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Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg

Count Claus Philip Maria
Schenk von Stauffenberg

15.11.1907 – 21.07.1944 German officer who attempted to assassinate Hitler.

He was a “Graf” i.e. count and Schenk (i.e., cupbearer) – an additional hereditary noble title. He took part in the attack on Poland in 1939, the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Tunisian Campaign during the Second World War.

Stauffenberg was one of the leading members of the failed 20 July plot of 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power. Along with Henning von Tresckow and Hans Oster, he was one of the central figures of the German Resistance movement within the Wehrmacht. For his involvement in the movement, he was executed by firing squad shortly after the failed attempt known as Operation Valkyrie.

Colonel von Stauffenberg worked in the German Army headquarters in Berlin. He was one of the main conspirators in an attempt to kill Hitler and take control of the government, to end World War II. Von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room at Hitler’s headquarters on July 20, 1944. The bomb went off, causing severe damage to the building and killing and wounding several officers, but Hitler escaped with only minor injuries. In the meantime, von Stauffenberg had flown back to Berlin to help with the coup, but when word came that Hitler had survived, von Stauffenberg and the other main conspirators were rounded up and summarily executed in the courtyard of Army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse, just after midnight.

Von Stauffenberg’s last words were “Long live our sacred Germany.” He became a German national hero after the war, and Bendlerstrasse was renamed Stauffenbergstrasse.