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| result = Military coup d'état against the Nazi government fails. Nazi government victory. | combatant1 = Military-led German resistance | combatant2 = Nazi government | commander1 = | commander2 = | strength1 = | strength2 = | casualties1 = | casualties2 = 4 killed }} On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, perpetrated by Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The name Operation Valkyrie, originally referring to a component part of the conspirators' overall plot, has become associated with the event. The apparent purpose of the assassination attempt was to seize political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the SS) in order to obtain peace with the western Allies as soon as possible. The underlying desire of many of the involved high ranking Wehrmacht officers was apparently to show to the world that not all Germans were like Hitler and the Nazi Party. The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown,〔Hans Helmut Kirst "20th of July"〕〔Winston Churchill,war annual books, "1944"〕〔William L. Shirer "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", part IV, chapter "20th July"〕 but they likely would have included demands to accept wide-reaching territorial annexations by Germany in Europe.〔German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad 1938-1945 By Klemens von Klemperer〕〔History of the German Resistance, 1933-1945 By Peter Hoffmann, page 608-609〕 The plot was the culmination of the efforts by several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government. The failure of both the assassination and the military ''coup d'état'' which was planned to follow, led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo.〔Shirer 1960, p. 1393.〕 According to records of the ''Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs'', 4,980 of these were executed.〔 ==Background== Since 1938, conspiratorial groups planning an overthrow of some kind had existed in the German Army (''Wehrmacht Heer'') and in the German Military Intelligence Organization (''Abwehr''). Early leaders of these plots included Brigadier-General Hans Oster, General Ludwig Beck and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. Oster was the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office. Beck was a former Chief-of-Staff of the German Army High Command (''Oberkommando des Heeres'', OKH). Von Witzleben was the former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command in the West (''Oberbefehlshaber West'', or OB West). They soon established contacts with several prominent civilians, including Carl Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, the great-grandnephew of the hero of the Franco-Prussian War. Military conspiratorial groups exchanged ideas with civilian, political, and intellectual resistance groups in the Kreisauer Kreis (which met at the von Moltke estate in Kreisau) and in other secret circles. Moltke was against killing Hitler; instead, he wanted him placed on trial. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle it". Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical. Hitler and National Socialism had turned "wrong-doing" into a system, something which the resistance should avoid.〔Kurtz, Harold. ''July Plot'' in Taylor 1974, p. 224.〕 Plans to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 1938 and 1939, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army Generals Franz Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch, and the failure of the Western powers to oppose Hitler's aggression until 1939. This first military resistance group delayed their plans after Hitler's extreme popularity following the unexpectedly rapid success in the battle for France. In 1942, a new conspiratorial group formed, led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's staff, who commanded Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa. Tresckow systematically recruited oppositionists to the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of the army resistance. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him.〔Kurtz, Harold, ''July Plot'' in Taylor 1974, p. 226.〕 During 1942, Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective resistance network. Their most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units throughout Germany. Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created a viable coup apparatus.〔Fest, ''Plotting Hitler's Death'', p. 188.〕 In late 1942, Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and stage an overthrow during Hitler's visit to the headquarters of Army Group Centre at Smolensk in March 1943, by placing a bomb on his plane (''Operation Spark''). The bomb failed to detonate, and a second attempt a week later with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin also failed. These failures demoralised the conspirators. During 1943 Tresckow tried without success to recruit senior army field commanders such as Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to support a seizure of power. Tresckow in particular worked on his Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, to persuade him to move against Hitler and at times succeeded in gaining his consent, only to find him indecisive at the last minute.〔von Schlabrendorff, Fabian, ''They Almost Killed Hitler'', p. 39.〕 However, despite their refusals, none of the Field Marshals reported their treasonous activities to the Gestapo or Hitler. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「20 July plot」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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