Claus von Stauffenberg Biography

Count Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg is remembered as one of the tragic heroes of World War II, thanks to his role in a failed plot to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.

Born into an aristocratic German family, Claus von Stauffenberg was a German army officer during the war but grew disillusioned with the Nazis. Eventually he joined a plot to kill the Nazi supreme leader, Adolf Hitler, in Hitler’s secret headquarters on the Eastern front, called the Wolfsschanze, or Wolf’s Lair.

Von Stauffenberg planted a briefcase bomb during a staff meeting with Hitler on July 20, 1944. The bomb went off as planned, but by chance Hitler was shielded by a heavy conference table and survived. Von Stauffenberg escaped the blast and flew to Berlin, where he and others had hoped to lead a coup. Instead he was captured the same day and executed early the next morning.