had formed a cavalry "honor guard" unit secretly packed with anti-Nazi officers. With this force he could intercept Hitler in the forest between the airfield and the HQ area, overwhelm Hitler's SS escort in a fair fight, and kill the Führer. This option was rejected because even the plotters disliked the prospect of German soldiers fighting each other, and because the attack could fail if the escort was stronger than expected. The plotters could shoot Hitler during dinner in the mess. This option was also abandoned for many of the plotters abhorred the idea of shooting an unarmed man and would not go along. A timebomb could be smuggled on Hitler's plane. This was the plan ultimately attempted. The bomb was adapted from a British plastic explosive, which had been seized by the Abwehr from captured SOE agents. The pencil detonator consisted of a thin copper tube containing copper chloride that would take about ten minutes to silently eat through wire holding back the spring-loaded firing pin from the percussion cap. This mechanism provided a time delay for detonation, without any telltale ticking of a clockwork mechanism or smell from a burning fuse. The bomb was disguised as a box supposedly containing two bottles of Cointreau. Tresckow was acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Brandt, an officer on Hitler's staff, who traveled on Hitler's plane. Tresckow asked Brandt to take the parcel with him to Germany for delivery to Tresckow's friend General Helmuth Stieff. (Stieff was anti-Nazi, but not then part of the fiasco.) Tresckow claimed the liquor was the payoff for a bet he had lost to Stieff. Tresckow's aide, Schlabrendorff, carried the parcel to the airfield. As Hitler and his entourage prepared to board his plane, Schlabrendorff secretly activated the detonator with a pair of pliers, then re-closed the parcel and handed it to Brandt as he boarded the plane. The bomb was expected to explode about half an hour later, with the plane near Minsk, close enough to the front for the plane's loss to be attributed to Soviet fighters. When the crash and Hitler's death were reported, General Olbricht would use the Replacement Army to seize control in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich, and in the centers of the Wehrkreis (the German military supply system). It was an ambitious but credible plan, and might possibly have worked if Hitler had indeed been killed, although persuading Army units to