LUDWIG AUGUST THEODOR BECK GENERALOBERST – COLONEL-GENERAL

BECK RESIGNED AS CHIEF OF THE GENERAL STAFF IN 1938, AND WAS DESIGNATED PRESIDENT AND HEAD OF STATE IF THE PLOT SUCCEEDED

a First World War veteran, Beck was an early supporter of the nazis and their policy of German rearmament, even appearing as a witness for the defence in a 1930 trial of three army officers accused of nazi Party membership – something explicitly banned at the time. rising to become head of the General staff in 1935, he continued to support hitler until 1938, when he thought the dictator’s proposed invasion of Czechoslovakia would lead to a war Germany wasn’t ready for yet.

resigning his post, he was placed on the retirement list, only to become a focal point for antihitler conspirators. Other leading plotters such as Carl Goerdeler, hans Oster and henning von tresckow, were frequent visitors to his modest apartment in Berlin’s lichterfelde district, and he accepted the offered role of provisional head of state after a successful coup. his role in Valkyrie itself was to speak to senior military commanders, throughout Germany and across all fronts, to reassure them that the dictator was indeed dead, that they should arrest and disarm the ss in their own areas, and that he as the leading figure in the coup would safeguard their positions with the new administration.

after hitler’s radio broadcast ruined the whole plan, he was arrested with von stauffenberg and the rest in the army’s Bendlerblock headquarters. Knowing Fromm of old, he asked for permission to commit suicide rather than face execution. Fromm agreed, and Beck put a pistol to his own head. Failing to kill himself, an NCO delivered the coup de grâce.