Word: stauffenberg
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Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg had fought with Rommel in Africa, lost his left arm and two fingers of his right hand there. But he could still do staff work. Above all, he could still carry a briefcase. On July 20, 1944, he carried a briefcase into a conference at the Führer's field headquarters in East Prussia. He put it down close to the Führer-with a powerful little bomb inside...
Last week the Nazis said that Stauffenberg first took a bomb in Hitler's conference room the day that Rundstedt relinquished his command, but left again without exploding it. Had the Junker taken Rundstedt's removal as a signal that the time had come to strike against the Nazis? Three months ago Allied intelligence officers had heard reports of a Wehrmacht coup in the making. Rumors linked Rundstedt's name with men like Finance Wizard Hjalmar Schacht, onetime Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath, Baron von Weizsacker, Ambassador to the Vatican, former Oberbürgermeister Karl Goerdeler...
...Stauffenberg's bomb was no time bomb, but it dinned into Adolf Hitler's ears what time it was on history's relentless clock. The Junker felt that opportunism, the chief bond between them and Naziism now bound them to depose Hitler. For the time being Hitler restored the bond by a number of judicious hangings...
...implacable lines set the tone for the bloody terror that still racked the Reich a fortnight after Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb under the Führer's table and blew the crisis between the Nazi Party and the Army officers wide open...
Hitler had been forewarned at Berchtesgaden by the Gestapo, had sent his double, Heinrich Bergner, into the big map room, where a dozen generals and their adjutants were waiting for afternoon conference. Von Stauffenberg mistook Bergner for Hitler. In the same motion with which he gave the Nazi salute, he tossed a hand grenade. There were flames and an explosion. Bergner fell dead...