Baron von Stauffenberg led a conspiracy of German officers against the Führer; the assassination attempt was carried out in the heart of Hitler’s headquarters, the so-called Wolf’s Lair, in Rastenburg (now Ketrzyn in Poland) and was dubbed “Operation Walkyrie”: the bomb, contained inside a briefcase, was placed near Hitler by von Stauffenberg himself, but was moved a few meters away by someone; this fact, together with other fortuitous circumstances (due to the intense heat, the meeting was held in a building with open windows and not in the bunker, where the explosion would have been vastly more devastating); Stauffenberg had originally prepared two bombs, but due to his disability (he had only three fingers on his left hand, and was missing his right hand and eye), in his haste he managed to arm only one; the meeting table, built of solid oak, further cushioned the force of the explosion), caused the assassination attempt to fail. Subsequently, as planned, the Baron immediately flew to Berlin to take control of the military high command headquarters on Bendlerstrasse. However, Hitler survived the explosion almost unscathed, and Stauffenberg, Beck, Olbricht, von Tresckow, Chief of Staff Colonel Albrecht, and other conspirators were arrested by the SS and Gestapo, as were all those who had somehow come into contact with them. Those arrested were tortured to extract revelations, then murdered, often without even a trial.
