How a table leg saved Fuhrer

HITLER escaped with little more than a burst eardrum after the Valkyrie bomb plot by a group of top German officers failed.

They had hoped to kill Hitler and set up a military government that would then sue for peace with the Allies. But the explosion on June 20, 1944, at the Wolf’s Lair HQ in what is now Poland was contained by the leg of table beneath which Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg had left his briefcase bomb.

The Colonel, played by Tom Cruise in the 2008 thriller Valkyrie, was executed by firing squad but many other plotters suffered the slow death of being hanged with piano wire.