After quickly considering the news Hitler issued his orders to the relevant military personnel. After Germany's defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler was unwilling to discuss the war outside these conferences and refused to read reports that gave bad news. His secretaries, for example, were ordered not to mention the war in Hitler's presence.
Hitler would then have a long lunch followed by an afternoon nap. When Hitler was asleep no one was allowed to
disturb him. Even when important events were taking place, such as the allied landing in Normandy, Hitler was left to carry on sleeping.
Whereas Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt made use of radio broadcasts to raise the morale of their people. Hitler remained virtually silent. After the German defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler only made two public speeches and five radio broadcasts. Nor did he make visits to bombed areas of Germany. Hitler also avoided contact with injured German soldiers and rarely visited the front.
By 1943, it became clear to many senior German officers that to continue fighting a war on two fronts was bound to end in failure. It was proposed that Germany should negotiate a peace with Britain and the United States, which would then allow them to concentrate their efforts on defeating the Soviet Union.
Hitler rejected this idea. He knew that the allies would insist on his removal before agreeing to a deal with Germany.
Some senior officers decided that the only solution was to assassinate Hitler. In 1943 seven assassination attempts were planned but none of them was successfully carried out. The most dramatic of these attempts was the July Plot. On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who was attending one of Hitler's military conferences, placed a bomb in a briefcase under the table. When the bomb exploded it killed four people and seriously injured ten others, but Hitler only suffered minor cuts and burns.
Over the next few months most of those involved in plot to kill Hitler, including Wilhelm Canaris, Carl Goerdeler, Julius Leber, Ulrich Hassell, Hans Oster, Peter von Wartenburg, Henning von Tresckow, Ludwig Beck, Erwin von Witzleben and Erich Fromm were either executed or committed suicide.
It is estimated that around 4,980 Germans were executed after the July Plot. Hitler decided that the leaders should have a slow death. They were hung with piano wire from meat-hooks.