Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944), German army officer, was one of the leading figures of the July 20 Plot of 1944 to kill Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany.Stauffenberg was the third of three sons (the others being the twins Berthold and Alexander) in Jettingen near Ulm, in the part of Swabia belonging to the Kingdom of Bavaria, to one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic Roman Catholic families of Southern Germany. His parents were Alfred Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the last Oberhofmarschall of the Kingdom of Württemberg, and Caroline Schenk von Stauffenberg (née von Üxküll-Gyllenband). Among his maternal ancestors were several famous Lutheran Prussians, including field marshal August von Gneisenau.(The family's original name was Stauffenberg, and they held the noble titles of Schenk and Graf. After 1918, when the Weimar Republic abolished all noble titles, they added the words Schenk and Graf to their surname. Stauffenberg's formal surname was thus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. By convention he is usually referred to in English simply as Stauffenberg.)As his brothers, Stauffenberg was very well educated and inclined toward literature, but eventually took up a military career. In 1926, he joined the Bamberg Reiter- und Kavallerieregiment 17 (17th Cavalry Regiment) in Bamberg, the family regiment. It was around this time that the three brothers were introduced by Albrecht von Blumenthal to poet Stefan George's influential circle, from which many notable members of the German resistance would later emerge. As best of the class of 1929, he was appointed Leutnant.In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany. While some aspects of the Nazi Party's declared ideology were repugnant to him, Stauffenberg did not oppose others, in particular its nationalism. The Roman Catholic Church had signed the Reichskonkordat in 1933, but soon the Nazi government violated the concordat, and bishops and the papacy protested against these violations, culminating in the papal encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Concern") of 1937. Not only this, but also the growing systematic maltreatment of Jews and suppression of religion had offended Stauffenberg's Catholic sense of morality and justice; he felt, for instance, that the November 1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") had brought great shame upon Germany.In his military career, Stauffenberg had studied modern weapons at the Kriegsakademie in Berlin-Moabit, but remained focused on the use of the horse in modern warfare. In fact, apart from railways, horses carried a large part of transportation duties throughout and at the end of the war, when fuel supply was short. He was promoted to Rittmeister for 1937, his regiment became part of the German 1st Light Division under Erich Hoepner who had taken part in the 1938 German Resistance coup plans which were choked by the Munich Agreement. Instead, the unit was involved in the occupation of the Sudetenland. Once the Second World War broke out in 1939, von Stauffenberg and his regiment took part in the Polish campaign.While his uncle, Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll, had approached him to join the resistance movement, it was after the Polish campaign in 1939 that Stauffenberg's individual conscience and his religious convictions made him thinking about joining. Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld urged him to become the adjutant of Walther von Brauchitsch, then Supreme Commander of the Army, in order to participate in a coup against Hitler. Stauffenberg declined at the time - all German soldiers had pledged allegiance to Hitler himself.His unit was reorganized as the 6th Panzer Division, and Stauffenburg served as officer of its General staff in the Battle of France, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. As many others, Stauffenburg was impressed by the overwhelming success of Hitler. During the phony war, he was transferred to the organisation department of the Oberkommando des Heeres.After Operation Barbarossa was launched in 1941, mass executions of Jews, Poles, Russians and others as well as the for him already apparent deficiency in militäry leadership (Hitler had assumed the role of supreme commander in late 1941 after sacking Hoepner and others) convinced Stauffenberg in 1942 to join resistance groups within the Wehrmacht, as it was the only force that could overcome the Gestapo, SD and SS. Stauffenberg opposed the Commissar Order, which was cancelled by Hitler after one year, and tried to soften the policy in the occupied areas by pointing out the benefits of getting volunteers for the Ostlegionen which were commanded by his department. Guidelines were issued on 2 June 1942 for the proper treatment of prisoners of war from the Caucasus region which had been captured by Heeresgruppe A. The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention, German POWs in Soviet hand thus could not expect treatment according to the convention, and in turn, many Germans were not inclined to treat the millions of Soviet POW well.With Hitler at the peak of his power in 1942, seemingly defeating the communism which was loathed by many, the time for a coup was not ripe. In the meantime, the Stauffenberg brothers also kept not only contact to former commanders like Erich Hoepner, but also to the Kreisau Circle and included civilians and even social democrats like Julius Leber in their scenarios for the time after Hitler.In November 1942, the Allies had landed in North Africa, and the 10th Panzer Division occupied Vichy France before being transferred to Tunis to support Rommel's Afrikakorps. For 1943, Stauffenberg was promoted to Oberstleutnant i.G. (im Generalstab) (Lieutenant Colonel), and was send to Africa to join the 10th Panzer Division as its First officer in the General Staff. There, while he was scouting out a new command area, his vehicle was strafed on 7 April 1943 by British fighter-bombers and he was severely wounded. He spent three months in hospital, was treated by Ferdinand Sauerbruch, yet ended up losing his left eye, his right hand, and the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand, although he later joked that he hardly knew what he had done with all ten fingers when he had them.For rehab, he was sent home to Lautlingen. Initially, he had felt powerless as he was in no position of authority to stage a coup himself, but finally in 1943, after recuperating from his wounds, he was posted as a staff officer to the Ersatzheer, located in an office on the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin.Here, one of his superiors was General Friedrich Olbricht, a committed member of the resistance movement. In the Ersatzheer they had a unique opportunity to launch a coup, as one of its functions was to have "Operation Valkyrie" in place. This was a contingency measure which would let it assume control of the Reich in the event of internal disturbances when communications with the military high command were blocked. Ironically, the Valkyrie plan had been agreed to by Hitler, and was now secretly to become the means of sweeping him from power.Stauffenberg believed that Hitler's military ambitions would destroy Germany. He felt that there had to be an attempt on Hitler's life to show the world and history that not all Germans mindlessly followed Hitler.The July 20 PlotWhile Stauffenberg's part in the plan required him to be at the Bendlerstrasse office to telephone regular Army units from around the Reich to arrest leaders of political organisations, such as the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo, in the end he was the only one of the conspirators who had regular access to Hitler, at his briefing meetings.Even with only three fingers remaining, von Stauffenberg, in 1944, now promoted to Oberst (Colonel), agreed to carry out the assassination of the German Führer, Adolf Hitler himself. The attempt took place at the Führer's briefing hut at the military high command Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg, East Prussia on 20 July 1944.Stauffenberg's briefcase contained two bombs, and a simple ten- to fifteen-minute timer set. He entered the briefing room before Hitler was present. He told Hitler's butler that he needed to use the toilet and brought the briefcase with him. Once in there he began to arm the first bomb, which isn't easy with just three fingers. Stauffenberg's chauffeur knocked on the door and told Stauffenberg to hurry up as the meeting was due to begin soon. This hurried Stauffenberg and he only armed one of the bombs and only put this one back in his briefcase. He went back into the briefing room and placed the briefcase under the table, announced that he needed to make an urgent phone call to Berlin, and then quickly left the room. He waited in a nearby shelter until the explosion tore through the hut. From what he saw, he was convinced no one could have survived the blast. Although four people were killed and almost all present were injured, Hitler was injured only slightly as he was shielded from the blast by a heavy, solid oaken conference table (if Stauffenberg had just put the second bomb into the briefcase, he didn't even have to arm it the impact of the first bomb would have been enough to blow the second bomb up and Hitler).Stauffenberg and his aide de camp, Leutnant Werner von Haeften, quickly walked away and talked their way out of the heavily guarded compound to fly back to Berlin in a waiting Heinkel He 111. Stauffenberg only learned of the failure on his return to Berlin. While he was in transit, an order was issued from the Führer's headquarters to shoot Stauffenberg and von Haeften down, but the order landed on the desk of a fellow conspirator, Friedrich Georgi of the air staff, and was not passed on.When Stauffenberg arrived in Berlin, he began the second phase of the project: to organize a military coup against Nazi leaders. However, Joseph Goebbels announced over the radio that Hitler survived an attempt on his life. Hitler broadcast a message on the state radio, and it became obvious that the coup attempt had failed. Shortly afterwards, the conspirators were overpowered in their Bendlerstrasse office, with Stauffenberg being shot in the shoulder.General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army, himself a suspected conspirator who was later executed, held an impromptu court martial and condemned the ringleaders of the conspiracy to death. Stauffenberg, along with fellow officers General Olbricht, Leutnant von Haeften and Oberst Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, were shot later that night by firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock (Headquarters of the Army) in Berlin.As his turn came, Stauffenberg spoke his last words: Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland! ("Long live our sacred Germany!"). In an attempt to assuage his troubled conscience for assassinating his fellow conspirators, General Fromm gave the officers an honourable burial in the Matthäus Churchyard in Berlin's Schöneberg district. There is a stone in memory of the event in the churchyard. The next day, however, Stauffenberg's body was exhumed by the SS, stripped of his medals and cremated.Another central figure in the plot was Stauffenberg's eldest brother, Berthold Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. Berthold was tried in the People's Court by Roland Freisler on 10 August and was one of eight conspirators executed by strangulation, hanged slowly in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, later that day. Stauffenberg's wife and children were also arrested by the SS, and in the final hours of World War II were about to be executed when the SS decided not to carry out the order when they became aware that British troops were within 400 meters of their location.Since the end of the war the Bendlerblock has become a memorial to the failed anti-Nazi resistance movement. The street's name was changed from Bendlerstrasse to Stauffenbergstrasse, and the Bendlerblock now houses the Memorial to the German Resistance, a permanent exhibition with more than 5,000 photographs and documents showing the various resistance organisations at work during the Hitler era. The courtyard where the officers were shot i
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s now a site of remembrance with a plaque commemorating the events, and includes a memorial bronze figure of a young man with his hands symbolically bound.
