Major Axel von dem Bussche, a confederate of Claus von Stauffenberg, planned to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a concealed landmine which he planned to detonate while embracing Hitler during a viewing of a new winter uniform the striking looking Major would be modeling. The viewing was canceled when an Allied air raid in Berlin destroyed the rail car in which the new uniforms were contained.
Von dem Bussche was of German noble lineage, as the name indicated, and had turned against the Nazis after accidentally witnessing a 1942 massacre of Jews in Ukraine. He volunteered to attempt the assassination again in 1944 and was set to do so when he was badly wounded on the Russian Front and had to have a leg amputated. His being in the hospital at the time of the July 20 plot saved him from being a suspect in it.
An East Westphalian by birth, much of his ancestral holdings were in East Germany after the war, which required him to pursue a civilian career, which he in turn did. After 1990, however, he was a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking their return, which failed. His eldest daughter, however, has since bought the larger portions back from the Federal Republic of Germany. He died in 1993 at the age of 73.
The Battle of Leros ended with an Allied surrender. The Germans, however, had taken tremendous casualties in the effort, and were on the verge of calling the offensive off when the surrender came.
The British village of Tyneham in Dorset was ordered evacuated by the British War Department, which needed the grounds for a training area. It remains a British military facility today.
The U.S. Army Air Force struck heavy water facilities at Rjukan and a molybdenum refinery at Knaben, damagign the German nuclear weapons effort.
The submarine USS Corvina was sunk by the Japanese submarine I-176, becoming the only U.S. submarine to be sunk by another submarine.
The I-176 was in turn sunk in June 1944.
The U-280 was sunk by a British B-24.
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