I didn't know any of the anti-Hitler plotters were still alive.

[Denis]

RIP, Ewald Von Kleist. Tried to do the right thing.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Last-Anti-Hitler-Plotter-Ewald-Heinrich-Von-Kleist-Dies-at-90-336793.shtml

[Pilgrim]

RIP, Ewald Von Kleist. Tried to do the right thing.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Last-Anti-Hitler-Plotter-Ewald-Heinrich-Von-Kleist-Dies-at-90-336793.shtml

Saw that this AM in the paper.  Must have been a bright and capable man.

[uwe]

Hitler didn't get them all. And after the initial bloodshed the Nazis were hesitant in killing them all off, wishing to use some for bargaining (and saving their own Nazi ass) with the Allies.

My partner here in the litigation department is Fabian von Schlabrendorff Jr., born 1944 as son of Fabian von Schlabrendorff Sr.,



the righthand man of the chief plotter at the time, Henning von Tresckow (he who blows himself up with a hand grenade in the not so bad Tom Cruise movie after the assassination has failed). He looks every bit like his dad, I always joke, "Fabian, you in a Wehrmacht uniform and we're all set to do it again ....". His father survived too by a series of freak accidents (an RAF bomb saved him from execution, he survived a subsequent concentration camp stay because the SS though he might prove useful knowing that the war was invariably lost). Tragically and ironically, he died in the eighties via another freak accident, falling off his balcony. By then he had had a successful career as inter alia a judge in our Constitutional Court, the Verfassungsgericht. Eat your heart out, Adolf Hitler!

In my view, any form of resistance against Hitler anoints, be it by communists, religious freaks, conservative circles or plain nutcases with a heart in the right spot. Some of the discussions led today that great parts of the Widerstand were not spotless democrats or had incriminated themselves by previous support for the regime, were communist etc, fails to put into the equation that any early death of Hitler, for whatever assassin's motives, would have been a blessing for Germany.

Another thing often overlooked is how pragmatic some of the arrangements of the time between ostensibly opposing forces were. After Stauffenberg planted the bomb and it went off, the initial assumption was that Hitler had found his death. So, in line with Operation Walküre , the Wehrmacht occupation forces in Paris disarm and arrest the SS occupation forces there, but no one is shot. Hours later it becomes clear that Hitler survived, the coup d'etat has failed. So the Wehrmacht, somewhat sheepishly, approaches the SS, "And now what?" And the Paris SS goes: "You know what, we all know where this is going to end (Allies had already landed and entrenched themselves in France, the war was definitely lost), how about if we forget what happened a few hours ago and you remember that we forgot should this war end one day without, Führer forbid!, a victory of the German Reich, however certain it may be." And a gentlemen's deal was struck and it worked all the way until the end of the war. Pragmatism!  It's something the US Congress could learn from.  

[Pilgrim]

Interesting.  I'm just reading In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. It's the story of an unassuming man who was made ambassador to Germany in 1933 and his family's experiences in Berlin as the Nazi party was revving up and taking power.  Recommended reading. 



I also highly recommend Larson's book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.  It's the story of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, with the story of a serial killer woven through it.

[Denis]

My partner here in the litigation department is Fabian von Schlabrendorff Jr., born 1944 as son of Fabian von Schlabrendorff Sr.,

Far out. I've read a lot about that attempt on Hitler's life and what it cost the conspirators and Germany ultimately. It was the latest in a string of failed attempts on his life.

[uwe]

He was unbelievably lucky a couple of times. As if he was meant to survive and tear Germany with him.

OTOH: If someone would have shot him 1938, there would be now far too many people for my taste who would regard him - by and large, yes, the ant-semitism was ugly, but look what he did for Germany - as a great statesman. In that way it was good that he dragged everything down and devalidated Nazism so comprehensively. We learned a lesson from it.

[Highlander]

He's earnt his rest...

A nice obit in the (UK) Daily Telegraph...