Roger Moorhouse - Killing Hitler - The Plots, The Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death

Chapter 1
Maurice Bavaud: Gods Assassin

Chapter 2
Georg Elser: The Lone Bomber

Chapter 3
The Abwehr: The Enemy Within

Chapter 4
The Nest of Vipers: The Polish Underground

Chapter 5
The Implacable Foe: The Soviet Union

Chapter 6
The Dirty War: The British and the Special Operations Executive

Chapter 7
Honor Redeemed: The German Military

Chapter 8
Revolt of the Acolyte: Albert Speer

I might be killed by a criminal, or by an idiot, at any time.

A DOLF H ITLER

A SSASSINATION, IT WAS ONCE SAID, HAS NEVER CHANGED the history of the world. This benign sentiment, often repeated in times of crisis, is wishful nonsense, however. In response, one might point most obviously to the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which unleashed the First World War, or to the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, which sparked the murderous purges in Stalins Soviet Union. Assassination clearly has the capacity to affect world events.

More recently, the question of the utility of assassination as a political weapon has been subjected to closer examination. An analysis of eighteen famous assassinations through the ages concluded that not one of them achieved their wider political aims. Indeed, in many cases, the results were the exact opposite of those intended. The murder of President Lincoln in 1865, for example, by a southern sympathizer proved disastrous for the American South, while the assassination of Lord Cavendish by Irish nationalists in 1882 set the cause of Irish independence back by a generation. Assassinations, therefore, have certainly changed history; they have just never changed it in the way foreseen by the assassin.

Yet the possibility that Hitler could have been assassinated is one that has tantalized historians and fiction writers alike. It is tempting to speculate not only on the number of lives that could have been saved, the conflict that might have been avoided, and the suffering that perhaps would have been spared, but also on how differently European, and especially German, history might have played out in the twentieth century had Hitler been successfully felled by an assassins bullet. Surely here, if nowhere else, is a case where an assassination might actually have brought the benefits intended by the assassin.

The majority of modern readers would probably agree, instinctively at least, with that statement. But it is interesting to note that unanimity on this issue was much harder to find during Hitlers lifetime. Then, discussions raged over the propriety of playing God, the setting of dangerous precedents, the thorny concepts of principled treachery and state-sanctioned terrorism, and the question of what further horrors might have followed Hitlers premature demise. Surprisingly, perhaps, the proposal to assassinate Hitler was never anything less than highly controversial.

Yet, for all these concerns, Hitlers would-be assassins were not dissuaded. Few leaders, of any century, can have been the target of so many assassination attempts: no fewer than forty-two separate plots on Hitlers life have been identified by German historians, and even that list is far from complete. Of these, around twenty can be considered serious enough to warrant the attention given to them here.

Hitler was probably the most influential individual of the twentieth century. His name has become synonymous with brutality, intolerance, and racial hatred. His face, perhaps the most instantly recognizable and iconic image of the modern era, is one that feweven those blessed with living in peaceful timeswill ever forget. Yet what of his would-be assassins?

In some cases, the assassin and his victim are bound together in perpetuity by their moment of shared history. Thus John F. Kennedy has his Lee Harvey Oswald, Abraham Lincoln has his John Wilkes Booth, and Franz Ferdinand has his Gavrilo Princip. The assassins of history are sometimes lauded as heroes and are often vilified as the most bestial of criminals, but they are rarely forgotten.

Yet Hitlers would-be assassins are, for the most part, unknown. Of them, only the name Claus von Stauffenberg might expect to register any reaction from the reading public. For all of them, of course, their greatest failing was that they were unable to carry out their allotted taskthat of ridding the world of Adolf Hitlerbut they nonetheless deserve greater recognition. They deserve better than to exist only in the footnotes of history, better than the obscurity to which they have been condemned by time and fashion, and in many cases by their Nazi executioners.