On the 80th Anniversary of the Assassination Attempt on Adolf Hitler. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Hero, Political Strategist, or Victim of the Nazi Regime

Abstract

The attempt of assassination of the leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), on 20th
July 1944 at the Wolf’s Lair (Gierłoż) provokes many questions, the answers to which may not be
found. Nevertheless, numerous historians in Poland and abroad appreciate as well as criticise this
act. Being a German scholar whose main focus is on the period of the Third Reich and partially on
the Holocaust, I will reconstruct the causes, motives and execution of the unsuccessful assassina-
tion. However, one should not expect a definitive and unequivocal statements here, but only an
analysis of the circumstances in which the act took place. Sceptical and critical of this action, I see
its very purpose in von Staufenberg’s strategy, which had nothing to do with saving the real victims
of the war. With Europe already in ruins and its Jewish community completely exterminated, the
real purposes of the action in question could have been three goals: to end the war, to create
a convenient position for negotiations with the Allies, and to prevent the Soviet invasion in East
Germany. Regarding the consequences and perspectives in the past, the failed coup changed
nothing and brought about nothing, and consequently led to the elimination of the last liberal
forces in the ranks of Hitler’s opposition within the Third Reich. The trials of the Berlin judge Ro-
land Freisler were a case in point.