Stauffenberg, Claus von, << SHTOW fuhn BURK, KLOWS fahn >> (1907-1944), served as an officer in the German army during World War II (1939-1945). Stauffenberg was a colonel on the German general staff who initially supported Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler . Nazi brutality and anti-Semitism (prejudice against Jews), however, caused Stauffenberg to turn against the Nazi regime. In July 1944, Stauffenberg led a plot to assassinate Hitler and remove the Nazis from power. The plot failed, and Stauffenberg was executed for treason .
Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf (Count) von Stauffenberg was born in Jettingen, Bavaria , on Nov. 15, 1907. In 1926, Stauffenberg joined a cavalry regiment of the German army. In 1939, he took part in the German invasion of Poland —an event that officially began World War II. Stauffenberg then took part in the 1940 conquest of France .
Beginning in June 1941, German troops and Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) units committed numerous atrocities during an invasion of the Soviet Union . The mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war particularly bothered Stauffenberg. The conduct of the war—both morally and militarily—convinced Stauffenberg to join anti-Nazi resistance groups within the German army.
In April 1943, while fighting with German units in Tunisia , Stauffenberg was severely wounded in an Allied air attack. Stauffenberg returned to Germany and was later assigned to the reserve army staff in Berlin , the German capital. There, Stauffenberg became one of the chief participants in an ever-widening conspiracy against Hitler. With his co-conspirators, he planned to kill Hitler and stage a simultaneous coup d’état (sudden take-over of the government).
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg planted a bomb in Hitler’s eastern headquarters—known as the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair)—near Rastenburg (now Kętrzyn, Poland). The bomb exploded but failed to kill Hitler. The coup attempt also failed, and Stauffenberg was quickly arrested. He and a few other conspirators were executed by firing squad early on July 21.
Today, Berlin’s German Resistance Memorial Center is dedicated to Germans who resisted the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945. The museum and memorial is located on the site of Stauffenberg’s execution.
