Rundstedt had resisted all attempts to recruit him to the various conspiracies against Hitler that had been operating inside the German Army since 1938. Although he had not denounced or reported any of the officers who had approached him, he had shown no sympathy with their appeals. By June 1944 the conspirators had given up on him (and indeed on all the senior field commanders), because he was not approached by the group around Tresckow and Stauffenberg who hatched the unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler with a bomb at the Wolf's Lair (), his headquarters in East Prussia, and had no inkling of what was planned. When he heard of the attempt on 20 July, his reaction was very hostile. A year later, in June 1945, he told the investigating commission preparing for the Nuremberg Trials: "I would never have thought of such a thing, that would have been base, bare-faced treachery." Since he had every reason to try to put himself in a sympathetic light at Nuremberg, this certainly reflects his view in June 1944. He also argued, however, that the attempt to kill Hitler was pointless, because the German Army and people would not have followed the conspirators. "The Army and also the people still believed in Hitler at that time, and such an overthrow would have been quite unsuccessful." He reiterated his traditional sense of his duty as a soldier: had he supported the plot, he said, "I would have emerged and been considered for all time the greatest traitor to my Fatherland."