Operation Valkyrie Research Paper

My essay.

If the German army generals were under oath of loyalty to Hitler, why did they plan to assassinate Hitler and initiate operation Valkyrie?

There was many brave people that fought against Hitler’s rule in Nazi Germany. In particular some brave generals under oath of loyalty to Hitler planned to assassinate him and initiate operation Valkyrie to take over Germany after his assassination. These brave men put their lives at risk to overthrow this tyrannical reign of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

In the summer of 1944 some senior German army generals believed that Germany’s military power was crippling under leadership by Hitler and was doomed for defeat especially after the Russian successful operation (operation Barbarossa) which repelled the

Operation Valkyrie is directly linked to the July bomb plot of 1944 which was attempt by senior German army officers to kill Hitler. It was the closest successful attempt to assassinate Hitler. The plotters involved in the July bomb plot planned to use operation Valkyrie which officially passed the command of Germany over to the reserve (home) army to remove the power of the SD, gestapo and SS. Three of the major powers of Hitler’s power base, Also when Hitler died the soldiers under his command would be released from their oath to him. Claus von Stauffenberg a German army commander was the mastermind behind all this planning. He decided earlier in the 1942 that he must try overthrow Hitler. Throughout the summer of 1942 he persuaded senior commanders to move against Hitler, and he then declared in September 1942 that he himself was prepared to kill Hitler. On July, 20, 1944 a meeting at the Wolfs lair conference took place (Hitler’s secret base) with Hitler and high ranking German officers loyal to him. Stauffenburg planted an explosive in his briefcase under the table that

Had Stauffenberg been successful in his assassination attempt, the final part of the war would definitely have gone differently. The fact show that more people died between the July assassination attempt and the end of the war than in the previous four-and-a-half years before that. Very few people doubt that Hitler’s death would not have affected Germany’s strength to go on fighting. If he was successful many more people would have survived. However Stauffenberg place in history as a hero of the German resistance was not established after the war. In the decade after the war had ended the German public viewed him as a traitor, his wife was denied her pension and no memorials were erected to mark his brave acts. Some were suspicious of his motives they accused him upon acting more out of self-interest and less about the common good and the plight of the Jews. Perspectives have changed over time and there has been exhibition on Stauffenberg in the German resistance memorial center in Berlin and a recent movie called “Valkyrie” which shows him (played as tom Cruise) as brave and good man. He is now regarded as a national hero for Germany. (Ziwica, 2011) (enteprise,