re: #272 Targetpractice

Indeed. They probably would have also demanded political recognition of the government installed by the planned coup, something that Churchill and Roosevelt would have had a hard time agreeing to in light of Stalin’s inevitable refusal. And with that recognition would come demands on whether the plotters would be tried for war crimes, where the trials would take place, etc.

I rather think that had the plot gone off as planned, the more likely outcome would have been a short-lived civil war that only hastened the collapse of the Reich.

Agree with your conclusion. Also, IIRC, the July 20 gang hadn’t given a lot of thought as to how to deal with the Nazi Party state-within-a-state which Hitler had spent the previous decade obsessively entwining into every aspect of the German state - well, outside of shooting all the top Nazis, and taking it from there: their assumptions that the (Western) Allies would simply be so happy to see an end to the bloody (Western Front) campaigns that they would quickly acquiesce to a cease-fire with the new military government were, to be charitable, a bit overly optimistic….