What if the 20th of July 1944 Hitler has been "terminated"

[Louis VI the Fat]

What if?
What if in the 20th of July1944, the generals had succeeded to kill Hitler?

How they would have convinced the world to stop the war? What they would have to do?
Following the debate on the Treaty of Versailles and how the Allies were determined in 1944 to show to the Germans they had lost the war, would this assassination change the German end?
Or would this been seen by the Allies as another trick to avoid a defeat then to claim few years after that Germany wasn’t defeated?
What about the extermination camps?
Would Stalin be convinced to stop his offensive?
Would Churchill and Roosevelt convinced to halt the D-Day offensive?

In the internal situation what and who to arrest? The SS are an army in the Army. What about Himmler, Goering and the hard Nazi?

More I think about it, less I give a chance of success to the generals to stop the war at this point…

So what would they have to do?
Possible reaction of the major Allies?
Price to pay?

Lots of questions, good ones.


In short, I do not think that a succeeded attempt would've changed the course of history much. Perhaps a sad conclusion, and one that relegates the 20th of July attempt back to its rather modest place: merely a coup of continuity.


Ian Kershaw contrasted the options of Italy and Germany:
Unlike Italy, there was no alternative anymore. The Nazis had fully overtaken the state and society. Which is also telling of the extent to which German society, and especially the conservative, nationalist and military segment had embraced Hitler. They were the Nazis, instead of being governed by them. And everybody else had been eliminated.
Italy always retained a king, a society outside Mussolini, and could dispose of him when the war was lost. It was not possible for Germany to switch to the democratic camp in this manner.


And short of Germany turning democratic, I don't see how America could have struck a deal with 'Nazi' Germany, with or without Hitler, against the Soviet Union in 1944 anymore. It was too late for that. Britain, perhaps. Britain at this point was at the crossroads between independent foreign policy, and foreign policy in line with the US. The former impulse would dictate a return to the Ribbentrop-Hoare pact of 1935-1939, and indeed using Germany to contain Russia. (The UK is a promiscuous wench indeed! In twenty years, it jumped the beds of France, to Germany, to Russia and to America)
But this would require an isolationist America, which was not the case, so a deal with a non-democratic Germany was not a viable option.

There was also the irreconcilable problem of occupied states. What of France? Maybe this could've been solved with an evacuation of German troops. But France would not have fought alongside 'Nazi' Germany against the Soviet Union. It would've meant civil war in France, with the most likely outcome of a communist victory and an alliance with the Soviet Union. Poland is unsolveable too. Indeed, Poland was already unsolvable in actual history.

Peace(alliance) with the Western Allies, sensible command decisions and, dare I say, victory in the East.

B...but victory in the East means the defeat of Nazism.


Also, national-militaristic Germany installed Communism in Russia, and national-socialist Germany ensured its triumph over half of Europe. Some legacy! Far from claiming to lead the fight against bolshevism, the German right is the patron saint of Bolshevism, to which it owes all.