On the 80th Anniversary of the Assassination Attempt on Adolf Hitler. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Hero, Political Strategist, or Victim of the Nazi Regime

The attempt of assassination of the leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), on 20th July 1944 at the Wolf’s Lair (Gierłoż) provokes many questions, the answers to which may not be found. Nevertheless, numerous historians in Poland and abroad appreciate as well as criticise this act. Being a German scholar whose main focus is on the period of the Third Reich and partially on the Holocaust, I will reconstruct the causes, motives and execution of the unsuccessful assassination. However, one should not expect a definitive and unequivocal statements here, but only an analysis of the circumstances in which the act took place. Sceptical and critical of this action, I see its very purpose in von Staufenberg’s strategy, which had nothing to do with saving the real victims of the war. With Europe already in ruins and its Jewish community completely exterminated, the real purposes of the action in question could have been three goals: to end the war, to create a convenient position for negotiations with the Allies, and to prevent the Soviet invasion in East Germany. Regarding the consequences and perspectives in the past, the failed coup changed nothing and brought about nothing, and consequently led to the elimination of the last liberal forces in the ranks of Hitler’s opposition within the Third Reich. The trials of the Berlin judge Roland Freisler were a case in point.