List of attacks on Adolf Hitler

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The list of attacks on Adolf Hitler includes various documented, planned and in some cases carried out attacks by individuals, groups or institutions on the life of the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before and during the Second World War . The actual number of assassinations or attempted assassinations cannot be precisely determined due to a possible number of unreported cases. The author Will Berthold (1924–2000) published a book in 1981 with the title The 42 Attentates on Adolf Hitler . The work contains 42 planned or committed attacks on Hitler. Other sources assume at least 39 attacks are documented.

Some of the attacks carried out or planned before the outbreak of the Second World War were carried out or planned by politically motivated individuals or groups, but the most promising attempt was that of the September conspiracy by parts of the Wehrmacht in 1938. After the outbreak of the war there were up to the attack through Georg Elser all planners and executors of the attacks, members of the Wehrmacht .

The reasons for the increased number of assassinations by Wehrmacht officers are the looming defeat due to Hitler's amateurish warfare (e.g. halt orders ) with no prospect of peace, the discovery of mass murders (especially in the East; see also contemporary knowledge of the Holocaust ) and the growing number of defeats Insight into the criminal nature of the warfare ordered by the Nazi regime .

The following list of carried out or not carried out or canceled attacks is to be regarded as incomplete.

January 30, 1933 to August 31, 1939

date description
February 9, 1933 Adolf Hitler receives a poisoned letter from Ludwig Aßner (an ex-communist), but it is intercepted by telegram due to a warning.
1934 An opposition group around Helmuth Mylius in Berlin is planning an attack. Before the execution, the assassins are arrested; their fate is unknown.
1934 The writer Edgar Jung as the leading protagonist of the opposition "Chancellery Group", who as the speechwriter of Hitler's Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen has access to the dictator, plans to shoot Hitler, but does not carry out his intention because his co-conspirators fear that this will lead to Hitler Martyrs and endanger the group's overturn plans.
September 28, 1938 During the so-called September conspiracy, Hitler is said to be shot in the Reich Chancellery by a raiding party led by Captain Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz and Corvette Captain Franz-Maria Liedig . However, when Hitler agrees to a peaceful solution to the Sudeten question at the Munich conference , the main reason for the overthrow for the conspirators no longer applies.
November 9, 1938 The Swiss Maurice Bavaud wants to shoot Hitler on the memorial march to the Munich Feldherrnhalle . The attack fails because he cannot get close enough to Hitler.

September 1, 1939 to April 30, 1945

date description
November 8, 1939 Bomb attack in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller by Georg Elser . Hitler escapes the attack because he leaves the Bürgerbräukeller thirteen minutes before the explosion.
November 11, 1939 Erich Kordt wants to blow himself up with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery. As a result of the unsuccessful attack by Georg Elser, the security precautions have been tightened to such an extent that Colonel Hans Oster is unable to obtain explosives.
June 27, 1940 On this day, a Wehrmacht parade is to take place on the Champs-Élysées (Paris), during which Hitler is supposed to be shot by Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg and Eugen Gerstenmaier while driving past . Since Hitler was visiting Paris on June 23, 1940, the planned parade was canceled.
May 21, 1941 Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben was able to persuade Hitler to visit Paris. On this day, the missed opportunity from June 1940 is to be made up and Hitler shot. Hitler cancels his visit at short notice (most likely because of the Balkan campaign ).
March 13, 1943 On the return flight from a visit to the front, Hitler visits the headquarters of Army Group Center in Smolensk . Colonel Henning von Tresckow came up with a three-part plan to kill Hitler.
  • Under the direction of Major Georg von Boeselager , some initiates are supposed to intercept and liquidate Hitler in a little wood on the way from the airport to the headquarters. Hitler is guarded by an armed SS escort; the plan is then dropped.
  • At lunch, Tresckow, Boeselager and others want to get up at a sign and fire pistols at Hitler. The Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge , knew about the plan and had agreed in principle. But when it became clear that Himmler would not be present, Kluge forbade the assassination attempt because he wanted to avoid a possible civil war between the SS and the army. At the very least, he wanted something like this to be done “outside his area of ​​responsibility,” and the officers on his staff obeyed his prohibition.
  • As a last resort, Tresckow gives an escort officer a time bomb disguised as a packaged liquor, which is supposed to explode in Hitler's Focke-Wulf Fw 200 ("Condor") on the return flight over Poland . The package with the explosives is deposited in the hold of the aircraft, where it freezes and the ignition mechanism fails. The initiated co-conspirators in Berlin wait in vain for the news of Hitler's fall. Fabian von Schlabrendorff flies to Germany immediately to get the Corpus Delicti back to himself without being recognized.
March 21, 1943 At the opening of an exhibition of Soviet looted weapons in Berlin, Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff wants to blow himself up with Hitler, Göring , Himmler , Keitel and Dönitz . Hitler leaves the exhibition after ten minutes; Gersdorff can defuse the timer just in time.
December 16, 1943 On that day, Major Axel von dem Bussche wanted to blow himself up together with Hitler at the demonstration of new Wehrmacht uniforms. The scheduled appointment is canceled because the uniforms were destroyed in an Allied air strike.
1944 In 1944, the British agent Eddie Chapman offered the British secret service to kill Hitler with a bomb at an event and to sacrifice his own life in the process. The offer was rejected by the MI5 leadership because of Chapman's criminal past, among other things. In addition, Hitler may appear "more useful alive than dead" to the British leadership because of his now irrational war strategy.
February 11, 1944 The demonstration of Wehrmacht uniforms, which was canceled in December, is to take place on that day. This time Lieutenant Ewald Heinrich von Kleist wants to pounce on Hitler during the demonstration and blow himself up with him. This attempt also fails because Hitler cancels the appointment shortly beforehand.
March 11, 1944 Rittmeister Eberhard von Breitenbuch (Ordonnanzoffizier von Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch ) plans to shoot Hitler during a visit to the Berghof . To do this, he hides a second pistol in his pants. He wants to shoot Hitler straight in the head at close range. The SS bodyguard only lets the generals see Hitler; the orderly officers must stay away from the meeting.
July 7, 1944 The repeatedly canceled demonstration of Wehrmacht uniforms will take place in Kleßheim Palace near Salzburg. Hellmuth Stieff is supposed to carry out the attack. However, the nerves fail. He feels unable to carry out the assassination attempt.
July 11, 1944 Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army) is summoned to give a lecture at the Berghof. There's a bomb in his briefcase. However, this should only be ignited if Göring and Himmler can also be killed with Hitler. But on that day Himmler does not take part in the lecture, and the co-conspirators in Berlin cancel the assassination attempt.
July 15, 1944 Just four days later, Stauffenberg tries again. This time the bomb attack is to be carried out in the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg in East Prussia. However, Himmler is not present again, which Stauffenberg sends encrypted to Berlin. General Beck wants to wait and postpone the assassination attempt. General Olbricht and Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim persuade Stauffenberg to kill Hitler alone. When Stauffenberg re-enters the lecture room, he learns that Hellmuth Stieff has removed the briefcase (probably to prevent the bomb from being found by accident). Stauffenberg transmits this immediately to Olbricht, who has already started the Walküre company in Berlin . At the last moment Quirnheim can break off the mobilization as an "exercise".
July 20, 1944 The bomb attack on Hitler, which has been postponed several times, is carried out by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg at the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg in East Prussia. Neither Himmler nor Goering are present in the barrack in which the bomb exploded. Through a series of coincidences, Hitler was only slightly injured. This attack is the last known, verifiable attempt to kill Adolf Hitler. On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in Berlin .

Assassinations that cannot be proven without any problems

The following list contains assassinations or plans for assassinations that are mentioned by various sources, but either cannot be properly proven or which are not unequivocally an assassination attempt.

date description
1933 An unknown person in SA uniform and with a loaded weapon is arrested on the Obersalzberg. The man's identity and fate remain unknown. It can no longer be determined with certainty whether an assassination attempt on Hitler was really planned here.
September 10, 1939 General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord becomes Commander-in-Chief of Army Division A on September 10, 1939. He immediately tries to persuade Hitler to visit the troops at one of the locations under his control. He informed General Ludwig Beck that this would lead to a "tragic accident". However, the visit does not take place. Hammerstein-Equord retired on September 21, 1939. It can no longer be ascertained with absolute certainty whether this attack was really ever planned. All information is based on the very contradicting statements of a British agent.
April 23, 1945 After the war, Albert Speer claims that he wanted to kill Hitler with a gas attack on his last visit to the Führerbunker. Whether this claim is true or whether Speer just wanted to save his head in the Nuremberg trial cannot be determined with absolute certainty.

literature

  • Will Berthold : The 42 attacks on Adolf Hitler. Blanvalet, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7645-6716-3 .
  • Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler: The assassins, the plans and why they failed , Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Will Berthold : The 42 attacks on Adolf Hitler , 12th edition 2007, Vma-Vertriebsgesellschaft, ISBN 978-3-928127-70-7 .
  2. ↑ Rainer Orth: Parenthese: Jung's rejected plans for an assassination attempt on Hitler , in: Ders .: “The official seat of the opposition?” Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the deputy of the Reich Chancellor 1933/34 , Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2016, p. 434ff .
  3. ↑ Philipp von Boeselager reports: “Kluge had been initiated. He agreed in principle. Only when it was certain that Himmler would not come did Kluge prohibit the assassination attempt. He feared a civil war between the Army and the SS if Himmler stayed alive. ”( Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager : The Resistance in the Army Group Center . Contributions to the Resistance 1933–1945, Issue 40. German Resistance Memorial Center , Berlin 1990, p. 18 ).
  4. ^ Fabian von Schlabrendorff: The bomb attack on Hitler on March 13, 1943. , Online edition Myth Elser. In: Fabian von Schlabrendorff: Officers against Hitler. Zurich 1946, p. 73 ff.
  5. ↑ Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff (1905–1980). With excerpts from: Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff: Soldiers' Life in Silesia. In: Herbert Hupka (Ed.): My Silesian Years - Memories from Six Decades , Part 2. Gräfe and Unzer-Verlag, Munich. Lüben - pictures, stories, documents .
  6. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Zeughaus crime scene . In: Die Welt , June 3, 2006.
  7. ↑ The British prevented the attack on Hitler. Focus , Jan. 9, 2007.
  8. ^ Manfred Zeidler: Stieff, Hellmuth . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)
  9. ↑ Sensing chest . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1966 ( online ).