Eighty-one years ago, on July 20, 1944, at 12:42, a bomb went off in the conference room of the Wolf's Lair military headquarters in East Prussia, the easternmost province of the German Reich until the end of World War II. It was supposed to kill Adolf Hitler, and had been planted by German army officer Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. The former ardent National Socialist now no longer saw any other option apart from murdering the dictator.

"There is nothing left but to kill him," he had told his closest confidants a few days earlier.

Stauffenberg was not only the assassin, but also the most important organizer of a large-scale coup attempt by people from conservative circles, which included high-ranking military, diplomatic and administrative officials.

Shortly before the time bomb exploded on July 20, 1944, the officer had left the barracks. He flew in a military aircraft toward Berlin, believing the "Führer" was dead. In the German capital, "Operation Valkyrie" was underway.

Originally devised as a Wehrmacht plan to suppress a possible uprising, the conspirators — who held key positions throughout the Nazi state apparatus — wanted to repurpose "Valkyrie" for their own........

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