A Hero of Mine

It was ever since I saw the film Valkyrie that I looked at Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg as a hero and a person who I greatly admire for what he did in the year before the end of World War II. For those who do not know who he was, he was a colonel in the German army during the last great war and what he did took a lot of bravery and courage that it cost him his life. What I am speaking of is a plot to assassinate Hitler.

Stauffenberg was one of many conspirators involved in operation Valkyrie but i was his plan to take it into affect.

He was born of a wealthy German family, one of the oldest and most aristocratic Catholic families of southern Germany, and lived in the family castle of Jittengen between Ulm and Augsburg on the 15th November 1907. He was the third of four sons, two being older and his own twin who died a day after birth due to complications.

This was a very well educated man and inclined to take a career up in literature but instead took up a military career instead and joined the family's traditional regiment and later would become the man Germany knows today. He had many successful military campaigns at the beginning of the war before being sent to Tunisia.

Stauffenberg was a man who had one eye and one hand with three fingers, having lost them when a British bomber had hit his vehicle during an ambush leaving him fatally wounded and left to heal in a hospital in Munich, then being awarded the Wound Badge in Gold in 1943. It was during this period of recovery that Stauffenberg would often feel frustrated that he himself was not in a state to stage a coup and end the war and influence others to his new cause. After meeting with fellow conspirators it was decided that the only way to save not only German Lives but end the war and save so many more lives was to kill and replace Hitler by using operation Valkyrie. Even though there had been many assassination attempts on Hitler this still didn't stop the German people from trying with every means they could, showing that Germany was not a Nazi country that they realized how dangerous and mad this man was who was leading them.

The plan for Valkyrie was to ensure combat readiness of units of scattered elements of the reserve army and use them to stage the coup, meaning that instead of in the case o Hitlers death that the SS would initially take control of the entire Nazi regime that it would instead fall to the conspirators to take charge and hold the SS officers under arrest for trying to take control of the government.

On the day of the assassination, well who knows what must of been going through this mans mind when he was delivering the explosives to the meeting Hitler was holding. He knew that if he did not succeed then he would die and risk the very lives of his wife and children but still he took that one chance that he saw, but sadly nothing went according to plan. The plan was to have two explosives in the bag he was carrying, but due to him being rushed and only with one hand struggled to set up the second charge, leaving only one, but this was not the worst of it, it was when he had placed the bomb close enough for it to do any damage to the hut that it went wrong. Obviously Stauffenberg had to have left pretending there was an important phone call for him, that someone had slightly moved the bag against on of the tables legs, which prevented the blast which was not strong enough but would of at least killed Hitler if close enough did not succeed.

Once back in Berlin the resistance began to take control of the country but when their goal was in sight it was taken away when Hitler had gotten through to the commander of the reserve army and told him that the colonel and his team were to be arrested and taken for questioning. What I admire about all those involved is that they fought to the very end, they all kept their dignity and did their country proud. Once captured the conspirators were to be sentenced to death immediately at the command of a General who wanted to hide any involvement he had in the plot, which later would not of mattered as he was executed. It was here that General Ludwig Beck requested a pistol to commit suicide as he was to be kept alive but could not bare to live in shame that his life was spared when his friends were not, which I believe was a very honourable and brave thing to do.

It was on the 21st July 1944 that Claus Von Staffenberg and his fellow conspirators were executed by firing squad, and with his last breath Stauffenberg shouted the greatest words of his life "Long live our sacred Germany". Not only the colonel but everyone else who was executed that day that they must of all been so scared and what must of been going through their heads just before it is mind boggling. But they did not die in vain, today they are in Germany but should also be considered all around the world, hero's and great men who believed in their country and made their people proud to be Germans.

I admire him a lot as he gave up everything for a cause that he considered greater than his own very existence.

Above is a picture of Stauffenberg and Tom Cruise who you can see just by looking at him as part of why he was cast in this role.