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What If...?
"If I succeed they will call me a traitor to Germany. If I fail, I will be a traitor to my own conscience."
This is what Claus Von Stauffenberg told his wife the day before he left to attempt the assassination of Adolf Hitler. He and his fellow conspirators believed that killing Hitler and overthrowing the government would bring an end to the immoral crimes and injustice they had witnessed. They also believed that without Hitler, Germany could avoid utter defeat by negotiating a ceasefire with the Allies. Where they right?
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| Hitler asks to keep his uniform as a memento |
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"The Alliance between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin was still strong at this point and it would have been unlikely that the Allies would have talked to the conspirators unless they were willing to surrender at once to the three allies."
(Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin's Biographer)
If a ceasefire had been declared, Germany may have been able to halt the advance in the East of Stalin's Red Army.
| "It might have made a huge difference in the way Europe
looked after the end of the war, with Russia taking far less of Eastern Europe." Perhaps Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
parts of Germany and even maybe Poland might have escaped the communist regime. |
They could have instead have become democratic nations. Stalin's empire would have been more limited, an Iron Curtain might not have descended across Mitteleuropa and the Cold War might have been very different."
(Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin's Biographer)
Millions of lives could have been saved. There were heavy civilian and military casualties as the Red Army and the Allies advanced through Europe to eventually take Berlin. Five million Germans alone died in the last nine months of the war, and thousands were killed in Allied bombing raids. As the tide turned against Germany, the Nazi regime increased the number of Jews sent to the death camps and millions were killed.
If Hitler had died on 20th July, the conspirators would still have had to seize control from Heinrich Himmler or vice-Fuhrer Hermann Goering. If they had failed, the results could have been disastrous.
"If either Himmler or Goering had taken over and not made many of the strategic blunders perpetrated by Hitler in the final months of the war, Nazi Germany might even have lasted longer."
(Andrew Roberts, Churchill's Biographer)
Many experts believe that if Hitler had been killed, he would have become a martyr and his successors would have used his memory to urge the German people to fight to the bitter end. His death may have been used by some as an excuse for Germany�s defeat and the Allies' victory would not have been total.
"The war needed to be won by the Allies, but it also needed to be lost, comprehensively and personally, by Hitler himself. His suicide in the bunker after the total collapse of his dreams had to be the last chapter of the tale, the crucial prerequisite for the decent, democratic, peace-loving Germany we know today."
(Andrew Roberts, Churchill's Biographer)
For sometime after the war Stauffenberg's fears were realised and many saw him as a traitor. But today his sacrifice, along with that of his co-conspirators, is recognized and they are hailed by many as heroes.
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Many thanks to Simon Sebag Montefiore for his comments and Andrew Roberts for kind permission to use extracts from his book, "Hitler and Churchill, Secrets of Leadership". |
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