Operation Valkyrie was a Hitler approved emergency scenario that set up the continuity of government and plan for the military if a general breakdown of civil order should occur, such as the Führer’s death.

On July 20, 1944, in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg detonated a briefcase bomb at Hitler’s Eastern Front military headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. Once Stauffenberg detonated the bomb, he believed Hitler to be dead. He rushed back to Berlin to initiate Valkyrie in order to take control of the government and the military with his fellow co-conspirators. The scene in Berlin quickly turned to chaos as conflicting reports about Hitler leaked to the military and Hitler’s colleagues.   Once Nazi officials were assured that Hitler was alive, Stauffenberg and his associates were immediately arrested and killed shortly after midnight that night.

Stauffenberg and his men came devastatingly close to ending the Third Reich, the Holocaust, and Hitler’s reign of terror, but an early end to the war was not meant to be. Instead, these men paid the ultimate price for their disloyalty to their Führer.

Otto Remer was in charge of the home guard for Operation Valkyrie.  You can read his account of the coup attempt in the WWII Military Studies.

The WWII Foreign Military Studies, 1945-54 includes reports, interviews, questionnaires and more regarding major operations and events of World War 2.

Today, in conjunction with the National Archives and Records Administration, we announced the launch of the internet’s largest interactive World War II collection.

Some of the information in the collection has been on the site for a while, but this week we released two important additions, an interactive USS Arizona Memorial Wall and over 8 million Hero Pages created from U.S. Army enlistment records.

Some of the other titles in the collection include:

• Pearl Harbor Muster Rolls
• Missing Air Crew Reports
• U.S. Air Force Photos
• Submarine Patrol Reports
• Japanese Air Target Analysis
• Army JAG Case Files
• Navy JAG Case Files
• Naval Press Clippings
• Allied Military Conferences

You can read the full press release here, or begin exploring the collection here.

It’s amazing what a plane can go through and still keep flying.

This morning I was looking through some photos on the site and came into a section of photos taken in England of planes that had been damaged on missions, but still returned to base.

Here are a couple of examples:

Then I came across this one:

I did a little research and found a Missing Air Crew Report for this plane (one member of the crew was killed) and then found Footnote Pages, created from the Social Security Death Index, for the pilot, Lawrence DeLancey and the navigator, Ray Ledoux. I added a few web links and some stories about this amazing event to their pages.

Here’s the first image in the section of battle damaged planes in England. You can browse through the collection using the filmstrip at the bottom to look at other images.

You can view all the World War II Airforce images for free.

The Footnote scanning team has been working in the vaults of The National Archives diligently scanning the complete WWII US Air Force photo collection (officially known as “Black and White and Color Photographs of U.S. Air Force and Predecessor Agencies Activities, Facilities, and Personnel – World War II”).

There are more than 80,000 photographs of aircraft, equipment, air races, bombing tests, and military personnel grouped by regional “war theater.”

The collection is searchable and unique because you can view the entire photograph – both front and back for additional caption information. Start exploring some interesting categories such as D-Day, Battles, Maps, Charts & Drawings, Rescue and thousands more.