Died: 1 May, 2008, in Germany, aged 90
PHILIPP Freiherr von Boeselager was believed to have been the last surviving member of the inner circle of German army officers who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb
on 20 July, 1944.
Disturbed by the Nazi campaign of extermination against the Jews and by German atrocities that he witnessed as a lieutenant on the Eastern Front, von Boeselager joined an anti-Hitler conspiracy in 1942 and later took part in the plot being organised by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who, as chief of staff to General Friedrich Fromm of reserve army headquarters, routinely attended meetings at which Hitler was present.
Von Boeselager, assigned to an explosives research team, was able to acquire top-grade English explosives, and on 20 July, von Stauffenberg carried a briefcase stuffed with plastic explosives and a timed detonator into a conference being held in the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia, and placed it under a table being used by Hitler and more than 20 officers.
After making an excuse, von Stauffenberg left the room. In his absence, Colonel Heinz Brandt, trying to get a better look at a map on the table, moved the briefcase, blunting the impact of the explosion. The blast demolished the conference room and mortally wounded three officers (Brandt among them) and a stenographer, but Hitler escaped with minor injuries.
Had the assassination succeeded, von Boeselager was supposed to lead 1,200 men back to Berlin and take part in a general uprising against the Nazi regime, code-named Operation Valkyrie. The bomb plot is the subject of the unreleased film Valkyrie, in which Tom Cruise plays von Stauffenberg.
Most of the 200 or so conspirators, including von Stauffenberg, were rounded up and executed, while others committed suicide. No-one revealed von Boeselager's role in the plot, so he did not need to use the cyanide capsule he kept on hand. But, fearing exposure, he kept the cyanide for the rest of the war.
Von Boeselager, who was born into a Roman Catholic family in Burg Heimerzheim, near Bonn, graduated from a Jesuit secondary school and intended to study law and enter the foreign service. Not wishing to join the Nazi party, he instead enlisted in the army, as did his brother, Georg, who also took part in the 20 July plot.
Von Boeselager was first approached in 1942 to shoot both Hitler and Heinrich Himmler at close range. "It was no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes," he said in a recent interview.
On 13 March, 1943, with a Walther PP pistol in hand, von Boeselager prepared to assassinate both men, who were scheduled to hold a strategy session with Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, von Boeselager's commanding officer and also a conspirator. When Himmler decided not to attend, von Kluge called off the mission.
In 1944, it was von Boeselager's brother Georg who gave him the signal to move forward. "One day, my brother called and said, 'They want explosives', " he said in a 2004 interview. "I knew exactly what for."
When he stepped off an airplane to deliver the explosives to General Hellmuth Stieff at army high command, however, the plan nearly came unravelled. "Getting out of the plane, I was limping, because I had been injured in the leg." he said in the interview. "Several young soldiers came up to me, offering to carry my suitcase. But I refused. I thought they would notice at once that the suitcase was far too heavy."
As for the failure of the 1944 assassination attempt, von Boeselager said: "Stauffenberg was the wrong man for this, but no-one else had the guts."
After the war, von Boeselager studied law and economics and served as an adviser in creating the Bundeswehr, the armed forces of West Germany. He founded several charities and welfare organisations, and often spoke at schools about German resistance to the Third Reich and the importance of taking an active part in politics.
In 1948, he got married and he and his wife had four children.
Two weeks before his death, von Boeselager took part in a documentary, The Valkyrie Legacy, which is due to be shown on the History Channel next year.
He said that the decision to call off the 1943 plot had continued to haunt him.
"I always see Hitler from here to the fireplace in front of me (indicating with his hands a distance of about two feet] and think, 'What would have happened if you had shot him?'"
The full article contains 778 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
