Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created a viable coup apparatus. Their most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units throughout Germany. ĭuring 1942, Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective resistance network. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him. Tresckow systematically recruited oppositionists into the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of the army resistance. In 1942, a new conspiratorial group formed, led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's staff, who commanded Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa. Plans to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 19, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army General Franz Halder and Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, and the failure of the Western powers to oppose Hitler's aggression until 1939.
Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical: Hitler and National Socialism had turned wrongdoing into a system, something which the resistance should avoid. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle it". Moltke was against killing Hitler instead, he wanted him placed on trial. Groups of military plotters exchanged ideas with civilian, political, and intellectual resistance groups in the Kreisauer Kreis (which met at the von Moltke estate in Kreisau) and in other secret circles. They soon established contacts with several prominent civilians, including Carl Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, and Helmuth James von Moltke, the great-grandnephew of Moltke the Elder, hero of the Franco-Prussian War. Von Witzleben was the former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command in the West. Beck was a former Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command (OKH). Oster was the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office. Early leaders of these plots included Major General Hans Oster, Colonel General Ludwig Beck and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. Since 1938, there had been groups plotting an overthrow of some kind within the German Army and in the German Military Intelligence Organization. The conspirators also wanted to make an end to the Holocaust.īattle fronts in Europe as of 15 July 1944 The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown, but they would have included unrealistic demands for the confirmation of Germany's extensive annexations of European territory. The apparent aim of the coup d'état attempt was to wrest political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the SS) and to make peace with the Western Allies as soon as possible. In the months after the coup d'état attempt, the Gestapo had arrested more than 7,000 people, 4,980 of whom were executed. A few members of the conspiracy including Stauffenberg were executed by firing squad the night afterwards. It took the opponents of the conspiracy a few hours to take control of the situation again. This part of the coup d'état attempt is referred to by the name " Operation Valkyrie", which also has become associated with the entire event.
A few hours later, the conspiracy used Wehrmacht units to take control of several cities, including Berlin, right after giving them disinformation on the intention of the orders they were given. The most remarkable tool to make this military coup d'état succeed was an attempt to assassinate the German dictator Adolf Hitler - personally executed by the leader of the conspiracy, colonel Claus von Stauffenberg - by detonating an explosive, hidden in a briefcase. The 20 July plot was a part of the German resistance, mainly composed of Wehrmacht officers, which attempted to overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944, nine months before its actual end as a result of the allied military achievements. The location of the assassination attempt on Hitler
0 kommentar(er)
