In this video, you’ll learn about all the
creative and cunning ways that Adolf Hitler was almost assassinated, raging from a
grenade snuck into the pocket of someone modeling uniforms for the Fuhrer, an exploding
case of Cointreau, and even a failed attempt on his life from Hitler’s very own military officers!
It’s almost become a stock answer to the question, ‘What would you do with a functioning time
machine?’ Most people will say the same thing: go back and kill Adolf Hitler. And given
the sheer scale of abject suffering the Nazi leader subjected people to, it’s not
hard to see why people would want one of history’s greatest monsters taken out.
After all, during the Second World War, the entirety of the Allied Forces would’ve jumped
at the chance to kill the leader of the Third Reich in the hopes his death would bring about a
Nazi surrender. But the Allies certainly weren’t the only ones with a grudge against Adolf Hitler,
and as a matter of fact, the earliest of the many, many assassination attempts against him actually
began well before World War Two had even started. Before Hitler had even achieved his rise to power,
there had already been multiple attempts to stop him from doing so. He didn’t just appear out of
nowhere one day as chancellor but spent many years beforehand working his way up through the ranks of
the Nazi party, with his eyes on their leadership. Then, in 1932, something strange occurred
directly after a dinner that Hitler attended. After eating at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin,
Hitler and a number of his staffers all reportedly fell ill at the same time. The reason? Poison.
While nobody was ever suspected of perpetrating the assassination attempt, nor was anyone
arrested, ironically, Hitler seemed to be the least affected by the supposed poisoning –
his vegetarian diet likely being what saved him. However, this certainly wouldn’t be the only
time something like this would happen. In early February of the same year, no less, Hitler
was sent a letter from France that had been poisoned. This had come from a German politician
and member of the Bavarian State Parliament, Ludwig Assner, whose attempt to take down
the soon-to-be Nazi leader had just been thwarted by one of his own acquaintances.
Someone familiar with Assner was aware of his poisoning plot and had forewarned Hitler
about it, allowing the letter to be intercepted and thus, once again, sparing the Nazi’s life.
After Hitler became Germany’s chancellor in 1933, he naturally had a great many more resources
at his disposal when it came to keeping himself protected. Not that it deterred further plots to
‘remove him from office’ as early as possible. In 1934, a man named Beppo Römer openly shared
his intention to assassinate Hitler as an act of vengeance for the Night of Long Knives. This was
a series of extrajudicial executions conducted by the Sturmabteilung, or SA, to murder Hitler’s
political enemies and critics of his new regime. Römer would never get to carry out his plans to
make Hitler face retribution for these killings, as he was reported to and detained by the
Gestapo before any attempts could be made on the life of the newly instated dictator.
Beppo Römer was then imprisoned at Dachau, one of the first of the Nazis’ concentration
camps, where Hitler threw a number of those who were politically opposed to his fascist regime,
including communists and social democrats. Römer wasn’t the only would-be assassin actively
calling for Hitler’s death shortly after he had assumed power. Doctor Helmut Mylius, who was the
head of Germany’s right-wing Radical Middle Class Party, managed to get much closer. He was able
to get a hundred and sixty men to infiltrate the ranks of the SS so that they could gather
information about Hitler’s movements. The Gestapo, however, quickly learned of this
conspiracy and had those involved arrested. Doctor Mylius, however, was lucky
enough to escape, thanks to having some friends in high places among the Nazis.
From a right-wing doctor infiltrating the SS to a British Army officer cooking up the idea to
take down Hitler on his own birthday! Lieutenant Colonel Noel Mason-Macfarlane was the British
military’s attache to their embassy in Berlin, and had some severe misgivings about
Adolf Hitler – and it’s not hard to see why. Between 1934 and 1939, he had started
considering that it might be worth contriving some way to have the Nazi leader assassinated.
Lieutenant Colonel Mason-Macfarlane’s idea was to station someone armed with a sniper rifle in his
drawing room at the British Embassy, which just so happened to have a clear, unobstructed view of the
Charlottenburger Chaussee. This also happened to be where Hitler was due to receive the Nazi salute
from his armed forces on his birthday, April 20. However, when the Lieutenant Colonel proposed
his idea to have someone take the shot at Hitler, the British government refused to entertain
the idea. At the time, their Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, believed it was possible to still
maintain relations with Nazi Germany and that they weren’t at a stage where assassinations could be
used as a substitute for diplomacy. We can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if that fateful
shot had been taken before the war had broken out. In 1935, yet more people within Germany who
opposed Hitler’s regime attempted to launch a coup against him that could have seen
the then-Chancellor killed. This time, the Marwitz group, officials
within the German Foreign Office, tried rallying a military takeover to remove
Hitler from power. They weren’t successful, as you can probably imagine. Neither was another
resistance group led by one Doctor Paul Joseph Stuermer. Under his leadership, a collection
of businessmen, university professors, and even those working within the German government
would assist in a number of the assassination attempts against the Fuhrer, including
those made by our old friend Beppo Römer. On the twentieth of December, 1936, yet another
attempt to kill Hitler ended in a gruesome fashion for the would-be assassin. Helmut Hirsch had been
a member of the Jungenschaft in his youth – think of them as being a lot like the boy scouts;
that is, until the Nazis had the Jungenschaft dissolved, fearing it would encourage
dissidence among younger German citizens. The Nazis, of course, would replace this with
their own youth movement to indoctrinate German children into their ideology, but being Jewish
meant that Hirsch was barred from joining. Given how the Jungenschaft had influenced a
young Helmut Hirsch, he later became affiliated with the Black Front. This socialist group had
splintered away from the Nazis and opposed them, with intentions to rally the German people
to overthrow Hitler and his regime. However, the Black Front was largely comprised of other
radical Nazis, rife with antisemitism, and it was when joining up with them that Hirsch was sent
off on a suicide mission: to blow up the Fuhrer. Convinced by leaders of the Black Front that this
would be a heroic act, Helmut Hirsch was persuaded to take a bomb, concealed in a suitcase,
into the Nazi headquarters at Nuremberg. What Hirsch wasn’t made aware of was that the
Black Front never intended for him to survive, as the bomb was constructed in such
a way that the blast would kill him, as well as destroy the Nuremberg building.
This, however, didn’t end up happening since members of the Gestapo caught Hirsch – whether
this was due to a tip from members of the Black Front or thanks to a Gestapo double agent
working within their ranks is unknown. It has been speculated that the Black Front was merely
using this attempted assassination to bring more publicity and support to their movement, using
Hirsch as a patsy. Helmut Hirsch was arrested for treason, and despite efforts made by his family
and an American ambassador to have him pardoned (since Hirsch held American citizenship),
he was executed by the Nazis in 1937. The same year that Hirsh was executed via
guillotine, several others would take a chance to bring Hitler down. In November of 1937,
a mental patient named Josef Thomas confessed to the Gestapo his intent to shoot both Adolf
Hitler and Hermann Göring, another powerful member of the Nazi party. Another unknown man
wearing an SS uniform attempted to take Hitler out during one of his rallies in Berlin.
As the dominoes leading into World War Two gradually began to topple, yet another plot
formed: the Oster Conspiracy. Named after the Generalmajor leading the conspiracy, Hans
Oster, the plan was devised by a group of high-ranking conservatives within the
Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany’s armed forces. Their concern was that the actions of Hitler and
his regime, particularly the possibility of him declaring war on Czechoslovakia, were driving
their country closer to another World War, and they weren’t exactly optimistic about
their odds. Oster and his co-conspirators believed Germany wasn’t ready for an armed
conflict on such a scale, so they planned to overthrow and either arrest or assassinate
Hitler and reinstate the German monarchy. Although they ultimately abandoned their plans
once war seemed less likely to break out, many who had been involved in the Oster
Conspiracy would later become embroiled in arguably the most infamous attempt
on Hitler’s life… but we’ll get to that! Moving away from the overwhelming number of people
within Nazi-controlled Germany who were gunning for Hitler, to a theology student from Switzerland
who followed the Fuhrer across the country to take a shot at him. Maurice Bavaud believed that Hitler
posed a threat not only to Bavaud’s home country of Switzerland, but to humanity in general. So,
in late 1938, he bought himself a pistol with the intention of using it to stop the Nazi dictator.
He'd eventually get his opportunity in November of that year, during a parade commemorating
the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler’s original failed coup to try and seize power in
Munich. Of course, Bavaud couldn’t just take a potshot at the dictator from the crowd, so
he assumed a disguise to get himself closer. Posing as a member of the Swiss press, he
gained access to a seat in the grandstands that overlooked the parade route, ready to
draw his gun and shoot Hitler as he passed. Unfortunately, when the Nazi leader approached,
the crowd around Bavaud stood to their feet, which blocked his view and prevented him from
shooting. Having run out of money after stalking Hitler at his various public appearances, Bavaud
hid aboard a train heading for Paris, but was eventually caught and interrogated by the Gestapo.
Upon admitting he had planned to shoot the Fuhrer, he was sentenced to death and executed via
a guillotine in a Berlin prison, in 1941. In September of 1939, Hitler would invade Poland,
causing both France and Britain to declare war on Germany. Within a few months of the Second
World War commencing, there were already further attempts on Hitler’s life. The first of these came
from members of the Polish Army in retaliation against his invasion. Led by General Michał
Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, Polish soldiers hid over five hundred kilograms of TNT in a ditch in
Warsaw, in October directly after war broke out. Hitler’s victory parade was due to pass through
that area, so their plan was to hit the detonator and blow the Nazi leader to kingdom come. At the
last moment, though, the parade was diverted down a different route, allowing Hitler to one again
avoid going from one place to several all at once. A month later he saw a carpenter become a… wood-be
assassin. In an attempt to halt any further bloodshed, Georg Elser planned to kill Hitler and
stop the war altogether. Once again, Hitler was set to make an annual speech at the Munich Beer
Hall, so timing was everything – literally. Elser spent a full thirty five nights secretly working
in the Beer Hall, constructing a time bomb. He hid the homemade explosive in a pillar next to
the speaking platform that he had hollowed out, setting it to detonate during Hitler’s speech.
However, Elser couldn’t have predicted that the Fuhrer would not only commence his speech
early, but also have it cut short so he could return to Berlin and draw up plans for his war
against France. Even though Hitler had left, finishing his speech at seven minutes past
nine, the hidden bomb would still detonate at twenty minutes past – if the Nazi leader had
stayed just another thirteen minutes, Elser would have succeeded. Eight people were killed in the
blast, and over sixty sustained serious injuries, but the target had slipped away unscathed. As for
Elser, like many other of the attempted assassins, he was arrested and held prisoner at Dachau
concentration camp. He was executed on Hitler’s direct orders, in 1945 – less than a month
before the Nazis eventually surrendered. Yet another plot involving explosives
would occur before the end of 1939, this time headed by a German diplomat and
resistance fighter against the Nazis. Erich Kordt, who had previously been a part of the Oster
Conspiracy, worked alongside an officer named Hasso von Etzdorf to plant explosives at a
location in Berlin in order to take Hitler down. But their plan would never come to fruition,
however – thanks to the previous attempt by Georg Elser. Following the bombing of the Munich Beer
Hall, new security restrictions were put in place that made acquiring and concealing explosives
much harder, ultimately scuppering Kordt’s plans. Over the course of the Second World War,
there’d be many more attempts to kill Hitler, several of which involved a familiar figure –
Beppo Römer was far from done planning to take on the Fuhrer. Having been released from his
imprisonment in 1939, Römer was quick to get himself embroiled in more anti Nazi activities.
Namely, trying to kill Hitler… again. Alongside co-conspirators from the resistance group Solf
Circle, Römer drew up further assassination plans, receiving funding from Nikolaus von Halem,
a German businessman, lawyer and resistance fighter. Through information he obtained from
a contact at the Berlin City Commandment, Römer was able to track Hitler’s movements
around Germany, and prepared for another strike. Unfortunately, an opportunity didn’t present
itself in time. Before long, the plot to assassinate Hitler was discovered by the Gestapo,
and Römer was arrested yet again. He was sentenced to death in June of 1944, and eventually executed
at Brandenburg Görden Prison later that year. By this point, German citizens, Swiss students
and Polish soldiers were among the overwhelming group of people who wanted Hitler dead. Would you
believe that group also included some of his own Nazi generals though? When it was announced that
Hitler was planning to visit an Army Detachment Camp in Ukraine, three German generals - Hubert
Lanz, Hans Speidel and Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz – were all part of a conspiracy to arrest or execute
the Nazi leader. Their plan was as follows: when Hitler and his military escort arrived,
Strachwitz would see to it that they were surrounded by tanks! Forget about secretly
planted explosives, or subterfuge and sniper rifles – these generals didn’t have time for
that. Lanz had planned on arresting Hitler, but at the first sign of resistance from the
Fuhrer or his soldiers, Strachwitz would have ordered his tanks to wipe them all out. The one
problem with this plan? Hitler cancelled his visit and the whole thing had to be called off.
By 1943, with the tide of the war changing in favor of the Allied Forces, some more officers
within Hitler’s army started to think it was time to consider making peace with their
enemies. Of course, the man himself wouldn’t have stood for that, so he had to go. Following
the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, Hitler was due to visit his troops on the
Eastern Front, spurring German officer and resistance member Henning von Tresckow to come
up with a trio of audacious assassination plans. The first was to intercept and kill Hitler as
he made his way from the airport to the German army base he was visiting in Smolensk, Russia.
Seeing that he was guarded by armed SS officers, this plan was dropped, and another took its
place. During lunch, Tresckow and a number of other officers intended to stand up when one
of them gave a signal, draw their pistols, and shoot Hitler there and then. However, it
quickly became clear that Hitler wouldn’t be joining them for lunch, and, in a last-ditch
effort, Henning von Tresckow cracked his most outlandish plan of all – explosive liquor.
Tresckow presented a case of Cointreau triple sec to one of Hitler’s aides, asking the man if
he’d take the case back with them and deliver it to another officer that whom Tresckow had
supposedly lost a bet. The aide accepted, not realizing he’d just been given a bomb…
with a thirty-minute timer. The Cointreau bomb was meant to detonate within the cargo
hold of Hitler’s plane as he made the return flight towards Germany, going over Poland.
However, given the freezing conditions, the package iced up and failed to detonate.
One of Tresckow’s fellow conspirators was able to recover the bomb before their unsuccessful
plot could be discovered. But Tresckow and his allies weren’t about to give up there.
One of Tresckow’s close friends and co-conspirators, Generalmajor Rudolf Christoph
Freiherr von Gersdorff, was the next to plan an attempt on Hitler’s life and planned to take
even more drastic measures that wouldn’t have just resulted in the Nazi leader’s demise – but his
own! Following Tresckow’s failed assassination with the case of Cointreau, Gersdorff was ready to
sacrifice his own life to take Hitler down, using two grenades and a deadly embrace.
Hitler was due to attend an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin, and
Gersdorff was something of an expert, so he’d been tasked with showing the Fuhrer around. It was the
perfect opportunity, so Gersdorff readied a pair of explosive devices with delayed timers and hid
them on his coat. The timers were on a ten-minute delay, and his plan was to throw his arms around
Hitler as the explosives were about to detonate, grabbing him in a death embrace that
would blow them both to smithereens. But much to Gersdorff’s understandable
disappointment, Hitler breezed through the exhibition in less than ten minutes and was
gone before the bombs went off. This would’ve left Gersdorff in quite the predicament, caught with a
pair of unexploded bombs in his pockets, with only a couple minutes left until they blew up. Luckily,
he was able to sneak off to a bathroom and defuse the concealed explosives instead of going to
pieces. He even managed to escape detection, intentionally transferring back to the Eastern
Front to avoid the suspicion of the Gestapo. Gersdorff certainly wouldn’t be the last person
willing to give his own life in order to get rid of Hitler, though. Major Axel von dem Bussche was
encouraged to carry out another suicide bombing attempt that was intended to take Hitler with
it after he witnessed the SS massacre of over three thousand Jewish civilians. You see, Bussche
happened to be over six feet tall, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed – in other words, he was the epitome
of the Nazis’ Aryan ideal – which made him the perfect candidate to model the new Wehrmacht
winter uniforms in front of the Fuhrer himself. The uniform viewing was scheduled to
take place at the Wolf’s Lair in Poland, Hitler’s top secret military headquarters.
Bussche’s plan was to slip a grenade into his own pocket and blow himself up when the
Fuhrer got close enough to him. But this time, rather than being discovered by the Gestapo, it
was actually the Allied Forces that put a stop to this assassination plan – albeit unintentionally.
The night before, a bombing raid by Allied pilots destroyed the train that had been carrying the
uniforms that Bussche had been due to model, and the viewing was postponed. This didn’t
stop a man named Ewald von Kleist from coming up with a plan similar to Bussche's;
however, the uniform inspection was postponed again and eventually canceled by Hitler.
Perhaps the most famous attempt to kill Hitler came in 1944, known as the July Plot. Several
German military leaders planned to assassinate the Fuhrer in order to seize control of the German
government and win favor with the Allies. This coup, codenamed Operation Valkyrie, was planned by
Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, our old Cointreau-concealing friend Henning von Tresckow,
and a number of the officers who had been involved in the Oster Conspiracy. They’d been warned the
Gestapo might be onto them, so they were running short on time – they needed to act soon.
When they were in a conference with Hitler, Stauffenberg slipped a bomb inside a briefcase
under the table. It was as close to the Fuhrer as possible… until another unsuspecting officer moved
it behind one of the table’s legs. This time, unlike so many other attempts… the bomb
actually detonated. But being behind the table leg shielded Hitler from the worst of
the explosion, leaving him with only minor injuries. Four other people were killed in the
blast, and a further thirteen suffered injuries. The coup had failed, and Stauffenberg was
sent to face a firing squad after he tried to flee to Berlin. After hearing the plan had
failed, Henning von Tresckow took his own life, and around five thousand other officers and
civilians were rounded up and executed by the Gestapo in connection to Operation Valkyrie.
On April 30th, 1945, Adolf Hitler did what no assassin could and took his own life, effectively
signaling the end of the Second World War and his Nazi regime along with it.
To find out what happened next, check out “What Happened Immediately
After Hitler Died.” Or watch this instead!
