This is an incomplete list of documented attempts to assassinateAdolf Hitler.[1]
All attempts occurred in theGerman Reich, except where noted. No fewer than 42 plots have been uncovered by historians.[2] However, the true number cannot be accurately determined due to an unknown number of undocumented cases.
| Date | Location | Attempted by | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1932 | Hotel Kaiserhof (Berlin) | Unknown | Hitler and several members of his staff fell ill after dining at the reveredHotel Kaiserhof in Berlin. Poisoning was suspected, but no arrests were made. Hitler himself seemed least affected by the alleged poisoning, possibly due to hisvegetarian diet.[3] |
| February 9, 1933 | Berlin | Ludwig Aßner | Ludwig Aßner, a German politician and member of theBavarian State Parliament, sent a poisoned letter to Hitler from France. An acquaintance of Aßner warned Hitler and the letter was intercepted.[3] |
| 1934 | Berlin | Beppo Römer | Freikorps memberBeppo Römer vowed to assassinate Hitler as revenge for theNight of the Long Knives but was turned over to theGestapo before any concrete plan could be made.[4] He was imprisoned atDachau until 1939. Römer was arrested once again for anti-Nazi activities and eventually executed atBrandenburg-Görden Prison in 1944.[5] |
| 1934 | Berlin | Helmut Mylius | Dr. Helmut Mylius, head of the right-wing Radical Middle Class Party (Radikale Mittelstandspartei), had 160 men infiltrate the SS and begin gathering information on Hitler's movements. The conspiracy was uncovered by the Gestapo and the conspirators arrested. Mylius escaped arrest through the aid of influential friends, including Field MarshallErich von Manstein.[6] |
| 1934 | Berlin | Edgar Jung | The writer Edgar Jung, who due to his occupation as the speech writer of Hitler's conservative Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen had the opportunity to get close to Hitler, during the Spring of 1934 planned to shoot him as a first step of a scheme envisioned by himself and some associates to overthrow the Nazi Government. However, some of Jung's confidantes convinced him not to go through with his plan, fearing that being killed in an assassination might turn Hitler into a martyr and may thus render a dead Hitler even more dangerous than a living. Jung was arrested by the Gestapo on June 25, 1934, in his Berlin apartment and murdered in a forest North of the city during the night of June 30 to July 1, 1934.[7] |
| 1934–1939 | Charlottenburger Chaussee, Berlin | Noel Mason-MacFarlane | Lieutenant-Colonel Noel Mason-Macfarlane,Military Attache to the BritishEmbassy in Berlin, did not trust Hitler and tinkered with the notion that it might pay off to contrive Hitler's assassination. It could have been achieved bysniper rifle-shot from Mason-Macfarlane's drawing room which overlooked theCharlottenburger Chaussee where there was a saluting base podium from which Hitler received the salute from the German armed forces during his birthday parade on 20 April.[8] When Mason-Macfarlane proposed this plan to his superiors, it was turned down. The BritishForeign Secretary,Lord Halifax argued that "We have not reached that stage ... when we have to use assassination as a substitute for diplomacy".[9] |
| 1935 | Berlin | Marwitz group | Several officials in the German Foreign Office attempted to instigate an army coup against Hitler; they distributed a letter asserting that "The oath of allegiance to Hitler has lost its meaning since he is ready to sacrifice Germany", and that "now was the time to act."[10] |
| 1935 | Berlin | Paul Josef Stuermer | Dr. Paul Joseph Stuermer led a resistance group composed of several officers, university professors, businessmen, and government workers. The group assisted in several assassination attempts includingBeppo Römer's attempt.[11] |
| December 20, 1936 | Nuremberg | Helmut Hirsch | Helmut Hirsch, a German Jew and a member of theStrasseristBlack Front, was tasked with planting two suitcases filled with explosives at the Nazi party headquarters in Nuremberg.[12] The plot was revealed to the Gestapo by a double agent and Hirsch was executed in theguillotine on 4 June 1937.[13] |
| 1937 | Berlin | Josef Thomas | On 26 November,mental patient Josef Thomas, who traveled from Elberfeld to Berlin to shoot Hitler and air force commanderHermann Göring, was arrested by the Gestapo after he confessed his intent.[14] |
| 1937 | Berlin | Unknown man inSS uniform | An unidentified man in SS uniform reportedly tried to kill Hitler during a rally at the Berlin Sportpalast.[14] |
| September 28, 1938 | Berlin | Hans Oster,Helmuth Groscurth | GeneralmajorHans Oster and other high-ranking conservatives in the Wehrmacht formed a plan to overthrow Hitler if he declared war onCzechoslovakia. Forces controlled by the plotters would storm the Reich Chancellery, arrest or assassinate Hitler, take control of the government, and restore the exiledWilhelm II as Emperor. The plan, that relied upon British support against the Nazis, was abandoned after Britain and France agreed to German annexation ofSudetenland in theMunich Agreement, neutralizing the immediate risk of war. Many of the conspirators later took part in the 194420 July Plot.[15] Main article:Oster Conspiracy |
| November 9, 1938 | Munich | Maurice Bavaud | Swiss theology studentMaurice Bavaud posed as a reporter and planned to shoot Hitler from the reviewing stand as he passed through the parade. His view of Hitler was blocked by the unwitting crowd and he was forced to abandon the plan. He then attempted to follow Hitler but failed. On his way back to Paris he was discovered by a train conductor and turned over to the Gestapo. Bavaud was executed by guillotine at Berlin'sPlötzensee Prison on the morning of 14 May 1941. |
| October 5, 1939 | Warsaw | Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski,Service for Poland's Victory | GeneralMichał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski and other members of the Polish Army attempted to detonate hidden explosives during Hitler's victory parade in Warsaw. 500 kg ofTNT were concealed in a ditch, ready to be detonated by Polishsappers. However, at the last moment, the parade was diverted and the saboteurs missed their target.[16] |
| November 8, 1939 | Munich | Georg Elser | German carpenter Georg Elser placed a time-bomb at theBürgerbräukeller inMunich, where Hitler was due to give his annual speech in commemoration of theBeer Hall Putsch. Hitler left earlier than expected and the bomb detonated, killing eight and injuring sixty-two others. Following the attempt, Elser was held as a prisoner for over five years until he was executed at the Dachau concentration camp less than a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany. |
| 1939 | Berlin | Erich Kordt | German diplomat and resistance fighter Erich Kordt hatched an assassination plot along with officer Hasso von Etzdorf to plant explosives, but the plan was abandoned after the security restrictions following Georg Elser's attempt to kill Hitler made the acquisition and concealment of the necessary explosives too dangerous.[17] |
| 1941–1943 (several) | Berlin | Beppo Römer | Beppo Römer, along with several co-conspirators of the resistance groupSolf Circle, plotted once again to assassinate Hitler. He obtained funds from co-conspiratorNikolaus von Halem and kept track of Hitler's movements through a contact at the Berlin City Commandment. However, before an opportunity presented itself, the Gestapo unraveled the plot. Römer was sentenced to death on 16 June 1944 and executed on 25 September of that year atBrandenburg-Görden Prison inBrandenburg an der Havel. Von Halem was sentenced to death as well and executed on 9 October 1944.[18] |
| 1943 | Walki,Ukraine | Hubert Lanz,Hans Speidel,Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz | General der GebirgstruppeHubert Lanz and GeneralsHans Speidel,Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz, andPaul Loehning planned to arrest or kill Hitler during his visit toArmy Detachment Kempf in Ukraine. Strachwitz was to surround Hitler and his escorts with his tanks. Lanz stated that he would have then arrested Hitler, and in the event of resistance, Strachwitz's tanks would have killed the entire group. Hitler cancelled the visit and the plan was dropped.[19] Lanz told of this plot after the war. However Strachwitz's cousin,Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, who attempted to assassinate Hitler in 1943, said Strachwitz had expressed the belief to him several times that killing Hitler would have constituted murder. That is, Strachwitz was too much a Prussian officer to consider assassinating Hitler, which suggests that the plot never existed.[20] |
| March 13, 1943 | Flight fromSmolensk | Henning von Tresckow,Fabian von Schlabrendorff | On the return flight from a front visit, Hitler visited the headquarters of the Army Group Center inSmolensk. During the visit there were several attempts on his life:
|
| March 21, 1943 | Berlin | Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff | After becoming close friends with leading Army Group Center conspirator Colonel (later Major-General)Henning von Tresckow,Generalmajor Gersdorff agreed to join the conspiracy to kill Hitler in order to save Germany. After Tresckow's elaborate plan to assassinate Hitler on 13 March 1943 failed, Gersdorff declared himself ready to participate in an assassination attempt that would entail his own death. On 21 March 1943, Hitler visited theZeughaus Berlin, the oldarmory onUnter den Linden, to inspect captured Soviet weapons. A group of top Nazi and leading military officials – among themHermann Göring,Heinrich Himmler,Field MarshalWilhelm Keitel, andGrand AdmiralKarl Dönitz – were present as well. As an expert, Gersdorff was to guide Hitler on a tour of the exhibition. Moments after Hitler entered the museum, Gersdorff set off two ten-minute delayed fuses on explosive devices hidden in his coat pockets. His plan was to throw himself around Hitler in a death embrace. A detailed plan for a coup d'état had been worked out and was ready to go but, contrary to expectations, Hitler raced through the museum in less than ten minutes. After Hitler had left the building, Gersdorff defused the devices in a public bathroom "at the last second". After the attempt, he was transferred back to theEastern Front, where he managed to evade suspicion.[21] |
| November 16, 1943 | Wolf's Lair | Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst | Encouraged byClaus Stauffenberg,MajorAxel von dem Bussche agreed to carry out a suicide bombing in order to kill Hitler. Bussche, who was over two meters tall, blonde and blue-eyed, exemplified the Nazi "Nordic ideal" and was thus chosen to personally model the Army's new winter uniform in front of Hitler. In his backpack, Bussche concealed a landmine, which he planned to detonate while embracing Hitler. However, the viewing was canceled after the rail car containing the new uniforms was destroyed in an Allied air raid on Berlin. |
| February 1944 | Wolf's Lair | Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin | Ewald von Kleist attempted a scheme similar to Von dem Bussche's. However, the uniform inspection was once again postponed, and eventually cancelled by Hitler.[22][23][24] |
| March 11, 1944 | Berghof | Eberhard von Breitenbuch | On 9 March 1944, covert German resistance member Busch and his aides were summoned to brief Hitler at theBerghof inBavaria on 11 March. In discussion with Tresckow, Breitenbuch declined to attempt a suicide bombing. Instead he would try to shoot Hitler in the head with a 7.65mmBrowning pistol concealed in his trouser pocket.[25] Busch and Breitenbuch travelled on aCondor aircraft to Bavaria, and were allowed into the Berghof. But SS guards had been ordered – earlier that day – not to permit aides into the conference room with Hitler, preventing Breitenbuch's attempt.[26] |
| July 20, 1944 | Wolf's Lair | Claus von Stauffenberg | Main article:20 July plot Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to kill Hitler by detonating an explosive hidden in a briefcase, however it failed due to the location of the bomb at the time of detonation, the blast only dealing minor injuries to Hitler. |
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