If given the chance, would you kill Hitler? You've probably encountered this question at some point in your life either on a Reddit thread, in your history class, or at an especially nerdy dinner party. But back when history's most hated man was still alive and kicking, there were more than a few folks who answered that question with a definitive yes. In fact, depending on how you count them, there were as many as 40 assassination plots on Hitler's life. And on today's deep dive, we're going to take a look at the plots that made it the furthest in their execution and how surviving those attempts affected the Fuhrer's psyche.
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00:00If given the chance, would you kill Hitler? You've probably encountered this question
00:05at some point in your life, either on a Reddit thread, in your history class, or at an especially
00:09nerdy dinner party. But back when history's most hated man was still alive and kicking,
00:14there were more than a few folks who answered that question with a definitive yes. In fact,
00:19depending on how you count them, there were as many as 40 assassination plots on Hitler's
00:22life. And on today's Deep Dive, we're taking a look at the plots that made it furthest
00:26in their execution, and how surviving those attempts affected the Fuhrer's psyche.
00:39In the summer of 1934, shortly after his rise to the Chancellery, Hitler began a violent
00:43purge of the SA, the often-violent paramilitary wing of the Nazi party also known as the Brown
00:48Shirts. This was ostensibly to prevent a coup, but was more likely a consolidation of power
00:53by eliminating perceived threats to the SA and the German military. This attempt would
00:57later become known as the Night of the Long Knives, and it specifically targeted the leadership
01:02of the SA, as well as other anti-Nazi and political rivals. One of the men executed
01:07in this purge was the head of the SA, Ernst Throm. The political and military mind to
01:11the SA was severely curtailed after this purge, and was essentially replaced by the SS under
01:16Herman Goering. But not everyone was happy about this change, and one SA member, Heinrich
01:21Grenau, vowed to take revenge on Hitler for the death of Ernst Throm. Now, Grenau was
01:25uniquely placed to take action here, as he was one of Hitler's bodyguards, and so he
01:29was very familiar with Hitler's movements. As such, he knew when Hitler would be returning
01:33to his beloved retreat at Berchtesgaden, and the exact route he would take to get there.
01:38Grenau set himself in a position alongside a narrow, winding section of the road that
01:42would force Hitler's car to slow to 15 miles an hour. When the car rounded the bend, Grenau
01:46fired three shots into the man in the back seat. Then, believing he had killed Hitler
01:51and wanting to avoid torture from the Gestapo, Grenau turned the gun on himself. A paranoid
01:56Hitler, however, had been driving the car, and had placed his personal chauffeur, Julius
02:01Schreck, in the back seat. Schreck died from his wounds. And while we don't know exactly
02:06what Hitler's thoughts on this particular assassination bid were, we do know that the
02:10act was covered up, and that the Nazis listed Schreck's cause of death as sepsis brought
02:14on by a tooth infection. This attempt no doubt fueled both Hitler's paranoia and his
02:18belief in his providential protection.
02:25Maurice Bavaud was a 25-year-old Swiss student studying at a Catholic seminary in Brittany,
02:30France. He became convinced that Hitler was a threat to Switzerland, Catholicism, and
02:34was, in his own words, the incarnation of Satan. Bavaud believed that it was his spiritual
02:38duty to remove Hitler from history's great chessboard, and in 1938, he began to track
02:43Hitler's movements. He settled on his moment during a parade in Munich to celebrate the
02:46Nazis' failed Beer Hall Pusht of 1923. Bavaud's plan was very simple. He would pose as a Swiss
02:52journalist, take a seat in the grandstands with a good view of the parade route, and
02:56when Hitler passed in an open car, he would pull a gun from his pocket and open fire.
03:02Simple or not, the plan didn't work, because as soon as Hitler came into view, the crowd
03:06rose to their feet and offered the infamous Nazi salute, obscuring Bavaud's view and
03:10any chance at a shot. Undeterred, Bavaud purchased expensive stationery and forged
03:14a letter of introduction in the name of the French nationalist leader Pierre Tétangé.
03:18He traveled to Berchtesgaden and, using the letter, told Nazi officials that there was
03:22a second letter that he was to deliver directly to Hitler. He was told, however, that Hitler
03:27was still in Munich. But by the time Bavaud made it back to Munich, Hitler had left for
03:31Berchtesgaden. Having spent all of his money on his travels and supplies, Bavaud attempted
03:35to stow away on a train to Paris, but was caught in the act. And when police discovered
03:39a gun and details of Hitler's movements on Bavaud's person, he was handed over to the
03:43Gestapo and tortured into confessing. Ironically, rather than cover up this bumbled plot, the
03:48Nazi propaganda machine declared Bavaud the Swiss assassin and made it sound as though
03:52Hitler had narrowly escaped death. The neutral Swiss government refused to intervene in the
03:56case and even purportedly turned down an offer to exchange a German spy for Bavaud. Bavaud
04:01was executed in May of 1941. Needless to say, security around the Führer was tightened
04:06after this incident, making it far more difficult for a member of the public to get close to
04:10Hitler.
04:16At the same parade where Bavaud had hoped to take out Hitler was another would-be assassin,
04:20a man named Georg Elser. Elser was a German carpenter and a committed communist who thought
04:25Germany was in terrible shape, and believed the only way to improve things was to get
04:29rid of its leaders. Elser had been at the Bürgerbrot Keller beer hall the night before
04:33watching Hitler give his annual speech, celebrating the failed beer hall push. Elser figured his
04:38best chance to strike would be at the same event the following year. He hoped not to
04:42just take out Hitler, but other top Nazis too. To do that, he knew he needed more than
04:46just a gun, he needed a bomb. Being a carpenter, Elser knew nothing about making bombs, so
04:53he spent the next nine months teaching himself how to build them. Using materials and explosives
04:57he lifted from his jobs at a munitions factory and quarry, Elser built several prototypes.
05:02He tested these makeshift devices in his parents' orchard until he had one he was
05:05confident would do the job. Elser then rented a room in Munich and started his preparations.
05:11For 35 days, he stuck to the same routine. He would dine at the Bürgerbrot Keller at
05:158 p.m., pay his bill at 10 p.m., and then hide in the building until the staff left.
05:20Once the coast was clear, he'd come out and work on hollowing out a column close to
05:23where Hitler was going to give a speech. This column was a key support for the balcony above,
05:28and Elser hoped his bomb would not only take out the Fuhrer, but also drop the balcony
05:32onto any other Nazi bigwigs in attendance. On November 6th, just days before the anniversary
05:37of the Beer Hall push, Elser placed his bomb in the hollowed-out column and set the timers
05:41to go off during Hitler's speech. He covered up his work and left the Beer Hall to make
05:44his escape. But the border crossing, which had been lightly patrolled the previous year,
05:49was now heavily guarded, and Elser was caught by a German patrol while trying to cross into
05:53Switzerland. While he was in custody, his bomb went off, bringing down the Beer Hall's
05:57balcony and ceiling. The explosion killed eight people and injured over 60. None of
06:01the victims, however, were Hitler. The Fuhrer had finished his speech early in order to
06:05attend a meeting with his military leaders, and was already on his way to Berlin when
06:09the bomb exploded, missing the blast by just 13 minutes. Hitler would later claim he had
06:14a strange urge to leave the Beer Hall early, which he saw as a sign of divine intervention.
06:19He told photographer Heinrich Hoffman,
06:28According to Roger Morehouse in Killing Hitler, from this point on, he would only become more
06:32trenchant in his beliefs, more convinced of his own opinions, and more contemptuous of
06:36the advice of others. He was slipping into megalomania. And no doubt, Goebbels' propaganda
06:41machine reinforced this idea of divine protection for Hitler, and letters from world leaders,
06:46including one from the Pope congratulating him on his survival, added to his sense of
06:50invincibility. As for Georg Elser, he wasn't executed right away, but was sent to Dachau
06:55concentration camp for the rest of the war. The Nazis likely kept him alive in hopes of
06:59finding other conspirators. Elser insisted he acted alone, and was finally executed just
07:04weeks before Germany surrendered.
07:10Major General Henning von Tresckow had seen Hitler as a threat to Germany for years, and
07:14had surrounded himself with like-minded officers, who called themselves the Black Band. And
07:18when Hitler visited the Eastern Front in March of 1943, the men decided the time had come
07:22for a regime change. The initial plan was that, while at a lunch conference with Hitler,
07:27the conspirators would all rise from their seats at a signal and simply shoot Hitler
07:30and anyone who tried to defend him. The plan was called off at the last minute, however,
07:34when another officer convinced the men that the German people would not react well to
07:38a military coup. Tresckow then quickly came up with a plan B, one that would give the
07:42conspirators some cover. He convinced one of the officers returning with the Fuhrer
07:46on the plane to pack a carton of Cointreau in his luggage. Tresckow told the unsuspecting
07:51officer that the triple sec was payment for a lost wager he had made with a German official
07:55back at headquarters, but in reality, the bottles contained plastic explosives and a
07:59timed fuse. Tresckow hoped that the destruction of Hitler's plane would be attributed to
08:03an attack from a Soviet aircraft, and thus shift the blame of his death to the enemy.
08:08But Hitler's plane landed safely back at headquarters in East Prussia, and Tresckow
08:12had to scramble to retrieve the Cointreau before the bomb was found. Once the package
08:16was safely back in the hands of the conspirators, it was discovered that the timed fuse in the
08:20bottles had frozen in the uninsulated cargo hold of the plane. Tresckow and his conspirators
08:25would make another attempt on Hitler's life later that same month when Hitler visited
08:29a display of captured Soviet equipment in Berlin. Colonel Rudolf Christoph von Gerstorff,
08:34an officer working for Tresckow, volunteered to carry a pair of bombs under his coat that
08:38would detonate while he was giving Hitler a tour of the equipment. Just before Hitler's
08:42scheduled arrival, Gerstorff triggered the timer on the bombs, but Hitler rushed through
08:46the tour in an astonishing five minutes and was gone before the bombs detonated. Gerstorff
08:51luckily managed to defuse the bombs mere seconds before they were to explode.
08:55Although unaware of these assassination attempts, Adolf Hitler grew increasingly paranoid and
08:59drastically tightened his security. Officers were prohibited from carrying sidearms around
09:04him, and junior officers were banned from meetings unless specifically summoned by Hitler.
09:09These measures thwarted several plots by Tresckow and his co-conspirators, pushing them to execute
09:13the most famous attempt on Hitler's life, the July 20th bomb plot.
09:21Hitler rarely left his Eastern Front headquarters, the Wolfslehr. Of all the conspirators, only
09:26Claus von Stauffenberg had direct access to the Führer, making him responsible for the
09:30next assassination attempt. This plot, however, extended well beyond merely killing Hitler.
09:36Upon his death, the conspirators planned to blame his assassination on a clique of unscrupulous
09:40party leaders and implement Operation Valkyrie. Initially, Operation Valkyrie, a plan approved
09:46by Hitler himself, was designed to quash any internal uprisings from German civilians or
09:50forced laborers with the Territorial Reserve Army of Germany. Tresckow had modified the
09:55plan to seize control of German cities, disarm the SS, and ultimately remove Nazi leadership.
10:01With Hitler dead, the conspirators hoped to take over the German government and military,
10:05and do it all while appearing as if they were merely following Hitler's pre-planned orders
10:09to address a national crisis. On July 20th, Stauffenberg was invited to attend a meeting
10:14with Hitler at the Wolfslehr, and he arrived with two bombs hidden in his briefcase. Before
10:19the meeting began, Stauffenberg slipped into the bathroom and activated one bomb's timer
10:23by crushing its pencil fuse. However, he was unable to prepare the second device before
10:27being called into the conference room. Once inside the room, Stauffenberg placed the briefcase
10:31on the floor near Hitler. A few minutes later, Stauffenberg was called out for a planned
10:35phone call. He exited the room, leaving the briefcase behind. At 12.42 p.m., the bomb
10:41exploded. Assuming Hitler was dead, Stauffenberg rushed to Berlin to oversee the execution
10:50of Operation Valkyrie. Convinced their plan had worked, the conspirators began making
10:54their moves, issuing an order to remove any remaining Nazi leaders from their various
10:58posts. But, spoiler alert, Hitler was in fact not dead. The conference table's support
11:04leg had shielded him from the worst of the blast, and when news of his miraculous survival
11:09spread, Operation Valkyrie collapsed. The following morning, Hitler addressed the German
11:13people, stating,
11:14"'The bomb has exploded two meters to my right. One of those with me has died. I myself
11:19am completely unhurt.' He again interpreted his survival as confirmation of his destiny,
11:24declaring,
11:25"'I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed on me by Providence to continue
11:29on the road of my life, as I have done hitherto.'"
11:32Hitler's retaliation was swift and brutal. Stauffenberg and several conspirators were
11:37captured and executed by the end of the day. Tresckow committed suicide the next day. Over
11:427,000 people were arrested, and those deemed most responsible were executed by hanging
11:47with piano wire. Their executions were filmed, and Hitler reportedly spent hours watching
11:52the footage.
11:53Even those with only indirect knowledge of the plot were considered traitors. Erwin Rommel,
11:58the renowned Desert Fox, was implicated and chose suicide over facing a Nazi tribunal.
12:03By the war's end, nearly 5,000 people were executed in connection with the plot.
12:08But despite all his bluster about divine protection, Hitler's paranoia and fear continued to deepen,
12:13and in January 1945, he retreated into the Führerbunker deep beneath Berlin. He would
12:18remain there until the war's end.
12:20As the Allies closed in on Berlin and Hitler's officers refused his orders of counterattacks,
12:25Hitler flew into a rage. When he discovered that his right-hand man Heinrich Himmler was
12:29trying to negotiate a surrender with the Allies, Hitler declared him a traitor, and then ordered
12:33that his SS representative Hermann Feiglein be taken out and shot. This was even though
12:38Feiglein was his lover Eva Braun's brother-in-law.
12:41Finally, on April 30th, after realizing that Germany was defeated, Hitler did what no one
12:46else, despite their best efforts, had managed to do. He took his own life.