Killing Hitler

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• 1. Operation Foxley
• 2. Germany still in control of Europe
• 3. Eastern Front
• 4. Western Front
• 5. A radical solution to the Soviet advance
• 6. Soviet belligerence
• 7. Find out more
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Operation Foxley

Adolf Hitler was the centre of the Nazi system. Around him revolved a loose confederation of fiefdoms, whose leaders engaged in a ceaseless struggle to protect and enhance their power. If Operation Foxley, the plan devised by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) to assassinate Hitler, had succeeded, this system would have been thrown into chaos.

Count von Stauffenberg and various fellow conspirators, whose courage was equalled only by their ineptitude, were plotting a similar operation from the German side. There was, however, not the slightest possibility that they could have taken advantage of the chaos.

Rather more likely was the emergence of a coalition of the major fiefdoms, with Hermann Goering as Reichsverweser (literally state caretaker), co-existing uneasily with Heinrich Himmler, Albert Speer, Karl Doenitz and a clutch of popular generals such as Erich von Manstein and Erwin Rommel.

The most plausible date for SOE's assassination of Hitler would have been around 13-14 July 1944. By this time the Russians had reached the old Polish-Soviet frontier. From what is now known about the frame of mind of many prominent generals in Germany around this time, we can guess that the new administration would have sent peace feelers to the western allies, who would have reiterated their demand for unconditional surrender.

'The most plausible date for SOE's assassination of Hitler would have been around 13-14 July 1944.'

For Himmler and the SS even a negotiated peace would have posed serious problems. He would have been worried about how he was going to explain the 'final solution' (the extermination of all Jewish people, and other 'untermenschen', in Nazi-held territories) to the outside world, and might well have decided to close down the gas chambers, and tried to pass the death factories off as labour camps.

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