Right behind him in the column, a bomb has been hidden away.

And it is about to go off.

The German carpenter and Nazi opponent Georg Elser has planned this moment for months.

He knew Hitler would be here tonight.

He knew when exactly the Führer would give a speech.

Elser installed explosives with a time fuse.

At exactly 9.20pm his bomb is supposed to detonate.

The explosion causes the entire ceiling above the podium to collapse.

63 people get injured, 8 die.

But Hitler isn't one of them.

He left the beer hall earlier than expected at 9.07pm.

Georg Elser failed.

This was just one of many attempts to assassinate Hitler.

One of almost 40.

Today we take a look at some of the most spectacular plans to rid the world of the Nazi leader.

Why did they all fail?

How did he keep getting away?

Was Hitler just that lucky?

Or was there more to it?

This is Henning von Tresckow, a first general staff officer in the Wehrmacht.

At first, he's a supporter of Hitler when he seizes power in 1933.

But that will soon change.

Tresckow's turning point comes in 1941, when Germany attacks the Soviet Union.

He thinks Hitler's invasion is military madness.

He thinks they will lose the war.

But Tresckow also has moral concerns.

He knows about the mass murder of Jewish people.

He knows what the regime is doing.

A resolve forms within him.

He's convinced that this mad dictator must be stopped at all cost.

And in spring of 1943, Tresckow makes his move.

He manages to persuade his commander-in-chief Gunther von Kluge to invite Hitler to Smolensk in the Soviet Union.

Here, Tresckow is stationed.

And the Führer agrees.

On March 13, 1943, he makes a stopover in Smolensk on his flight from Vinnitsa to his headquarters in East Prussia.

At lunch, Tresckow asks Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Brandt, who is traveling with Hitler on the plane, for a favor.

Brandt is to deliver a package containing two bottles of Contreau cognac to a friend of Tresckow's in East Prussia.

Tresckow tells him that he lost the bet.

Instead of two bottles of alcohol, however, the package contains a bomb with a detonator.

Tresckow wants to feign an airplane accident.

His co-conspirator Fabian von Schlabrendorf secretly activates the time pencil and then hands the package to Brandt.

The plane takes off at around 3pm.

On board are Hitler, Brandt, and the bomb.

The bomb is supposed to explode within an hour.

Schlabrendorf set the timer by crushing a glass vial filled with a corrosive liquid in the time pencil.

The airplane should crash at about the height of Minsk.

Hitler lands in his headquarters unscathed.

Brandt had packed the package in the cold cargo hold.

The acid detonator had frozen.

Tresckow immediately calls Heinz Brandt and tells him that he accidentally gave him the wrong package.

The next day, Schlabrendorf flies to East Prussia, exchanges the package with two bottles of cognac, and diffuses the bomb.

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Tresckow's assassination attempt failed, but he didn't get caught either.

In fact, he was part of a sworn circle of military resistance fighters determined to kill Hitler, and they were far from giving up.

A key figure in the group was Lieutenant Colonel Klauschenk Graf von Stauffenberg.

Over the years, he became the head of the military conspiracy.

Tresckow and Stauffenberg were close companions, and they were always looking for a new opportunity to eliminate the Führer.

They didn't have to wait for long.

Fast forward 9 months.

This is Axel Freiherr von dem Busche.

He's an officer, almost 2 meters tall, blonde, and has blue eyes.

He truly embodies the Nazi ideal.

This appearance is supposed to provide him with the perfect opportunity to kill Hitler.

Von dem Busche and a group of other soldiers are to present the new Wehrmacht's uniform to Hitler at his headquarters.

Von dem Busche plans to use a hidden British hand grenade to blow himself up along with the dictator.

But then in Berlin, a railroad wagon is destroyed by an Allied bomb.

It contained the new uniforms.

No uniforms, no presentation.

The meeting is postponed.

By then, von dem Busche isn't an option anymore.

Just one month earlier, he was seriously wounded.

One of his legs had to be amputated.

Instead, Stauffenberg now wants the 21-year-old lieutenant Ewald Heinrich von Kleist to trade his life for Hitler's death.

The young lieutenant takes his time to think about it and agrees.

Von Kleist is ready to do the job and prepares.

But Hitler cancels the appointment on short notice.

On July 7th, 1944, the presentation of the new Wehrmacht uniforms finally takes place at a castle near Salzburg.

This time, Major General Helmut Stief is chosen as the assassin.

He too is part of the resistance group.

The odds of success are extremely high.

An explosion at that distance is nearly unsurvivable.

It's the perfect opportunity.

Then at the last minute, Stief hesitates and backs out.

Sure he wants to see Hitler dead, but he isn't willing to sacrifice his life for it.

But the group around Stauffenberg doesn't give up.

They plan a new attack.

This time, Stauffenberg wants to do it himself.

He aims not only to kill Hitler, but also to bring down the entire Nazi regime in one coordinated strike.

In the early morning of July 20th, 1944, Stauffenberg and 1st Lieutenant Werner von Heften fly from

Berlin to the Führer's headquarters.

Stauffenberg is to report on the Eastern Front at a meeting with Hitler.

It presents the perfect opportunity for Stauffenberg.

He plans to arm two bombs in his briefcase, place it near Hitler during the meeting and leave the room before the bombs go off.

Then he plans to fly back to Berlin, where he and other resistance fighters plan to take over power after Hitler's death.

At the Führer's headquarters, Stauffenberg learns that the time of the meeting has been changed.

Due to a visit of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, it is moved forward by half an hour.

At around 12.15, Stauffenberg pretends to want to change his shirt.

Together with Heften, he wants to secretly activate the time fuse for the bomb before the meeting begins.

But they get interrupted and told to hurry not to be late for the meeting.

Therefore they can only arm one of the two explosives.

So Stauffenberg doesn't pack the second one and leaves it with Heften.

He then enters the meeting.

He puts his briefcase down near his target at the end of the table.

Hitler and the bomb are now separated by only about 1.3 meters.

Stauffenberg gives his report and then immediately leaves the room, supposedly to make an important phone call.

Everything is going according to plan.

A few minutes later, Hitler leans over the table to further discuss war strategy.

And the bomb detonates.

Stauffenberg watches the explosion from 200 meters away and is certain.

Hitler is finally dead.

He flies back to Berlin with Heften to continue Operation Valkyrie.

They plan to blame the SS and the Gestapo for Hitler's death.

Then they want to take power and put an end to the Nazi dictatorship.

But Operation Valkyrie failed.

In the meeting room, the pressure wave caused the ceiling to collapse and there is now a gaping hole in the floor where the briefcase once stood.

The loud explosion ruptured the eardrums of almost everyone present.

Four people die, almost all of the others are injured.

Only two people got off lightly.

One of them is Adolf Hitler.

The fact that Hitler leaned over the table during the explosion saved his life.

He was only thrown slightly upwards by the force of the explosion.

If Stauffenberg had also placed a second bomb in his briefcase, the explosion probably also would have killed Hitler.

With the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, the planned coup to end the Nazi regime also fails only a few hours later.

Stauffenberg and the three other main plotters are shot that very night in the courtyard of the Blenderblock.

Those are the headquarters of the General Army Office and was the heart of military resistance.

Two hundred other co-conspirators also get executed.

It is the last known attempt to assassinate Hitler.

On April the 30th, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker in Berlin.

Why did Hitler survive again and again?

In old photos and video recordings, we almost always see Hitler walking around alone.

Hitler was part of his image as an invincible, untouchable dictator.

But in reality, Hitler had made many precautions to protect himself.

He had many highly trained bodyguards.

A special security service checked all routes and locations meticulously before Hitler arrived.

His whereabouts were top secret.

He was always well protected when he traveled by train, car or plane.

He had his own pilot and cook.

He always had his meals tasted by his personal doctor before he started eating, all to minimize the risk of an assassination.

Besides these security precautions, Hitler pursued a special tactic.

He allegedly once said, Das einzige Gegenmittel ist ein unstettes Leben.

Which means, the only antidote is an unsteady life.

He often changed his routes, canceled trips at short notice, came earlier to meetings than planned, or left events earlier than expected.

We don't know if and how a successful assassination would have changed Germany's history.

What would have happened if Hitler had just stayed 13 minutes longer in the beer hall in 1939?

Could millions of Jews have been saved if one of almost 40 recorded attempts would have succeeded?

Or would someone else in the regime simply have taken his place?

We will never know.