Adolf Hitler single-handedly started the Second World War.

While the Allies were desperately trying to end the Third Reich and Hitler personally,

they weren't the only ones trying to bring Hitler's reign to an end.

Inside Nazi Germany, a small but committed group sought to remove Hitler from power

and they finally took action in July of 1944.

Learn more about Operation Valkyrie and the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. By the summer of 1944 things were not looking good for Nazi Germany.

The Western Allies had finally landed in France opening up a second front for the war

and on the eastern front things weren't looking very good either.

The Soviets were on the march and German

forces were retreating. While Hiller managed to lay all the blame for Germany's

problems on the feet of his many generals, those in the know realize the problem was not with Germany's generals, the problem was with

Hitler himself.

Despite success early in the war, Hitler was not a brilliant military strategist.

The higher-ups in the German vermacht saw Hitler as the problem, and the only way

to avoid a complete defeat for Germany was to eliminate Hitler.

I should note that while we tend to paint history with a very broad brush, there were many officers in the German military who were not members of the Nazi party.

The German officer corps had traditionally been made up of aristocrats who viewed themselves as being professional.

Plans to remove Hitler from within the German military had been around since at least

1938. All of the plots and plans eventually went nowhere for a variety of reasons. Some plotters were

indecisive, some plans were leaked out, and some plans just failed. For example,

there was a bomb placed in Hitler's plane in 1943 that just didn't detonate. Another attempt weeks later in

Berlin also failed. Just finding other conspirators was difficult given the

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