FATEFUL CHOICES · 20 JUL 1944 · WOLF'S LAIR, EAST PRUSSIA
The bomb under the map table
At 12:42 on 20 July 1944 a briefcase bomb exploded two metres from Hitler, and he lived, because an officer wanting a clearer view of the map had moved the case behind a heavy oak table leg. This is the timeline where nobody moves it.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
20 JUL 1944 · 12:37
The midday briefing at the Wolf’s Lair has been moved out of the concrete bunker into a wooden hut, windows open to the July heat. Twenty-four men stand around a long map table set on two massive oak plinths. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, one eye and three fingers left to him after Tunisia, sets his briefcase under the table two metres from Adolf Hitler and leaves to take an arranged telephone call. Inside the case an acid fuse eats through the last of its wire. In our timeline Colonel Heinz Brandt leaned in for a better look at the Eastern Front. He found the case in his way and stood it behind the far side of the oak.
In the timeline recorded here, no one touches it. It waits where it was set, on the Führer’s side of the table leg.
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