Volume 24, Number 14 · September 15, 1977
Hitler: Hard to Resist
By John Kenneth Galbraith
The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945
by Peter Hoffmann, translated by Richard Barry
MIT Press, 847 pp., $19.95
On July 20, 1944, with the Russians fewer than a hundred miles to the east and the Western Allies known by the Wehrmacht to be on the verge of a breakthrough in Normandy, a professional German army officer of great courage and determination, Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, left his briefcase in the hut at the East Prussia headquarters (Wolfschanze) where Hitler and his generals were assembling for the noonday briefing, and went out, ostensibly to make a telephone call. Minutes later a captured British-made explosive in the briefcase went off with a terrific bang, killing four officers but leaving Hitler physically more or less undamaged. It was Stauffenberg's third try.
Review, 3312 words
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