coup were approaching. Knowing of the coup preparations, Fromm had done nothing to suppress it. These prisoners might implicate him in treas...
Send us Fan Mail At about 4 in the afternoon of 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg arrived back in Berlin. He expected the insurrection to be in full swing, and was shocked to learn nothing had been done. He swung into action, and the first Valkyrie orders went out. Colonel General Fromm was unwilling to commit himself to the coup while Hitler’s survival remained uncertain. Incensed when he learned Valkyrie orders had been issued without his knowledge, he ordered the arrest of the off...
Send us Fan Mail Claus von Stauffenberg took his briefcase bomb to three conferences with Hitler. On 11 July 1944 he attended a conference in the Berghof, in the Bavarian alps, but generals in the conspiracy ordered him not to go ahead if Himmler was not present. On 15 July he took the bomb to the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia (see episode cover photograph). In a long telephone call the generals were again reluctant to have the bomb detonated with Himmler absent. Claus decided to go ahead...
Send us Fan Mail With over a million slave workers in Germany, the Nazis feared an uprising. They prepared a plan for the Army to handle any such revolt. Echoing Wagner’s Ring, they called it ‘Operation Valkyrie’. The orders provided an ideal framework for a coup. In 1943, Claus von Stauffenberg was initiated into this plan. He modified the orders to facilitate a takeover. He was married, with four children. He felt he could not be a father while turning his back on the moral destruction of h...