Claus von Stauffenberg
November 15, 1907 – July 21, 1944
German army officer who led the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944 and was executed the following night.
Biography
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was born in 1907 at Jettingen in Bavaria into an old Catholic noble family; his father was the last senior court official of the Kingdom of Württemberg. As a young man he moved in the circle of the poet Stefan George. In 1926 he joined the family's cavalry regiment in Bamberg, and later trained at the war academy in Berlin.
Stauffenberg took part in the invasion of Poland, the campaign in France and the invasion of the Soviet Union. Though he had initially shown some sympathy for parts of Hitler's programme, events such as the Night of the Long Knives and Kristallnacht and the treatment of Jews alienated him. In 1943 he was badly wounded in Tunisia, losing his left eye, his right hand and two fingers of his left hand.
After recovering he joined the military resistance around Henning von Tresckow and became the central figure of the plan to kill Hitler and seize power through Operation Valkyrie. On 20 July 1944 he planted a bomb at the Wolf's Lair, but Hitler survived with minor injuries. The coup collapsed that evening in Berlin, and Stauffenberg was shot by firing squad in the early hours of 21 July.
