Stauffenberg, a Wehrmacht officer disillusioned with Hitler's conduct of the war and its atrocities, planted a bomb in a briefcase during a military conference in East Prussia. The explosion killed four people but Hitler survived, protected by a heavy oak table support. The failed assassination, part of the broader Operation Valkyrie conspiracy, triggered brutal reprisals: roughly 4,900 people were executed, including Stauffenberg himself, shot that same night in Berlin.
Claus von Stauffenberg had lost his left eye, right hand, and two fingers on his remaining hand fighting in North Africa, injuries that somehow didn't stop him from priming and carrying the bomb himself. Inside the Wolf's Lair conference room in Rastenburg, he placed his briefcase—packed with plastic explosive—under the map table close to Hitler, then excused himself with a phone call alibi and left the compound before the device detonated at 12:42 PM.
The blast tore through the wooden barracks, killing four officers and wounding others, but the room's heavy oak table leg absorbed much of the explosive force directed at Hitler, who suffered ruptured eardrums, burns, and shredded trousers but walked away largely intact—famously photographed shaking hands with Mussolini hours later, his uniform in tatters.
Stauffenberg, believing Hitler dead, flew back to Berlin to launch Operation Valkyrie, the plan to seize control of the government. But as news spread that Hitler had survived, the coup collapsed within hours. Stauffenberg was arrested and executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock just after midnight. The Gestapo's subsequent purge, the Sippenhaft campaign, swept up not just conspirators but their extended families, crushing what remained of organized German resistance to the Nazi regime for the rest of the war.