Posted on 07/18/2004 4:36:24 AM PDT by Grzegorz 246
BERLIN, (AFP) - Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg made a dramatic turnaround from being an enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler and his regime to carrying the bomb packed in a briefcase that was intended to kill him.
The 60th anniversary of Stauffenberg's failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, will be commemorated in Germany on Tuesday.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and President Horst Koehler will attend a ceremony at the Bendlerblock, the former Nazi war ministry in Berlin, where Stauffenberg and three fellow conspirators were executed by firing squad hours after the bomb went off.
Four years earlier, the young count was full of praise for Hitler after his armies chalked up military successes in Poland and France.
"Such changes in such a short space of time!" he wrote.
It was a description that fitted his own swing of opinion.
By 1942, he was complaining that "not a single officer in the Fuehrer's headquarters has killed that pig with their pistol."
It was the crushing defeat of the German army on the Russian front that same year that prompted Stauffenberg's radical shift of opinion.
By insisting on leading his troops into a battle they did not have a chance of winning, Hitler lost all credibility in the eyes of the brilliant young officer.
Stauffenberg was born on November 15, 1907 into an aristocratic family in southwest Germany.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, the young count had already joined the army. He admired the principle of a strong leader, a Fuehrer, for the shattered country, although he was quietly suspicious of the modest origins of many of the Nazi leaders.
Blue-eyed, with high cheekbones, Stauffenberg was an outstanding student at the military academy in Berlin and he rose rapidly through the ranks before taking part in the offensive on Poland.
He wrote to his wife, Nina, another aristocrat whom he had married in 1933, that Poland contained "many Jews, many people of mixed blood... who are only happy when they are dominated."
In May 1940, Stauffenberg was named to the army's chief of staff where he discovered that Hitler was planning to attack Russia.
He became increasingly vocal in his criticism of Hitler's tactics and in 1942 requested to be sent to the North African front where he was seriously injured, losing an eye, his left hand and two fingers on his right hand in fighting in Tunisia.
Back in Berlin in 1943, he was approached by General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the army's supply units and a central figure in the resistance against Nazism. Stauffenberg accepted immediately to take part in a coup against Hitler.
Stauffenberg was not originally intended to be the man who carried out the attack, but the circle of officers with access to Hitler was highly restricted and few had his courage.
On July 1, 1944, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Army Reserve in Berlin, putting him in regular contact with Hitler.
He knew he must act. "There is only one solution: kill him," he said.
Having carried the bomb into Hitler's war headquarters in East Prussia, Stauffenberg flew immediately back to Berlin to organise the coup.
Instead, Hitler was only slightly injured in the blast and Stauffenberg was betrayed.
He was executed at the age of 36, crying "Long live holy Germany" as the shots rang out, according to several witnesses.
i'M KINDA SAD/MIFFED...
I coulda sworn i smacked the spine outta some freak named taotao sometime in the last 24 hours, but I can't find the post in my (now rapidly growing) archives.
I hadn't realized this would happen when i started a clique.
you da Man!
YDM still in force, but neither link works.
"action cancelled" message
It was French troll?
He admitted on a pulled thread titled "question" that he was from Brussels Belgium.
And he repeatedly typed snotty crap in French.
(See post 54 in this thread)
He asked a brain dead 'question' about the US Constitution and government, and when people answered, he got snotty with them.
He then repeatedly said that he would lead the EU to where 'they' wanted to go nowhere 'we' would 'force them' to.
I'd say he'll be back.
You probably slapped him a bit yesterday, he started his "Question" thread yesterday.
And he stayed quiet for 24 hours almost before spouting his crap today.
That thread got pulled, but he was REALLY fixated on me.
Crap..
OKay, then I cannot post the links and have them work.
found it - and it wasn't what I was thinking of.
it was some OTHER pissant i hosed down with bile.
Lately I have seen a few strange, French-speaking users here.
but of course we are Franch! Whah elze would we hef dese outrrraaaagus accent?
I believe the number is equal to the number of people I know who claimed to be at Woodstock, those who were Special Forces in Vietnam, Marine snipers, and the number of Israelis who crossed the Suez.
GARG.. Rats.
You would have LOVED this clown.
Yes, that is strange.
Almost like the troll wave from Der Spiegel.
I have made my best effort to interpret #54 for you:
I hope that one day you will finally come to understand, dear troglodytes whose pretentiousness is matched only by ignorance, that it is not your place to rule over the whole world or to impose your vision unilaterally on it, no matter how formidable you might consider your vision to be.
Other francophones may want to correct me where I am wrong.
*snicker*
Unfortunately, he did a good job on slaughtering his message there in spots.
Almost as if he were trying too hard to type in French.
And misspellings, too.
Yes, for being from 'brussels belgium' as he claimed, and being as 'intelligent' and intellectually elite as he kept claiming..
*winces*
And here he was hoping to make me feel ignorant with that?
I guess he expected us to be too ignorant to discern how ignorant he was.
I guess he figured he was being clever.
The idiot.
He asked me if I spoke French, and I told him that I didn't need to speak "badly mispronounced provincial Latin."
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