Those Who Opposed Hitler [View all]

By Joel Connelly

As he learned that the officers’ bomb plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler had failed, just slightly wounding the Fuehrer, lead conspirator Major Gen. Henning von Tresckow knew he had not long to live. Tresckow had designed Operation Valkyrie and a year earlier, on March 13, 1943, had planted a bomb on Hitler’s plane during his visit to Army Group Center at Smolensk on the Eastern Front. Tresckow waited, stopwatch in hand, for a radio report from the explosion.

The British-made bomb did not ignite due to the low temperatures in storage. The blast would have saved millions of lives and perhaps saved Eastern Europe from 45 years of Soviet domination.

Now, on July 21, 1944, Trekscow faced vengeance and retribution hard to imagine from any civilized leader. He would be tortured, hauled before the People’s Court, harangued by political judge Roland Freisler, and hanged using piano wire. Instead, he chose to go out into no-man’s land, on the front, and pulled the pin on a grenade.

The young Prussian officer predicted the outcome, once telling fellow conspirators: “It is almost certain we will fail. But how will future history judge the German people, if not even a handful of men had the courage to put an end to that criminal?”

https://www.postalley.org/2025/07/20/those-who-opposed-hitler/