General Friedrich Olbricht and the Plot Against Hitler
Kill the Fuehrer! A secret plot three years in the making. The main conspirator: one of Hitler’s most trusted and decorated generals. His plan would have changed the course of history — if Colonel Stauffenberg had not failed.
The true story of the mastermind behind the plot to depose Hitler and re-establish the rule of law in Germany: Friedrich Olbricht.
Helena Schrader’s incisive account describes the transformation of a highly decorated senior German Army officer into an active conspirator dedicated to removing Hitler from power. She convincingly shows how Olbricht’s plans might just have succeeded, had Stauffenberg not failed to kill the Fuehrer on 20 July 1944.
Codename Valkyrie is based on the dissertation, with which Helena P Schrader earned a PhD from the University of Hamburg cum Laude. Schrader was one of the first Western scholars to gain access to the Military Archives of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), which contained important Wehrmacht and Reichswehr documents not then available in the West. In addition, she conducted hundreds of interviews with survivers of the Nazi regime, including the widows of General Friedrich Olbricht, Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg, and Graf Moltke. In addition, she was able to interview Olbricht’s former secretaries, and had access to the private papers of some of his staff officers. Her research broke new ground and is sited in subsequent academic literature on the German Resistance to Hitler.