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| Sunday, 2 October 2005 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Famous trials that shook the world - The trial of von Stauffenberg by Lionel Wijesiri Claus von Stauffenberg was born the third of three sons in Bavaria to one of the distinguished aristocratic German Catholic families. Strikingly handsome and with a fine physique, he excelled both academically and in sports.
For a while, young Stauffenberg considered a musical career, then architecture; but at the age of nineteen, in 1926, he entered the army as an officer cadet in the famed Bamberg Cavalry Regiment. During the hectic years of German economic unrest and the Nazi rise to power, Stauffenberg remained an apolitical military officer. In 1930, he met seventeen-year old Nina von Lerchenfeld, descended from a line of Bavarian nobility. They married after a three year etrothal. Stauffenberg did not endorse certain activities of the Nazis. However, being a conservative German patriot, he was not initially in complete opposition to Hitler's ideas, especially in the area of nationalism. However after Kristallnacht (Nazi attack against Jewish people: the night of November 9, 1938), he felt that great shame had been brought upon Germany and that it deeply offended his sense of morality and justice. The systematic maltreatment of the Jews, and the suppression of religion in Germany, made Stauffenberg more and more an opponent of the Nazi concepts. In the military, he worked his way through the ranks and he was promoted to Hauptmann (captain) in 1937, a rank he would hold for the next six years. His regiment became part of the Sixth Panzer Division and was involved in the occupation of the Sudetenland (a former region of Czech Republic) once war broke out, in the Polish, French and Russian campaigns. Towards the end of the French campaign in May 1940, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. On January 1st 1943, Stauffenberg was promoted to Oberstleutnant (lieutenant Colonel) and was soon transferred to the North African campaign. There, while he was scouting out a new command area, his vehicle was strafed by marauding British fighter-bombers and he was severely wounded. He spent three months in hospital and ended up losing his left eye, his right hand, and the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand. By September, 1943, Stauffenberg was back in Berlin as Chief of staff to General Friedrich Olbricht at the General Army Office. Now with a block eye patch, the heavily decorated Stauffenberg had become a legendary soldier in the Berlin command. The position gave him frequent personal contact with Hitler. He approached his new assignment with the same zeal and determination that marked his entire career. While he settled into his new assignment, he also quickly achieved political control of the disheartened military officers. He recommended that a new government should be formed with an anti-Nazi cabinet, and suggested a list of potential leaders acceptable to the moderates. Recognising that the conspiracy needed younger military men ready to mobilise their commands, he persuaded some of the most important German officers to support the coming putsch. The attempt took place at Hitler's briefing hut at the military high command Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) near Rastenburg, East Prussia (today Ketrzyn, Poland) on July 20, 1944. Colonel von Stauffenberg packed his briefcase with English-made explosives and a simple ten minute timer set. He entered the briefing room, placed the briefcase under the table, announced that he needed to make an urgent phone call to Berlin, and then quickly left the room. He waited in a nearby shelter until the explosion tore through the hut. From what he saw, he was convinced no one could have survived the blast. Stauffenberg and his aide de camp, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, quickly walked away and talked their way out of the heavily guarded compound to fly back to Berlin in a waiting aircraft. Unknown to Stauffenberg, Hitler had miraculously survived the blast and was not seriously hurt. Four others died, and many were critically injured. Meanwhile, with Stauffenberg in the air, the conspirators lost their momentum and leadership. The message from the Wolf's lair was not clear as to whether Hitler was dead or alive, and as a result no one in Berlin issued the orders to start military operations to take over the government. When he did arrive in Berlin, Stauffenberg was stunned to learn that the most crucial hours had been lost. He began to rally the men, but the open communication lines slowly carried the word that Hitler had survived. Stauffenberg refused to believe it. But once that news spread, some key officers who had been fence-straddling reverted to supporting, Hitler. The news also guaranteed that forces loyal to Hitler were energized for a bitter fight. By eleven that night the dwindling leadership of the conspiracy was sequestered in the war ministry when a group of loyal Nazis burst in. During the ensuing scuffle, Stauffenberg was shot in his remaining arm. General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the General Army, held an impromptu court martial the same day and condemned the ringleaders of the conspiracy to death. Stauffenberg, along with fellow officers General Olbricht, Leutnant Haeften and Oberst Albrecht Quirnheim, were shot that night by a firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendler-Block (War Ministry). As his turn came, Stauffenberg spoke his last words. "Long live our sacred Germany!" Another central figure in the plot was Stauffenberg's eldest brother, Berthold. He was tried in the People's Court by Roland Freisler on August 10 and was one of the eight conspirators executed by strangulation, hanged slowly in Plotzensee Prison, Berlin, later that day. Stauffenberg's wife and children were also arrested by the SS, and in the final hours of World War II about to be executed when the SS decided not to carry out the order when they became aware that British troops were closing in. Claus von Stauffenberg is celebrated today as a national hero in Germany. Since the end of the war the Bendler-Block has become a memorial to the failed anti-Nazi resistance movement. The street's name was ceremonially changed from "Bendlerstrasse" to "Stauffenbergstrasse", and the Bendler-Block now houses a permanent exhibition with more than 5,000 photographs and documents showing the various resistance organisations at work during the Hitler era. The courtyard where the officers were shot is now a site of remembrance with a plaque commemorating the events, and includes a memorial bronze figure of a young man with his hands symbolically bound. |
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