On 20 July 1944, the last in a series of assassination attempts against Hitler failed. In the aftermath, leading conspirators and thousands of supporters and sympathizers were arrested and executed. First to fall to the vicious Nazi retribution was the man who had nurtured the coup d’état plans over three years, codenamed ‘Valkyrie’ – General Friedrich Olbricht. Helena Schrader traces the transformation of a highly decorated and senior German officer into an active conspirator dedicated to removing the Führer from power. She shows how Olbricht’s coup plans might well have succeeded if Stauffenberg had not failed at several key junctures.
Helena P. Schrader
Historian, Novelist, Diplomat
Helena P. Schrader obtained a BA in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and followed this with a MA in Diplomacy and International Commerce from the University of Kentucky, Lexington. She earned a PhD in History from the University of Hamburg with a ground-breaking biography of the German Resistance leader General Friedrich Olbricht.
Schrader worked for consulting firms in Washington, DC, for the German Privatization Agency (Treuhandanstalt), and as an Investor Relations Manager for a German bank and a German venture capital fund, before joining the U.S. Foreign Service. She is now a career diplomat.
She has lived on five continents and speaks three languages fluently. She owns property in what was once Lacedaemon, which she visits regularly and where she intends to retire.
