CLAUS PHILIPP MARIA JUSTINIAN SCHENK GRAF VON STAUFFENBERG OBERST – COLONEL

THE OFFICER WHO LED THE PLOT & PLANTED THE BOMB THAT FAILED TO KILL HITLER

a swabian aristocrat – schenk (‘cup-bearer’) and Graf (‘count’) were hereditary titles – von stauffenberg was born in 1907 into Germany’s military, landowning caste. Joining the army in

1926, he took part in the invasions of Poland,

France and the soviet Union, before being transferred to tunisia in late 1942.

Badly wounded in 1943 during an air attack – he lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand – he spent months convalescing before joining the staff of the ersatzheer, the replacement army responsible for training soldiers for the front. Members of the anti-hitler resistance had previously tried to recruit him, only to be rebuffed, but his experiences in north africa made him believe that hitler would lose

Germany the war, and therefore had to be gotten rid of. Placing himself at the epicentre of the conspiracy, he attended hitler’s daily conference at his Wolf’s lair headquarters near rastenburg. there, he armed a bomb hidden in his briefcase and placed it as close to the dictator as he could, before excusing himself and returning to Berlin with his ADC, Oberleutnant Werner von häften.

launching Valkyrie, success turned to ashes when hitler announced his survival on the radio. after a short firefight in army headquarters, von stauffenberg and other leading conspirators were arrested. in an attempt to cover up his own involvement, Friedrich Fromm – the chief of the ersatzheer – ordered them executed immediately. a makeshift firing squad shot von stauffenberg in the courtyard, but not before von häften threw himself in front of his boss to shield him from the first salvo. Von stauffenberg’s last words were “long live sacred Germany!”.