15. Two attempted suicide bomb attacks on the Fuhrer
On March 21, 1943, a collection of captured Soviet equipment was put on display in Berlin, and Adolf Hitler was scheduled to attend the opening. Colonel Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, an Abwehr intelligence liaison officer working for Tresckow, volunteered to be a suicide bomber, killing himself and Hitler while he viewed the display of Soviet equipment (and an untold number of other spectators). Gersdorff wore his full-length army topcoat (the museum had no heat) and triggered the timers of the two bombs he wore underneath it just before Hitler’s scheduled arrival at the museum. When Hitler arrived Gersdorff stayed near him, the bomb timers ticking beneath his coat. Hitler’s stay was shortened for security reasons; he rushed through the display in less than five minutes, and with his prey gone Gersdorff barely had time to find a place where he could deactivate the bombs. He succeeded.
The winter of 1942-43 had proven that German uniforms were inadequate to face the harshness of the Russian winter, and when new uniforms were designed to be worn by the army, the Luftwaffe, and the SS, a showing was arranged, to be attended by Hitler, SS leader Himmler, and Luftwaffe leader Herman Goering, providing an opportunity to assassinate the three leading Nazis at once. The model for the uniforms, Axel von dem Bussche, volunteered to wear a bomb fashioned from a land mine beneath the coat. When Bussche was wounded in battle a second officer volunteered to replace him, Ewald von Kleist. The difficulty scheduling the three Nazi leaders at the same time delayed the plan repeatedly, and eventually the assassination by suicide bomber plot was canceled while Tresckow and his fellow conspirators sought other means by which they could kill their Fuhrer.