January 17, 2019 • 46 mins
A lot of people in Hitler's inner circle wanted him dead toward the end of the war. But he proved impossible to kill from within. Listen in today as Josh and Chuck dig into the infamous July 20th plot to blow up Der Führer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know about Smoking Hitler,
(00:22):
Smoking Hitler. Well, you know what's funny is uh, what's
funny about? Assessin? Well? I I got this idea because
I had listened to the recent friendly Fire podcast episode
on Valkyrie. Boy, you're just going all out on friendly Fire,
aren't it? Like it? Okay, it's good show, um, and
(00:46):
there aren't many people that know more about history than
John Roderick, Like, it's really impressive to hear that guy
go off like from the dome. No, I know, it's
got quite a brain. And hey, Ben Harrison's no slouch either.
He's a little bit of a slouch. He's listening to this,
so I gotta rib him. But John at one point
in the show was like, I can't like this. You'll
(01:06):
see in the show it's such a convoluted plan to
blow up Hitler. And he's just like, I can't believe
in all those years they couldn't get one one person
to walk up and shoot him in the head. I
saw that to um in a couple of places, and
it is very vexing and perplexing. Then not one person
(01:26):
said and apparently people agreed to suicide missions. A lot
of people wanted to kill him, but personally they just
didn't go. They didn't go. But that what sound? Is
it like a luger make? I don't even know. I
don't know. I can tell you what a dye in
German sounds like when they're falling off a building. Oh
(01:47):
is that the vilhelm screen? Well, we wouldn't put the
right one in anyway, so I forget. Yeah, anyway, it
just seems odd to me that because there were I
think fifteen or sixteen total plots to assassinate Hitler, and
I don't know if there wasn't a single one that
was like you take a gun, walk up behind him
(02:09):
at his desk and shoot him in the head, and
then shoot yourself because it's going to go really badly
for you, right, Yeah, I mean they were all suicide missions, mostly,
not all of them, apparently. So Um, I was surprised
because I didn't realize. I think I had heard, like,
you know, people had wanted to assassinate Hitler or something
like that. I didn't realize that Hitler was about his
(02:30):
charmed human being as far as surviving assassination tempts goes
as they come. Um, just didn't realize that, would you say,
like maybe fifteen sixteen plus this one? Okay? Um? And
I mean like there were close calls, like somewhere you know,
he just missed his assassination by a couple of minutes
(02:50):
or a bomb didn't go off even though it was
fully functioning and should have been blown his plane out
of the sky. That's the contro bottle or whatever. So
it's not like he he went on as their fear
for lack of trying. It just didn't happen for some reason.
The assassination attempt that that most people think of when
(03:12):
they think of attempts to assassinate Hitler, especially if you're
a fan of Tom Cruise, especially if you're a fan
of Tom Cruise dressed as a pirate. Um is uh
the the Operation Valkyrie that we're about to talk about.
I watched that again today, and what do you think
of this time around? It's good. I like it. I
like the Cruise. It's the accent things weird, But you
(03:33):
just gotta get past it. He uh I saw. There
was like a pretty big outcry from Germans when he
was cast, when it was announced that he was going
to play class fund Stauffenberg because Klass von Stauffenbergers will
see as a national hero of Germany, and Germany does
not take kindly to scientology. It's yeah. They were not
(03:54):
really happy when Tom Cruises cast to play their national hero.
They said, crew, that was great. Thanks, so July, yes, like,
do you want to do the whole plan right here?
Like we're working this out right, okay, alright, alright, new
new new plans or just like what happened. I've got it,
(04:17):
I've got it. We're gonna take a totally different tech
you already okay. So this Operation Valkyrie that we're talking about,
it took place. It was a called the July twenty
plot is what it's called. But the operation was actually
something larger than that, and as we'll see, it entailed
a lot of people. And these were like high ranking
military officials, some of the highest military officials in the
(04:41):
German military, the Wehrmacht, saying that right, we're involved in
a plot to assassinate Hitler, and uh, ed put this
together for us any points out like, there are a
lot of reasons people had to want to assassinate Hitler.
There was people who said, you know, uh, we're what
we're doing with the the extermination of the Jews and
(05:03):
other people is is like completely unconscionable and this needs
to have an end put to it. I think that
was mostly Kenneth branna Right, if we're going movie style, okay, um,
like in real life though he supposedly was the one that, yeah,
I had the true conscience of what they were doing
was wrong. Who who did he play? Trust Trust Cow?
(05:26):
He's it's a tough one, Henning von Trush Cow Trust
t r E s c. K Ow. I'm pretty sure
I got that right, that that was the Kenneth Branno character,
and he genuinely was opposed to how they were doing
things right, Okay, So um, there was at least one
person who felt that way, but he was very much
in the minority. Yeah. There were another group of people
(05:47):
who thought, well, you know, these Nazis, they're kind of upstarts.
They're like nouveaux reiche politically speaking. Yeah, um, and they
don't really care about the old Guard well, I'm part
of the old Guard. My family landed gentry in Germany.
We have a nice tradition going back hundreds of years,
and now these Nazi up starts are moving my family
(06:08):
out of power. We're no longer in the elite, and
I don't like that. That's another reason why people wanted
to get Yeah, and I think they were, like the
majority of the people in this plot were those people
like they weren't idealist democratic people who wanted like they
were just trying to protect their heritage. Some of them
(06:30):
were anti fascists, not all of them, but then there
was definitely a through line that a lot of people
bought into and may have even been a major motivator
for a lot of people to um. By the time
July rolled around, it was very clear to most people,
uh inside of Germany and out who were paying attention
(06:51):
and who knew everything, that Germany could not win World
War two any longer. After Normandy it was dead exactly
the water Yeah, um, when once we made it to Normandy,
it was it was over. And not only have we
made it to Normandy by this time, but we we
had supplies coming in, we had more and more troops
coming in we were overrunning Europe. Now Europe was was ours.
Plus the Russians were moving their way westward from the east.
(07:15):
Not a good position for Germany to be in between
the Allies and the Russians. Um Italy, Mussolini had been overthrown.
So Italy was now this soft underbelly, as Winston Churchill
put it, that could be attacked from Africa. Was he
gone by this time? He was a puppet dictator in
the northern part of Italy that was protected by Germany
(07:35):
because the most of Italy was gone. The movie may
be wrong, but the movie they were like Mussolini's coming
for lunch or whatever. That's true. But he had lost
most of Italy by this time. But that left Italy
exposed to attack from Africa, and Africa had just recently
been lost by Rommel. So Germany was in no position
to win World War two. So there were a lot
(07:57):
of people, high ranking officials in the military. You said, Okay,
before they actually make their way into Germany, that's a
point of no return. Maybe we can get it a
hitler and negotiate a peace that that keeps our republic intact. Yeah,
and supposedly had even spoken to some of the Allied
leaders like, hey, let's just say Hitler was not around,
(08:22):
just just hypothetically, what would that look like for for
the rest of us, Like, how could we come out
of this? Okay? Yeah, uh, no one knows truly how.
I don't know how far down the road those talks went,
but it had been mentioned. So the supposedly their point
of contact was Alan Dulles, one of the Dullest brothers
who would later overthrow the um government of Guatemala, among
(08:44):
other things, as CIA director the airport Dulless. Yea interesting,
same dulless As, But that's who they were talking to.
He was like the CIA or the OSS station chief
of Switzerland at the time. But I think the Germans
were like, Okay, we will do this and we'll get
rid of Hitler and we want to remain, you know,
keep Germany intact. But the Russians cannot be part of
the peace talks. We've done some things that they're not
(09:08):
very happy about and they can't be part of it.
And the Allies wouldn't wouldn't take that off of the table. Yeah,
because if the Russians were in there negotiating, it would
be a much different story for Germany. So all of
these guys knew that Germany could not win the war. Hitler,
who was running the show, still had very different ideas.
His idea of fighting this war was, We're going to
(09:30):
fight this war until the very last German is killed.
Every man, woman, child who can pick up a gun
is going to fight to the death against these invaders
of our homeland. And and I'm totally out of my
mind and I'm taking the whole country down with me. Yeah.
And in the in the Vulkyrie film, they even say, like,
you know, with the Normandy going on and what's happened there,
(09:52):
and he's just sort of like, well, I don't know
what you're talking about. Everything's going great, right, give me
some more crystal meth? Did he do that? That's the
legend that that crystal meth was invented by Nazi scientists,
and that upper echelon Nazis were all into that big time. Man,
there's so many, like of all the people in history,
(10:12):
like so many things that are horrific and true, and
then so many weird stories from like Nazi treasure hunting
to crystal meth addiction. It's just crazy. I wrote a
really interesting new Yorker article about people who treasure hunt
for Nazi treasures in Poland in the mountains of Poland.
And the thing that gives gravity to these claims is
(10:34):
that there really are enormous tunnels in the mountains in
Poland that you could fit train folds of gold in
and um, they think that they actually might have something
to them, even though that's supposedly a hoax, the Nazi
gold thing, supposedly, but again, they have these tunnel networks
that are like, really there. It's not like there are
(10:54):
the tunnels themselves are urban legend. It's just these tunnel
networks are so expansive that no one's ever app them all, gotcha,
But they do exist. So there may be a gold
rich poss wing that no one's ever found. Yeah. Interesting,
So wow, that was a lot. Do you want to
take a break and then get into it, tomorre you're
ready to keep plugging along? No, man, let's uh, let's
talk about killing Hitler right after this. So Hitler. Uh.
(11:43):
Hitler had done a lot up into this point to
have total control over Germany and over the state, whether
it was controlling what news went out to, having people
swear oaths of loyalty to him as a person, not Germany,
like it really at me today, the Hyle Hitler thing
like soldiers saying Hyle Hitler to one another when Hitler
(12:07):
is not around. It's not like I would understand if like, well,
sure you'd do that to Hitler. But he was having
them do that to everyone. It wasn't like long lived Germany.
It was Heil Hitler. And they're like, he's nowhere near here,
are you realize? You're like, yeah, but we gotta say
this otherwise we're toasted. And I think over time, like
even when you are forced to do that or kind
(12:27):
of brainwashed into doing there or whatever, you kind of
adopt that that sense, like like the eagerness. You know
it's weird. It's because it's just it's bizarre. It is bizarre. Um.
The other thing we should mention really quickly too, before
we move on, is the the sipping hoft uh. This
was an ancient Middle Aged blood law basically where they
(12:52):
say from Germany, where they were like, you know, if
you're guilty of a crime, your whole family is. And
as you will see, Project Valkyrie was reason enough for
for Himler to dust that off. Say, remember that ancient custom. Well,
we're just gonna do it here. Yeah, it wasn't even
further back than that to like the second century BC.
(13:12):
From what I saw, it's crazy. So it's basically the
idea is, if you are a trader, that means you
have traitorous blood in you, and since you've passed your
bloodline along, then all of the members of your family
must have that same traitor as blood. So the whole
family has to be wiped out. That's the idea behind it.
It's not clear if Himler just made this up or whatever,
(13:34):
but there was that threat of of if you do
something to um put the family into to to put
yourself in jeopardy, you put the whole family in jeopardy.
People like basically spying on not just their neighbors, but
on their own family members. Yeah, and if you want
to hatch a plot to kill Hitler, then that puts
your family at risk exactly, not just yourself. Yeah. And
(13:56):
then plus also um the the it's you can't really
discount the that he really thoroughly controlled the media. So
if there was a resistance, if there were people who
did great acts of protest or whatever, it would just
be lost. It would not be reported on, and so
whatever spark they created couldn't grow into a flame. So
(14:16):
there was a tremendous amount of control. And even today
historians are still debating how complicit the actual people of
Germany were and how much they were coerced into following Hitler.
It's a it's a real bone of contention among historians today. Well,
I'm sure it was a very mixed bag of allegiances
and loyalties and like what people truly believed in what
(14:39):
they were, you know, they weren't getting the real information anyway,
you know exactly. And then that on top of the
whole family is going to get wiped out if you
do something could keep people in line, alright. So the
Operation Valkyrie itself, like we said, killing Hitler was a
small part, well not a small part, a major part,
But Operation Valkyrie itself was a larger plan uh to
(15:04):
rest control of of the German government basically from the
Nazis and the s S. Yeah, it was an existing
operation that got co opted and made a part of
the plot to assassinate Hitler because they knew that just
killing Hitler wasn't enough, because someone I guess Hitler would
have just stepped in this place. Yeah, there's evidence that
Himmler knew about this plot and basically letting it happen
(15:27):
so he could do of course. So uh, here was
a deal. Operation Valkyrie was a contingency plan and this
was set up with Hitler's signature, uh, to control the
reserve army of Germany. So there was basically I couldn't
tell if it was like our reserves over here. I
(15:51):
don't know. It wasn't quite like that because they maybe
like the National Guard, you think, yeah, because it says
that they were called up to um to support the front,
and you call up the National Guards sometimes here in
the United States, right, Yeah, I think it was. It
would be like, well, they were the remnants of the
(16:12):
German army that was left back. They were the army
that was still in Germany at this point. They weren't
out fighting and on the front lines, although they could
be called. They were there to defend Germany. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh,
if the call came through and Operation Valkyrie was enacted,
that basically meant that something's gone wrong, and not necessarily
the Hitler's dead, but um, something's gone wrong and that
(16:35):
army needs to mobilize basically and keep it the status
quo until they hear further. Then there were two people
who were who were authorized to start Operation Valkyrie, which
was essentially a signal like you said that something's gone
wrong and the army needs to regain control of the country.
(16:55):
Um it was Hitler and Friedrich Frome. It was the army,
Reserve Army leader and um if From basically said to
the Reserve Army Operation Valkyries. In effect, the Reserve Army
would fight whoever From told them to, which is Tom Wilkinson.
If you're playing at home, man, that guy. He's great,
(17:19):
great actor. He had this English accent in full effect. Heir,
Tom Cruise is speaking American. It's all over the map.
It's crazy. It was a weird decision. Lots of weird decision.
It was at the time. I mean, have you seen it.
I started to and then stopped. Yeah. Yeah, I thought
it was a good movie. But I'm sure it was.
I don't know. I don't remember what it was, but
(17:40):
I just couldn't. I know that that Brian Singer, the director,
made the conscious choice. He was like, I don't want
everyone doing these bad german accents. Everybody do different weird,
so just talk how you talk. And it's a little confusing,
I mean not confusing, because you know they're Germans because
they're wearing those fantastic outfits by Hugo Ball. Is that true? Yes,
(18:02):
I heard that he was co opted but not didn't
actually design the uniforms. Uh. I think it's probably like
the Adidas, the Danzler brothers Rember their factory was co
opted to make torpedoes. I'm pretty sure the same thing happened.
But Hugo Boss's thing was to make the uniforms. Um.
So yeah, I think it's true. I just wondered if
(18:24):
he actually designed them. That's what I heard. That's what
Russell Brand says, and by god, there's ever been a
truth teller, it's that guy, so Truscou Kenneth Branda, like
I was saying, he was the one that was really
um opposed to the brutality of Nazism, and he's the
one that developed these amendments to Operation Balkyrie for this plan,
(18:47):
which from what I could tell, was basically two speed
everything up a lot because they had a limited amount
of time once they killed Hitler to pull this off.
And I think it was like Operation Valker was supposed
to be six or eight hours, and he was now,
we need to get this done in like two or three.
So those are the amendments that he created, I think so,
in addition to some other stuff. But I think it
was speed mainly, all right, which is ironic because it
(19:09):
actually got slowed down in the in the in the execution.
Um but the so again, just to restate because it
is a little confusing, Operation Valkyrie was an existing Nazi
plan or German Army plan for the Reserve Army the
National Guard back home in Germany to take control of
the country. Um in in the event Operation Valkyrie was enacted,
(19:34):
and that could be because there was an uprising in
a in a concentration camp. It could be that there
was some sort of revolt that this, whatever it was,
it was an official Nazi German military plan that existed
that got co opted by the assassination plotters to tailor
it so that they could use it in a conjunction
(19:57):
with assassinating Hitler and basically trick the Reserve arm Me
into doing their bidding. And everyone, that's three times now.
If you don't get it, now, just listen to something else, Okay,
go listen to Friendly Fire. He's talking to me everybody.
He wants me to stop explaining. Will there be a
fourth time? Okay? So, uh well, I guess we need
(20:19):
to talk a little bit about Tom Cruise, who was
sort of the main player in this assassination attempt. Yeah,
we gotta talk a lot about him. This is the
guy who was who's become a national um hero in Germany. Yeah,
and here's a deal like history, and certainly that film
painted him as a as a hero. I mean, he
(20:40):
was a tried and true Nazi um up and you know,
up to a point where he decided to kill Hitler.
But he was not some like great guy who was
always like, no, to think what we're doing is wrong, guys,
we should really rethink this. His brother was his brother
Barthold Am I pronouncing that correctly b E R T
h O l D. Yeah. Okay. His brother Bart told
(21:02):
his older brother Um was in this plot too, and
he actually was um tortured and gave a confession. And
apparently in his confession he said, you know, no, we
generally agree with what the Nazis are doing. We just
think Hitler is a little too um uh over eager
(21:23):
over zealous about spilling German blood, uh and trying to
conquer the world. But everything else we pretty much agree with.
So yeah, these guys were they were Nazis, they were
just anti Hitler basically. Yeah. So, um, Klaus fin Stauffenberg
had been wounded previously I think in Africa, right, yes,
under Rammel. Yeah, and was. Um. In fact, that scene
(21:45):
of the film is really good, that's pretty accurate his
his There's a bombing and a and a stray thing
from a plane that he gets like full on all
over his body, loses his right hand and everything but
too Inger's and his thumb on his left, loses his
left eye and as basically he's got two functioning fingers
(22:07):
and a thumb at this point. Yes, not the perfect
person to carry out a very highly technical bomb planting. Yeah,
and that's definitely going to come into play. But apparently
um Stauffenberg, Klaus Staffenberg said, you know enough of this,
like people losing their nerve, quatro bombs not going off.
I mean, come on, if you want to done it right,
(22:29):
just do it yourself. Is basically apparently what his policy was.
He said, I'll do it, I'll kill Hitler. Yeah, He
never said maybe I should just shoot him in the head. Yeah,
Well he wanted to live, as evidenced by the actual
plot that they came up with. Well, plus they also
wanted um not wanted they they sort of demanded that
(22:50):
that Himmler be in the room at the time and
also be taken out. Otherwise, what's the point, right, So
this July twenty plot that we're working up to was
actually could have been called like the I think July
second plot or the July eighth plot. There were like
a few different attempts that were aborted, and one of
them was because Himmler and Garing I believe or were
(23:14):
meant to be in the room with Hitler and they weren't,
so they called it off. Apparently Klaus Strassburg decided on
his own, he's gonna von Stroffenberg. Straffenberg, I keep playing
to say Strassburg um Straffenberg decided on his own he's
gonna kill Hitler anyway, And when he went back in
the room to do it after reporting that that Himmler
and Garing weren't there um to kill Hitler, Hitler had
(23:37):
just left. The meeting ended early like that. That was
the kind of like luck that Hitler had. Yeah, and
that was played out pretty accurately in the movie. Actually,
um like he was like, all right, I'm gonna do it,
and they're like meetings adjourned said wait wait, I have
something else to say. Um, just to kind of reset
with who the major or what the major players are doing.
(23:58):
We mentioned Frederick fron him Tom Wilkinson in the movie.
He was the head of the Reserve Army. And then
there was another key player named Friedrich olbrick Um who
was He was the one that basically was because from
was like, I kind of know about this, but I'm
not I'm not going to play a part in it,
(24:19):
but I'm not gonna wrat you out either, So I'm
just gonna see where the chips fall. Very cowardly. Yeah,
he he would have basically gone with whoever was in
charge or whoever was on top, so he wouldn't report it.
But he also wouldn't sign the order himself, which meant
that Old Brick had to actually issue a fake order
in from his name, uh mobilizing that you know, basically
(24:42):
Operation Balkris in effect. Right, So Albricht from and uh
Staffenberg were all Reserve Army high officials, and again the
Reserve Army is the one who can take control of
the country under operation. We should have a sound effect
every time we explain that, maybe Jerry will surprise us. Um,
(25:05):
all right, should we talk about the actual day on?
I think we should? Alright, So Hitler is in the
Wolf's Layer. That's where he spent it was, Um, I
guess it would have been Poland. Huh yeah, East Prussia,
which is part of Poland. Yeah, so that was where
(25:25):
he was hanging out towards the end of the war.
Heavily fortified, heavily on meth. Well, that would actually make
a lot of sense, because he was increasingly paranoid. Yes,
that's I think that's part of your evidence. Locked in
a bunker doing meth probably doesn't help. In East Prussia
they call it the East Prussia Blues. So uh, the
(25:46):
I guess it's called the wolf the wolf Shanza in German.
But give it some flavor the um. But just very
heavily fortified, like his actual bunker. An area was like
concrete with like steel doors. It was where that where
you would keep Hitler at that point in the war, right,
(26:07):
or where Hitler would keep himself. So there was on
this July twenty plot. There again they wanted Himmler and
um Garing, if not Gribbles too. Uh in the room
with Hitler was the big one they wanted, right because
he was the heir apparent, right. But if you'll notice,
as many times as they tried to do this, um
(26:30):
Himmler was nowhere around Hitler at this time, which is
again evidence that Himler knew something was up and wasn't
about to be in the same room as Hitler at
any point because they knew that. He knew that they
wanted to kill Hitler and take him out too, so
he was just gonna let it play out. So they
decided to just go ahead and assassinate Hitler at least,
and this Wolf Slayer was a perfect location to assassinate
(26:54):
Hitler if it was an inside job. He said, you
could not get to him in there from the outside,
but if you could get in, you could get to
him really well. Because these concrete reinforced bunkers with steel
doors that had no windows. If you set off a
bomb in there, it would be amplified. It would have
(27:14):
the the concussion from the bomb, the blast, the shock
wave would have nowhere to go, so it would just
reverberate around the room until it finally went out of steam,
and it would kill everybody in there. No matter where
you were, no matter what you were doing, you would
be dead from this blast. So it was a really
good idea. When they showed up on July, Staffenberg and
(27:35):
his assistant with two briefcases that each had a time
bomb in it with two pounds of plastic explosives, one
of those would have killed everybody. They had double the amount. Yeah,
and the guy that set this all up in the
in the movie basically said that he was like, this
is pretty redundant to have du with these, like in
(27:56):
that bunker. One of these will kill everyone in that room, right, Um, Like,
don't sweat it, guys. Nothing can go wrong, yea, even
though you have to stick this metal thing in there
and crack it with a pair of pliers and I
noticed you've only got two fingers, but this should be fine. Um,
nothing can go wrong. What went wrong was something that
(28:18):
no one anticipated is that meeting and this changed everything. Uh.
That meeting didn't take place in the bunker, supposedly because
it was too hot, too hot. Hitler didn't like to
sweat and he was loaded on meth. Right, So they
moved this this meeting where they were going to go
over strategy, like detailed strategy maps and everything, from this
death inducing bunker to basically a hut, a flimsy hut
(28:42):
almost open air. It was so flimsy and windows and everything.
I think the windows were open too because it was hot. Okay. Um.
The roof was just kind of like whatever, it might
as well have been thatched. And then the the room
also featured a table, a heavy slab oak table with
heavy oaken legs, and that's what they had the maps
(29:03):
out on that was this will be a big deal
in a second. Yeah, So the plan is we we
go in there. We uh they were gonna fake like
he needed to change his shirt because he got some
blood from cutting his neck while shaving. Yeah, and so
that's where he would get some private time to um
to activate the bomb. He knew he would have you know,
(29:25):
ten minutes maybe less to get out of there once
he did that. So uh they did. So they broke
these capsules. Um went in there and the plan was
that he was gonna have it set up where uh,
he had someone faking a call coming in to get
him out of the room, in which he would say,
I gotta get to Berlin. I got orders like I
(29:45):
gotta leave now, and Hitler would be like, uh, I
give the orders here? Who told you to go to Berlin? Well,
Hitler wouldn't know about any of this. He's knee deep
and pounding tables and yelling. So um, they have they
have the briefcases. They only get a chance because as
there um cutting open the acid capsule on the one,
(30:07):
I guess a century outside like called through the door
to them, scared them. Yeah, they were like, hey, dude,
the meeting starting, okay, so they had to head out.
That was another thing. The meeting time change from one
to twelve thirty because Mussolini was coming and they wanted
to make sure they were done in time for his arrival. Okay.
So um, they only got to activate one of the
(30:28):
bombs and they just left the other one. They didn't
take it in with them, they just kept it with them,
So they were down to one bomb. They were in
a different venue than the bomb had been planned for.
And then now this heavy oak table comes into into play. Yeah,
so while they were in there, they set it down
near Hitler or you know Stauffenberg does. Um. A man
(30:48):
named Heinz brunt Um went stepped close to the table
so we could see things better, knocked over the briefcase.
It's just so like, are you kidding me? With like
how history plays out. He if he hadn't kicked over
that thing, it might have still worked. But he kicked
over the briefcase, moved it to the other side of
one of those big, heavy oak legs. The bomb does
(31:09):
go off, and Staufenberg gets the heck out of there
quick like, and in his mind he's like that bomb,
that explosion was massive, Like everyone's dead. Yeah, and when
we're gone, he and his assistant. Yeah, So he heads
out from the Wolf's Layer to a waiting airplane at
the nearby air base to fly back to Berlin and
(31:30):
start Operation Valkyrie. Right, that's where we're going to leave
it for now. Yeah, we'll be back right after this, Okay, chuck.
(32:02):
So Stoffenberg just said, off this bomb, He and his
assistant are on their way to Berlin, right, Yeah, three
hour flight and while he's in the air, Valkyrie is
supposed to have started, right. But here's the problem. There
was a guy stationed at the Wolf Slayer who was
meant to report on this and basically say, go ahead,
(32:25):
do your thing. Operation Valkyrie's a go. Hitler's dead, but
they hadn't considered that Hitler might survive this assassination attempt,
didn't come up with any code word for that. So
the guy was just kind of clumsily like trying to
be like, you know, things aren't so great. Um uh,
something big happened, but not not happened happig So so
(32:49):
they're like, we don't know what you're talking about because
people are listening basically, so um. They the guys back
in Berlin, these assassination plotters, these conspirators, get this mess
and from the Wolf Slayer, and they still don't know
what's going on. They just know something has happened. They
don't know if Hitler's dead or what. So the guy
is a Albricht who decides to wait until Staffenberg comes
(33:10):
back to enact Operation Valkyrie. So there's a three hour
delay between the bomb going off and the implementation of
Operation Valkyrie. Yeah, and if you recall back at the beginning,
they sped this whole thing up by three hours in
the official plans that Hitler signed off on. So timing
was important, So in Tom Cruise Lands He's like, dude,
(33:34):
are you kidding me? It was three hours ago? Right?
So um, that was that was a big problem with it.
The second problem was that they didn't cut the lines
from the wolf Slayer, and apparently even Gebel's like mocked
them later after this. They didn't even cut the telephone lines,
didn't cut them. They ceased communications. They tried to as
(33:54):
as they could, but they didn't have control of the
wolf Slayer. They just could. All they could do is
kind of clumsily mess up the communications to delay it.
But there was no radio silence from the wolfs Layer,
which would have let Operation Valkyrie play out. Instead, Germany
had a lot of conflicting reports and different things going on.
(34:14):
It was total chaos. Is Hitler alive? Is Hitler dead? Um?
Who's in charge? And so when when Stauffenberg gets back
and finds out all Brick has been waiting sitting on
Operation Valkyrie, he immediately is like, put it into into play.
It's going um one way or another. We don't know
if it's Hitler's dead or not, but we're going ahead
(34:35):
with Operation Valkyrie. Because no one knows the Hitler's dead
or not, so we could considerably pull it off. Yeah,
and I think there were um I think it was
like Paris, Prague, maybe Vienna, where some of the strongholds
where they needed these people to get on board and start,
you know, gathering up the ss UH. In Paris, the
(34:55):
quartermaster of the German troops there did receive the message
set the coup in motion, and I think it might
have happened in Prague, but like things were happening, but
Berlin was the big one because they knew like even
if they got Paris and the others like fully on
board and finished, you know, with their duties, if they
didn't have Berlin, they were still kind of screwed. So
(35:16):
they they actually didn't have Berlin. It was kind of
like a seesaw whether they were going to have Berlin
or not. Um, there was enough confusion that I think
the guy who was in charge of the Reserve Army
at the time, um, I didn't know which way to
go from. Well, yeah, from was the sort of coward
(35:38):
that was just he just wanted to not get ratted out.
He just wanted things to turn out well for him.
So he um, he he sees the chance to basically
realigned himself with Hitler because it's clear that the it
looks like the coup's probably not going to work. So
his allegiance is back a Hitler, and so he tries
(36:01):
to arrest Staffenberg and Obricht, and they in turn arrest him,
and there's apparently a shootout right in the actual War
Ministry building. Yeah, because there were literally two different sets
of orders official orders coming out because they were because
of miscommunication. There were two different people controlling the German Army.
(36:22):
We'll find the German government, right, And so finally there
was a guy who was truly confused. One of the
Reserve Army leaders was genuinely confused. He was trying to
follow orders because he thought that there was an S
S uprising like the Operation Valkyrie plotters had said. And apparently,
uh he got on the phone with Hitler and Hitler
(36:43):
said do you recognize my voice? And the guy was
like yeah. He goes, I'm telling you to arrest these
people that the Nazis are still in charge, and to
disregard these other orders, to send them more crystal mess
right supplies low uh uh And and here's the deal
Hitler had ordered, um he wanted them taken alive, um,
(37:06):
whereas From was trying to speed up their execution so
he wouldn't get ratted out. Uh And basically, and and
I think this is kind of true how it played
out in the movie. Um, Chalfenberg is like you're going
down to like you realize this, like nobody will be spared.
So you're kidding yourself if you think this kangaroo court
you're gonna run us through was gonna make any difference.
(37:27):
So From said, Okay, well then I'll just have you
guys summarily executed. Yeah what what he did? Yeah? This court, Um,
it's sort of the definition of a kangaroo court in history.
It was called the People's Court, which is kind of funny.
There was no judge Wapner hanging out. There was a
judge Freislow though. Um, and there's actually footage of this guy.
(37:49):
He had this really shrill voice and he would This
was a court where you would run people in and
just have a chance of like conviction by hanging or
firing squad. Yeah, there was a run by um Nazi
fanatics and it was a court designed to try people
who resisted Nazism. Yeah, and the sippen Hoff that we
(38:12):
mentioned that all your family is guilty too. This was
really where it got enacted, uh, the heaviest and I
think like seven thousand people were arrested in this plot.
Seven thousand people were arrested, five thousand were executed. Man,
so they really went to town in that sippen Hoff thing. Um,
they they took babies, infants and put them in concentration
(38:36):
care for for children under sixteen. Um. The Staffenberg brothers,
so From summarily executed Klaus Stoffenberg that night at the
war ministry. UM. It's something I saw I thought was
kind of cool. His assistant jumped in front of the
bullets originally intended for Stoffenberg, and then they still killed
(38:56):
Steffenberg anyway, but From was trying to cover up as
tracks it did work. From was among the executed at
this later kangaroo court. I think he was executed in
March and as part of this the Sippenhoft. It was
just basically if there had been any restraints whatsoever on
Hitler in the Nazis in Germans or Germany, um, which
(39:21):
you could really make the case like there really weren't.
If there were, they were off now at once Hitler
realized that this was part of a larger plot, he
went berserk and it just became a blood orgy for him,
just killing everybody, anyone he could find that might have
anything remotely to do with this plot. He killed. He
killed people who have been prisoners for years. He went
(39:44):
through and did another purge of people who had just
been in prison, you know, for maybe thinking of assassinating
him years back. Totally unrelated. Um, they were just as
the the Allies started to move in and the Russian
started to move and they started killing people in the
concentration camps, just stepping it up even more. And there's
(40:04):
a there's a really good possibility that a lot of
those people would have lived had that bomb worked, had
it killed Hitler. Um, there's a there the the the
idea that there were people waiting to negotiate a piece
immediately a surrender of Germany. Um, all those people who
died after July would have lived. Yeah. I think some
(40:29):
of them were offered the opportunity to take their own life,
which quite a few of them did. Um. Like literally,
like here's a gun, just go in the other room.
So Ram was a very famous example of that. Yeah,
I think did he signide himself. He was given He
was given the opportunity to take a cyanide pill. Um.
Some Gestapo guys came to his house and said, here's
(40:51):
how it is. If you're a national hero, if you
if it comes out that you were part of this plot,
people are going to start questioning Hitler and Nazism. So
we can't have that. We're gonna give you the opportunity
to kill yourself and we won't make your family part
of this. Sippenhof will leave your family alone. So he
chose to take his own life rather than um, rather
than let his family go through this and and be
(41:13):
court martialed and executed anyway, So he killed himself as
a as a from this plot. Yeah, So there was
a cyanide, There was gunshots that you put upon yourself,
There were firing squad and then there was the meat
hook hanging, which was um. Hitler would require that certain
of these people had wire tied around their throat and
(41:36):
then that was hung from a meat hook and Bear
told von st Staffenberg was one of those guys. Oh brother, Yes,
he was UM. He was strangled multiple times and revived
so that they could strangle him again and Hitler. The
whole thing was filmed for Hitler to watch later. So yeah,
(41:57):
it was he went berserve after that. Apparently, if you
went to go visit Hitler, you, um, even as one
of his loyal like Nazi military officials, you had to
leave your gun outside. Yeah. I think that might have
been a rule anyway, because or maybe it was just
tradition to leave your your side arm and you know,
(42:19):
outside the room. Um, because they were doing that in
the movie. Yeah, but you know, I think on Roderick
Show he was like, well you could stick a gun
in your pocket and your little guard, yeah wherever in
your sock garter sure or your thie guard. Yeah, it
depending on what you're into. Um, I think that's it.
(42:42):
I'm surprised you didn't go after because, uh, von Strassenberg's
family was not punished, like his wife died like ten
or twelve years ago, right, but she was sent to
a concentration camp and was liberated from it after the
after the war. But they, I mean she went to
a concentration camp for sure, his brother. I can't believe
they weren't. He and her and her kids weren't killed
(43:03):
though the spot Yeah, it's weird apparently the arbitrary and
its just increased the terror of it too. You know,
well that makes sense. So, uh, that is the July
twenty plot. Okay, to assassinate Hitler. Uh. If you want
to know more about that, go listen to the uh
the friendly Fire episode on it. Yeah, it's a good one.
(43:26):
And Hitler, by the way, he was gone I think
nine months later, right, so it wasn't. I mean, this
is towards the end anyway, but which makes it even worse. Yeah,
you know, all right, so if you already said that,
it means it's time for listener me so quick follow
up on administrative details. We said if we forgot someone
(43:48):
uh and lost Embarni wrote in and it did. Forget
this one. Um. I sent an early color color study
of my Pando painting and wanted to make sure to arrive.
It's about three by five inches and an envelope and
it did and it's wonderful and lovely and very sorry
Lawson for that sneaking bias. I also want to say
I got something from Alison Gallagher as well. Oh now
(44:09):
he hadn't realized it, so thank you Allison for my gifts.
Too nice. It wasn't just chuck that you sent stuff too.
And you can find Lawson's art at Lawson Barney art
dot com. Yeah, it's beautiful pain very nice. All right,
listener mail this is uh. It was a very sweet
sweet emo from a couple. Hey guys, Rightney, thank you
(44:30):
for always being there on our long car rides. My wife,
me and I have to travel twelve hours from our
home in Butte, Montana, to Salt Lake City for her
cancer treatment at Huntsman Cancer Institute every couple of months,
and learning something new from you guys is always a
welcome edition on our drive. I thought of her type
of cancer h and the treatment as an interesting idea
(44:50):
for an episode. She was diagnosed with a rare cancer
called uh neuro endocrine tumor in ET. It's on her pancreas,
but it's very different from and create a cancer. So
when Steve jobs in a wreath of franklin um pass
of this type of cancer, it's always reported the news
is paying creatic cancer, which is incorrect and very disappointing
(45:11):
because it does take away awareness from n ET cancer.
The treatment is called peptide receptor radio nuclei therapy it
works in a way that sounds like science fiction. The
treatment is done through I V and is combined in
two parts. One part is attracted to cancer cells and
is welcomed into the cell. The second part is attached
to the first and releases a small amount of radiation
(45:34):
when inside the cancer cells. Very fascinating and my explanation
is very much glossed over. Again, thank you for the show.
Last thing, can you give my wife Mia a shout out?
That is from bo Miller, so of course, Mia, Hey, Miya,
shout out to Mia. Yeah, hanging there, guys. I know
it's a very tough time for you, and I'm glad
we can help in some small way while you're making
(45:56):
these long car rides. And we'll look into any t
for sure. Yeah, and thank you for reaching out to
us too. If you want to reach out to us,
you can find us on stuff you Should Know dot com.
All of our social links are on there and uh
you can also send us an email to stuff podcast
and how stuff Works dot com for more on this
(46:19):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com. H
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know about Smoking Hitler,
(00:22):
Smoking Hitler. Well, you know what's funny is uh, what's
funny about? Assessin? Well? I I got this idea because
I had listened to the recent friendly Fire podcast episode
on Valkyrie. Boy, you're just going all out on friendly Fire,
aren't it? Like it? Okay, it's good show, um, and
(00:46):
there aren't many people that know more about history than
John Roderick, Like, it's really impressive to hear that guy
go off like from the dome. No, I know, it's
got quite a brain. And hey, Ben Harrison's no slouch either.
He's a little bit of a slouch. He's listening to this,
so I gotta rib him. But John at one point
in the show was like, I can't like this. You'll
(01:06):
see in the show it's such a convoluted plan to
blow up Hitler. And he's just like, I can't believe
in all those years they couldn't get one one person
to walk up and shoot him in the head. I
saw that to um in a couple of places, and
it is very vexing and perplexing. Then not one person
(01:26):
said and apparently people agreed to suicide missions. A lot
of people wanted to kill him, but personally they just
didn't go. They didn't go. But that what sound? Is
it like a luger make? I don't even know. I
don't know. I can tell you what a dye in
German sounds like when they're falling off a building. Oh
(01:47):
is that the vilhelm screen? Well, we wouldn't put the
right one in anyway, so I forget. Yeah, anyway, it
just seems odd to me that because there were I
think fifteen or sixteen total plots to assassinate Hitler, and
I don't know if there wasn't a single one that
was like you take a gun, walk up behind him
(02:09):
at his desk and shoot him in the head, and
then shoot yourself because it's going to go really badly
for you, right, Yeah, I mean they were all suicide missions, mostly,
not all of them, apparently. So Um, I was surprised
because I didn't realize. I think I had heard, like,
you know, people had wanted to assassinate Hitler or something
like that. I didn't realize that Hitler was about his
(02:30):
charmed human being as far as surviving assassination tempts goes
as they come. Um, just didn't realize that, would you say,
like maybe fifteen sixteen plus this one? Okay? Um? And
I mean like there were close calls, like somewhere you know,
he just missed his assassination by a couple of minutes
(02:50):
or a bomb didn't go off even though it was
fully functioning and should have been blown his plane out
of the sky. That's the contro bottle or whatever. So
it's not like he he went on as their fear
for lack of trying. It just didn't happen for some reason.
The assassination attempt that that most people think of when
(03:12):
they think of attempts to assassinate Hitler, especially if you're
a fan of Tom Cruise, especially if you're a fan
of Tom Cruise dressed as a pirate. Um is uh
the the Operation Valkyrie that we're about to talk about.
I watched that again today, and what do you think
of this time around? It's good. I like it. I
like the Cruise. It's the accent things weird, But you
(03:33):
just gotta get past it. He uh I saw. There
was like a pretty big outcry from Germans when he
was cast, when it was announced that he was going
to play class fund Stauffenberg because Klass von Stauffenbergers will
see as a national hero of Germany, and Germany does
not take kindly to scientology. It's yeah. They were not
(03:54):
really happy when Tom Cruises cast to play their national hero.
They said, crew, that was great. Thanks, so July, yes, like,
do you want to do the whole plan right here?
Like we're working this out right, okay, alright, alright, new
new new plans or just like what happened. I've got it,
(04:17):
I've got it. We're gonna take a totally different tech
you already okay. So this Operation Valkyrie that we're talking about,
it took place. It was a called the July twenty
plot is what it's called. But the operation was actually
something larger than that, and as we'll see, it entailed
a lot of people. And these were like high ranking
military officials, some of the highest military officials in the
(04:41):
German military, the Wehrmacht, saying that right, we're involved in
a plot to assassinate Hitler, and uh, ed put this
together for us any points out like, there are a
lot of reasons people had to want to assassinate Hitler.
There was people who said, you know, uh, we're what
we're doing with the the extermination of the Jews and
(05:03):
other people is is like completely unconscionable and this needs
to have an end put to it. I think that
was mostly Kenneth branna Right, if we're going movie style, okay, um,
like in real life though he supposedly was the one that, yeah,
I had the true conscience of what they were doing
was wrong. Who who did he play? Trust Trust Cow?
(05:26):
He's it's a tough one, Henning von Trush Cow Trust
t r E s c. K Ow. I'm pretty sure
I got that right, that that was the Kenneth Branno character,
and he genuinely was opposed to how they were doing
things right, Okay, So um, there was at least one
person who felt that way, but he was very much
in the minority. Yeah. There were another group of people
(05:47):
who thought, well, you know, these Nazis, they're kind of upstarts.
They're like nouveaux reiche politically speaking. Yeah, um, and they
don't really care about the old Guard well, I'm part
of the old Guard. My family landed gentry in Germany.
We have a nice tradition going back hundreds of years,
and now these Nazi up starts are moving my family
(06:08):
out of power. We're no longer in the elite, and
I don't like that. That's another reason why people wanted
to get Yeah, and I think they were, like the
majority of the people in this plot were those people
like they weren't idealist democratic people who wanted like they
were just trying to protect their heritage. Some of them
(06:30):
were anti fascists, not all of them, but then there
was definitely a through line that a lot of people
bought into and may have even been a major motivator
for a lot of people to um. By the time
July rolled around, it was very clear to most people,
uh inside of Germany and out who were paying attention
(06:51):
and who knew everything, that Germany could not win World
War two any longer. After Normandy it was dead exactly
the water Yeah, um, when once we made it to Normandy,
it was it was over. And not only have we
made it to Normandy by this time, but we we
had supplies coming in, we had more and more troops
coming in we were overrunning Europe. Now Europe was was ours.
Plus the Russians were moving their way westward from the east.
(07:15):
Not a good position for Germany to be in between
the Allies and the Russians. Um Italy, Mussolini had been overthrown.
So Italy was now this soft underbelly, as Winston Churchill
put it, that could be attacked from Africa. Was he
gone by this time? He was a puppet dictator in
the northern part of Italy that was protected by Germany
(07:35):
because the most of Italy was gone. The movie may
be wrong, but the movie they were like Mussolini's coming
for lunch or whatever. That's true. But he had lost
most of Italy by this time. But that left Italy
exposed to attack from Africa, and Africa had just recently
been lost by Rommel. So Germany was in no position
to win World War two. So there were a lot
(07:57):
of people, high ranking officials in the military. You said, Okay,
before they actually make their way into Germany, that's a
point of no return. Maybe we can get it a
hitler and negotiate a peace that that keeps our republic intact. Yeah,
and supposedly had even spoken to some of the Allied
leaders like, hey, let's just say Hitler was not around,
(08:22):
just just hypothetically, what would that look like for for
the rest of us, Like, how could we come out
of this? Okay? Yeah, uh, no one knows truly how.
I don't know how far down the road those talks went,
but it had been mentioned. So the supposedly their point
of contact was Alan Dulles, one of the Dullest brothers
who would later overthrow the um government of Guatemala, among
(08:44):
other things, as CIA director the airport Dulless. Yea interesting,
same dulless As, But that's who they were talking to.
He was like the CIA or the OSS station chief
of Switzerland at the time. But I think the Germans
were like, Okay, we will do this and we'll get
rid of Hitler and we want to remain, you know,
keep Germany intact. But the Russians cannot be part of
the peace talks. We've done some things that they're not
(09:08):
very happy about and they can't be part of it.
And the Allies wouldn't wouldn't take that off of the table. Yeah,
because if the Russians were in there negotiating, it would
be a much different story for Germany. So all of
these guys knew that Germany could not win the war. Hitler,
who was running the show, still had very different ideas.
His idea of fighting this war was, We're going to
(09:30):
fight this war until the very last German is killed.
Every man, woman, child who can pick up a gun
is going to fight to the death against these invaders
of our homeland. And and I'm totally out of my
mind and I'm taking the whole country down with me. Yeah.
And in the in the Vulkyrie film, they even say, like,
you know, with the Normandy going on and what's happened there,
(09:52):
and he's just sort of like, well, I don't know
what you're talking about. Everything's going great, right, give me
some more crystal meth? Did he do that? That's the
legend that that crystal meth was invented by Nazi scientists,
and that upper echelon Nazis were all into that big time. Man,
there's so many, like of all the people in history,
(10:12):
like so many things that are horrific and true, and
then so many weird stories from like Nazi treasure hunting
to crystal meth addiction. It's just crazy. I wrote a
really interesting new Yorker article about people who treasure hunt
for Nazi treasures in Poland in the mountains of Poland.
And the thing that gives gravity to these claims is
(10:34):
that there really are enormous tunnels in the mountains in
Poland that you could fit train folds of gold in
and um, they think that they actually might have something
to them, even though that's supposedly a hoax, the Nazi
gold thing, supposedly, but again, they have these tunnel networks
that are like, really there. It's not like there are
(10:54):
the tunnels themselves are urban legend. It's just these tunnel
networks are so expansive that no one's ever app them all, gotcha,
But they do exist. So there may be a gold
rich poss wing that no one's ever found. Yeah. Interesting,
So wow, that was a lot. Do you want to
take a break and then get into it, tomorre you're
ready to keep plugging along? No, man, let's uh, let's
talk about killing Hitler right after this. So Hitler. Uh.
(11:43):
Hitler had done a lot up into this point to
have total control over Germany and over the state, whether
it was controlling what news went out to, having people
swear oaths of loyalty to him as a person, not Germany,
like it really at me today, the Hyle Hitler thing
like soldiers saying Hyle Hitler to one another when Hitler
(12:07):
is not around. It's not like I would understand if like, well,
sure you'd do that to Hitler. But he was having
them do that to everyone. It wasn't like long lived Germany.
It was Heil Hitler. And they're like, he's nowhere near here,
are you realize? You're like, yeah, but we gotta say
this otherwise we're toasted. And I think over time, like
even when you are forced to do that or kind
(12:27):
of brainwashed into doing there or whatever, you kind of
adopt that that sense, like like the eagerness. You know
it's weird. It's because it's just it's bizarre. It is bizarre. Um.
The other thing we should mention really quickly too, before
we move on, is the the sipping hoft uh. This
was an ancient Middle Aged blood law basically where they
(12:52):
say from Germany, where they were like, you know, if
you're guilty of a crime, your whole family is. And
as you will see, Project Valkyrie was reason enough for
for Himler to dust that off. Say, remember that ancient custom. Well,
we're just gonna do it here. Yeah, it wasn't even
further back than that to like the second century BC.
(13:12):
From what I saw, it's crazy. So it's basically the
idea is, if you are a trader, that means you
have traitorous blood in you, and since you've passed your
bloodline along, then all of the members of your family
must have that same traitor as blood. So the whole
family has to be wiped out. That's the idea behind it.
It's not clear if Himler just made this up or whatever,
(13:34):
but there was that threat of of if you do
something to um put the family into to to put
yourself in jeopardy, you put the whole family in jeopardy.
People like basically spying on not just their neighbors, but
on their own family members. Yeah, and if you want
to hatch a plot to kill Hitler, then that puts
your family at risk exactly, not just yourself. Yeah. And
(13:56):
then plus also um the the it's you can't really
discount the that he really thoroughly controlled the media. So
if there was a resistance, if there were people who
did great acts of protest or whatever, it would just
be lost. It would not be reported on, and so
whatever spark they created couldn't grow into a flame. So
(14:16):
there was a tremendous amount of control. And even today
historians are still debating how complicit the actual people of
Germany were and how much they were coerced into following Hitler.
It's a it's a real bone of contention among historians today. Well,
I'm sure it was a very mixed bag of allegiances
and loyalties and like what people truly believed in what
(14:39):
they were, you know, they weren't getting the real information anyway,
you know exactly. And then that on top of the
whole family is going to get wiped out if you
do something could keep people in line, alright. So the
Operation Valkyrie itself, like we said, killing Hitler was a
small part, well not a small part, a major part,
But Operation Valkyrie itself was a larger plan uh to
(15:04):
rest control of of the German government basically from the
Nazis and the s S. Yeah, it was an existing
operation that got co opted and made a part of
the plot to assassinate Hitler because they knew that just
killing Hitler wasn't enough, because someone I guess Hitler would
have just stepped in this place. Yeah, there's evidence that
Himmler knew about this plot and basically letting it happen
(15:27):
so he could do of course. So uh, here was
a deal. Operation Valkyrie was a contingency plan and this
was set up with Hitler's signature, uh, to control the
reserve army of Germany. So there was basically I couldn't
tell if it was like our reserves over here. I
(15:51):
don't know. It wasn't quite like that because they maybe
like the National Guard, you think, yeah, because it says
that they were called up to um to support the front,
and you call up the National Guards sometimes here in
the United States, right, Yeah, I think it was. It
would be like, well, they were the remnants of the
(16:12):
German army that was left back. They were the army
that was still in Germany at this point. They weren't
out fighting and on the front lines, although they could
be called. They were there to defend Germany. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh,
if the call came through and Operation Valkyrie was enacted,
that basically meant that something's gone wrong, and not necessarily
the Hitler's dead, but um, something's gone wrong and that
(16:35):
army needs to mobilize basically and keep it the status
quo until they hear further. Then there were two people
who were who were authorized to start Operation Valkyrie, which
was essentially a signal like you said that something's gone
wrong and the army needs to regain control of the country.
(16:55):
Um it was Hitler and Friedrich Frome. It was the army,
Reserve Army leader and um if From basically said to
the Reserve Army Operation Valkyries. In effect, the Reserve Army
would fight whoever From told them to, which is Tom Wilkinson.
If you're playing at home, man, that guy. He's great,
(17:19):
great actor. He had this English accent in full effect. Heir,
Tom Cruise is speaking American. It's all over the map.
It's crazy. It was a weird decision. Lots of weird decision.
It was at the time. I mean, have you seen it.
I started to and then stopped. Yeah. Yeah, I thought
it was a good movie. But I'm sure it was.
I don't know. I don't remember what it was, but
(17:40):
I just couldn't. I know that that Brian Singer, the director,
made the conscious choice. He was like, I don't want
everyone doing these bad german accents. Everybody do different weird,
so just talk how you talk. And it's a little confusing,
I mean not confusing, because you know they're Germans because
they're wearing those fantastic outfits by Hugo Ball. Is that true? Yes,
(18:02):
I heard that he was co opted but not didn't
actually design the uniforms. Uh. I think it's probably like
the Adidas, the Danzler brothers Rember their factory was co
opted to make torpedoes. I'm pretty sure the same thing happened.
But Hugo Boss's thing was to make the uniforms. Um.
So yeah, I think it's true. I just wondered if
(18:24):
he actually designed them. That's what I heard. That's what
Russell Brand says, and by god, there's ever been a
truth teller, it's that guy, so Truscou Kenneth Branda, like
I was saying, he was the one that was really
um opposed to the brutality of Nazism, and he's the
one that developed these amendments to Operation Balkyrie for this plan,
(18:47):
which from what I could tell, was basically two speed
everything up a lot because they had a limited amount
of time once they killed Hitler to pull this off.
And I think it was like Operation Valker was supposed
to be six or eight hours, and he was now,
we need to get this done in like two or three.
So those are the amendments that he created, I think so,
in addition to some other stuff. But I think it
was speed mainly, all right, which is ironic because it
(19:09):
actually got slowed down in the in the in the execution.
Um but the so again, just to restate because it
is a little confusing, Operation Valkyrie was an existing Nazi
plan or German Army plan for the Reserve Army the
National Guard back home in Germany to take control of
the country. Um in in the event Operation Valkyrie was enacted,
(19:34):
and that could be because there was an uprising in
a in a concentration camp. It could be that there
was some sort of revolt that this, whatever it was,
it was an official Nazi German military plan that existed
that got co opted by the assassination plotters to tailor
it so that they could use it in a conjunction
(19:57):
with assassinating Hitler and basically trick the Reserve arm Me
into doing their bidding. And everyone, that's three times now.
If you don't get it, now, just listen to something else, Okay,
go listen to Friendly Fire. He's talking to me everybody.
He wants me to stop explaining. Will there be a
fourth time? Okay? So, uh well, I guess we need
(20:19):
to talk a little bit about Tom Cruise, who was
sort of the main player in this assassination attempt. Yeah,
we gotta talk a lot about him. This is the
guy who was who's become a national um hero in Germany. Yeah,
and here's a deal like history, and certainly that film
painted him as a as a hero. I mean, he
(20:40):
was a tried and true Nazi um up and you know,
up to a point where he decided to kill Hitler.
But he was not some like great guy who was
always like, no, to think what we're doing is wrong, guys,
we should really rethink this. His brother was his brother
Barthold Am I pronouncing that correctly b E R T
h O l D. Yeah. Okay. His brother Bart told
(21:02):
his older brother Um was in this plot too, and
he actually was um tortured and gave a confession. And
apparently in his confession he said, you know, no, we
generally agree with what the Nazis are doing. We just
think Hitler is a little too um uh over eager
(21:23):
over zealous about spilling German blood, uh and trying to
conquer the world. But everything else we pretty much agree with.
So yeah, these guys were they were Nazis, they were
just anti Hitler basically. Yeah. So, um, Klaus fin Stauffenberg
had been wounded previously I think in Africa, right, yes,
under Rammel. Yeah, and was. Um. In fact, that scene
(21:45):
of the film is really good, that's pretty accurate his
his There's a bombing and a and a stray thing
from a plane that he gets like full on all
over his body, loses his right hand and everything but
too Inger's and his thumb on his left, loses his
left eye and as basically he's got two functioning fingers
(22:07):
and a thumb at this point. Yes, not the perfect
person to carry out a very highly technical bomb planting. Yeah,
and that's definitely going to come into play. But apparently
um Stauffenberg, Klaus Staffenberg said, you know enough of this,
like people losing their nerve, quatro bombs not going off.
I mean, come on, if you want to done it right,
(22:29):
just do it yourself. Is basically apparently what his policy was.
He said, I'll do it, I'll kill Hitler. Yeah, He
never said maybe I should just shoot him in the head. Yeah,
Well he wanted to live, as evidenced by the actual
plot that they came up with. Well, plus they also
wanted um not wanted they they sort of demanded that
(22:50):
that Himmler be in the room at the time and
also be taken out. Otherwise, what's the point, right, So
this July twenty plot that we're working up to was
actually could have been called like the I think July
second plot or the July eighth plot. There were like
a few different attempts that were aborted, and one of
them was because Himmler and Garing I believe or were
(23:14):
meant to be in the room with Hitler and they weren't,
so they called it off. Apparently Klaus Strassburg decided on
his own, he's gonna von Stroffenberg. Straffenberg, I keep playing
to say Strassburg um Straffenberg decided on his own he's
gonna kill Hitler anyway, And when he went back in
the room to do it after reporting that that Himmler
and Garing weren't there um to kill Hitler, Hitler had
(23:37):
just left. The meeting ended early like that. That was
the kind of like luck that Hitler had. Yeah, and
that was played out pretty accurately in the movie. Actually,
um like he was like, all right, I'm gonna do it,
and they're like meetings adjourned said wait wait, I have
something else to say. Um, just to kind of reset
with who the major or what the major players are doing.
(23:58):
We mentioned Frederick fron him Tom Wilkinson in the movie.
He was the head of the Reserve Army. And then
there was another key player named Friedrich olbrick Um who
was He was the one that basically was because from
was like, I kind of know about this, but I'm
not I'm not going to play a part in it,
(24:19):
but I'm not gonna wrat you out either, So I'm
just gonna see where the chips fall. Very cowardly. Yeah,
he he would have basically gone with whoever was in
charge or whoever was on top, so he wouldn't report it.
But he also wouldn't sign the order himself, which meant
that Old Brick had to actually issue a fake order
in from his name, uh mobilizing that you know, basically
(24:42):
Operation Balkris in effect. Right, So Albricht from and uh
Staffenberg were all Reserve Army high officials, and again the
Reserve Army is the one who can take control of
the country under operation. We should have a sound effect
every time we explain that, maybe Jerry will surprise us. Um,
(25:05):
all right, should we talk about the actual day on?
I think we should? Alright, So Hitler is in the
Wolf's Layer. That's where he spent it was, Um, I
guess it would have been Poland. Huh yeah, East Prussia,
which is part of Poland. Yeah, so that was where
(25:25):
he was hanging out towards the end of the war.
Heavily fortified, heavily on meth. Well, that would actually make
a lot of sense, because he was increasingly paranoid. Yes,
that's I think that's part of your evidence. Locked in
a bunker doing meth probably doesn't help. In East Prussia
they call it the East Prussia Blues. So uh, the
(25:46):
I guess it's called the wolf the wolf Shanza in German.
But give it some flavor the um. But just very
heavily fortified, like his actual bunker. An area was like
concrete with like steel doors. It was where that where
you would keep Hitler at that point in the war, right,
(26:07):
or where Hitler would keep himself. So there was on
this July twenty plot. There again they wanted Himmler and
um Garing, if not Gribbles too. Uh in the room
with Hitler was the big one they wanted, right because
he was the heir apparent, right. But if you'll notice,
as many times as they tried to do this, um
(26:30):
Himmler was nowhere around Hitler at this time, which is
again evidence that Himler knew something was up and wasn't
about to be in the same room as Hitler at
any point because they knew that. He knew that they
wanted to kill Hitler and take him out too, so
he was just gonna let it play out. So they
decided to just go ahead and assassinate Hitler at least,
and this Wolf Slayer was a perfect location to assassinate
(26:54):
Hitler if it was an inside job. He said, you
could not get to him in there from the outside,
but if you could get in, you could get to
him really well. Because these concrete reinforced bunkers with steel
doors that had no windows. If you set off a
bomb in there, it would be amplified. It would have
(27:14):
the the concussion from the bomb, the blast, the shock
wave would have nowhere to go, so it would just
reverberate around the room until it finally went out of steam,
and it would kill everybody in there. No matter where
you were, no matter what you were doing, you would
be dead from this blast. So it was a really
good idea. When they showed up on July, Staffenberg and
(27:35):
his assistant with two briefcases that each had a time
bomb in it with two pounds of plastic explosives, one
of those would have killed everybody. They had double the amount. Yeah,
and the guy that set this all up in the
in the movie basically said that he was like, this
is pretty redundant to have du with these, like in
(27:56):
that bunker. One of these will kill everyone in that room, right, Um, Like,
don't sweat it, guys. Nothing can go wrong, yea, even
though you have to stick this metal thing in there
and crack it with a pair of pliers and I
noticed you've only got two fingers, but this should be fine. Um,
nothing can go wrong. What went wrong was something that
(28:18):
no one anticipated is that meeting and this changed everything. Uh.
That meeting didn't take place in the bunker, supposedly because
it was too hot, too hot. Hitler didn't like to
sweat and he was loaded on meth. Right, So they
moved this this meeting where they were going to go
over strategy, like detailed strategy maps and everything, from this
death inducing bunker to basically a hut, a flimsy hut
(28:42):
almost open air. It was so flimsy and windows and everything.
I think the windows were open too because it was hot. Okay. Um.
The roof was just kind of like whatever, it might
as well have been thatched. And then the the room
also featured a table, a heavy slab oak table with
heavy oaken legs, and that's what they had the maps
(29:03):
out on that was this will be a big deal
in a second. Yeah, So the plan is we we
go in there. We uh they were gonna fake like
he needed to change his shirt because he got some
blood from cutting his neck while shaving. Yeah, and so
that's where he would get some private time to um
to activate the bomb. He knew he would have you know,
(29:25):
ten minutes maybe less to get out of there once
he did that. So uh they did. So they broke
these capsules. Um went in there and the plan was
that he was gonna have it set up where uh,
he had someone faking a call coming in to get
him out of the room, in which he would say,
I gotta get to Berlin. I got orders like I
(29:45):
gotta leave now, and Hitler would be like, uh, I
give the orders here? Who told you to go to Berlin? Well,
Hitler wouldn't know about any of this. He's knee deep
and pounding tables and yelling. So um, they have they
have the briefcases. They only get a chance because as
there um cutting open the acid capsule on the one,
(30:07):
I guess a century outside like called through the door
to them, scared them. Yeah, they were like, hey, dude,
the meeting starting, okay, so they had to head out.
That was another thing. The meeting time change from one
to twelve thirty because Mussolini was coming and they wanted
to make sure they were done in time for his arrival. Okay.
So um, they only got to activate one of the
(30:28):
bombs and they just left the other one. They didn't
take it in with them, they just kept it with them,
So they were down to one bomb. They were in
a different venue than the bomb had been planned for.
And then now this heavy oak table comes into into play. Yeah,
so while they were in there, they set it down
near Hitler or you know Stauffenberg does. Um. A man
(30:48):
named Heinz brunt Um went stepped close to the table
so we could see things better, knocked over the briefcase.
It's just so like, are you kidding me? With like
how history plays out. He if he hadn't kicked over
that thing, it might have still worked. But he kicked
over the briefcase, moved it to the other side of
one of those big, heavy oak legs. The bomb does
(31:09):
go off, and Staufenberg gets the heck out of there
quick like, and in his mind he's like that bomb,
that explosion was massive, Like everyone's dead. Yeah, and when
we're gone, he and his assistant. Yeah, So he heads
out from the Wolf's Layer to a waiting airplane at
the nearby air base to fly back to Berlin and
(31:30):
start Operation Valkyrie. Right, that's where we're going to leave
it for now. Yeah, we'll be back right after this, Okay, chuck.
(32:02):
So Stoffenberg just said, off this bomb, He and his
assistant are on their way to Berlin, right, Yeah, three
hour flight and while he's in the air, Valkyrie is
supposed to have started, right. But here's the problem. There
was a guy stationed at the Wolf Slayer who was
meant to report on this and basically say, go ahead,
(32:25):
do your thing. Operation Valkyrie's a go. Hitler's dead, but
they hadn't considered that Hitler might survive this assassination attempt,
didn't come up with any code word for that. So
the guy was just kind of clumsily like trying to
be like, you know, things aren't so great. Um uh,
something big happened, but not not happened happig So so
(32:49):
they're like, we don't know what you're talking about because
people are listening basically, so um. They the guys back
in Berlin, these assassination plotters, these conspirators, get this mess
and from the Wolf Slayer, and they still don't know
what's going on. They just know something has happened. They
don't know if Hitler's dead or what. So the guy
is a Albricht who decides to wait until Staffenberg comes
(33:10):
back to enact Operation Valkyrie. So there's a three hour
delay between the bomb going off and the implementation of
Operation Valkyrie. Yeah, and if you recall back at the beginning,
they sped this whole thing up by three hours in
the official plans that Hitler signed off on. So timing
was important, So in Tom Cruise Lands He's like, dude,
(33:34):
are you kidding me? It was three hours ago? Right?
So um, that was that was a big problem with it.
The second problem was that they didn't cut the lines
from the wolf Slayer, and apparently even Gebel's like mocked
them later after this. They didn't even cut the telephone lines,
didn't cut them. They ceased communications. They tried to as
(33:54):
as they could, but they didn't have control of the
wolf Slayer. They just could. All they could do is
kind of clumsily mess up the communications to delay it.
But there was no radio silence from the wolfs Layer,
which would have let Operation Valkyrie play out. Instead, Germany
had a lot of conflicting reports and different things going on.
(34:14):
It was total chaos. Is Hitler alive? Is Hitler dead? Um?
Who's in charge? And so when when Stauffenberg gets back
and finds out all Brick has been waiting sitting on
Operation Valkyrie, he immediately is like, put it into into play.
It's going um one way or another. We don't know
if it's Hitler's dead or not, but we're going ahead
(34:35):
with Operation Valkyrie. Because no one knows the Hitler's dead
or not, so we could considerably pull it off. Yeah,
and I think there were um I think it was
like Paris, Prague, maybe Vienna, where some of the strongholds
where they needed these people to get on board and start,
you know, gathering up the ss UH. In Paris, the
(34:55):
quartermaster of the German troops there did receive the message
set the coup in motion, and I think it might
have happened in Prague, but like things were happening, but
Berlin was the big one because they knew like even
if they got Paris and the others like fully on
board and finished, you know, with their duties, if they
didn't have Berlin, they were still kind of screwed. So
(35:16):
they they actually didn't have Berlin. It was kind of
like a seesaw whether they were going to have Berlin
or not. Um, there was enough confusion that I think
the guy who was in charge of the Reserve Army
at the time, um, I didn't know which way to
go from. Well, yeah, from was the sort of coward
(35:38):
that was just he just wanted to not get ratted out.
He just wanted things to turn out well for him.
So he um, he he sees the chance to basically
realigned himself with Hitler because it's clear that the it
looks like the coup's probably not going to work. So
his allegiance is back a Hitler, and so he tries
(36:01):
to arrest Staffenberg and Obricht, and they in turn arrest him,
and there's apparently a shootout right in the actual War
Ministry building. Yeah, because there were literally two different sets
of orders official orders coming out because they were because
of miscommunication. There were two different people controlling the German Army.
(36:22):
We'll find the German government, right, And so finally there
was a guy who was truly confused. One of the
Reserve Army leaders was genuinely confused. He was trying to
follow orders because he thought that there was an S
S uprising like the Operation Valkyrie plotters had said. And apparently,
uh he got on the phone with Hitler and Hitler
(36:43):
said do you recognize my voice? And the guy was
like yeah. He goes, I'm telling you to arrest these
people that the Nazis are still in charge, and to
disregard these other orders, to send them more crystal mess
right supplies low uh uh And and here's the deal
Hitler had ordered, um he wanted them taken alive, um,
(37:06):
whereas From was trying to speed up their execution so
he wouldn't get ratted out. Uh And basically, and and
I think this is kind of true how it played
out in the movie. Um, Chalfenberg is like you're going
down to like you realize this, like nobody will be spared.
So you're kidding yourself if you think this kangaroo court
you're gonna run us through was gonna make any difference.
(37:27):
So From said, Okay, well then I'll just have you
guys summarily executed. Yeah what what he did? Yeah? This court, Um,
it's sort of the definition of a kangaroo court in history.
It was called the People's Court, which is kind of funny.
There was no judge Wapner hanging out. There was a
judge Freislow though. Um, and there's actually footage of this guy.
(37:49):
He had this really shrill voice and he would This
was a court where you would run people in and
just have a chance of like conviction by hanging or
firing squad. Yeah, there was a run by um Nazi
fanatics and it was a court designed to try people
who resisted Nazism. Yeah, and the sippen Hoff that we
(38:12):
mentioned that all your family is guilty too. This was
really where it got enacted, uh, the heaviest and I
think like seven thousand people were arrested in this plot.
Seven thousand people were arrested, five thousand were executed. Man,
so they really went to town in that sippen Hoff thing. Um,
they they took babies, infants and put them in concentration
(38:36):
care for for children under sixteen. Um. The Staffenberg brothers,
so From summarily executed Klaus Stoffenberg that night at the
war ministry. UM. It's something I saw I thought was
kind of cool. His assistant jumped in front of the
bullets originally intended for Stoffenberg, and then they still killed
(38:56):
Steffenberg anyway, but From was trying to cover up as
tracks it did work. From was among the executed at
this later kangaroo court. I think he was executed in
March and as part of this the Sippenhoft. It was
just basically if there had been any restraints whatsoever on
Hitler in the Nazis in Germans or Germany, um, which
(39:21):
you could really make the case like there really weren't.
If there were, they were off now at once Hitler
realized that this was part of a larger plot, he
went berserk and it just became a blood orgy for him,
just killing everybody, anyone he could find that might have
anything remotely to do with this plot. He killed. He
killed people who have been prisoners for years. He went
(39:44):
through and did another purge of people who had just
been in prison, you know, for maybe thinking of assassinating
him years back. Totally unrelated. Um, they were just as
the the Allies started to move in and the Russian
started to move and they started killing people in the
concentration camps, just stepping it up even more. And there's
(40:04):
a there's a really good possibility that a lot of
those people would have lived had that bomb worked, had
it killed Hitler. Um, there's a there the the the
idea that there were people waiting to negotiate a piece
immediately a surrender of Germany. Um, all those people who
died after July would have lived. Yeah. I think some
(40:29):
of them were offered the opportunity to take their own life,
which quite a few of them did. Um. Like literally,
like here's a gun, just go in the other room.
So Ram was a very famous example of that. Yeah,
I think did he signide himself. He was given He
was given the opportunity to take a cyanide pill. Um.
Some Gestapo guys came to his house and said, here's
(40:51):
how it is. If you're a national hero, if you
if it comes out that you were part of this plot,
people are going to start questioning Hitler and Nazism. So
we can't have that. We're gonna give you the opportunity
to kill yourself and we won't make your family part
of this. Sippenhof will leave your family alone. So he
chose to take his own life rather than um, rather
than let his family go through this and and be
(41:13):
court martialed and executed anyway, So he killed himself as
a as a from this plot. Yeah, So there was
a cyanide, There was gunshots that you put upon yourself,
There were firing squad and then there was the meat
hook hanging, which was um. Hitler would require that certain
of these people had wire tied around their throat and
(41:36):
then that was hung from a meat hook and Bear
told von st Staffenberg was one of those guys. Oh brother, Yes,
he was UM. He was strangled multiple times and revived
so that they could strangle him again and Hitler. The
whole thing was filmed for Hitler to watch later. So yeah,
(41:57):
it was he went berserve after that. Apparently, if you
went to go visit Hitler, you, um, even as one
of his loyal like Nazi military officials, you had to
leave your gun outside. Yeah. I think that might have
been a rule anyway, because or maybe it was just
tradition to leave your your side arm and you know,
(42:19):
outside the room. Um, because they were doing that in
the movie. Yeah, but you know, I think on Roderick
Show he was like, well you could stick a gun
in your pocket and your little guard, yeah wherever in
your sock garter sure or your thie guard. Yeah, it
depending on what you're into. Um, I think that's it.
(42:42):
I'm surprised you didn't go after because, uh, von Strassenberg's
family was not punished, like his wife died like ten
or twelve years ago, right, but she was sent to
a concentration camp and was liberated from it after the
after the war. But they, I mean she went to
a concentration camp for sure, his brother. I can't believe
they weren't. He and her and her kids weren't killed
(43:03):
though the spot Yeah, it's weird apparently the arbitrary and
its just increased the terror of it too. You know,
well that makes sense. So, uh, that is the July
twenty plot. Okay, to assassinate Hitler. Uh. If you want
to know more about that, go listen to the uh
the friendly Fire episode on it. Yeah, it's a good one.
(43:26):
And Hitler, by the way, he was gone I think
nine months later, right, so it wasn't. I mean, this
is towards the end anyway, but which makes it even worse. Yeah,
you know, all right, so if you already said that,
it means it's time for listener me so quick follow
up on administrative details. We said if we forgot someone
(43:48):
uh and lost Embarni wrote in and it did. Forget
this one. Um. I sent an early color color study
of my Pando painting and wanted to make sure to arrive.
It's about three by five inches and an envelope and
it did and it's wonderful and lovely and very sorry
Lawson for that sneaking bias. I also want to say
I got something from Alison Gallagher as well. Oh now
(44:09):
he hadn't realized it, so thank you Allison for my gifts.
Too nice. It wasn't just chuck that you sent stuff too.
And you can find Lawson's art at Lawson Barney art
dot com. Yeah, it's beautiful pain very nice. All right,
listener mail this is uh. It was a very sweet
sweet emo from a couple. Hey guys, Rightney, thank you
(44:30):
for always being there on our long car rides. My wife,
me and I have to travel twelve hours from our
home in Butte, Montana, to Salt Lake City for her
cancer treatment at Huntsman Cancer Institute every couple of months,
and learning something new from you guys is always a
welcome edition on our drive. I thought of her type
of cancer h and the treatment as an interesting idea
(44:50):
for an episode. She was diagnosed with a rare cancer
called uh neuro endocrine tumor in ET. It's on her pancreas,
but it's very different from and create a cancer. So
when Steve jobs in a wreath of franklin um pass
of this type of cancer, it's always reported the news
is paying creatic cancer, which is incorrect and very disappointing
(45:11):
because it does take away awareness from n ET cancer.
The treatment is called peptide receptor radio nuclei therapy it
works in a way that sounds like science fiction. The
treatment is done through I V and is combined in
two parts. One part is attracted to cancer cells and
is welcomed into the cell. The second part is attached
to the first and releases a small amount of radiation
(45:34):
when inside the cancer cells. Very fascinating and my explanation
is very much glossed over. Again, thank you for the show.
Last thing, can you give my wife Mia a shout out?
That is from bo Miller, so of course, Mia, Hey, Miya,
shout out to Mia. Yeah, hanging there, guys. I know
it's a very tough time for you, and I'm glad
we can help in some small way while you're making
(45:56):
these long car rides. And we'll look into any t
for sure. Yeah, and thank you for reaching out to
us too. If you want to reach out to us,
you can find us on stuff you Should Know dot com.
All of our social links are on there and uh
you can also send us an email to stuff podcast
and how stuff Works dot com for more on this
(46:19):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com. H
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Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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