Schmundt was one of the casualties of the failed 20 July plot, planned to kill the German dictator Adolf Hitler. One of the conspirators, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, placed a bomb in a briefcase beside Hitler. Colonel Heinz Brandt moved it behind a heavy table leg and unwittingly saved Hitler's life, but as a consequence, he lost his own. Severely injured in the assassination attempt, losing his left eye and suffering shrapnel wounds to both legs, Schmundt initially made a promising recovery, but ultimately died of complications resulting from his injuries on 1 October 1944 at the Carlshof hospital.[3][additional citation(s) needed]
After Schmundt's death, all current Generals and Field Marshals were summoned by Hitler to attend a funeral service at the Tannenberg Memorial, in east Prussia. As reported by Hauptmann Alexander Stahlberg (aide to Field Marshal Von Manstein) in his book Bounden Duty, the group were entrained back to Berlin and Schmundt was buried, on Hitler's orders, in Invalids' Cemetery.[full citation needed] Hitler did not attend either ceremony.[citation needed]
Schmundt was posthumously awarded the German Order on 7 October 1944. He was replaced as the Chief of the Personnel Department by General Wilhelm Burgdorf, the Deputy Chief.[citation needed]
^ abcdeMiller, Michael D. "SCHMUNDT, Rudolf". Axis Biographical Research. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
Bibliography
Hermann Weiß: Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich, Frankfurt, 2002, p. 411,.
Johannes Hürter: Schmundt, Rudolf. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, p. 267.
Reinhard Stumpf: General der Infanterie Rudolf Schmundt; in: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): Hitlers militärische Elite. Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende Bd. 2, Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998.