On July 20, 1944, a briefcase bomb planted beneath a conference table at Hitler's field headquarters came within an architectural accident of ending World War II. The conference had been moved from a concrete bunker to a wooden barrack — and that single change dissipated the blast enough for Hitler to survive. This episode of Sidequests covers Operation Valkyrie: the conspiracy involving hundreds of German military officers, lawyers, clergy, and civil servants who concluded that assassination was the only remaining moral option, how close they came to succeeding, why the coup unraveled in hours, and what the attempt reveals about resistance, complicity, and moral choice under tyranny.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}