German Forces

Count Claus von Stauffenberg

While assination is not an especially admirable means, one does have to admire the courage it took to plan, execute and come so close to success in the attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944. He, and many others, paid for the failure with their lives, including Erwin Rommel, who was at most only distantly involved in the plot, if at all. Some died hideous deaths, which Hitler said to have recorded on video and watched often. Stauffenberg was a Catholic aristocrat who reached the rank of colonel in the German Army, and he had served in combat positions in all of Hitler's major campaigns from Poland to Tunisia. During Operation Barbarossa, Stauffenberg became appalled by the atrocities committed by the Schutzstaffel (SS), SD and “Security Police” units, particularly the mass murder of the Jews in Russia, but he was equally appalled by the atrocities committed by the German Army against Soviet prisoners-of-war and by the treatment of the civil population in Russia at the hands of the German occupation administration and forces, and even cited these matters to Major Joachim Kuhn in August 1942....