14. The Cointreau bomb on Hitler’s airplane
During the lunch at Smolensk, Tresckow approached Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Brandt, a member of Hitler’s entourage who would fly with the Fuhrer later that day. Asked if he would as a personal favor carry a bottle of Cointreau to be delivered to Colonel Helmuth Stieff. Tresckow explained that the Cointreau was payment for a friendly wager he had lost. Lieutenant Colonels in any army are always willing to do favors for senior generals and Brandt was no exception, placing the bottle in his personal luggage. The bottle contained a bomb with a timed fuse. The bombing attempt was known to other conspirators though the named recipient of the Cointreau was not one of them. It was manufactured from British explosives and timers and encased in a container also of British manufacture. Once Hitler’s aircraft had taken off the other conspirators were notified that the operation was underway.
Hitler arrived safely at his headquarters in East Prussia, to the consternation of the conspirators, not only because it had failed but because the bomb was now to be delivered to an officer presumably still loyal to Hitler. An aide to Tresckow, Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, flew to East Prussia to retrieve the Cointreau. It was determined that the bomb had failed to explode due to the extreme cold in the unheated cargo hold of Hitler’s plane, which had it crashed would have been attributed to Soviet fighter aircraft since the timer would have caused it to detonate near Minsk. Through sheer luck, Hitler had survived another attack on his life, though this one too was undetected by his security personnel. The plotters decided to attempt the more reliable concept of suicide bombers to kill Hitler.