Claus Graf von Stauffenberg

[Klaus]

Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
(15 November, 1907 – 21 July, 1944)

Military career

Stauffenberg was born the third of three sons (the others being Berthold, and Alexander) in Jettingen, Swabia, near Ulm in the Kingdom of Bavaria, to one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic southern German Catholic families. His parents were Caroline Schenk von Stauffenberg (née von Üxküll-Gyllenbrand) and Alfred Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, the last Oberhofmarschall of the Kingdom of Württemberg. Among his ancestors were several famous Prussians, including August von Gneisenau.
(The family's original name was Stauffenberg, and they held the noble titles of Schenk and Graf. After 1918, when the Weimar Republic abolished all noble titles, they added the words Schenk and Graf to their surname. Stauffenberg's formal surname was thus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. By convention he is usually referred to in English simply as Stauffenberg.)
Stauffenberg was very well educated and inclined toward literature, but eventually took up a military career. In 1926, he joined the family regiment in Bamberg, the Reiter- und Kavallerieregiment 17 (17th Cavalry Regiment). It was around this time that he and his brother Berthold were introduced by Albrecht von Blumenthal to poet Stefan George's influential circle, from which many notable members of the German resistance would later emerge.
In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany. While some aspects of the Nazi Party's declared ideology were repugnant to him, Stauffenberg did not oppose others, in particular its nationalism. By 1939, however, the growing systematic maltreatment of Jews and suppression of religion had offended Stauffenberg's sense of morality and justice; he felt, for instance, that the November 1938 Kristallnacht had brought great shame upon Germany.
In his military career, Stauffenberg had been promoted to Hauptmann (captain), a rank he held for six years, on 1 January 1937. His regiment became part of the Sixth Panzer Division and in 1938 was involved in the occupation of the Sudetenland following the now infamous Munich Agreement. Once the Second World War broke out in 1939, von Stauffenberg and his regiment took part in the Polish, French and Russian campaigns. Toward the end of the French campaign, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class.
On 1 January 1943, he 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, although he later joked that he hardly knew what he had done with all ten fingers when he had them.
While his uncle, Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll, had approached him to join the resistance movement, it was after the Polish campaign in 1939 that Stauffenberg's individual conscience and his religious convictions urged him to act. Initially, he felt powerless as he was in no position of authority to help organise a coup, but finally in 1943, after recuperating from his wounds, he was posted as a staff officer to the Replacement Army located in an office on the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin.
Here, one of his superiors was General Friedrich Olbricht, a committed member of the resistance movement. In the Replacement Army they had a unique opportunity to launch a coup, as one of its functions was to have "Operation Valkyrie" in place. This was a contingency measure which would let it assume control of the Reich in the event of internal disturbances when communications with the military high command were blocked.
Ironically, the Valkyrie plan had been agreed to by Hitler, and was now secretly to become the means of sweeping him from power.

The July 20 Plot


While Stauffenberg's part in the plan required him to be at the Bendlerstrasse office to telephone regular Army units from around the Reich to arrest leaders of political organisations, such as the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo, in the end he was the only one of the conspirators who had regular access to Hitler, at his briefing meetings.
Even with only three fingers remaining, von Stauffenberg, in 1944 now promoted to Oberst (Colonel), agreed to carry out the assassination of the German Führer, Adolf Hitler himself. The attempt took place at the Führer's briefing hut at the military high command Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) near Rastenburg, East Prussia (today K?trzyn, Poland) on 20 July 1944.
Stauffenberg's briefcase was packed with explosives, and a simple ten to fifteen minute timer set. He entered the briefing room where Hitler was present, 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. Although four people were killed and almost all present were injured, Hitler was injured only slightly as he was shielded from the blast by a heavy, solid oaken conference table.
Stauffenberg and his aide de camp, Leutnant Werner von Haeften, quickly walked away and talked their way out of the heavily guarded compound to fly back to Berlin in a waiting Heinkel He 111. Stauffenberg only learned of the failure on his return to Berlin.
While he was in transit, an order was issued from the Führer's headquarters to shoot Stauffenberg and von Haeften down, but the order landed on the desk of a fellow conspirator, Friedrich Georgi of the air staff, and was not passed on.
Hitler broadcast a message on the state radio, and it became obvious that the coup attempt had failed. Shortly afterwards, the conspirators were overpowered in their Bendlerstrasse office, with Stauffenberg being shot in the shoulder.

Reasons for failure
Stauffenberg had time to arm only one of the two bombs he had; he was interrupted while arming the explosives.
Hitler was looking over a map on the table just as the bomb went off. Oberstleutnant Heinz Brandt was trying to get a better look at the map, saw Stauffenberg's briefcase was in his way, and moved it to the opposite side of one of the table supports, shielding Hitler from the blast. Brandt, who was killed in the explosion, inadvertently helped save Hitler's life. (This however is disputed.)
[edit]
Execution
General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army, himself a suspected conspirator who was later executed, held an impromptu court martial and condemned the ringleaders of the conspiracy to death.
Stauffenberg, along with fellow officers General Olbricht, Leutnant von Haeften and Oberst Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, were shot later that night by firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock (Headquarters of the Army) in Berlin.
As his turn came, Stauffenberg spoke his last words: Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland! ("Long live our sacred Germany!"). In an attempt to assuage his troubled conscience for assassinating his fellow conspirators, General Fromm gave the officers an honourable burial with their medals; the next day, however, Stauffenberg's body was exhumed, stripped of his medals and burned.
Another central figure in the plot was Stauffenberg's eldest brother, Berthold Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. Berthold was tried in the People's Court by Roland Freisler on 10 August and was one of eight conspirators executed by strangulation, hanged slowly in Plötzensee 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 were about to be executed when the SS decided not to carry out the order when they became aware that British troops were within 400 meters of their location.
On account of the vital role he played in the July Plot, Stauffenberg is celebrated today as a national hero in Germany, and remains a symbol of the German Resistance to the Nazi regime.
Since the end of the war the Bendlerblock has become a memorial to the failed anti-Nazi resistance movement. The street's name was ceremonially changed from "Bendlerstrasse" to Stauffenbergstrasse, and the Bendlerblock now houses the Memorial to the German Resistance, 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.


source: wikipedia