Tragic Account

Of The Plot Of July 20

If July 20, 1944, had not been a warm day at Rastenburg, in East Prussia, World War II may have ended nine months before it did and a million lives may have been saved.

ON July 20 a plot to kill Adolf Hitler failed because he moved from his underground bunker, where the air-conditioning system had failed, to a lightly-built hut, where much of the force of an exploding brief-case bomb was dissipated.

It failed also because of the ineptitude of the plotters, of whom one historian has said, “they were officers and gentlemen, and therefore totally unfit to be conspirators”.

They paid dearly. Not one of the principals, who included some of Germany’s top-ranking military officers, liberals and clerics, escaped Hiker’s vengeance. More than 5,000 people died either by suicide or execution for their part in the plot.

The plotters killed only four people—none of them important to the sucess of the coup. Hitler was so lightly injured he was able to meet Mussolini the same after noon and to prolong the war (and his life) another nine months, during which an estimated 500,000 Germans died along with about the same number of Allies.

Now Hans Kirst, best known as the author of the Gunner Asch series, has turned the bomb plot into a thrilling novel. Much of the dialogue has been taken from detailed official documents.

It is a tragic account of officers and gentlemen who tried to apply their own standards in dealing with a war machine created by a monster.

The lesson is, if you organise a plot, go at it boots and all.—Rob W. (THE 20th OF JULY. Published by Collins. $3.15.)