Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a German army officer and Catholic aristocrat who reached the rank of colonel and was one of the leading officers of the failed July 20 plot of 1944 to kill German dictator Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany. Stauffenberg found some aspects of the Nazi Party’s ideology repugnant; although he agreed with its nationalistic aspects, he never became a member of the party.
Stauffenberg’s part in the original plan required him to stay at the offices in Berlin from where he would phone regular army units all over Europe and the Reich in an attempt to convince them to arrest leaders of Nazi political organizations. However, he was forced to kill Hitler far away from Berlin and to trigger the military machine in Berlin during the office hours of the very same day.
He was the only conspirator who had regular access to Hitler by mid-1944 and the only officer to have the resolve and persuasive power to convince German military leaders to throw in the with the coup once Hitler was dead. On July 20, armed with two small bombs contained in a briefcase, Stauffenberg nearly succeeded in blowing up Hitler at a meeting but the dictator escaped with only slight injuries as he was shielded by the blast by a heavy, solid oak conference table.
