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You may and most likely have heard that Hitler committed suicide and shot himself in his bunker in World War II when he knew Germany was losing and the Allied Powers were closing in on him but have you heard all of the times Hitler should have died but somehow did not?
As it's pretty obvious for obvious reasons Hitler had a lot of enemies and a lot of ways he could have died but somehow he managed to survive them and surviving these assassination attempts made him feel like a god and immortal. In the end, it was his own undoing which did him in. He did what all these numerous people tried to do.
I will break this up into four different layers the first one is the years from 1921-1927. Then we will move on to the 1928-1934 years. Furthermore, we will then talk about the assassination attempts on Hitler between the years of 1935-1941. Then to top it off we will start to wrap things up and talk about the years 1942-1945 up to his death in April just two months after the last assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. In all the number is between 30-50 assassination attempts on Hitler’s life there may be more but the other ones may not have been recorded or lost to history.
Then to put an end to it all I will give a summary of about what we just read to put the whole thing in perspective.
Assassination Attempts Between the Years of 1921-1927
4th of November 1921 – To start things off let’s talk about the first assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. The first one happened in Munich Hofbräuhaus on the 4th of November 1921. When after Hitler had been speaking for a while the SA (Storm Detachment) who is supposed to be Hitler’s defense and protection when he is doing his speeches and to fight against the opposition and to protect and keep Hitler and the Nazi party in general safe and growing.
They then attacked the opposition at this big public meeting Hitler was speaking at. Then shots were fired at Hitler from in the crowd. They never found who took the shots or who committed the crime against Hitler’s life. Then they got out of there presumably fast since if someone is shooting at you I hope you would leave.
1923 – Next attempt on Hitler’s life happened in 1923 when he was addressing a crowd of people again but this time in Thuringia. As he was speaking shots were fired from the crowd trying to hit Hitler then they got out of there presumably fast. They also never caught the person who tried to kill Hitler here too.
1923 – The next assassination attempt on Hitler was in the same year of 1923. He was driving along the roads of Leipzig when a gunman fired some shots at Hitler’s car. Hitler was untouched and he presumably got out of there as fast as possible. They also never caught the person responsible for committing this crime and attempted assassination of Hitler.
Assassination Attempts Between the Years of 1928-1934
1932 (January) – The next assassination attempt on Hitler would occur almost a decade later in 1932 (January). Hitler and his staff favored the restaurant Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin. He would often dine there and discuss political matters with his associates. Then one fateful day he went there as usual and everything seemed fine and he and his staff ordered their food as usual and everything went smoothly.
Then less than an hour after eating their meal they started to feel a little sick and most of the table fell ill to food poisoning. Hitler, on the other hand, fell less ill to it maybe some have speculated is because of his strict vegetarian diet. No long-term harm was done and no was killed by the poisoning and no one was even charged for it.
1932 (15th March) – Hitler was on a train carriage ride from the Munich to Weimar line. Hitler was traveling with his Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels and Reich Minister of the Interior in the Hitler Cabinet Wilhelm Frick. Shots were fired at the traveling train but thankfully no one was injured or killed.
1932 (June) – Hitler was traveling in a car near to Stralsund and a group of men was waiting around the corner of this tight turn to ambush Hitler and kill him but the car managed to get away in time before they could kill him.
1933 (21st March) – Just two weeks after the previous assassination attempt on Hitler. Hitler was scheduled to attend this ceremony to commemorate the opening of the new Reichstag building. Also to celebrate the passing of the Enabling Act (Which basically gives Hitler the ability to make any laws and do what he pleases without the votes and approval of the Reichstag (federal government) so basically a dictator just so you have some backstory on what the act is.)
Known as the Day of Potsdam the ceremony was put together after Hitler had succeeded and the Act was passed. The ceremony was planned to take place at the garrison church (Garnisonkirche) and the day before the ceremony was supposed to take place authorities found a tunnel dug right under the church. They speculated that it would have been filled with explosives and blown up to kill most definitely Hitler and most of his cabinet. The people responsible were never found.
1933 – An unknown man wearing a SA uniform walking around with a gun was spotted in Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden. The man was then arrested and he told them he planned on killing Hitler when he saw him doing his afternoon walk.
1933 – Hitler was once again shot at and this time it was once again at him in the car he was in. In happened in between Rosenheim and Obersalzberg shots were fired but they missed Hitler and they got out of there presumably fast. The culprit was never caught or found and prosecuted.
March 4th, 1933 (planned assassination date) – Hitler’s next assassination attempt was after he became chancellor of Germany on January 30 (1933) just before the Reichstag elections (5th March 1933). So then this guy Kurt Lutter who was a carpenter and a communist and him along with his fellow conspirators ran an underground organization called the Lutter Group whose goal was to kill Hitler. They devised and thought up a plan to assassinate Hitler on the 4th of March while he was doing his election speech to the people with a bomb.
It was set up and ready to go but then for some reason, one member of the group leaked the information to the authorities which led the whole group and Lutter to be arrested March 3rd the day before Hitler’s speech.
Assassination Attempts Between the Years of 1935-1941
1935 – His own officers and generals tried to attempt an overthrow and kill Hitler since they started to realize how crazy he was and they strongly disliked his politics. The two who orchestrated this coup were Dr. Helmuth Mylius and Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, they tried to infiltrate the SS (Schutzstaffel also translated literally into ‘Protection Squadron’ they protected Hitler and tried to keep him safe at his speeches and they tried to protect the Nazi regime and beat down and oppress the opposition and keep the Nazi regime growing.) with other members of their group.
They actually succeeded and smuggled in around 160 people into the SS and found out about and learned about Hitler’s daily routine but then somehow the Gestapo (Hitler’s secret police) found it out and put an end to it rather quickly.
1935 – Once again Hitler was shot at while driving around in a car. This time someone was shot and injured and the man who carried out this assassination attempt on Hitler was Heinrich Grunow. The ironic thing about this attempt is that he was Hitler’s bodyguard and it is suspected that he wanted to get revenge for the Night of the Long Knives murder of SA leader Ernst Rohm.
Heinrich Grunow knew Hitler would be returning to Berchtesgarten so he hid out in a place where he knew that the car had to slow down at. Then when the car came around to him and slowed down he opened fire shot someone in the back turned out to be his chauffeur and then promptly shot himself and died. Quite unfortunate for him is that he probably thought to himself before killing himself that he killed Hitler but he just shot his chauffeur and Hitler was the one actually driving the car this time and not the chauffeur.
1935 – There was this socialist group called the Markowitz Circle. Whose goal was to think up ideas and ways to kill Hitler. The assassination plans and plots never went through of course since the Gestapo infiltrated their group. Then they all got arrested and killed for treason before they had a chance to carry out any of their plans.
1936 (December) – Helmut Hirsch was recruited by Otto Strasser (an opponent of Hitler) to help carry out a plot to kill Hitler. Hirsch’s job was to carry a bomb in a briefcase into Germany and he actually succeeds in doing that. He then continued on his route to meet his appointed contact but unbeknownst to him his contact got arrested three days earlier and all he met was a Gestapo agent.
So he arrested him and he was tried and beheaded in March 1937.
1937 – This one is funny how it turned out this assassination attempt on Hitler is another bombing one this time by an unfortunately unknown German soldier. So he made this bomb and he was gonna place it under a stage that Hitler was supposed to give a speech on.
Thinking that the speech would go on for hours he went to use the bathroom before detonating the bomb. Then somehow someway he got stuck in the bathroom and was unable to get out in time to detonate the bomb.
1937 – Dr. Johannes von Dohnanyi tried to recruit Hitler’s adjutant (a military officer who acts as an administrative assistant to a senior officer) Hans Wiedemann and persuade and encourage him to shoot and kill Hitler. Instead, he was betrayed and he was presumably hanged or shot for treason.
1938 – Maurice Bavaud tried two assassination attempts on Hitler. First, he wanted to kill Hitler since he failed to get rid of the communist party. Maurice Bavaud first went to visit his relatives in Germany before buying a gun. Then he got on a train heading to Berlin hoping to find Hitler there little did he know that Hitler a few days earlier headed and left for Berchtesgarten.
Not put off and discouraged he continued onward to try and find and track and kill Hitler. So he then hopped on a train heading to Bavaria with the intent of going to Berchtesgarten and meeting and seeing Hitler and killing him. Once he got off the train he learned that Hitler is doing a parade right in Bavaria so he pretended to be a Swiss journalist so he could have a great vantage point in the grandstand to shoot Hitler.
Of course, as it goes with Hitler and assassination attempts Hitler was marching on the side of the parade not facing and away from the grandstand so he did not have a clear shot.
Still undiscouraged and headstrong he then forged a letter to Hitler from the French Foreign Minister and intended to use it so he can get close to Hitler (to somehow kill him then presumably) by saying that he had been asked by the French Foreign Minister to deliver it personally.
Then he headed off once again with the intent to go to Berchtesgarten to find and locate Hitler and then once he got Berchtesgarten he learned that Hitler is actually in Berlin and went on a train to Berlin. Then as fate would have it as soon as Maurice got to Berlin Hitler was off to Berchtesgarten.
So then him being angry and out of money, he got on a train to head back home. Unfortunately, he could not afford a train ride to Switzerland so he went to France with the hope of getting help to return to Switzerland.
Unfortunately, he was stopped by a railway conductor and since he was a foreigner and had possession of a gun he turned him over to the Gestapo. Then he confessed to what he was trying to do and everything and then he was executed.
1938 (September) – Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster was a World War I veteran and was head of counterintelligence. He did not like Hitler because of the Nazi movement he was doing and he sought to kill him to try and stop it. He sought out and got other like-minded people to join him in this quest to kill Hitler. His plan depended on the impending invasion of Czechoslovakia.
So he and his group hid in these secret houses in Berlin their plan was that when Hitler would give the order to invade Czechoslovakia then Britain and France would declare war on Germany. Then somehow they would overthrow Hitler and kill him and prevent war from happening.
The group made a big miscalculation I guess they did not question the idea or prospect of Britain and France not declaring war on Germany at that time so when they did not declare war their plan was abandoned and it was no good.
1939 (September) – General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord was a military veteran and an opponent of Hitler and what he tried to do to kill Hitler is that he invited Hitler to visit him at Cologne. Hitler knew better and he knew the general’s feelings toward him were hostile and the invite was not of good intention or kindness of heart. So he did not go and meet the general and he declined his invite and then Hitler then arranged for the general to be retired.
1939 (8th November) – George Elser was a carpenter who had recently been released from Dachau Concentration Camp where he had been sent for being a Communist. He knew that every year Hitler did a speech on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch ( which is the failed coup attempt that Hitler tried to pull off and do Nov 8 – Nov 9, 1923, of the Bavaria government a state in southern Germany.)
He somehow managed to get access to where Hitler would be giving his speech at and he made a little area in one of the pillars behind the stage and then placed a bomb he made in there. He hooked up a clock to the bomb and timed it to go off and detonate at 9:30 pm. Which was the time when the other past year’s speeches had ended.
As fate would have it once again for some reason this year was different though instead of ending at 9:30 pm they ended it at a shorter time for whatever reason and when the bomb went off Hitler was at the train station and it was all for nothing.
1940 (27th July) – A little backstory On June 22nd, 1940 France signed an armistice agreement with Germany. Then they set up a parade to celebrate this occasion which was set for July 27, 1940. This is when Count FritzDietlof von der Schulenberg planned to shoot Hitler while he was watching the play but then Hilter for some reason decided to cancel it. Maybe cause of paranoia I think most times paranoia is baseless and has no good reason but I think paranoia for Hitler saved his life more than a few times so I guess paranoia worked well for him.
1941 (21st May) – There was a parade in Paris and Captain Graf Schwerin von Schwanefel, Major Hans Alexander von Voss and Captain Graf von Waldersee. We’re planning to shoot and throw a grenade at Hitler with two of the three shooting at him and one throwing a grenade. As luck would have it or paranoia or both or something but regardless either way for some reason Hitler once again canceled the parade that he was supposed to attend and be a part of.
1941 (4th August) – Hitler was once again involved in a plot to assassinate him by being shot. This time Major General Henning von Tresckow planned to shoot and kill Hitler this time at Barysaw. So what Henning von Tresckow did to try and kill Hitler is he invited Hitler many times to Army Group Centre Headquarters presumably in Barysaw and so then finally Hitler finally accepted to go and meet him albeit after many canceled invitations.
Nevertheless, he showed up but he got cold feet when he was in the presence of Hitler to shoot him since he had so many bodyguards.
Assassination Attempts Between the Years of 1942-1945
1943 (13th March) – This time they tried to do a mid-air explosion it was organized by Major General Henning von Tresckow, Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge and other like-minded people who wanted to help out. Their plan to use an explosive disguised as two bottles of Cognac ( a brandy named after a town in France) so at a lunch meeting, one-day Tresckow went up to Colonel Heinz Brandt and asked him if would take the two bottles and deliver them to someone in Berlin.
Brandt agreed and he put them on the plane in an unheated overhead locker. Sounds like a perfect plan and it is all going smoothly but the thing they did not realize is that as you go up to higher altitudes it gets cold and I mean really cold. Just to give you some information a jet airliner flies at around 35,000 feet and up there it is around – 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
I am not saying that is how high they were but just to give you some information just so you know how unbearably cold it can get up there. Anyways back to the story, it was in this overhead locker and it was so cold that this messed with the detonation and the bomb did not go off because of it. Once again somehow Hitler managed to evade death without even being aware of his almost imminent demise.
1943 (21st March) – This time I guess they felt like they needed to do something drastic since they might have felt like they were running out of options. So Major General Henning von Tresckow and Von Gertsdorff decided let’s send a suicide bomber to kill Hitler and Von Gertsdorff decided that he would be the suicide bomber and that he would be the one to try and kill Hitler.
The place this was all supposed to do down was at the Army Group Centre where they were doing a scheduled inspection of the weapons there. The plan was when Hitler arrived he would make the bomb live and then Hitler would greet him and I guess occupy him until the 10-minute detonation timer was up.
When Hitler arrived he just walked right past him and Gertsdorff tried to get his attention but Hitler just ignored him. So then Gertsdorff left and went to the nearest bathroom and disabled the bomb.
1943 – This one is another explosion attempt by this time Major General Henning von Tresckow (once again) and Colonel Stieff at Rastenburg. This time Tresckow tried to get appointed as Field Marshal Manstein’s Chief of Staff. Mainstein was smart though and he knew of his dislike he had towards Hitler so instead, he arranged for him to be posted east. Where Colonel Stieff comes in is that he got some explosives from Tresckow’s resistance group.
Since Tresckow was heading away it was decided they should bury the explosives for a later date. So they found this water tower and buried it near that and then somehow, and someway the explosives detonated so they were lost and destroyed so they could not be used for any later assassination attempts.
1943 – Another explosion attempt by guess who Major General Henning von Tresckow he just keeps coming back and just keeps on keeping on trying to kill Hitler. Even though to be fair its Captain Axel von dem Bussche who actually would detonate the bomb and kill Hitler but he is part of Tresckow’s resistance group so in a way Tresckow is still part of it since he probably worked on setting this plan up.
So first let me tell you a little beforehand so some new uniforms came out and Hitler was supposed to check them and choose a new selection of uniforms for his troops. What Captain Axel von dem Bussche job was he was supposed to model them and he would have an explosive device on him which he would then explode near Hitler killing him.
The plan failed since the showing was postponed to the next day and while in the night the train car was destroyed in an air raid.
1944 – This one is pretty weird so these group of US men thought it would be a good idea to drop a lot of pornographic material over Hitler’s mountain retreat the Berchtesgarten and that Hitler would be overcome with lust and have to shoot and kill himself. I think you can guess why this one never happened and failed since it is completely crazy and absurd and I really wonder how they ever thought this would work out.
1944 (6th July) – This time Colonel Claus Count von Stauffenberg tried to attempt another bombing attempt on Hitler I guess they like to use bombs a lot in their assassination attempts to kill Hitler a lot in the latter portion of these assassination attempts. Colonel Claus Count von Stauffenberg had a pretty good chance since he was Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army so he had direct access to Hitler.
So his plan was that he would carry a bomb into a meeting with Hitler and the bomb would be in a briefcase so it could be easily placed under the table. The meeting was set and he went to it and everything went fine he was not caught and no one found out.
He just for someone reason did not detonate the bomb maybe cause he was scared of his presumably many guards surrounding Hitler or maybe cause he did not want to die or maybe cause he did not want to kill Hitler we most likely will never know the answer which is quite unfortunate.
1944 (11th July) – Just 5 days after the last assassination attempt which failed for whatever reason. Colonel Claus Count von Stauffenberg was back at it again with another bomb in a briefcase and another meeting with Hitler. The reason this one failed was that Himmler was not present so Stauffenberg decided to abort and not go through with the bombing attempt on Hitler.
Since he wanted Himmler and Goering to both be there so it would take out his entire team of people in one go so when they were not there he called it off.
1944 (20th July) (Also probably most commonly known as Operation Valkyrie) – This is arguably the most well known and famous assassination attempt on Hiter. There is even a movie about it which Tom Cruise starred in called Valkyrie. So here is how the plan goes there was another meeting and this time it was at this wooden outbuilding instead of Hitler’s concrete bunker. Colonel Claus Count von Stauffenberg was apart of this one again since he was one of the select people who still actually had direct access to Hitler.
So onwards then Stauffenberg arrives at the meeting and Hitler moved the meeting ahead so it would be sooner so Stauffenberg had little time to prime the bomb and get it all set up. So then Stauffenberg enters the meeting room and places the briefcase under the table and then shortly after Stauffenberg leaves and says he has an urgent telephone call he has to take. So then he leaves the room and waits and then he hears the bomb go off and thinks he has succeeded.
Little does he know Hitler only has a few scrapes and cuts and somehow miraculously stays relatively unharmed. So after Stauffenberg hears the bomb go off he takes his getaway car and goes directly to the airport and goes to Berlin. So he and the group of men he has can go and seize control of the government since he believes Hitler is dead and he has succeeded but then he hears Hitler talking on the radio about how he is still alive.
So then the resistance fails and so then it was quickly put together that Stauffenberg was apart of this plot to kill Hitler so then he was taken into custody and executed by being shot to death.
1945 (February) – Hitler’s last known assassination attempt I found. It is just two months before he commits suicide. This one is done by Albert Speer (Hitler’s Armaments Minister) he tried to put some lethal gas into the ventilation system of Hitler’s bunker. Before he could do that though Hitler put twice the amount of security around his bunker so Speer’s plan was unlikely to happen so I guess he called it off and it never happened.
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Assassination Attempts On Hitler Overview
This is the extensive list of most if not all of Hitler’s assassination attempts. Basically, to sum it up for you Hitler was a terrible person who did many terrible things and many people even in his own inner circle wanted him dead. They tried many, many, and I mean many things as you saw above but none of them ever worked.
I do not know why God only knows all I know is that somehow, and someway he survived all these numerous attempts on his life. He was a very very lucky man. He then after surviving all these numerous attempts on his life just kills himself in his bunker. I hope you enjoyed this article I put a lot of time into it. I hope you learned something and you are better for it and you can maybe share it with friends and family to show how smart you are. I hope you have a great day.
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History.com Staff. “Beer Hall Putsch.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/beer-hall-putsch.
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By Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13774 / Unknown Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5481177
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By Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-048-29A / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5783006
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By Josef Gierse – Josef Gierse, my dead uncle, I am the heir of the pic, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8785473
By Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-P022061 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5474676
By Unsure, an unknown friend of the relative actually took the photograph. All are deceased – From a personal collection found in a shoe box in a deceased relative’s closet., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57449607
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Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1967306
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Sealman at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons