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.
Bozone... I like it. About as good as my DUmium.
Springtime
For Hitler
And Germany....
Winter
For Poland
Annnd Fraaaance...
If he had been truly courageous, he would have taken Hitler down personally, instead of leaving that bomb and walking out.
*snicker*
Did you see how badly he slaughtered Francais in his post to me?
I told him that French was badly mispronounced provincial Latin, but he didn't believe me.
Bump
No, these were people who convinced themselves to the very end that it was all a mistake that would be corrected in time. At least Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to correct it. He wasn't just a lamb, led to the slaughter.
I found this online:
"It is etimated that 4,980 Germans were executed after the July Plot. Hitler decided that the leaders should have a slow death. They were hung with piano wire from meat-hooks. Their executions were filmed and later shown to senior members of both the NSDAP and the armed forces."
And this:
"In subsequent days, Hitler's police rounded up the remaining conspirators, many of whom were tortured by the Gestapo to reveal their confederates and hauled before the Volksgericht (People's Court) to be excoriated by the dreaded Nazi judge Roland Freisler. About 180 to 200 plotters were shot or hanged or, in some cases, viciously strangled with piano wire or hung up on great meat hooks. "
I suspect that historically, the most heinous crimes perpetrated against Western or Central European civilians, were carried out either by Hitler's secret police, gestapo, Waffen SS, or other units within the Nazi party or military infrastructure, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, by the Stasi.
I hate to admit this, but the bravest resisters/dissenters during The Second World War-aside from the courageous Roman Catholics and Protestants who spoke out against and vehemently opposed the Holocaust-were the partisans.
The internal opposition in most of Nazi-occupied Europe, consisted almost entirely-with the exception, as I've already mentioned, of the devout-of communists.
That being said, it was the extreme fecklessness of the German Communist Party that led to Hitler's acquisition of power in the first place.
Check this out from DU.
General Discussion
The mods at Free Republic won't send me my password.
Discussion started at Tue Jul-20-04 03:36 PM by Kid_A
What is going on? I have noticed some "French landing" here lately.
Me either. Never worked in that biz because I believe the customer is a whining fool, and seldom RIGHT
Same thing
Bavarian DNA... They should have studied the history of Celtic demographics and sociology in Europe a little more closely...
you know, i haven't heard this tune in a freakin dog's age.
you have it on some kinda format ya kin hook me up with?
(I don't do p2p filesharing, though)
it was all the way gone before I got around to looking for who you wre enucleating.
I had a real player link to the video for it once.
Gonna see if I still have it.
http://boss.streamos.com/real/2/universalmotown/universal/rammstein/video/56_sonne.smi?pageid=summary-results-in-boxster-wrapper
http://boss.streamos.com/real/2/universalmotown/universal/rammstein/video/56_sonne.smi
See if one or the other above works..
Oh man, you missed it.. his post 54 is still there.
But the troll itself gone.
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