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What If The July Plot To Kill Hitler Had Succeeded?
Would WWII have ended differently?
On July 20th, 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg placed a heavy brown briefcase under the table at which Adolf Hitler was supposed to sit at for a council of war. The briefcase was filled with explosives, and Stauffenberg, shaking and covered in sweat, excused himself to go to the bathroom. Before leaving the room, he secretly activated a delayed fuse that would cause the explosives to detonate while he was safely in another room.
While Stauffenberg was away, Colonel Heinz Brandt became irritated with the placement of the briefcase and slid it over to the other side of the table and tucked it behind its thick oaken leg. It is one of those moments in history that changed everything. A simple human irritation and a very reasonable response. This briefcase is in the way; let me move it.
When the bomb went off, it shredded the room, but most of the intended targets survived because they had been shielded from the worst of the detonation by that thick oaken table leg. Hitler’s pants were famously shredded in the blast, but he walked away relatively unscathed. If the briefcase had remained in its original position, Hitler would have undoubtedly been killed.
What if that briefcase hadn’t been moved? What if the blast had gone off as…
