Modern Era · Europe · War

1944

Valkyrie plot fails to kill Hitler

July 20, 1944

Count Claus von Stauffenberg slid a briefcase with a bomb under a map table at Hitler's East Prussian headquarters and left the room. The bomb went off; Hitler survived with singed trousers. By midnight Stauffenberg was shot in a Berlin courtyard. Five thousand more Germans were killed in the bloody purge that followed.