Oak Table Leg Saved Hitler's Life 50 Years Ago

ON JULY 20, 1944, Adolf Hitler was huddled with his generals at his Wolf's Lair in the woods of East Prussia when a briefcase bomb exploded. Four people were killed, but the Fuhrer escaped the assassination attempt by German officers. The conspirators were dealt with swiftly and mercilessly.

To say a figure as hellish as Adolf Hitler had a guardian angel insults religion. Settle for Lady Luck.

Even before his inauguration as Germany's chancellor in 1933, he survived attempts to kill him. His closest brush with assassination occurred July 20, 1944 - 50 years ago Wednesday - when members of his own army came within an oak table leg of blowing him up.

He emerged with his pants in shreds, his face blackened, an eardrum ruptured and his right arm inoperative.

That afternoon he greeted his old Axis sidekick, Benito Mussolini, now reduced to a marionette in a puppet state in a corner of Italy.

"My buttocks are like the backside of a baboon," he said. "But I survived."

And this survival signaled celestial intent, Hitler said. "Clearly it is my divine task to continue on and bring my great enterprise to completion."

Plots against Hitler were not unknown. Some generals, prominent among them Ludwig Beck, conspired to seize him on the eve of the takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Beck feared Hitler would throw Europe into a war from which only communism would triumph. The capitulation of Britain and France at Munich pulled the rug from under any plots.

Once the war began, anti-Hitler generals put patriotism above conspiracy. But with Stalingrad and subsequent debacles in Russia, killing Hitler increasingly appeared to be the only way to save Germany.

Hitler had taken to wearing a flak jacket under his tunic. His peaked cap was lined with steel. A bodyguard of SS troopers accompanied him on the few trips he ventured.

He visited the Russian front on March 13, 1943. Plastic explosives - British - were put in two brandy bottles that an aide to Gen. Henning von Treschkow asked Hitler's pilot to deliver to a friend. The aide, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, broke a capsule of acid that would eat through the wire triggering the bomb in half an hour. Hitler took off.

To avoid weather, the pilot flew higher than planned, freezing the mechanism. Schlabrendorff later retrieved the bomb and found its detonator a dud.

Eight days later, Maj. Freiherr Rudolf von Gersdorff planned a suicidal assassination to blow up Hitler and himself with two bombs in his overcoat pocket while the Fuhrer was visiting an exhibit in Berlin. Hitler was to stay half an hour. The bombs had 10-minute fuses. Hitler left after only eight minutes. Gersdorff defused the bombs.

That December, Capt. Axel von dem Bussche, who had joined the conspirators after seeing 1,200 Jews slain in an afternoon, agreed to sacrifice himself by blowing up a hand grenade in his pocket while Hitler was examining a display of new uniforms. Beforehand, the uniforms were destroyed in an air raid.

A similar attempt was plotted over Christmas. Hitler decided at the last minute to spend the holiday with Eva Braun, his mistress.

The assassination's mantle now fell on Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg, 37, was an aristocrat. Handsome, magnetic, he had joined the army in 1923. Over time, he became appalled at Hitler's savagery against Jews and was convinced that his aggression would eventually destroy Germany. Killing Hitler would be an act of patriotism.

But loyalty to country compelled Stauffenberg to fight in Poland, France, Russia and finally North Africa, where he was wounded, losing an eye, an arm and two fingers of his remaining hand. He took a staff position in Berlin on recovery.

Sitting on the fence were some of the biggest names of the German army: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, hero of North Africa and commander in Normandy; Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, soon to be overall commander in France; Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr; and Canaris' more active Hitler-hating assistant, Gen. Hans Oster. Gen. Friedrich Fromm, head of the Home Army in Germany, was aware of the plot, and Gen. Karl von Stuelpnagel, commander in Paris, and Gen. Erich Fellgiebel, head of army communications, were involved.

The conspirators were hoping for a triple play: killing Hitler, Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler and No. 2 Nazi Hermann Goering with one bomb at a joint meeting. Stauffenberg brought a bomb to a meeting at Hitler's retreat in Bavaria on July 11, 1944. But Himmler was not present.

Four days later Stauffenberg took the bomb in a briefcase to a meeting at the Fuhrer's Wolf's Lair in the woods of East Prussia. Hitler left early. Stauffenberg defused the bomb. Another meeting was set for July 20 at the Wolf's Lair.

Stauffenberg flew to the Wolf's Lair, told the pilot to wait and passed through two security gates of the concrete command complex. The day being hot, the conference was to be held in a wooden-frame building. The windows were open.

Stauffenberg with his three remaining fingers fused the bomb to go off in 15 minutes. Then he entered the conference. He sidled up to Gen. Adolf Heusinger next to Hitler and placed his briefcase as near to Hitler as he could. The Fuhrer was leaning over the massive oak table while Heusinger delivered a grim report on the fighting in Russia. Unobtrusively, Stauffenberg left the room.

Blocked by the briefcase from a better view of the map, Heusinger's aide moved it to the far side of a heavy table leg from Hitler. At 12:42 p.m. the bomb exploded in a sheet of flame. Four people were killed. But the frame building and its open windows softened the blast. The Fuhrer, his eyebrows singed, his hair standing on end, his face blackened, was alive.

Stauffenberg, now flying back to Berlin, was quickly suspected. Unable to confirm Hitler's death due to damage at the Wolf's Lair and a communications blackout, the conspirators became indecisive.

His feet cooling, Fromm told the conspirators he was arresting them. After a scuffle, they arrested him instead. The Berlin garrison had been called out, but Maj. Otto Remer, a former member of the Hitler Youth, wanted confirmation of the Fuhrer's death. He decided to check with Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

Goebbels got through to the Wolf's Lair where Hitler told Remer: "Do you believe that I am alive?" Dubious, Remer nonetheless accepted the Fuhrer's order that he was in command of all the military in Berlin regardless of rank. Gen. Paul von Hase, commander of the garrison, sheepishly yielded to his subordinate, asking only if he could get something to eat and to call his wife.

"There go our revolutionaries," Goebbels scoffed. "All they think about is eating, drinking and calling Mama."

Meanwhile, loyal SS troopers stormed the Army headquarters, where Beck had joined the conspirators. Fromm held a drumhead court-martial. Beck was given the option of suicide with a pistol but missed his vitals on two tries. A sergeant finished the job with a shot in the neck. Stauffenberg and two others were hustled outside and executed.

As many as 7,000 people known to harbor anti-Hitler sentiments were arrested. After torture and farcical trials of the ringleaders, most were executed.

Kluge killed himself, as did Rommel, who was given the choice of that or a trial. Fromm could not convince the Nazis he was an innocent bystander, and they hanged him. Canaris, too, was executed, as was Bonhoeffer.

None of his enemies ever got to Hitler. It remained for him to kill himself in May 1945.