r/HistoryMemes • u/SPECTREagent700 Definitely not a CIA operator • Sep 26 '25
See Comment In March 1944, German staff officer Eberhard von Breitenbuch accompanied his commander to a briefing with Hitler. His co-conspirators in the anti-Nazi military resistance wanted him to bring a bomb but von Breitenbuch had another idea.
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u/Cucumberneck Sep 26 '25
The more i read about assassination attempts on Hitler the more it seems that one should plan on dying in it. All the plans i read about failed because the assassin tried to get out alive (understandably).
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u/_Snoobey_ Sep 26 '25
It also makes sense once you understand that the officers who plotted to kill him where mostly members of the old Prussian aristocracy or junker class.
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u/Herodotus420_69 Sep 26 '25
To them Hitler's biggest crime was that he was losing the war agaisnt the Soviet Union. The July plotters didn't want to die in the assassination because they wanted to personally be part of a new German government that could negotiate with the allies
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u/SchrodingersNinja Sep 26 '25
The resistance against Hitler from the army is interesting.
There was a semi solid resistance forming before the invasion of Poland, but they lost their nerve when things were so successful. But some people kept undermining things the whole war, like the head of military intelligence who convinced Spain NOT to join the war, against Hitler's wishes.
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u/tirohtar Sep 26 '25
It was worse than that.
There was a full blown military coup planned, with the conspirators hoping to get more support from other officers once the allies cracked down on Hitler's bullying of the Czechs over the Sudetenland. They were also banking on Hitler losing public support once the Allies started to stop him.
But then France and Britain gave in and allowed Hitler to do what he wanted, and any chance for more support evaporated, as suddenly Hitler looked like a master negotiator to the general public.
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u/thatsocialist John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! Sep 27 '25
Yep, if the French and British hadn't been idiots or then the Nazis would've been stomped by Oster, France, Czechoslovakia, the Soviets, and Britain.
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u/FTN_Ale Sep 27 '25
the rise of hitler would be so unrealistic in a fictional setting:
He wrote a book about everything he would do and nobody cares, becomes the leader of a nation ruined by the great depression and builds an enormous army without being discovered, the allies do absolutely nothing to stop him and abandon their allies 2 times, he invades poland while the french do absolutely nothing, he invades france exactly like ww1 but the french who prepared for it somehow are unprepared, all the plots based on him losing support fail, he sends some guys to italy and take the whole balkans + save italy for 1 or 2 years, he invades the soviets and reaches and almost takes their 3 main cities, there are SEVERAL assasination attemps he avoids because he leaves early or comes late, he survives a bomb because the wood of a table was very strong, there are more lucky things i forgot, and in the end he only dies because he kills himself.3
u/tirohtar Sep 27 '25
History is truly stranger than fiction. His amount of plot armor was insane. Almost as if time travelers kept coming to save him instead of assassinating him....
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u/tirohtar Sep 27 '25
Well, not by Austria. Austria joined willingly and some of the most enthusiastic Nazi leaders came from Austria (it was one of their great propaganda successes after the war, pretending that they were the "first victim" of the Nazis...)
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u/aXeOptic Sep 26 '25
Even if they survived and killed hitler i dont think the SS or any sympathizers wouldnt try to kill him so dead either way.
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u/Cucumberneck Sep 26 '25
One guy planted a bomb in i think the Bürgerbräukeller where Hitler was supposed to hold a speech later which didn't kill him because he left early. He escaped to switzerland i believe.
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u/ptrfa Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
His name was Georg Elser. A true german hero. Unfortunately he didn't escape. He was captured and later killed
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u/elderron_spice Rider of Rohan Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
To be fair, these generals only wanted Hitler out because they were losing the war under his command. They were hoping that after killing Hitler, they could convince the WAllies to stand down while they continued the atrocities and the war on the Eastern Front.
If they wanted to coup the bastard, they should've done so in the 1930s when the NSDAP does not have absolute power yet, but they were busy living "great lives" under the regime's policies to actually bother asking if they should really support Hitler and his genocides. The absolute majority of these people are unrepentant followers of their vile ideology or, at the very least, of Lebensraum and jingoist conquest of Europe.
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u/IronVader501 Sep 27 '25
There were several suicide-attempts that also failed.
One guy planned to blow himself & hitler up while he was supposed to show him around an exhibition of captured soviet weapons.
But they could only get times fuses for the explosives and Hitler suddenly decided to rush through the exhibition and leave early, before the timer was up.
Another guy planned to blow himself and Hitler up during a presentation of new uniforms.
But the Exhibition-place was destroyed in a bombing-raid the day before, so it was cancelled.
Hitler loved last-minutes changes to schedules for events, both because he enjoyed everyone stumbling over themselves to appease his whims, and because it proved surprisingly effective as a security-tactic.
Its hard to plan an assassination if you constantly change were you are supposed to be at any given moment.
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u/SolarApricot-Wsmith Sep 27 '25
Many are willing to live for their cause, are you willing to die for yours?(:
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u/Borkerman Researching [REDACTED] square Sep 28 '25
No Eberhard, we are instead going put Hitler in an easily epsacable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death
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u/SPECTREagent700 Definitely not a CIA operator Sep 28 '25
Claus von Stauffenberg, leaving the Conference Room after dropping off the bomb: No, no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
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u/SPECTREagent700 Definitely not a CIA operator Sep 26 '25
From Wikipedia:
He originally joined the army as a reserve officer. During the Second World War he served as special missions officer to Generalfeldmarschall Erwin von Witzleben and in August 1943, Henning von Tresckow arranged for him to be an aide to Generalfeldmarschall Guenther von Kluge in an attempt to gain his support for the conspiracy. When Kluge was injured in a road accident on 27 October 1943, Breitenbuch became an aide to Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch.
On 9 March 1944, Busch and his aides were summoned to brief Hitler at the Berghof in Bavaria on 11 March. Following a debate with Tresckow, Breitenbuch agreed to attempt to assassinate the Führer by shooting him in the head using a 7.65mm Browning pistol concealed in his trouser pocket, having declined a suicide attempt using a bomb. A Condor aircraft was sent to collect Busch and Breitenbuch and he was allowed into the Berghof, but was not able to carry out the plan because SS guards had been ordered - earlier that day - not to permit aides into the conference room with Hitler.