Changes

===Assassination attempt===

===Assassination attempt===

[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]

[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]

Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him).  The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot.  The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire.  It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions.  As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.

Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel [[Claus von Stauffenberg]] went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him).  The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot.  The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire.  It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions.  As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.

Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands.  A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed.  Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination.  By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets.  When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.

Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands.  A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed.  Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination.  By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets.  When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.