"I tell you Hitler is dead," Stauffenberg insisted. "It was though a fifteen centimeter shell had hit the place. It is impossible that anyone could have survived." [From Joaquim Remak, "The Nazi Years," Prentice-Hall, 1969]. Count Stauffenberg had acted with bravery that had earned him a place in German history as one of the rare good guys in the Third Reich. But he was mistaken about Hitler being dead. The terrific explosion (July 20, 1944) that he had caused had failed to kill Hitler. But, the young Colonel Count von Stauffenberg will always be remembered as one of the bravest men of the twentieth century. He faced Hitler not once but twice with a live time bomb in his briefcase. He alone carried the time bomb into Hitler's presence at Rastenburg on that hot July day in 1944. It is well known that he went alone to church the evening before the attempt and prayed, just as that staunch and decent Christina pastor we wrote about earlier, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (at the time of the Hitler assassination attempt already in the hands of the Gestapo) had reconciled his conscience to the need to remove Hitler by force. But it seems true that this Christian conscience, with its built-in lack of ruthlessness, threatened the success of the conspiracy from the very beginning. The men in the conspiracy to kill Hitler were not murderers, but decent men of conscience, each a devout Christian.

Count Stauffenberg had no right hand or forearm, and he had only a thumb and two fingers remaining on his left hand. In addition, his left eye had been blown away. He suffered these wounds while fighting with Rommel's Afrika Corps in North Africa. We mention Stauffenberg's war injuries to show that he was no coward, nor was he a traitor who, seeing that the war was lost, decided at the last of the war to make a desperate attempt at gaining some favor from the ever more victorious Allies. He did not attempt to kill Hitler to save his own skin, but to save Germany. No, Colonel Count von Stauffenberg was among a select group of German men and women who began in 1933 conspiring to overthrow Hitler. Chief among the earlier conspirators to kill Hitler was the head of German Counter-Intelligence (similar to our CIA). His name was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. We'll have more to say about this exceedingly brilliant and clever man, and his WW II relationship with the American General William Donovan, the founder of the OSS, and the "godfather" of the CIA, in next week's final column on the conspirators.

Unfortunately, Hitler survived his attempted assassination, and thus the planned takeover of the German government from the Nazis failed. Stauffenberg and his immediate accomplices were arrested on the same day they attempted to kill Hitler. Stauffenberg and four of his friends were immediately lined up in the courtyard of the War Office on the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin and shot by a firing squad. The Nazis had a "policy" of killing every member of the family ("Sippenhaft") of anyone who was involved the attempted assassination of Hitler. That meant that the rest of the entire von Stauffenberg family was in hiding, except Count Stauffenberg's brother, who was arrested.

It is a touching fact, and a measure of the love of his people, that Count von Stauffenberg's wife and young children were hidden from the Nazis by the peasant farmers on the ancient and huge von Stauffenberg estate in Bavaria, They were not to surface until well after the war.

Those decent Germans who had been involved in a major or minor way in the conspiracy to end Nazi rule by killing Hitler were to pay dearly during the remainder of 1944, and beyond. Trials took place in the so-called People's Court, and German newsreel propaganda films were taken of the accused being subjected to the barbaric Nazi judge Rolannd Freisler. (Those courtroom films are readily available by special order through the Missouri library system.) Most of the accused were automatically condemned, and ended their lives by a hideous process of slow hanging, while suspended from butcher's hooks on piano wire. Hitler's lust for revenge added one of the more nauseating chapters to the atrocities committed in the name of "national socialism." I have visited the prison in Berlin where many of Germany's anti-Hitler regular (non-SS) army generals, most of whom were members of the Christian nobility, were executed by slow hanging. The room was more like a slaughterhouse than I expected. The meat hooks from which the piano wire was extended are still there.

As for Claus von Stauffenberg, it is said that he died shouting an inspired message just before he was shot. Some say he cried, "Long live our sacred Germany", others heard, "Long live our secret [meaning the underground anti-Hitler, kk] Germany." The German equivalents are very similar, and could easily be misunderstood in a noisy courtyard: "Es lebe unser heiliges‚ Deutschland" and "Es lebe unser geheimes‚ Deutschland." All of that is really irrelevant. What is relevant is that he acted with a bravery and consistency that entitle historians to forevermore call July 20, 1944 'Stauffenbergs's Day." It is now a national day of remembrance in Germany. "For a good man, what is right is always plain. The problem is to find the strength to do it." [General Ludwig Beck, about Stauffenberg]

We will conclude these sixtieth anniversary columns, dedicated to our American WW II veterans, with next week's column.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.