If the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler had succeeded, would the Holocaust have continued?

I've read that there was plot by a few German army officers on July 20, 1944, to assassinate Adolf Hitler because of the tide of World War II in Europe turning against the Germans after D-Day, but the Wikipedia article about the July 20 plot outlines some of the motivations for the unsuccessful attempt to kill Hitler:

While the main goal of the plotters was to remove Hitler from power, they did so for various reasons. The majority of the group behind the 20 July plot were conservative nationalists—idealists, but not necessarily of a democratic stripe. Martin Borschat portrays their motivations as a matter of aristocratic resentment, writing that the plot was mainly carried out by conservative elites who were initially integrated by the Nazi government but during the war lost their influence and were concerned about regaining it. However, at least in Stauffenberg's case, the conviction that Nazi Germany's atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war were a dishonour to the nation and its military was likely a major motivating factor. Historian Judith Michel assesses the circle around the 20 July Group as a diverse and heterogeneous group that included liberal democrats, conservatives, social democrats, authoritarian aristocrats, and even communists. The common goal was to overthrow Hitler's regime and bring the war to a swift end. There is evidence of the plot encompassing a broad spectrum of plotters which included Communists in that in April, prior to the attempted coup, Stauffenberg agreed to cooperate with the Operational Leadership of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) remaining in Germany. Contacts were established through the Social Democrats Adolf Reichwein and Julius Leber.

If the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler had been successful, would the Nazi government have continued the Holocaust with encouragement from Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann, or would it have been forced to shut down some concentration camps in occupied Europe due to Soviet forces racing across Eastern Europe?

a reply to: Potlatch

Is is all speculation and What-If's but I would assume they would sue for peace almost immediately.

If peace was not an option, I assume the status-quo would have remained as the new leaders were of like mind with the newly dead Hitler.

But don't forget the Holocaust did not involve only Jewish people - people in my own family in Poland during those terrible times went through it all, and they were Roman Catholic.
Everyone suffered.

originally posted by: RonnieJersey
But don't forget the Holocaust did not involve only Jewish people - people in my own family in Poland during those terrible times went through it all, and they were Roman Catholic.
Everyone suffered.

Yes, the Holocaust didn't just go after Jews and Slavs but also Gypsies, homosexuals, elderly people, and disabled people.

a reply to: Potlatch

Peace was never an option for the allies, given AH tried many times beforehand, and during to bring the war to an end. Churchill had no interest.

I'll answer your Question with a Question .

Did 'Apple' suddenly withdraw there company from China and stop producing IPhones when Steve Jobs died ?

a reply to: Potlatch

No. The man at the top is always just the figurehead of a movement.
What stood behind the concentration camps was the idea of Rassenhygiene, in another word eugenics.
Very popular idea from 1900 onwards. If it wouldn't have been Hitler it still would have happened.

In case someone is interested:
Hitler called Grant's Conquest of a Continent his bible. The question was how people so superior like Germans could have lost the war and the answer was they carried too many undesirables in their midst. Other than the US the only real foreign element in Germany's stock were handicapped, homosexuals or Gipsys and Jews.
The problem with Jews was not so much that they were inferior though, they were in big parts the elite in old Germany in politics, art and science. Their fault in the eyes of the Germans was merely that they were too Cosmopolitan. Too connected over the globe and not really attracted by a 'Germany first' policy the plebs wanted at that time.

a reply to: Potlatch

Probably not. There may be the chance but they would not have only killed Hitler with the bomb, they would have taken out a full room of the upper military management.

People back then were sick and tired of sending their sons to a war. I know from family history and diaries that the people were very grateful for the Americans to arrive. The Americans on the ground treated people good. They might have taken away shovels, pitch forks and such for own safety but overall they treated the German people good.

Americans had a little base set up in the neighboring farm house opposite the street from the house I grew up. They treated people good, a lot better than Hitler treated their own people. Granted, this is just a local example but people did not want the war and already knew about the concentration camps.

It wasn't only Jews like other's pointed out. Family members were shot too and not just because of race. You spoke up, you were dragged in front of the local church and simply shot. Just like that. The bullet marks are still there, the lead washing out of them stains the stones until today.

There were only a few mishaps like American fighter pilots shooting at farmers on the field from their planes just for giggles weeks into after the war had ended. My grandfather's brother was killed this way two weeks after the war when they were working on a field and made the mistake not running for the forest but try hiding in a ditch. But these were actions of single individuals, as a whole the population was very grateful for the Americans to arrive.

Yes! it was a propaganda tool.
and they tool all the jew money!

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: Potlatch

No. The man at the top is always just the figurehead of a movement.
What stood behind the concentration camps was the idea of Rassenhygiene, in another word eugenics.
Very popular idea from 1900 onwards. If it wouldn't have been Hitler it still would have happened.

In case someone is interested:
Hitler called Grant's Conquest of a Continent his bible. The question was how people so superior like Germans could have lost the war and the answer was they carried too many undesirables in their midst. Other than the US the only real foreign element in Germany's stock were handicapped, homosexuals or Gipsys and Jews.
The problem with Jews was not so much that they were inferior though, they were in big parts the elite in old Germany in politics, art and science. Their fault in the eyes of the Germans was merely that they were too Cosmopolitan. Too connected over the globe and not really attracted by a 'Germany first' policy the plebs wanted at that time.

One hundred years ago across Europe there were many situations and tensions going on, times were different then.
German and Polish citizens who were working for Jewish owned companies were not making much money and were struggling to survive. It was felt that Jewish people were not assimilating into society, but holding big businesses such as banks, etc., in European countries and taking over, in a way, which created mounting tensions and resentments. Whether or not that was true, it was just a part of the growing situation then. And people were just helpless in its midst.
Concentration camp survivors told me some of these stories when I was a kid, horrifying.
I don't believe that the death of Hitler would have made much difference at that point, things had gone much too far, for too many years.

depends on which group won control after his death, was their a faction that wanted the horrors stopped sure, heck there was an SS division that last I heard never had a single accusation thrown at them (could be wrong) they were up in Scandinavia name escapes me at the moment.

Not everyone was a mengel or hitler, but to think they would be the only that could have won the power struggle would have been naive.

Lotta people in positions of power had blood on their hands, then you run into the old adage, in for a penny in for a pound.

a reply to: Potlatch

Eichmann was more dangerous than Hitler, more rational but definitely no less evil.

Had Hitler been killed or deposed by someone like Eichmann early in the war (Though Eichmann was his chosen successor) then in all likelihood the holocaust would indeed have continued, indeed it may even have expanded as under Eichmann's more rational leadership (But no less evil) Germany may very well have won the war and Hitlers ideals were shared by the NAZI's under him.

In death he would have had monuments built to him and a legend among the germans that he was a saviour rather than the devil he actually was.


The reason we stopped trying to assassinate Hitler and the reason other western powers also stopped is because his irrational decisions were actually robbing the German army of victory after victory at crucial points in the war, imagine if for instance he had insisted on an invasion of Britain, oh we would have fought tooth and nail but so soon after losing so much equipment after the French lines had buckled and France surrendered (it was the French lines that had collapsed though some very good French forces remained holding there own as well though not enough to hold the line so forcing the British whom had held our own to have to retreat to Dunkirk) and before we had a chance to ramp up into full war mode we probably would have been unable to hold back the invaders at that point in time.

But not realizing we had RADAR (or as it was called at that point in time RDF - Radio Directional Finding AND Huffduff an anachronistic term based on HRDF were the H was High Frequency RDF) the Germans assumed that our RAF was much larger than it actually was and so fearing that they would not therefore have full Aerial supremacy and not knowing how strong our ground forces within the UK actually were they never actually invaded (or that is the official take though there are persistent rumours that there Germans did indeed attempt an invasion and had there arses kicked, an elderly man in Liverpool whom had served down in the south of the UK once told my mother back in the 1970's that the Germans had invaded and that it was - The old men that were waiting for them who got them - now who the old men were I don't know unless it was WW1 veterans).

Either way I digress.

The general take is this.

The western allies stopped trying to assassinate Hitler when we realized his irrational decisions were actually costing the Germans the war by spending there strength on his mad errands as well as over ruling the plans of some very competent German generals.

However Russia continued to try to assassinate him right through the war with no success (unless as some claim Hitler was actually a double and the real one had been killed).

Even the Germans themselves failed to kill him (or did they?) with Rommel for instance being roped in by a plan among the senior staff of the German army to kill the madman.

Either way the NAZI's were evil, they wanted to kill the Jewish, the Gypsies, the Russians and of course all Slavic people's, after this they would have sought other human ethnicity's to wipe out.

Evil bunch driven by Ideology, something that is even wrecking nations today such as for example our UK prime minister Lizz Truss and her sick and twisted economic ideology and her inept Chancellor Kwasi Karteng (A useful idiot according to some bankers).

Oddly Putin's war against the Ukraine is Ideological in nature as well.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Just as I said on another thread, Putin is the new Hitler.
History always repeats itself.

a reply to: RonnieJersey

That's probably also true. That's the thing with injustice and violence you think it could never be normal for people but one gets used to it. That's a big problem. For all growing up in war.

a reply to: Potlatch

More than lightly because Heinrich Himmler was the main architect of the Holocaust.

If the assassination of Hitler was successful, as per the von Stauffenberg plot in July 1944, the plan was for the Wehrmacht to take over. The Wehrmacht would have acted fast to take all important and strategic points across the lands that Germany controlled, probably including concentration camps. Likely that there would have been a bloody struggle with the Waffen-SS and SS organisations (such as the Schutzstaffel) who ran things like the concentration camps.

It's all speculation, but I think the Wehrmacht would have opened a dialogue with the Western allies and pulled everything out of France, Italy and the Low Countries to stop the advancing Soviets.

What would have happened next would have been a surrender, with Germany returning to their original borders. Of course, the Soviets would have probably kept on fighting to expand the area under their control, but maybe the Western allies could have brokered a deal to end of hostilities. Stalin was a mad psycho, so difficult to control.

Not sure whether the war with Japan being conducted by the British and Commonwealth and the USA would have ended much sooner. The A-Bomb's development would not have ceased.

Much blood would not have been spilt, and the advancement of the "final solution" would have been cut short. Israel may still have been created, but the Cold War would have certainly taken place, albeit with the borders of the Soviet Union further east.

If Hitler had been assassinated, Germany probably would have sued for peace. They might have agreed to pull out of France Belgium and the Netherlands. If the war halted for discussions it could have made the Holocaust worse than it was. Many survivors only survived because the people running the camps left because the camp was going to be overrun. Every thing that I have read had the Allied forces hearing about the camps, but not believing it until they came upon them.

a reply to: Potlatch

Stephen Fry wrote a novel about alternate realities where Hitler never existed.

Turned out the alternative was worse, apparently.

Not read it yet, but I do love alternate reality fiction.
John Birmingham's WW 2.2 is good:


en.m.wikipedia.org...(novel)

a reply to: Oldcarpy2
A video game called Command and Conquer Red alert touches up on that reality too, had Germany not been in the way, The soviet union was sure to steam roll Europe eventually. Something interesting to think about.