On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg tried to assassinate Nazi Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, with a time bomb.              

Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia.  Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it—appropriately enough—“Wolf’s Lair.” 

While a war conference was in session, he placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler—who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table. Then he excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.

“Wolf’s Lair”

But after Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, who stood next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs. So he moved it—to the other side of the heavy oaken support, thus unknowingly shielding Hitler from the full blast.

At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.

Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer. Hitler not only survived, but the plotters failed to seize the key broadcast facilities of the Reich.

This allowed Hitler to make a late-night speech to the nation, revealing the failed plot and assuring Germans that he was still alive. And he swore to flush out the “traitorous swine” who had tried to kill him.

Mass arrests quickly followed. Among the first victims discovered and executed was the conspiracy’s leader, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Standing before a makeshift firing squad at midnight, he cried: “Long live our sacred Germany!”

Claus von Stauffenberg

At least 7,000 persons were arrested by the Gestapo. Of these, 4,980 were executed.

If the conspiracy had succeeded and Germany had surrendered in July or August, 1944, World War II would have ended eight to nine months earlier. This would have meant:  

• The Russians—who didn’t reach Germany until April, 1945—could not have occupied the Eastern part of the country.
• Millions of East Germans would have been spared the misery of living under Communist rule for 44 years.
• Many of the future conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union over access to West Berlin and/or West Germany would have been prevented.
• Untold numbers of Holocaust victims would have survived because the concentration camps would have been shut down far earlier.

Yet history notes other tyrants whose evil reigns ended prematurely—such as that of Gaius Caligula.

Caligula became Emperor of Rome in 37 A.D. after succeeding the Emperor Tiberius, his uncle.

For three years, he held—and exercised—life-or-death power over the citizens of Italy and beyond. His attitude toward humanity was best summed up by his remark: “Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please.” 

Gaius Caligula

Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Among his litany of crimes, according to his biographer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus:

• He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health. He invited another to dinner immediately after witnessing the execution, and trying to rouse him to gaiety by a great show of affability.
• He watched for several successive days as the manager of his gladiatorial shows was beaten with chains, and ordered him killed only when he was disgusted at the stench of his putrefied brain.
• He appeared at the temple of Castor and Pollux to be worshiped as Jupiter Latiaris.
• He lived in incest with all his three sisters. At a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above.
• He intended to promote his favorite racehorse, Incitatus (“Swift”), to consul.

Like all Roman emperors, Caligula was constantly protected by the Praetorian Guard, an elite unit of the Roman army comprised of tough legionnaires—especially German ones.

There had not been an assassination of a Roman emperor since the death of Julius Caesar almost 100 years earlier.

The assassins in that case had been motivated by a mixture of

• Personal animosity toward Caesar’s increasing arrogance and
• Genuine fears that he intended to abolish the Roman Republic and set himself up as a dictator.

And Caligula intended to keep a similar fate from overtaking him.

For all his cruelty and egomania, the trait that finally destroyed Caligula was his joy in humiliating others.

Among those he taunted was Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard.

Two different historians give two different motives for his decision to assassinate Caligula.

The Jewish historian Josephus claimed that Chaerea was a “noble idealist” deeply committed to “Republican liberties.”

But Suetonius wrote that Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and gave him such mocking watchwords as “Priapus” and “Venus.” Whenever Caligula had Chaerea kiss his ring, the emperor would “hold out his hand to kiss, forming and moving it in an obscene fashion.”

On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.

The assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler and the successful assassination of Gaius Caligula demonstrate that the greatest danger facing a tyrant is people who:

• Are in frequent and highly personal contact with him; and
• Keep their animosity toward him a secret—until the moment they wish to strike.

Had Secret Service agent Kerry O’Grady kept her revulsion toward Donald Trump to herself, she might now be hailed as an American traitor—or as democracy’s savior.

Where does loyalty leave off and conscience begin?          

Specifically: If you’re a bodyguard for a man you know represents a genuine threat to democracy, what are your obligations to defend him? Should you be as willing to “take a bullet” for him as for someone you truly admire?  

Members of Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard faced no such qualms. Right up to the bitter end, with Russian forces only blocks from the Fuhrerbunker, they manned their posts, ready to die for the man who had led them—and Germany—into the ultimate catastrophe. 

They made Hitler a closely-guarded target.

He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.

But his single greatest protection—he claimed—was an instinct for danger. He would suddenly change his schedule—to drop in where he was least expected. Or suddenly depart an event where he was expected to stay a long time.

Adolf Hitler

It wasn’t Hitler’s bodyguards who posed a threat to his life. It was the colonels and generals of the German General Staff. 

On August 20, 1934, members of the German army, navy and air force were required to swear the “Law On The Allegiance of Civil Servants and Soldiers of the Armed Forces.” 

Whereas members of the armed forces had previously sworn loyalty to Germany, the new law required them to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler personally.

In coming years, this would prove a deadly trap for many German officers—forcing them to choose between betraying a sacred oath and remaining loyal to a man who was clearly driving Germany to ruin.

For those officers who could not abide Germany’s coming destruction, the choice was simple: Hitler had to go.

A series of assassination attempts were made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff. 

In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it exploded.

Hitler came closest to death on July 20, 1944.

Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the driving force in a plot to assassinate Hitler with a time bomb. 

Claus von Stauffenberg

He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941). While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943, when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.

For most of his fellow officers, the motive was craven: The “happy time” of German victories was over. Germany was losing the war it had unleashed on the world in 1939—and now they feared the worst.

This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive. 

The Wehrmacht in Russia

The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.

For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.

Thus, Stauffenberg—more than many Germans—knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “Thousand-Year Reich” fell. Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans—even members of the Wehrmacht—were criminals.

Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces—well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany. Stauffenberg didn’t want to arrest Hitler; he wanted to kill him. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.

Stauffenberg intended to carry his bomb—hidden in a briefcase—into a “Hitler conference” room packed with military officers. Rigged with a time-fuse, it would be left there while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news. 

Stauffenberg intended to direct the new government that would replace that of the Nazis—and open peace talks with the British and Americans. With Hitler dead, the coup—“Operation Valkyrie”—would be on.

Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. They would inform the British and Americans of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the vengeance-seeking Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.

On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it—appropriately enough—“Wolf’s Lair.”

Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler—who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table. Then he excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.

At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.