Codename Valkyrie - General Friedrich Olbricht and the plot against Hitler

Author: Helena Schrader, Hardbound, 288 Pages, H4533, ISBN: 9781844255337, First Edition, 2009

On 20th July, 1944thew last asassination attempt against Hitler failed. A bomb planted by Oberst Claus Graf Stauffenberg, set to explode during the Fares daily briefing in the Wolfschanze, succeeded in only injuring him.

The leading conspirators behind the attempted coup were swiftly arrested and thousands of supporters and sympathisers rounded up and executed.

First to fall to the vicious Nazi retribution was General Friedrich Olbricht, who had nurtured the plans over three years and issued the orders — codenamed Valkyrie.

The real hero of the 'German generals' plot' against Hitler was Friedrich Olbricht. The career soldier's opposition to Hitler went back to 1923 and he actively sought to remove the Nazi leader from power from 1938 onwards.

Sadly, Olbricht's legacy as the architect of the resistance to Hitler has been treated shabbily.

His central role in Valkyrie has been largely written out of the history books and even maligned in the existing literature. Olbricht may have been less glamorous than Stauffenberg, who laid the bomb in the Wolfschanze, but he contributed far more to the overall resistance against Hitler.

Helena Schrader's incisive account describes the transformation of a highly decorated senior German Army officer into an active conspirator dedicated to removing Hitler from power.

She convincingly shows how Olbricht's plans might just have succeeded, had Stauffenberg not failed to kill the Fuhirer on 20 July 1944.