The Top Assassination Attempts on Hitler

Summary

Dan Snow’s History Hit – The Top Assassination Attempts on Hitler

Release Date: January 19, 2026
Host: Dan Snow
Guest: Roger Moorhouse (Historian, author of Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins and the Dictator who Cheated Death)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Snow and historian Roger Moorhouse take a deep dive into the most serious attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Moorhouse draws on his extensive research to discuss four principal plots—each of which, if successful, could have changed the course of world history. Their conversation explores the characters and motives behind these plots, the remarkable (and often coincidental) reasons for their failure, and why Hitler survived so many close calls.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction: The Astonishing Survival of Adolf Hitler

• Dan Snow opens with the staggering fact: "Adolf Hitler survived an astonishing 42 assassination attempts and plots against his life whilst he was the Fuhrer." (01:37)
• The episode focuses on the four most notable plots:
  • The 1939 Beer Hall Bomb by Georg Elser
  • Polish resistance plans in war-ravaged Warsaw
  • Wehrmacht officers’ efforts, particularly Henning von Tresckow
  • The famous Operation Valkyrie led by Claus von Stauffenberg

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1. The Lone Wolf: Georg Elser and the 1939 Beer Hall Bomb

[03:36 – 13:39]

• Who was Georg Elser?
  • A solitary, working-class cabinet maker from Swabia, not deeply political but instinctively anti-Nazi.
    • "He’s the ultimate lone wolf... Not interested in ideology and stuff like that, but he sort of quite instinctively hates the Nazis." — Roger Moorhouse (04:05)
    • Notably, "he turns his back and he says, 'you can kiss my backside'" to SA parade, showing quiet defiance. (05:00)
• The Plan:
  • Elser attended Hitler’s annual Beer Hall Putsch commemoration in Munich (1938), casing the venue. He spent months secretly hollowing out a pillar behind the lectern for a precisely-timed bomb.
  • Ingeniously, he made his own timing mechanism using clockwork so he could escape to Switzerland.
• What Went Wrong?
  • On November 8, 1939, fog forced Hitler to shorten his speech and leave early for Berlin—13 minutes before the bomb detonated, killing 8 and wounding 50 but missing Hitler.
    • "Had Hitler been standing in front of that pillar where the lectern was, he 100% would have been killed." — Moorhouse (11:35)
  • Elser was caught at the Swiss border by Gestapo—tragically carrying incriminating evidence, likely planning to confess to Swiss authorities for asylum.
    • "So the problem is he's confessing to the wrong set of border guards." — Moorhouse (12:37)
• Aftermath:
  • Elser was imprisoned, kept in isolation, and executed by the Nazis in April 1945—only weeks before the war’s end.

Notable Quote:
"What an astonishing story." — Dan Snow (13:39)

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2. The Polish Underground’s Plot in Warsaw

[15:29 – 19:36]

• Context:
  • After Poland’s defeat in Sept 1939 and establishment of the Polish Underground, there was an opportunity as Hitler intended to parade his victory in Warsaw.
• The Plan:
  • Polish conspirators led by Francesek Niepokulczycki (code name “Theodore”) hid half a ton of explosives at a central Warsaw intersection, aiming to detonate as Hitler’s convoy passed.
  • The bomb was primed and ready, with a spotter on hand.
    • "It's a brilliant plan and actually, again, could have worked. We don't know why it didn't... perhaps the spotter was unsighted at the right moment and essentially the order was never given." — Moorhouse (18:34)
• Result:
  • The explosion never occurred—possibly due to a missed signal or logistical confusion, but Hitler drove directly over the targeted spot unharmed.
• Polish Effectiveness:
  • Moorhouse emphasizes the Polish Underground’s skill in sabotage and assassination, despite the failure of this particular attempt.

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3. Wehrmacht Plots – Henning von Tresckow’s Multiple Attempts

[22:01 – 30:42]

• Background:
  • Major figure: Henning von Tresckow, early and morally driven anti-Nazi officer.
    • "He sees this already in 1933, 34... the scales fall from his eyes and suddenly it's like, Oh my God, what have we done?" — Moorhouse (23:00)
• March 1943 Smolensk Bomb Plot:
  • Tresckow smuggled two British clam charges onto Hitler’s return plane disguised as a brandy bottle—detonators primed.
  • The bomb simply failed to explode; Tresckow’s aide had to retrieve the package before its discovery.
    • "Remarkably, they get away with it." — Moorhouse (26:41)
• Subsequent Attempt, March 1943, Berlin:
  • Colleague Rudolf von Gersdorff volunteered to be a suicide bomber, but Hitler rushed through the armaments exhibit in only five minutes, while fuses required ten.
    • Gersdorff discreetly defused the charges in a toilet, and the bomb components were recycled for later plots.

Memorable Exchange:
"Those are actual physical bombs used three times." — Dan Snow
"And finally exploded with [Stauffenberg]." — Roger Moorhouse (30:32)

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4. Operation Valkyrie: The 20 July Plot

[32:12 – 43:17]

• Claus von Stauffenberg:
  • Critically injured, he joined the plot later, but played the pivotal role due to his access to Hitler.
  • Moral vs. Pragmatic Motivation:
    • The plotters were not merely desperate as the war turned; many, like Tresckow and Stauffenberg, were deeply troubled by Nazi atrocities.
      • "They know about the Holocaust. To them... it’s a besmirching of Germany’s name... We have to do this—to show that there was another Germany." — Moorhouse (32:30)
• The Attempt:
  • July 20, 1944, Wolfschanze (Wolf’s Lair):
    • Stauffenberg managed to plant his bomb—ironically half its intended strength, as he only primed one of two charges due to his injuries and stress.
    • The briefcase was moved behind a heavy table leg right before detonation, shielding Hitler from the blast.
      • "He’s saved not only by the bag being moved but also by the oak table." — Moorhouse (40:02)
    • Four officers died, but Hitler survived with minor injuries.
• Aftermath:
  • Initial confusion in Berlin led the wider coup to falter once news spread that Hitler was alive. The key conspirators, including Stauffenberg, were executed that night.
    • "At that moment it's like the spell is broken… and by the end of the evening, he'll be put up against a wall and shot." — Moorhouse (43:17)

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Why Didn’t the Allies Kill Hitler?

[43:23 – 45:29]

• The British and Americans drew up plans (notably "Operation Foxley") but did not proceed.
  • Moral aversion to assassination and concerns about setting unwanted precedents.
    • "We're supposed to be the moral ones, right?" — Moorhouse (44:32)
  • In the war’s later years, a pragmatic calculation emerged: Hitler’s strategic meddling was damaging Germany—removing him might actually help the Nazi war effort.

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Notable Moments & Quotes

• On Elser’s Motive:
  “He’s a craftsman…He’s a remarkable man… He's strong enough to say, 'I'm not playing along.'” — Moorhouse (03:42–05:27)

• On Tresckow’s Early Realization:
  “In those early days, they’d kind of been seduced by the rhetoric…then when they murder his friend…suddenly it’s like, oh my God, what have we done?” — Moorhouse (23:00)

• On the Polish Plot:
  “It's a brilliant plan and actually, again, could have worked. We don't know why it didn't.” — Moorhouse (18:34)

• On Near Misses:
  “Had Hitler been standing in front of that pillar where the lectern was, he...would have been killed, without question. But the fog...essentially changed history.” — Moorhouse (11:44)

• Stauffenberg’s Bomb Preparation:
  “He makes a point of priming the bomb himself...in his stressed state, he only primed one of them… So the bomb...is half what it should have been.” — Moorhouse (37:46–39:00)

• Why Not Assassinate?
  “There's a moral element there because it sets a precedent...if you're going to do that to your enemy, what's stopping the enemy trying to do that to you?” — Moorhouse (44:00)
  “There’s a hard-headed realization that actually leaving him in place is probably the best idea.” — Moorhouse (44:45)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [03:36] – Georg Elser and Beer Hall bomb plot
• [15:29] – Polish conspiracy in occupied Warsaw
• [22:06] – Henning von Tresckow and March 1943 bomb plot
• [32:12] – Operation Valkyrie and Stauffenberg’s attempt
• [43:23] – Why didn’t the Allies try harder to kill Hitler?

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Conclusion

Roger Moorhouse and Dan Snow’s vivid and fact-rich discussion brings to life the ingenuity, courage, and, at times, tragic flaws of Hitler’s would-be assassins. These plots, marked by “weather, wood, and just bad luck,” not only reveal the fragility of history’s path but also illuminate the range of motives—from private vengeance to moral rebellion—behind the resistance. The episode powerfully underscores what it took to resist under tyranny, and how close—on multiple occasions—history came to an alternate outcome.

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For more on these plots and their context, check out Roger Moorhouse’s works and follow Dan Snow’s History Hit for further episodes.

Transcript

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[Dan Snow]

Adolf Hitler survived an astonishing 42 assassination attempts and plots against his life whilst he was the Fuhrer. Today we're going to be looking at the top four of those near misses, each one of which would have changed the course of history, whether it's the Polish conspiracy, conspirators in a smashed Warsaw, the lone craftsman in the Munich beer hall, the circle of Wehrmacht officers on the Eastern front, and finally, and most famously, that one armed staff officer carrying that briefcase into the Wolf's Lair. This is the story of how resistance formed under a tyrannical regime of meticulous plans that were defeated by the weather, the wood, and just bad luck, and by people who decided that failure was worth the risk. For this we are joined by a great friend of the podcast, Roger Morehouse, brilliant historian and author specializing in modern German and Central European history. He's been on many times before. He is the author, among many other books, of killing the Plots, the Assassins and the Dictator who Cheated Death. Let's get into it.

[Roger Moorhouse]

T minus 10 atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God Save the King. No Black White unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to War with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Dan Snow]

Roger. Good to see you on the pod.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Thanks for having me, Dan.

[Dan Snow]

Well, it's always great to have you on. Roughly speaking, how many attempts do you think, to kill Hitler?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Well, there's a difference between attempts and plots, I suppose. There's a German book on this that gave 42 plots. In terms of actual attempts, it's probably less than 10, but that's tribute in a way to Hitler's security, which was absolutely state of the art. I think he's one of the most targeted statesmen in history. You know, probably up there with Castro.

[Dan Snow]

And a couple of very near misses.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Absolutely, yeah. Which we'll talk about.

[Dan Snow]

Right, okay. Where do we start?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Well, let's start with, I suppose, Georg Elser. I think he's one of my favorites.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Georg Elser is, you know, fascinating character for a long time, post war, was sort of forgotten in this rather small pantheon of, you know, Hitler's would be assassins. I mean, Stauffenberg looms large. We're gonna talk about him. And in a sense, he sort of obscures all the. Because he has been such a big figure. And part of my intention with writing about this was to try and look at the other figures as well. And Elsa was one that jumped out of me pretty much straight away when I started the research on this. And he's a fascinating character because he's a lone wolf. He's the ultimate lone wolf. And he's a craftsman. He's from Swabia, Southwestern Germany. Very ordinary German. He had a very working class upbringing. His parents ran a mill. He himself is trained as a cabinet maker initially, and a carpenter. And he's not really political. He's kind of instinctively left, but not really in any sort of doctrinal way. He's not interested in ideology and stuff like that, but he sort of quite instinctively hates the Nazis, which is quite interesting.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, he just got it.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah, he got it. He saw through them effectively in a way that perhaps millions of ordinary Germans like him didn't, but he did. And I sort of speculate that it might be that, you know, Hitler's bombast, if you like, kind of reminded him of his father. His father had been quite an abusive father, you know, So I think there's a possibility that there's that element in his makeup, but he sees through it all, you know. So there's a wonderful scene pre war, which is recorded by contemporaries, where there's a parade of the sa, you know, the stormtroopers, the brownshirts through his small town in Swabia and everyone stands out on parade and puts their arm out in salute and he turns his back and he says, you can kiss my backside. So he's just one of these people who is. I'm not playing along. He's strong enough to say that.

[Dan Snow]

But how does he go from there to this astonishing and risky and sophisticated attack?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah, it's quite astonishing. And as I said, he's kind of politically left, but it's not really politically motivated. It seems to be a very personal thing. He takes a visceral personal dislike to Hitler and he goes. In 1938, he goes to Munich. I mean, the problem is always, even in those days, actually getting access to Hitler. And he's reasonably accessible still, pre war. That all changes with the outbreak of war, of course, but reasonably accessible. So what else decides to try and do is to find out where he's gonna be, you know, in sort of set piece events and see if he's targetable. And he decides to go and watch the commemorations of the Beer hall Putsch in Munich in 1938. November 38.

[Dan Snow]

So every year Hitler goes back to his old stomping grounds where he launched that abortive attempt to take over Germany. Ridiculous. Fizzled out almost immediately. 923. He was a bit of a nobody, but it becomes part of his sort of legend.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah, it's his own sort of foundation, myth, effectively.

[Dan Snow]

And he goes back to that same.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Beer hall and makes big speech, gives big speeches. There's parades through the streets and so on. It's really one of the highlight events of the Nazi calendar. So there's lots of spectators and so on. So it's not unusual for someone like him to go and watch that. And he watches the proceedings and he basically sees that probably the best place to hit Hitler is during that set piece speech at the Burgerbroekelle, which is where the original putsch kind of originated from.

[Dan Snow]

It's a beer hall.

[Roger Moorhouse]

It's a beer hall. He saw the opportunity to plant a bomb in there somehow. And that was what he plans to do the following year in 1939. So he has a year then to sort of plan his attempt, which he does. And he's a complete lone wolf, so he's just operating on his own. He's sort of going out to the countryside and testing explosives, he's testing detonators, making everything himself because he's such a talented.

[Dan Snow]

So there's no weak link. So there's no chance that any intelligence agency is gonna intercept this.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Exactly. I mean, he's a really remarkable man. So he goes back to Munich in the summer of 1939, of course, that tempestuous summer where we know what's coming. He didn't. He's there from August 39onwards, preparing for this attempt, which is gonna be in November, right? And he goes to the Burger Brokelle every night and basically starts, first of all, sort of casing the joint to see what's possible.

[Dan Snow]

And this is months before, so there's no security. It's just like someone locks up and goes.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Exactly. So he just used to turn up. He'd turn up in the evening, he'd have his evening meal, he'd have a glass of beer. And he'd stay there reading a book or whatever until closing time. And then just before closing time, he'd disappeared to the loo. And then he hide in the loo while they locked up. And he'd stay there for about half an hour. And when it's all locked up and everyone's gone, he'd come out again. And he had his tools with him and so on.

[Dan Snow]

No burglar alarms and no chance.

[Roger Moorhouse]

No burglar alarms. And he started, basically, you know, found that there was a pillar near where the lectern. He knows where the lectern's gonna be, so there's a pillar just behind it. He starts hollowing it out, pulling out the bricks one by one. And of course, every morning. So he does this through the night, and he's hiding the sounds of him chiseling out bricks to sort of time it with the passing trams and so on, so that no one will know he's ever there. And then all of the dust that he's making and all the debris he gets rid of, and then he sneaks out in the morning before they turn up. So it's an astonishing story in itself. And he does this night after night and hollows out this sort of chamber in the pillar behind the lectern to where the lectern's gonna be. And it's all sort of lined with cork and so on so that no one would know it was there. There's a wooden paneling on it, so he creates this flush W door as well. I mean, it's an astonishing piece of work. And by the time Hitler's standing there on the 8th of November, he's ready to go. And he's created this detonator and he's created a timing mechanism because he wanted to be in Switzerland by the time it went off because he's wise like that. So he built his own timing mechanism with a couple of clock mechanisms that would run for 144 hours. So it gave him time to go. And it's supposed to go off in the middle of Hitler's speech.

[Dan Snow]

So what happens?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Well, a couple of things happen. The first thing is that Hitler himself, at that point in 11.39, he's just defeated Poland to great success. He's at war with the Western powers, He's planning his invasion of France for the next spring. So he has a sort of high level meeting with his military staff the following morning. So he said, well, I really have to be back in Berlin, can't stay the night in Munich. So that influences his travel plan. So it means he cuts his speech short. So he's got to get back on his train to go back further north to Berlin. Can't fly because there's fog. So he's on the train, speech is cut short. So that is gonna have an impact. The other thing is that Elsa, who is now trying to cross the Swiss frontier between November 39 and November 38, obviously the world has changed. So for him, where he sort of recce'd this in November 38, it was a pretty open border, it wasn't that difficult. Now it's heavily fortified, you know, crawling with AGE agents and troops and everything else. And he's waiting to cross the frontier and he's potentially in trouble. So anyway, that night Hitler starts giving his speech. He's surrounded by the, if you like, the great and the good of the Nazi movement. Lots of SA men, lots of SS men, lots of politicians and so on. And they're all sitting there listening to him giving forth about how successful the Nazi revolution is and how successful the Nazi Reich is and all the rest of it. And he sort of winds up slightly earlier than usual because he's got to get back to Berlin and 13 minutes after he's left the room, so they're all sort of clearing up. You know, the band are there and their staff are clearing the glasses and so on, and a few of the hardcore are finishing up their beers and all the rest of it. It's all sort of trestle tables like, you know, beer halls are. Elsa's BOMB EXPLODES Bang on time, incidentally. So everything had worked, the timers had worked and the detonators had worked. It goes off, shatters that pillar which is holding down most of the ceiling. So the ceiling comes down, it makes an absolute mess, absolute shambles of the room. Eight people are Killed in that room, incidentally. So more than 50 injured. It's a serious thing. Had Hitler been standing in front of that pillar where the lectern was, he absolutely, I think 100% would have been killed, without question. But the fog on his return to Berlin essentially changed history.

[Dan Snow]

And what about Elsa? Did he. He didn't make it across the border.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Elsa does make it across the border, but he is taken by Gestapo on the border. The problem he has is that we think essentially had various items in his pockets which looked to me like he was planning a sort of a confession to the Swiss authorities.

[Dan Snow]

Oh.

[Roger Moorhouse]

To basically be able to say. When the news of the bomb in the Burger Borkelle breaks, he would be able to say, empty his pockets. He had, for example, some fuse wire, a postcard of the Burger Bruhkeller, various other bits in his pockets, is basically so that he can say, by the way, I did this.

[Dan Snow]

That was his first and only mistake.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah. The problem is he's picked up by the Gestapo, who basically say, what are you doing here? And he sort of stammers some response, but it's not very convincing. So they pull him in and empty his pockets.

[Dan Snow]

Right on the border.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Exactly. So the problem is he's confessing to the wrong set of border guards. He's picked up by the Gestapo, taken away, is tortured, is interrogated. Of course, the Germans believe. Have to believe to some extent that he's an agent of foreign powers rather than being a lone wolf. So they're constantly trying to press on him that he was linked to, you know, the British Intelligence.

[Dan Snow]

Sure. Vast conspiracy. Sure, sure.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Absolutely has to be a vast conspiracy. And he's essentially kept in isolation in a series of concentration camps until 1945.

[Dan Snow]

Almost survives the war.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Almost survives the war. April 45, he's in Dachau in isolation. They kept him in really good conditions, actually. Cause they knew he's a craftsman. They allowed him to have tools and a sort of workshop and stuff to keep himself busy. But always in isolation. So he's never allowed to speak to anybody. Which for him. Cause he was a bit of a loner and probably wasn't that onerous. I think for the rest of us, it might have been. Yeah. In April 45, he's, you know, the order comes that essentially this man cannot be allowed to survive the war. And he's taken out and shot in the back of the head. Wow.

[Dan Snow]

What an astonishing story. You mentioned British intelligence there. Well, there's not really an assassination attempt, but there's a sort of Hint at one which I love before the war. Quickly tell me about the Brits. Well, one Brit in particular considers, well, he works out he could get rid of Hitler.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yes. This is the British military attache to Berlin. His name was Noel Mason MacFarlane. Wonderful character.

[Dan Snow]

So he's a soldier.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

But he's working the embassy, so he's a bit of military.

[Roger Moorhouse]

So first of all, soldier, you know, very upright, stiff as a ramrod kind of type. And he's in the working out of the British Embassy in Berlin. He actually witnesses. He's one of the guests at Hitler's birthday parade in April 39, which is a massive thing. You know, it's like an eight hour military parade. It's a show of strength of the Third Reich. Cheering crowds, you know, endless tanks and sort of searchlight units and artillery units.

[Dan Snow]

Endless authoritarians.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Love that. They love that, they love that. And Mason McFarlane watches that whole spectacle and he minutes back to Whitehall, to his masters in Whitehall and essentially says, I could take this guy out. You give me a rifle, I could take this guy out.

[Dan Snow]

Cause there's gonna be a birthday parade each year. I know I could.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Exactly. You know, he will have an opportunity. And the line that comes back, bear in mind, this is of course pre war. It's just pre war. So the tensions are there. You know, all the signs are that the Third Reich is that sort of nefarious force that we know it to be now, but still it's pre war. But the reply that comes back from Whitehall is quite telling because the line is, after he's suggested an assassination attempt, albeit obliquely, they come back and say, you know, we're not yet at that stage in our diplomacy where we have to resort to assassination.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, darling, what do you think?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Of course, which is, I think, is a lovely line.

[Dan Snow]

What were they thinking? All right. And it was all happening for Hitler. Little did he know this period because whilst Elsa's plot was underway, there was quite a serious plot in Poland, wasn't there?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yes. Yeah. So I like including the Poles in this. The Poles try a couple of times, actually. Polish Underground is one of the most remarkable stories of World War II, and it's one that really deserves to be better known. And the first attempt that they make there is a later one where they try and Hitler's train in, I think 1942, but this one in 1939. So the poles have just been defeated. Poland was invaded, of course, on 1st of September.

[Dan Snow]

There's an excellent book about the invasion of Poland.

[Roger Moorhouse]

It's a very Good book about it, I tell you.

[Dan Snow]

It's a classic.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Okay, first to Fight. Thank you very much.

[Dan Snow]

First to Fight, written by Roger Moyer.

[Roger Moorhouse]

And what's interesting in this respect is that the Poles, although defeated in the field, never actually surrender. Right. So there's a message that is sent from exile so that various politicians and so on, including the president, had escaped initially into Romania, and then later on they sort of resurface in France and then in London. But in the end of September, I think, 28th of September, so Warsaw is still being surrounded and besieged, but they send this message. Who brings the message from the president saying Warsaw is permitted to surrender, gives permission to them to surrender, but it also gives the order to set up the Polish Underground. And the Polish Underground is initially to sort of gather weapons, create weapons stashes and so on, so that they can resurface as a military force at some point in the future. So initially, it's quite kind of almost defensive in nature because the opportunity isn't necessarily there, but a key strand of what is the thinking at the beginning is sabotage. And there's a couple of interesting characters involved in this, one of whom has the impossible name of Mikhail Karashevich Tokachevsky. Well, you pulled that off, thank you very much. Who is essentially in charge of that sort of nascent underground organization. And one of his deputies who is initially involved with this particular operation was called Francesek Niepoku. It's even worse than showing off now. I am showing off. I'm sorry. His code name is Theodore. They all had pseudonyms, obviously, for the underground. His code name was Theodore, so we'll call him Theodore from now on. But in his operation, he decided this is a good opportunity. Cause Hitler might well be coming to Warsaw to sort of have a parade. This is his first big victory. And that's what comes to pass. On 5th October, he comes to Warsaw. The streets are sort of cleared of rubble because it had taken a bit of a hammering. And he oversees this sort of big parade. I mean, you can see the footage of that parade still on YouTube if you look for it, oversees this big parade. And. And Dniepa Kulchitsky and his fellow underground conspirators decide, well, there's that main intersection in Warsaw where in a sense, almost whatever direction Hitler's coming from, he's kind of got to pass over that intersection. So in amongst the rubble and everything else, and the roads have been repaired and so on, they basically hide about half a ton of explosives along with mortar shells and bits of whatever they can find. Anything vaguely explosive, they put in there with a spotter to see when the convoy is coming past and somebody hidden away that can press the button.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. So it's a proper detonator job. When they see the car in the right place.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Wow.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Roger Moorhouse]

So it's a brilliant plan and actually, again, could have worked. We don't know why it didn't. The records on this are pretty scant, partly because of the ravages of the German occupation and then the Soviet period in Polish history. So we don't know exactly why it didn't happen. It could well be that with the sort of the chaos of the aftermath of the parade and the sort of the number of people on the street, perhaps the spotter was unsighted at the right moment and essentially the order was never given and the button was never pressed. But Hitler drove over that spot and it never happened.

[Dan Snow]

So he came very close to being killed in October and November 1939.

[Roger Moorhouse]

I mean, he knew about the second one. He didn't know about the first one. But the Poles try very hard actually going forward. Polish underground is remarkably good both at sabotage and actually at assassination. So they actually kill the SS commander of occupied Warsaw in 1944 is held up on the street and assassinated. And there are other examples. So they actually prove themselves to be pretty good at this stuff.

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history. There's more coming up.

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[Roger Moorhouse]

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[Roger Moorhouse]

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[Roger Moorhouse]

Them.

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[Dan Snow]

So there's plenty of plots, as you mentioned. What's the next attempt that you think had a reasonable chance of success?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Next one, I think, is we jump forward to 1943. The German Resistance, the military resistance against Hitler is something that when people think of this subject at all, they probably alight on Operation Valkyrie and Stauffenberg. And that's, you know, the July plot of 44, which we're gonna come to. Which we're coming to. But that particular effort has a sort of longer tail, if you like, than we, I think, traditionally think it does. And one of the key figures in this, in that longer t is a chap called Henning von Trescor, who was another military man who was a colonel mainly serving on the Eastern Front in World War II. And where Stauffenberg, he's a bit of a Johnny come lately to the military resistance. So whereas he is a Johnny come lately, Tresco really isn't. So Trescko is someone who kind of sees with a surprising degree of clarity very early on that essentially Hitler's a wrong and the Third Reich is going to lead Germany to its doom is actually an element where he sees this already in 1933, 34, so astonishingly early. One of his former superior officers was a chap called General von Bredor, who was actually murdered during the Night of the Long Knives. And this was the moment that sort of opened Trescko's eyes, that for a lot of people like him with military background, very patriotic and all of that, in those early days of the Third Reich, they'd kind of been seduced by the rhetoric of, you know, we're going to put Germany back on its feet, we're going to restore German honor, all of that stuff, and. And generations of men like Trescal would have gone, this sounds great, but then when they murder his friend and former superior officer in 1934, then it's like the scales fall from his eyes and suddenly it's like, oh, my God, what have we done? So he has a very long tail in terms of just seeing with a degree of clarity what the Nazis are all about. So he becomes a really important player in the growth of the military resistance long before Stauffenberg kind of has even entered the fresh. And what Trescor used to do very effectively was to sort of have these sort of illicit conversations with people that he thought, perhaps because they've raised an eyebrow at the right moment in a conversation, people that he thinks are gonna be sympathetic. So he would start to have a conversation with them in private and say, well, what do you think? You know, what do you think about this? Do you think we're going in the right direction? And he would sound people out quite cautiously. And he's actually the author, ultimately, of something like five attempts on Hitler's life, usually through proxies. But the first. The first one we're going to talk about, which is in March of 1943, was himself. He did it himself. So he's a really influential character in everything that comes later on with the military resistance and ultimately with Stauffenberg. But this attempt in March 43 is his own. So he was a staff officer with the Wehrmacht, and he was based in Smolensk in Western Russia just after the Battle of Stalingrad.

[Dan Snow]

Things are clearly going to go very badly for the German army at this point.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah. So this is the spring of 43, which is the moment at which, essentially, for those with eyes in their head, it's pretty clear that Germany might not have yet lost. And they, of course, are still deep in Russia.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, yeah.

[Roger Moorhouse]

But essentially it's like 1918 all over again. Right. The realization must have been for many people at that moment, maybe going into the summer of 43, but the realization is growing that, all right, we haven't lost yet, but we kind of can't win.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Roger Moorhouse]

So this opens the question, what do we do about that? So he's one of the first to really think about this. And he. In March of 43, he arranges. He's constantly trying to get Hitler to come to the Eastern Front so that he can be targeted. And he's trying to persuade his fellow officers, senior officers, to come on board and to get involved with an assassination attempt. And a lot of them, most of them are not interested. It's kind of. They cannot possibly even imagine it. Even if they feel the same way as him, they can't make the jump to actively targeting their commander in chief. But he can. And he says, well, Essentially, if they're not going to do it, I'll do it myself. So he arranges an invitation for Hitler to come to Smolensk, which he does. They have sort of essentially like a sort of state visit. He's presented to all of the senior staff. He has lunch. Obviously, Hitler's his vegetarian kind of slop that he used to eat. He used to eat the same food as everyone else, just with the meat taken out. So he had this vegetarian lunch with them and then he goes to leave and Tresco has a package which he wants to be taken back to a colleague of his who is based at the Wolfscanze, Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. And he gives it to one of the colonels in Hitler's entourage and said, would you mind taking this back to Colonel so? And so it is shaped like a bottle of brandy. It's actually two British clam charges with a fuse ready to go.

[Dan Snow]

You say British supplied by the British?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yes, they were supplied, actually. From. Yeah, It's a curious story, because the same bombs effectively crop up all the way through, and they're the same ones that Stauffenberg uses in 1944, and they'd actually been captured from British intelligence circuits in Holland, supplied to the Dutch underground in 1940. They'd been rolled up by German security forces after 1940, and a lot of this material had found its way then into the hands of the Abwehr, German military intelligence. And, of course, there's this crossover between the German military intelligence and the military resistance. So it ends up in the hands of Henning von Tresko. Peculiarly. Right. So each of these clam charges, it's about the size of a sort of, I suppose, a hardback book. What they're meant for is to essentially be clamped onto railway lines, for example. Imagine the size of it clamped onto a railway line, so it would then blow the tracks. But this became the method used to try and assassinate Hitler, not once, but three times towards the end of the war. So the first outing for this thing is this brandy bottle bomb. So they're sort of clamped together, wrapped up with paper. It's dressed up like a bottle in a box. Please, can you take this to the Wolfschande? Of course. I will take it on Hitler's plane. And it has a detonator in it, ready to go. So Trescko, of course, is on tenterhooks, waiting for the news that Hitler's plane has been blown out of the sky. After a couple of hours, the message comes back that Hitler has landed. Safely at the Wolfschansse. Not only does he know that he's failed in his attempt, but then he also knows that the brandy bottle is gonna be delivered to its recipient, who will very quickly discover that it's not a brandy bottle. Right. So he has to dispatch his adjutant, a chap called Fabian von Schlabrendorf, who then hurries to the Wolfschaft. I bet he hurries, makes all of his excuses and makes loads of apologies on behalf of Tresco and says, very sorry, but we've given you the wrong brandy bottle, Please can I have it back? And then hurries back and takes it back to Tresco. But they get away with it. Remarkably, they get away with it. Only a week later, Tresco tries it again with one of his men that he'd kind of persuaded, who's a chap called Rudolf von Gersdorf, who's another German officer, similarly convinced of the necessity to get rid of Hitler and Hitler. Then again, this is still mid March 1943. Was in Berlin to sort of inspect a collection of captured Soviet weaponry which was all on display in the armory in Berlin. And they chose this officer, Gersdorff as his guide because he was an experienced Wehrmacht officer. He had been put forward, of course, by Trescko and others. And he was there with these two clam charges in his tunic pockets ready to go. So he was gonna show Hitler around the exhibition, which he does. And at the right moment he sort of pushes the fuses into them. They're time pencil fuses. So he breaks the time pencil fuses. He's essentially got 10 minutes. I mean, he would have been history's first suicide bomber. Wow, remarkable man. And then he's sort of showing Hitler around the exhibition. Hitler appears to have had something of a sixth sense for his own safety because he got spooked. He evidently was spooked and, you know, sort of rushed through. He wasn't particularly interested in the exhibits, he wasn't particularly interested in what Gersdorf had to say to him. It may just be that Gersdorf was perhaps sweating a bit too much.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, I bet he was. Yeah, exactly.

[Roger Moorhouse]

But you know, Hitler sort of ran through the exhibition and out through the back door within about five minutes. And Gersdorf had a 10 minute fuses after Hitler's gone out the back door that essentially he can't follow. So it has to abort mission. He takes himself to the toilet, pulls out the fuses, throws them down the toilet, manages to defuse himself and crucially, those clam charges get recycled back into the resistance circles. And they resurface the next summer in July 1944 with Stauffenberg.

[Dan Snow]

They're not the same actual.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Not the same clam charges.

[Dan Snow]

Hang on. But those aren't the ones that were in the Brandy Bot. Yes, those are actual physical bombs used three times. Yeah. Come on.

[Roger Moorhouse]

And finally exploded with.

[Dan Snow]

That is amazing. This is Dan Snow's history here. More after this.

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Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go?

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[Dan Snow]

Right? Well, let's come to July 1944 with the most famous Operation Valkyrie. By this stage, the war is going astonishingly badly for the Germans. Defeat is now months away, potentially. Is that what causes Stauffenberg to act at this point?

[Roger Moorhouse]

A very good question. I think it's more than that. I think that's the traditional view, is that essentially this is slightly craven. Defeat is looming. We must do something to salvage something from the wreckage kind of mentality. There is a degree of that, of course, and particularly in the wider conspiracy. The way they managed to convince other people who might have wavered a year before, but by 44, it's pretty obvious, the writing's on the wall. So I think there's an element of that. But actually in those that are most motivated, like Trescor, who I mentioned earlier on, and like Stauffenberg as well, there's a much more of a strong moral element to what they're doing. They know about the Holocaust because they've seen the, you know, the reports coming from the Eastern Front, the Einsatzgruppen killings, for example, in small details. They know about the Holocaust, but they know that this, to them, it's a sort of A besmirching of Germany's name. They see it as a shameful aspect of what the Nazis are doing that cannot be assuaged. It can't be wished away, it can't be explained away. So in a sense, and Trescko says as much in the run up to Stauffenberg's attempt in 44, he says we have to do this. Even if it costs us our own lives, we have to do this. And the line that he uses is to show that there was another Germany, that there wasn't just these Nazis, there were other Germans who thought differently. So there's a sort of a moral clarity about what they're doing as well. Moral aspect. So it's not just a sort of craven defeat is looming.

[Dan Snow]

Nonetheless, let's chuck the pilot over the side and hope that we can salvage something.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah, it's not just that there's a more moral strand to it than that. But anyway, by the time that Stauffenberg is in place, I mean, he's interesting character in 43, he'd been in North Africa, had been in the Tunisian campaign and had been very, very badly injured in an Allied strafing attack on his column. He was standing up in his jeep, kind of directing the column through a pass and then they'd been attacked.

[Dan Snow]

Lost an eye.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah, he lost an eye.

[Dan Snow]

Hand.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yes, he had left three fingers on his left hand. Basically that. That's all he had left. Lost an eye and a hand as well, and had various shrapnel injuries as well. So it was touch and go in 43 as to whether he'd survive at all. So invalided out. That's part of his conversion. He had been dabbling in sort of nationalist circles. He'd been one of those that perhaps was raising an eyebrow when Tresca would sort of seek out, but he wasn't yet fully on board. I think it took that injury, the months of convalescence and the various operations that he had that sort of soul searching period that he really converted, if you like. I would just add that he is a bit of a Johnny come lately. I'm a big fan of Trescorre. I think Trescor's, you know, really interesting character and he has that moral clarity. It's less clear with Stauffenberg. I mean, he's tremendously brave on a personal level. He does make the moral jump that's necessary, but he's a late comer. I mean, he. Earlier on in the war, he'd written some very dreadful things about the Poles and You know, so that element of the history.

[Dan Snow]

He went on a journey.

[Roger Moorhouse]

He had a journey. Absolutely right. Which is what makes him interesting for filmmakers and the rest of it. Of course, there's a narrative out there. But anyway, he is brought back to work within the Home army, if you like, the sort of domestic arm of the Wehrmacht, which is responsible particularly for sort of training of recruits and for maintaining security on the home front. So they then see a possibility with this Operation Valkyrie, which is initially is a legitimate, official German plan to deal with a revolt on the home front, which might be by forced laborers or those sorts of people within Germany. So this is an official plan to seize key institutions, key locations in the event of domestic unrest. And what the plotters around Stauffenberg do in the early months of 1944 is to turn Valkyrie from an official plan into an unofficial plan, whereby they could first of all, try their assassination attempt, which needed access. And that's where Stauffenberg himself comes in later on. But then, crucially, at the same time, they can effect a coup against the.

[Dan Snow]

The Nazi government using the pre existing. Very German.

[Roger Moorhouse]

It is very German.

[Dan Snow]

We're going to get the piece of paper out that says what's in the event, but we've been doing it with a different intent.

[Roger Moorhouse]

But this shows you how complex, I suppose, their deliberations had become by 1944, because it was no longer enough just to kill Hitler. If you just kill Hitler in 1944, all you do is accelerate the Soviet advance and accelerate the Bolshevization of Germany, which is everything that they didn't want. So they needed to kill Hitler and at the same time take power. Yeah. So the whole job of assassination got that much more complex in the year between Smolensk and Stauffenberg in 44. So Stauffenberg is key to all of that because he has access. Because in his role in that, it was known as the Replacement Army. In his role as key personnel in the Replacement army, he has to report to Hitler.

[Dan Snow]

Right.

[Roger Moorhouse]

So he then is the man that has access. So he initially sees Hitler in Berchtesgaden in the middle of July on the Obersalzberg. He has the bomb with with him again.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, those same.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Those same clown charges.

[Dan Snow]

Wow.

[Roger Moorhouse]

He asks for permission to set it off. The wider conspiracy basically come back and say no, because there weren't enough Nazi bigwigs in the room, so they wanted to knock out as much of the hierarchy as possible.

[Dan Snow]

Wow.

[Roger Moorhouse]

The following week.

[Dan Snow]

That's a what if.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah, absolutely. So he doesn't detonate it. He does his presentation to Hitler. He goes away again. He said himself, you know, this is a road you only go down once because of the nervous toll that it took on him. Next time, essentially, I have to do it because I can't go down that sort of stressful road again. A week later, he's summoned again to the Wolfschandze, to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia to present something to Hitler in a situation conference. Again, he goes with his adjutant with the bomb ready to go, and he's due to go and see Hitler, I think, around midday. So he's there, preps the bomb. He makes a point, I think, of, and this becomes significant. He makes a point of priming the bomb himself. And if we bear in mind that he only has these fingers left, this is perhaps unwise, but I think this is about him taking ownership of the attempt. Essentially, his adjutant is with him, Werner von Heften, who has all 10 fingers. But it's Stauffenberg who primes the bomb in his. His stressed state, as you can imagine. As I said, he only wanted to go down that road once. In his stressed state. He has two charges. He primes one of them as he's being summoned to go and see Hitler. The second one he doesn't prime, and he doesn't even put the charge in the briefcase. So essentially, the bomb that he's got in his briefcase is half what it should have been. Right. So he goes into this room. It's a very hot day. It's a wooden and plywood kind of briefing room rather than a bunker. So it's a little bit more flimsy because of the heat. They had the windows thrown open and so on. He's in there. There's about 20 other officers in there, members of the entourage, other visiting people like him. He had asked for a place next to Hitler because he says he's deaf in one ear from his maiming, which is quite convincing. So he says, can I have a place next to Hitler? He's given a place next to Hitler. He comes in, puts his briefcase down and says, I would just have to make a phone call, and disappears. What happens next, of course, is crucial because they've got this huge oak briefing table which dominates the room.

[Dan Snow]

Maps all over it.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Maps all over it. Absolutely everyone seated around Hitler's leaning over the table, sort of, as you can imagine, kind of gesticulating and making all.

[Dan Snow]

This, coming up with terrible ideas.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Indeed, indeed. And, of course, Stauffenberg's briefcase is Underneath the table. Stauffenberg is making his mock phone call within eyesight of the building, and then he sees the explosion. In the meantime, his bag has actually been moved because someone trips over it. So they've moved it to the other side of a sort of heavy slab oak leg. So it's been moved essentially away from where Hitler was. It's been moved away that way. So any resulting blast, of course, is gonna go in the other direction, which is what happens. So the bomb goes off. Stauffenberg watches it from a distance. Ultimately, it kills four people in that room, who are the four that were seated around the far end of the tunnel. So it had its effect, Right. Hitler has, I think, something like 300 oak splinters in his legs. That famous picture of his trousers, which had been completely shredded. That was the state of his legs burst in the eardrum, you know, various sort of contusions and bruising. Essentially, he's saved not only by the bag being moved, but also by the oak table. He's leaning over the oak table, so all of his vital organs are protected by that. So Hitler's quite battered and bruised, but essentially walks out of the room. Stauffenberg thinks he's done the job. He watched the explosion, thinks the job is done, starts to make his exit, bluffs his way out past the guards who are all flustered. They don't know what's happened. Is it an air raid? Has a mine gone off? What is it? Nobody knows what's happened. He utilizes that sort of chaos to escape, get back on his plane, get back to Berlin, because he has to lead that wider coup that we mentioned. It's not enough just to kill Hitler. You have to take power as well. So he's going back to Berlin believing that he's killed Hitler.

[Dan Snow]

But he hasn't.

[Roger Moorhouse]

But he hasn't. No. So he arrives back in Berlin. His co conspirators are a little bit nervy. They don't really know what's happened in Rastenburg. They don't have the sort of instant information that we have. So there's lots of conflicting reports. Is Hitler dead? Is he not dead? Stauffenberg lands. I said, of course he's dead. I saw it. It all happened. No one can survive that blast, of course. So that was his mindset. And he galvanises the sort of wider conspiracy. And they do try and take the Ministry of Interior, for example, and Goebbels propaganda Ministry. They try and take them using compliant troops that think this is the official Operation Valkyrie. They're not in on the plot. They think this is a rising of. Actually, it's sold as a rising of the ss peculiarly. But they're acting in good faith. They don't know that Valkyrie has been co opted. Of course, once word comes that Hitler has survived, later on that evening they have a, a radio crew in there, they broadcast on German radio Hitler's speech saying that this clique of bandits and adventurers has tried to kill me and providence has preserved me for the. All that stuff.

[Dan Snow]

All that stuff.

[Roger Moorhouse]

It gives this speech and of course at that moment it's like the spell is broken. The troops that have been operating unwittingly in the service of the conspiracy essentially melt away, saying we're not doing that. Those that have been wavering suddenly, okay, maybe we need to save our own skin. And Stauffenberg is effectively left along with a hard core of other conspirators, but they're essentially left high and dry. And by the end of the evening, he'll be put up against a wall and shot.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, quick. So Hitler, unbelievably lucky to survive as long as he did.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Lastly, Roger, why is it that the British, the Americans, I mean, it sounds like the Poles had the right idea. They tried to kill Hitler whenever they get a chance. Were the British and Americans sort of unwilling to go for Hitler or did they just think, look, it's too hard, or was there something that was sort of holding them back?

[Roger Moorhouse]

Yeah, the British particularly, I think there are too many sort of political and moral scruples to some extent. This was never less than controversial, interestingly. I mean, you would have imagined that the assassination of Hitler, maybe you can understand Mason McFarlane in 39, before the outbreak of war, you can understand why Whitehall was steady on old Star Trek. That's not the way we do things. You can understand that. But once the war's broken out and certainly into the second half of the war, you can see that there would have been some realization that this is a bad regime and this is a, a bad man, and surely the best thing to do would be to get rid of him. There's a sort of moral element there because it sets a precedent. Of course, if you're going to do that to your enemy, what's stopping the enemy trying to do that to you? So there's a moral element which does loom large in the discussion. So the British had this thing called Operation Foxley, which was a really interesting planning document of how to assassinate Hitler. If you're going to do it? How would we do it? And it's a really thorough document. It's all in the National Archives. But Operation Foxley was never put into the operational force phase. It was never made operational. So they never assigned a sniper or they never got the teams together to do it. It's purely a paper exercise, but a really interesting one. And a lot of the discussions are about morality, crucially about setting a precedent. Is this what we want to put our names to? We're supposed to be the moral ones, right? But also by the second half of the war, there's a very sort of hard headed view, which is that Hitler's doing a pretty good job of messing up the German war operation by meddling, constantly telling his forces to stand fast when they really need to be executing a tactical retreat, for example. So there's a hard headed realization that actually leaving him in place is probably the best idea. Wow. So it's a much more complex set of justifications essentially for doing nothing.

[Dan Snow]

Well, what a tour de force. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

[Roger Moorhouse]

My great pleasure.

[Dan Snow]

Thanks so much for listening, folks. We really hope that this has helped you better understand what's going on. Give me a bit of context and if you think your friends, family, colleagues would enjoy that, then please, please do share with them. Whatever your podcast player, whatever you're listening on it will let you share this as a link or even a WhatsApp message that sharing is the lifeblood of this podcast and what keeps us going. So thank you for listening and thanks for sharing. Join us next time for another episode of Dan Snow's History.

[Roger Moorhouse]

Foreign.

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[Roger Moorhouse]

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