[2] Olbricht successfully passed the Abitur (university preparatory school exit examination) in 1907, subsequently accepting a commission as a Fähnrich (ensign) with Infantry Regiment 106 in Leipzig.

[2] Olbricht was appointed chief of staff of the 4th Army Corps stationed in Dresden in 1935, an assignment that lasted until 1938 when he was promoted to commander of the 24th Infantry Division.

[2] Olbricht has the distinction of being one of the few officers who supported General Werner von Fritsch, the commander in chief of the German armed forces who was accused of homosexuality in January 1938.

Together with the resistance circles around Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Major-General Henning von Tresckow, he worked to find a means of assassinating Adolf Hitler and bring down the Nazi regime.

On the day of the attempted coup, 20 July 1944, Olbricht and Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim initiated Operation Valkyrie by mobilizing the Replacement Army.

It eventually became clear the briefcase bomb had failed to kill Hitler however, so the plan to seize key sites in Berlin using units from the reserve army, began to falter.

Later that evening, Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm held a hastily arranged court martial, supposedly in an attempt to protect himself from being exposed as a silent conspirator.