Since he had been forced by Hitler to abandon his beloved Afrika Korps in Tunisia in the spring of 1943, Rommel had been transformed from a zealous pro-Nazi officer into a cynical and dispirited opponent of Hitler's regime. He opened secret contacts with anti-Hitler civilians and military officers, and also began sounding out senior officers in France about the possibility of launching a coup d'etat to depose Hitler and seek a negotiated peace with the Allies.

Rommel's loyal chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Hans Speidel, was at the centre of the field marshal's efforts to form a solid group of anti-Hitler officers in France. Although the details are confusing, it seems that Rommel approached several senior Waffen-SS officers in France who reacted favourably to his overtures. These included Dietrich and several senior Leibstandarte commanders. Rommel convinced them that Hitler had to be removed to allow a more rational leader to take over Germany. From the frontline in Normandy, Waffen-SS commanders immediately agreed that the orders arriving from the Führer's headquarters telling them not to retreat an inch were far from "rational".

Rommel's plan called for units of the army and Waffen-SS to occupy Paris and other cities to prevent ultra-loyal SS, SD or Gestapo men trying to rally support for Hitler. He and Speidel devised a system of coded messages to allow their allies to be alerted to developments, while keeping Hitler's faithful entourage guessing about what was going on.

When Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia on 20 July 1944, the whole plot unravelled. Hitler survived, and in Berlin the plotters were quickly rounded up by pro-Hitler army units. Rommel had also been badly injured in a British air strike a few days earlier, and was not able to coordinate the response of the senior army and Waffen-SS commanders in France. The July Bomb Plot turned into bloody farce, as Gestapo and SS squads hunted down anyone remotely connected with the plot and delivered them to torture chambers for interrogation. Several thousand civilians and army officers were arrested and hundreds executed after show trials. The senior Waffen-SS officers escaped being tainted by involvement in the plot thanks to quick thinking by Dietrich, who pulled in some old favours and ensured that Speidel was released before he could be interrogated by the Gestapo squads.

The post-plot bloodletting did little to reassure veteran Waffen-SS field commanders of Hitler's rationality. The rank and file SS men were still fanatically loyal to their Führer, and several SS organizations participated in the purge with great zeal. This drove a further wedge between the Waffen-SS commanders and the rear-echelon SS men who were still parroting Hitler's claims that ultimate victory was only just around the corner.

After the 1944 July Bomb Plot, the power of the SS organization grew dramatically as Himmler took his revenge on the army High Command for its previous resistance to his schemes. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris' military intelligence organization, the Abwehr, was placed under the control of Himmler's RSHA security apparatus. The Abwehr's special operations unit, the Brandenburg Division, was also disbanded and replaced by Waffen-SS units.

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