THE GERMAN OFFICER WHO TRIED TO KILL HITLER (FINAL PART)

Meet Berthold von Stauffenberg 

"They were not sure they would succeed but Tresckow said the attack on Hitler must go on, if only to prove that not all Germans were his followers," says Berthold.

But if the plot failed, it was not just the conspirators who would be at risk. "My mother always said she knew what was planned. She'd found out and confronted my father and so he told her. But she didn't know that he was to plant the bomb."

"They knew the consequences, but in times of war, life is not as important as it is now in a peacetime environment. People die all the time and to sacrifice oneself seems to be an enormous thing, but in wartime it's different."

On Thursday 20 July, Stauffenberg arrived at the Wolf's Lair - the briefing was set for 12:30. But he was interrupted as he tried to set the bomb, so he put only one of two explosive devices in his briefcase before he entered the meeting.

"I remember that Stauffenberg had a big black briefcase under his good arm," said Warlimont in 1967.

The trouser Hitler was wearing when the bomb exploded

"But then I didn't look at him anymore, so I didn't see him putting it under the table, or leaving the room shortly afterwards. About five to 10 minutes passed - I had forgotten about him when the explosion happened."

Stauffenberg saw the explosion as he left the compound to head back to Berlin. He was sure that Hitler was dead.

But just before the explosion, Stauffenberg's briefcase had been moved behind a table leg away from Hitler. The bomb was not as powerful as intended and Hitler was leaning over the thick oak table looking at maps when it went off which shielded him from the blast. Four died in the explosion and many were injured, but Hitler survived.

"When the bomb went off I just had this feeling that a big chandelier had fallen on my head. I went down. I saw Hitler was led out of the room, supported on the arm of Keitel and my first impression was that he was not injured at all, or at least not seriously," recalled Warlimont.

When, hours later, it became clear the Fuhrer was still alive, the attempted takeover of Berlin fell apart. Stauffenberg and other leading conspirators were arrested at the War Office in Berlin and shot.

Mussolini and Hitler inspect the wreckage of the conference room after the blast

It was a total shock, I couldn't believe it... we were brought up in school to believe that the Fuhrer was a wonderful man”

At the time, Stauffenberg's pregnant wife, Nina, and their four children were staying at the family's estate in the Swabian hills. Berthold didn't know what was going on.

"I heard reports on the radio, reports that an attempt on Hitler's life had taken place and something about a small clique of criminal and stupid officers. I was 10 years old and I read a newspaper every day, I wanted to know what was going on. The grown-ups tried to keep me away from the radio. Me and my brother were sent on a long walk with my great uncle, Count Uxkull, who told us a lot of things about his life hunting big deer in Africa."

"It was actually the next day that my mother took me and my brother aside and told me that it was our father who'd laid the bomb. I said 'How, could he do it?' And she said, 'He believed he had to do this for Germany.'"

"It was a total shock, I couldn't believe it. An attack on the Fuhrer! We were brought up in school and everywhere else, to believe that the Fuhrer was a wonderful man."

That night the Gestapo came - Berthold's mother, grandmother and great uncle were among those arrested. Berthold and his siblings were sent to a children's home.

"The reason why, was never discussed. We were given different names - there is a theory that these were the names of families where we would have been taken after the war, probably SS families."

In the aftermath, thousands were arrested and executed for their alleged connection to the resistance. Berthold's mother was taken to a Gestapo prison at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was reunited with her children after the war - she never remarried. "For my mother there was my father and that was just it. He was the man of her life."

Berthold went on to become a general in the West German army. He still lives in the family's home town.

"For me there is no question that the plot has saved a little of the honour of Germany."