in Berlin even if the assassination were to fail. He argued that there must be an overt act of German opposition to Hitler regardless of the consequences. He also told Philipp von Boeselager and Margarete von Oven that 16,000 people were being killed daily not as casualties of war but from being murdered by the Nazis, and Hitler had to be killed just to put an end to it. A few days before the coup attempt, Tresckow confided to a friend that "in all likelihood everything will go wrong". When asked whether the action was necessary nonetheless, he replied, "Yes, even so." Death When the assassination attempt on Hitler and the following coup in Berlin (the 20 July plot) had failed, Tresckow decided to commit suicide at the front in Królowy Most near Białystok on 21 July. His parting words to Schlabrendorff were: To protect other conspirators, he staged an appearance of partisan attack by firing his pistols before detonating a grenade below his chin. He was buried in the family home in Wartenberg. When the Nazis learned about his connections to Operation Valkyrie in late August, his body was exhumed and taken to the crematorium in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His wife was arrested on 15 August, and her children taken away under the Nazi policy of Sippenhaft (shared family guilt); however, early in October she was released and survived the war. Personal life In 1926, Tresckow married Erika von Falkenhayn, the daughter of Prussian general Erich von Falkenhayn and his wife, Ida ( Selkmann). General von Falkenhayn served as Prussian Minister of War during World War I as well as Chief of German General Staff. Tresckow and von Falkenhayn had four children, Mark, born 1927, Rüdiger, born 1928, Uta, born 1931 and Adelheid, born 1939. After his suicide, his wife and daughters were arrested. His sons were already serving in the military. Mark would die in military service in 1945, almost a year after his father's suicide. The daughters were detained in a children's home in Bad Sachsa, Germany, together with several other children of the leaders of the 20 July plot. Portrayals in media Tresckow has been portrayed by the following actors in film: Kenneth Branagh in the 2008 United States film Valkyrie. Ulrich Tukur in the 2004 German film Stauffenberg. Awards and decorations German Cross in Gold on 2 January 1943 as Oberst im Generalstab'' (in