[4] At the beginning of 1942, Fromm apparently recommended a defensive strategy for the entire year because of exhausted army stockpiles and the diversion of production, after the initial successes of Barbarossa in the summer of 1941.

Fromm was aware that some of his subordinates, most notably his chief of staff Claus von Stauffenberg, were planning an assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler.

[5] On 20 July, news broke that Hitler and several officers of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces had become victims of an explosion in the German military's headquarters on the Eastern Front, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair), near Rastenburg, East Prussia (now Kętrzyn, Poland).

However, he was quickly overwhelmed and confined to a prison cell in the Bendlerblock, the Berlin headquarters of the Replacement Army, among other branches of the Wehrmacht.

Despite protests from Otto Ernst Remer who had direct orders from Hitler to take the conspirators alive, Fromm held a summary court-martial of the active soldiers at his headquarters who had been identified or suspected of being part of the coup.

[10] Since the court failed to prove a direct association with the 20 July plotters, he was instead charged and convicted for cowardice before the enemy.