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On this day in 1944, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer.
As the war started to turn against the Germans, and the atrocities being committed at Hitler's behest grew, a growing numbers of Germans-within the military and without-began conspiring to assassinate their leader. As the masses were unlikely to turn on the man in whose hands they had hitherto placed their lives and future, it was up to men close to Hitler, German officers, to dispatch him. Leadership of the plot fell to Claus von Stauffenberg, newly promoted to colonel and chief of staff to the commander of the army reserve, which gave him access to Hitler's headquarters at Berchtesgaden and Rastenburg.
Stauffenberg had served in the German army since 1926. While serving as a staff officer in the campaign against the Soviet Union, he became disgusted at his fellow countrymen's vicious treatment of Jews and Soviet prisoners. He requested to be transferred to North Africa, where he lost his left eye, right hand, and two fingers of his left hand.
After recovering from his injuries, and determined to see Hitler removed from power by any means necessary, Stauffenberg traveled to Berchtesgaden on July 3 and received at the hands of a fellow army officer, Major-General Helmuth Stieff, a bomb with a silent fuse that was small enough to be hidden in a briefcase. On July 11, Stauffenberg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to report to Hitler on the current military situation. The plan was to use the bomb on July 15, but at the last minute, Hitler was called away to his headquarters at Rastenburg, in East Prussia. Stauffenberg was asked to follow him there. On July 16, a meeting took place between Stauffenberg and Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, another conspirator, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Hofacker informed Stauffenberg that German defenses had collapsed at Normandy, and the tide had turned against them in the West. The assassination attempt was postponed until July 20, at Rastenburg
1987: Soldiers remember Passchendaele
Veterans have returned to the scene of the bloodiest battle of World War I to commemorate its 70th anniversary.
The fields of Passchendaele in Belgium claimed the lives of 250,000 troops of the British Commonwealth between July and November 1917.
The battle was the heaviest bombardment of WW I and few of its survivors are still alive.
Now in their 90s the men paid their respects at the Commonwealth's largest war cemetery - Tyne Cot - where 11,908 soldiers are buried.
In the evening they joined a formal parade through Ypres to the Menin Gate, which carries inscriptions of the 55,000 Allied soldiers who were never found.
Many of them disappeared into the swamp created by continual shelling and rain on reclaimed bogland.
All Commonwealth troops sent to the trenches at Passchendaele - also known as the Third Battle of Ypres - marched through the Menin Gate.
Traffic is stopped there at 2000 BST (1900 GMT) every day for the local fire department to sound the Last Post.
The annual Remembrance Day in the UK on the 12 November marks the end of the battle.
Battle plans
It took Allied troops 99 days to capture what was left of the village of Passchendaele in south-west Flanders.
When the assault was planned in 1916, the British command expected to reach Passchendaele in two days, before advancing to drive the Germans behind the Rhine as part of the Big Push to end the war.
Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig never went to the Western Front and ignored reports of the appalling conditions there.
When his Chief of Staff, Sir Lancelot Kiggell, visited near the end of the campaign he reportedly broke down and said: "Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?"
There were nearly half a million losses on both sides. The British gained just five miles at a cost of around 35 lives per metre.
In Context
World War I was fought from August 1914 to November 1918.
It was the first war that involved militarisation on a global scale, taking advantage of and encouraging advances in communication and weaponry.
A total of 65m soldiers went to battle. Of these 21m were wounded and 10m were killed - including a million missing and presumed dead.
The British Empire lost a total of 950,000 men, while the French, Germans and Russian Empire each lost well over a million.
Witnesses and survivors of WWI hoped it would be the war to end all wars.
For many the Battle of Passchendaele symbolised the futility of war and needless slaughter of human life.
As the war started to turn against the Germans, and the atrocities being committed at Hitler's behest grew, a growing numbers of Germans-within the military and without-began conspiring to assassinate their leader. As the masses were unlikely to turn on the man in whose hands they had hitherto placed their lives and future, it was up to men close to Hitler, German officers, to dispatch him. Leadership of the plot fell to Claus von Stauffenberg, newly promoted to colonel and chief of staff to the commander of the army reserve, which gave him access to Hitler's headquarters at Berchtesgaden and Rastenburg.
Stauffenberg had served in the German army since 1926. While serving as a staff officer in the campaign against the Soviet Union, he became disgusted at his fellow countrymen's vicious treatment of Jews and Soviet prisoners. He requested to be transferred to North Africa, where he lost his left eye, right hand, and two fingers of his left hand.
After recovering from his injuries, and determined to see Hitler removed from power by any means necessary, Stauffenberg traveled to Berchtesgaden on July 3 and received at the hands of a fellow army officer, Major-General Helmuth Stieff, a bomb with a silent fuse that was small enough to be hidden in a briefcase. On July 11, Stauffenberg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to report to Hitler on the current military situation. The plan was to use the bomb on July 15, but at the last minute, Hitler was called away to his headquarters at Rastenburg, in East Prussia. Stauffenberg was asked to follow him there. On July 16, a meeting took place between Stauffenberg and Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, another conspirator, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Hofacker informed Stauffenberg that German defenses had collapsed at Normandy, and the tide had turned against them in the West. The assassination attempt was postponed until July 20, at Rastenburg
1987: Soldiers remember Passchendaele
Veterans have returned to the scene of the bloodiest battle of World War I to commemorate its 70th anniversary.
The fields of Passchendaele in Belgium claimed the lives of 250,000 troops of the British Commonwealth between July and November 1917.
The battle was the heaviest bombardment of WW I and few of its survivors are still alive.
Now in their 90s the men paid their respects at the Commonwealth's largest war cemetery - Tyne Cot - where 11,908 soldiers are buried.
In the evening they joined a formal parade through Ypres to the Menin Gate, which carries inscriptions of the 55,000 Allied soldiers who were never found.
Many of them disappeared into the swamp created by continual shelling and rain on reclaimed bogland.
All Commonwealth troops sent to the trenches at Passchendaele - also known as the Third Battle of Ypres - marched through the Menin Gate.
Traffic is stopped there at 2000 BST (1900 GMT) every day for the local fire department to sound the Last Post.
The annual Remembrance Day in the UK on the 12 November marks the end of the battle.
Battle plans
It took Allied troops 99 days to capture what was left of the village of Passchendaele in south-west Flanders.
When the assault was planned in 1916, the British command expected to reach Passchendaele in two days, before advancing to drive the Germans behind the Rhine as part of the Big Push to end the war.
Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig never went to the Western Front and ignored reports of the appalling conditions there.
When his Chief of Staff, Sir Lancelot Kiggell, visited near the end of the campaign he reportedly broke down and said: "Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?"
There were nearly half a million losses on both sides. The British gained just five miles at a cost of around 35 lives per metre.
In Context
World War I was fought from August 1914 to November 1918.
It was the first war that involved militarisation on a global scale, taking advantage of and encouraging advances in communication and weaponry.
A total of 65m soldiers went to battle. Of these 21m were wounded and 10m were killed - including a million missing and presumed dead.
The British Empire lost a total of 950,000 men, while the French, Germans and Russian Empire each lost well over a million.
Witnesses and survivors of WWI hoped it would be the war to end all wars.
For many the Battle of Passchendaele symbolised the futility of war and needless slaughter of human life.
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