Heroes or Traitors: The German Replacement Army, the July Plot, and Adolf Hitler

When a German victory became impossible in WWII, the July 1944 conspirators plotted to bring a quick end to the war, hoping to negotiate a peace with the Western allies and possibly to join them in a war against Russia. Because the Allies would not negotiate with Hitler, the plotters planned to assassinate him and seize control of the government, using the Replacement Army to overcome the S.S. and the Nazi Party. This army would also maintain order within Germany, a task that would require more than half-a-million trained men. The conspirators convinced key Replacement Army officers to withhold men from the Field Army in the spring of 1944 in preparation for taking over the country. The result was a German army that lacked enough reserve divisions to counter the invasion of France and the Red Army attack in Russia. Although the plotters failed to kill Hitler, they hastened the war’s end by weakening the German army. Dunn examines the 1944 July Plot from a manpower and logistics perspective to demonstrate that the conspirators did, in fact, achieve their goal of hastening the war’s end. This is an account of the conspirators who plotted to kill Hitler in July 1944, and the methods they used to keep half a million men from the battlefields of France and Russia. Without the efforts of these high ranking German officers, the war against Hitler might have had a completely different outcome.