On July 21, 1944, the leaders of the assassination attempt against German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler were executed by firing squad after being sentenced to death by an impromptu court martial. The executions came following a failed attempt the previous day, July 20, to assassinate Hitler during a military meeting with the German Armed Forces high command at the “Wolf’s Lair” (Wolfsschanze), the German military headquarters on the Eastern Front, located near Rastenburg, East Prussia (now located in present-day Poland). The assassination attempt was part of a coup plot by several high-ranking German military officers and civilian members of the German resistance to seize power from the Nazi Party and then negotiate an immediate end to the war with the Western Allies. The failed assassination was the latest (and the last) of at least fifteen attempts made on Hitler during his lifetime.
The plan involved detonating two bombs at the Wolf’s Lair military headquarters while Hitler was meeting with the German high command. One bomb exploded which failed to kill Hitler, instead killing four officers and wounding many others.
In the aftermath, a massive hunt for the conspirators was launched. The Gestapo arrested more than 7,000 people, of whom 4,980 were executed. Famed war hero Field Marshall Erwin Rommel became implicated in the interrogations, which eventually led to his arrest and forced suicide rather than face a court martial which would lead to certain death by execution.