If von Stauffenberg’s bomb had killed Hitler on July 20, 1944, do you think it would have made the outcome of the war better, worse, or just different for the Allies and Axis powers?
I’m not sure it would have changed history for the better that much at all ultimately. IANA WW2 historian by any stretch, but from the books I’ve read on it it seems:
*Germany was still in a strong enough position to reject any demand for unconditional surrender
*The Allies, who were taking more territory in France everyday and had just spent gazillions and developed incredible new technologies for the Normandy Invasion, were still in a strong enough position they probably would have demanded- if not unconditional surrender- then peace terms the Germans wouldn’t have accepted
*FDR-Stalin-Churchill had agreed that none would negotiate a separate peace which the Germans almost certainly would have wanted (not to say FDR-Churchill wouldn’t have hung Uncle Joe out to dry and slept soundly)
So there’s a chance it would not have even ended the war. With Hitler dead, Rommel and others who’d been held back by Hitler’s obsession with holding points in the East that couldn’t be held (and weren’t that strategically important anyway) and by his disastrous micromanagement of D-Day preps (and napping) and other military insanities, could well have rallied the troops and gotten them over Hitler’s death and behind the new government very quickly. If Rommel had then taken back some serious ground in France (I can see Paris becoming one helluva battle) and with Hitler (the archenemy anyway) already dead, a peace treaty would have been a real probability leaving the Third Reich in power and many ardent Nazis among its military and political leaders.
The best thing that might have come of the Plot’s success is that the worst parts of the Holocaust (the “get rid of the evidence” horros of the final liquidations and transports and gas chambers working around the clock) would possibly have been avoided. This of course depends on how much power Himmler and other SS would have managed to retain, for they certainly wouldn’t have gone down without a fight and even if Himmler was killed there’s no way von Stauffenberg could have completely smushed the remaining SS in a day or a month. Also, it’s not impossible that the “get rid of the evidence” cleanup wouldn’t have happened if Germany had been given peace in order to save their reputation.
And if Germany and the U.S. had made peace they would possibly have eventually teamed up against the USSR which would have been a real boodbath in and of itself.
Anyway, I’d love to read the opinions of people who know the subject better than I do.
It’s an interesting question, but I don’t think Rommel would have had much to do with it. 0n July 20th he was lying in hospital recovering from a fighter-bomber attack that had cracked his skull. Plus “rallied the troops” wouldn’t have happened either in the west (the allied breakout in Operation Cobra Operation Cobra - Wikipedia was just 5 days away) or in the east (where Operation Bagration Operation Bagration - Wikipedia) was in its final throes and had swept the Soviets to the gates of Warsaw.
Personally I don’t think it would have made much difference militarily, but it would have knocked the stuffing out of the Nazi regime and Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators might have succeeded in seizing power from them.
Certainly the conspirators deserved a better end than they got (Stauffenberg shot himself IIRC, Field Marshal Von Witzleben was subjected to a hideous show trial and an ugly vicious execution http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Erwin-von-Witzleben, etc)
I am not sure the Stalin-Rooseveldt-Churchill common front would have survived. Assuming (and I don’t know how realistic this assumption is, given the utter clusterfuck that was German politics at the time) the country did not collapse into civil war, and that the Wehrmacht took over, and the SS units became loyal to the new government, my guess is you would have seen a shift to the Eastern Front, with strong feelers put out to the West. Even if nothing officially came from them, I think it likely that there would have been significantly less opposition to British, American & Canadian troops, and more to the Soviets. My guess is also there would have been less US/British air support for the Soviets.
Specifically arrested and executed at the direction of his immediate superior, General Fromm, commander of the Replacement Army (Stauffenberg was Chief of Staff). Fromm had apparently been approached by the conspirators earlier, and had given a non-commital “call me when Hitler’s dead” response akin to Rommel. It’s debatable whether his arrest and execution of Stauffenberg was effectively an act of mercy (given the fates of Witzleben and other conspirators), an effort to save his own ass, or both.
Key to the coup would have been whether Himmler could have been killed or captured, and whether the Replacement Army forces directed by the conspirators would have been able to overpower the limited SS and other Nazi loyalist forces in Germany proper. Remember that the cream of the SS was engaged in the front lines, and I doubt they would have abandoned their positions and allowed the fronts to collapse (especially in the East) to participate in a futile civil war if Hitler and Himmler were already dead.
If Germany did collapse in the wake of Hitler’s death, I doubt it would have made much difference to the division of Europe, which was already largely agreed upon by the Allies in principle – I doubt Roosevelt would have denied the Soviets a chunk of Eastern Germany, even if Churchill might have liked to. Nor would Stalin have accepted an attempted freeze out in any case. The Soviet presence in Eastern Europe was already present and building substantially.
If Germany didn’t collapse, then whoever ended up in power would probably have found themselves continuing the war much as it did historically. Neither a separate peace with the western Allies nor any negotiated peace were really in the cards. There had been feelers put out to the Allies by Admiral Canaris and others earlier in the war regarding the prospect for peace with Britain and the US if Hitler was eliminated, and they had not been well received. The geopolitical significance of a successful coup would then probably have been in post-war German politics. Supporters of the coup might have become influential in the post-war government, though I’m not familiar enough with historical post-war politics to really weigh the significance of that.
If, however, the post-coup government had recognized the hopelessness of Germany’s situation and surrendered at some date before the historical one, there might have been more significant repercussions. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of lives might have been saved by such a surrender, but might it have fed “stab in the back” sentiments among the Germans akin to those that thrived in post WWI Germany? Might the army have maintained more institutional authority in such a scenario, even if formally disbanded by the Allies for some interval after the war?
My extensive historical recreations, aided with a copy of Axis & Allies, see the Soviets driven back to their own lines, where their buildup in infantry makes further attacks unfeasible.
As for any further reading, which is what you actually asked…
Most of the recent stuff on the strategic bombing campaign will give you discussions of the targetting decisions, and the shifts that occured. I’ll have to look up the author of the book I read on Dresden…
IMHO I think it was good that hitler did not die. If he was killed, someone else would have took over who would probably be more competent that he was. Then agian, I am pretty ignorant on the matter and facts
Best/worst case scenario for Germany: they re-organize their military on a more rational basis and are able to keep fighting long enough to see Berlin get nuked.
The war was already deep into the endgame. Hitler had been effectually moot for a while. Even with Hitler dead, the Russians would not stop shy of Berlin (even with a post-Hitlerian German capitulation) and the Germans would not allow an unfettered “Bolshevik” advance.
Hitler dies in July 44, the Germans capitulate, but with the condition that the Russians stay the hell out of Berlin. Russians disagree, advance, and Germany unconditionally surrenders when it is obvious that Berlin cannot be spared, sometime in Spring 45. In other words, with Hitler dead, it would have played out much the same as it did, when he was alive. IMHO.
Nein! That could only make it worse. What’s really odd is that some of the actors are English and some are American and none of them try. (Is the difference in Austrian & German (Swiss, Bavarian, etc.) accents as pronounced as the England-U.S. accent?
Say what you will about ol’ Adolph, but he was a moderate Nazi. If was waxed, a more extreme, more efficient Nazi (Himmler?) could have taken over. What then? Heck made up anything you like. Poison gas on Moscow. Poison gas on London. Human sacrifice in Berlin. It would be hard to take anything off the table.
With Hitler in charge, the war followed a predictable and inevitable course. Any big change could have made things worse.
