Amongst them the Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel who was eventually forced to commit suicide in fear of reprisal against his relatives in Germany.
Considering the Third Reich tyranny, whether that was Sophie Scholl or other members of the German resistance, one needed titanium cojones to try and overthrow them. Respect.
Yes.
The regime made a terrible example of the chief conspirators who'd survived the 20th of July*. The majority of them were not shot or guillotined, but hanged. And not from a long-drop noose, mind you, but from a piano string.
*) Masterminds Colonels Graf von Stauffenberg, Mertz von Quirnheim and General Olbricht, as well as Stauffenberg's aide Lieutenant von Haeften, were summarily executed immediatedly after the plot's discovery by orders of General Fromm, commanding general of the reserve army, who likely sought to hide his having looked the other way.
The fourth ringleader, General von Tresckow, wisely committed suicide upon hearing the news that Hitler had survived.
Tresckow in particular should be remembered as one of history's tragic heroes. There's some evidence that earlier in the war, he'd passed on orders sanctioning massacres of partisans in Belarus (though it's questionable if his refusal had lead to a different outcome). On the other hand, von Tresckow was a fervent anti-Nazi and tried to kill Hitler three times, only to be thwarted by some stupid chance each time.
The biographies of the conspirators are fascinating to me. A few of them were opportunists and war criminals (like Graf von Helldorf, Berlin's chief of police). But others, much like Stauffenberg himself, were conservatives and religious Christians who grew a conscience when it mattered most.
However, Rommel is a very strange case. It seems that he only ever cared about being a captain of war, and that he was politically naive to the highest of levels. There's evidence that Rommel in 1943 suggested to Hitler that a Jew should be appointed NSDAP
gauleiter, so as to improve Germany's image in the world. Hitler is said to replied: "My dear Rommel, you don't get it, do you."
