in detail
The Memorial Museum of German Resistance is located on Stauffenberg Street (named Bendler Street until 1955) in the historical area of the former army`s high command. The neighboring property of Bendler Street 10-13, which was acquired in 1926, was developed and expanded until 1938 when it looked as it does today. The Foreign Office and Defense Department of the Army`s high command as well as other offices were situated in the main building on the Landwehr canal.
The general army department of the high command under General Friedrich Fromm and, from 1940, under General Friedrich Olbricht was located in the east wing of the main building. This is where Olbricht altered the plan of campaign "Walküre", officially designed to suppress an uprising among forced laborers, for use in a putsch against Hitler.
From October 1943, Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was head of the general army office on Bendler street. In June 1944, he became commander of the army reserve and therefore was privy to the discussions in the Führer`s Wolfschanze camp headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia.
On July 20, 1944, he ignited a bomb in the barracks and later flew back to Berlin, where the conspirators at Bendler street desperately tried to set the operation in motion. Hitler survived and the operation failed. That night, General Fromm (Colonel General since 1940) had Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Friedrich Olbricht, Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim and Werner Haeften executed in the Bendler courtyard. Beforehand, Ludwig Beck was forced to commit suicide.
About two hundred other participants were involved in humiliating trials before People`s Courts. More than a hundred were condemned to death and most were executed at Plötzensee. Family members were arrested and many were sent to concentration camps.
In response to appeals from members of the resistance fighters families, the Berlin Senate had the interior courtyard of the Bendler block redesigned as a memorial in 1952-53.
On July 20, 1969, the "Stauffenberg Street Memorial and Educational Site" opened with a small permanent exhibition called "Resistance against National Socialism" located in the building in the remodeled memorial courtyard. In 1989, a new exhibit opened in the "Memorial Museum of German Resistance", documenting the entire spectrum of German resistance against National Socialism.
1926
The headquarters of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Department of the German army`s high command is located at Bendler Street 10-13
July 20, 1944
Attempted putsch against Hitler fails
1952-53
Interior courtyard of the Bendler block is redesigned into a memorial court with a monument
1969
A permanent exhibit about military opposition against Hitler opens
1989
A new exhibit about all forms of German resistance against National Socialism is presented in the Bendler block
Summer 2014
A new permanent exhibit opens
