Germany is gearing up for a major state ceremony next Tuesday to honor a group, led mainly by aristocratic army officers, which nearly succeeded in killing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler at his Wolf's Lair compound in 1944.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has ordered a high profile commemoration for the 60th anniversary of the bomb plot and will himself make a speech at Berlin's Bendlerblock defense ministry where anti-Hitler leaders were executed by firing squad after the putsch was put down.
The bomb in Hitler's East Prussian headquarters was planted by Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the only member of the several hundred top people involved the coup attempt who had direct access to the Nazi Fuehrer.
Initially a supporter of Hitler like most officers, Stauffenberg was repulsed by Nazi atrocities and alarmed over the collapsing war effort.
Despite having lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left hand in combat, the 36-year-old Stauffenberg managed to set a bomb timer and have the almost 1kg of Plastit W explosives placed in a briefcase close to Hitler during a war room briefing at the heavily guarded Wolf's Lair.
The bomb blast killed four of the 24 people in the room but Hitler was only lightly injured because the heavy oak table top and wide, massive legs, next to which the bomb was placed, deflected much of the blast.
Stauffenberg flew to Berlin to help lead the attempted military takeover of Nazi Germany -- but efforts swiftly collapsed after it was revealed that Hitler had survived.
Killing Hitler had been a key part of the plan because soldiers had been forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the Fueher since 1934.
"One could not lead the troops against Hitler," said the last living survivor of the putsch bid, Ewald Heinrich von Kleist, who is 82.
Von Kleist said that by killing Hitler it had been hoped to win over soldiers to break their oath and follow orders of the putsch leaders.
Stauffenberg along with three other officers were shot by firing squad in the huge courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which is now a memorial, while remaining the defense ministry headquarters in Berlin.
Hundreds of others involved in the plot were put on trial and executed by often barbaric methods.
As the news magazine Der Spiegel says, failure to kill Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich on July 20, 1944 "is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century."
The magazine argues that had the attempt succeeded it would have saved millions of lives given that between the failed plot and Nazi Germany's May 1945 defeat some 4 million Germans were killed, as were 1.5 soldiers in the Soviet Red Army, hundreds of thousands of US, British and other Allied soldiers and hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners.
Although Stauffenberg and other members of the July 20 bomb plot have been elevated to hero status in Germany in recent years, this was far from the case in the first decades after the war.
In communist East Germany the aristocratic officers were termed "reactionary elements of U.S. imperialism" while in West Germany, many regard Stauffenberg as a traitor.
Some West German streets and schools might have been named after Stauffenberg and other executed members of the plot, but a poll in 1956 showed half the population opposed this.
Even West Germany's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, fueled such feelings by seeking to thwart the reappointment of a diplomat who had been involved in the anti-Hitler plot, Erich Kordt.
Adenauer, according to Der Spiegel, accused Kordt of already once having "betrayed" his boss.
But these views have now been buried and the 1944 bid to kill Hitler is this year being celebrated with lavish TV documentaries, feature films and exhibitions.
Chancellor Schroeder, who has a good nose for shifts in the public's mood, seems to have caught on to the changing view of Stauffenberg early during his first term in office.
One of his government's first military policy decisions after taking power in 1998 was to allow army recruits to swear their oath in the Bendlerblock courtyard where Stauffenberg was executed.
It was here, standing in the headlights of military vehicles before being shot by the firing squad, that the already wounded Stauffenberg shouted his final words: "Holy Germany lives!"
Although there has been some dispute over whether this was what he really said, his mourning widow later insisted, "that sounds just like him."
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS