Probably the best known act of German defiance to Hitler's tyranny the bombing of the Wolf's Lair and the attempted coup by Wermarcht officers who hoped to bring down Hitler's regieme. One can only wonder what would've happened had the bomb not been moved, or if the Heer had been wiling to desregard their oaths of allegences to Hitler and turn on the Nazis given many now knew the war was lost

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Had the bomb not been moved, Hitler would have been killed and Operation Valkyrie would have gone into effect. By this point, members of the conspiracy had already secretly edited the document to give the assassins control over Germany and commence disarming of the SS. Rommel was going to be placed at the head to broker peace with the Allies, as he was well respected on both sides.

From my perspective? It is not terribly likely we would have inherited a better world.

Many of the conspirators were Prussian nobles from military families, who opposed Hitler with little thought for the morality of his reign. They despised the shakeup of the "old" order and saw Germany's declining fortunes as proof the nation needed them. If the coup was successful, their rule would have been autocratic, with the military enjoying sweeping power.

A technicality, but perhaps still worth noting: The nation would have become far more "fascist" than Nazi Germany, run as it was by a political party.

Even this more "moderate" government would have difficulty achieving a negotiated peace. A surrender without an invasion of Germany could quite easily give way to a new "stab in the back" myth, and the Allies were well aware of this. The Allies sought unconditional surrender (officially made their doctrine at Casablanca), and by late 1944 the Germans were too weak to avert this.

If this new government did manage to achieve a livable peace, history would be different, but again not necessarily better. Germany would remain a regional power, ruled by a military clique and retaining its pro-military culture. The greatest opposition movement would almost certainly be ultra-nationalists, playing the now-factual "stab in the back" for all it's worth. I doubt we would see a WWIII (nuclear weapons work wonders for avoiding superpower wars), but they could hardly be expected to have evolved into the pacifistic, good-neighbor Germany we all know and love today.

There would also be a lingering question hanging in the air: "If Hitler had survived, could he have won?" Certainly, even to the end there were fanatics who believed he could still lead them to triumph. Had he been "martyred" and the war promptly lost afterwards, there would be no shortage of Nazis claiming he could have won or tied. There would be many people wondering if they were right, and many future debates on the subject...and no way to definitively disprove them.

The First World has, save for a few fringe groups, utterly rejected all forms of Nazism and Fascism. A fair part of the reason for this might be that Nazism was completely and utterly crushed by force of arms. With the Allies in Germany, there was no hiding the atrocities, no changing uniforms to claim innocence, and no delusion that Hitler was robbed of greatness by an assassin's bomb. The Wehrmacht were made accountable for their own crimes (of which they had many themselves), and Germany's identity as an expansionist, militant power was wiped away.

I can respect anyone who plants a bomb under Hitler. And I can certainly respect the patriotic feeling of men who act with the intent of saving their nation. But I have my doubts that the world would be improved by the plot's success. Nazism would be forced underground and thus survive, and Germany would simply be in the hands of a different group of men you wouldn't trust near the French border.