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Posts Tagged ‘CLAUS VON STAFFENBERG’

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A BRIEFCASE, A GUN–AND FATE: PART THREE (OF FOUR)

In History, Politics on September 4, 2012 at 1:01 am

On March 30, 1981, a psychopath obsessed with a movie star proved that it didn’t take a sophisticated “Day of the Jackal” assassin to shoot the President of the United States.

Seventeen years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Secret Service felt itself transformed.  It had:

  • Beefed up its manpower.  Whereas seven agents had protected Kennedy round-the-clock, at least a score were now assigned to the President.
  • Equipped itself with the latest defensive and communications devices.  Whereas agents on the Kennedy detail had been armed with pistols, now it was commonplace to see agents brandishing Uzi submachine guns.
  • Added a psychological profile of a woman assassin to its roster of those most likely to attack a President.  This came after two female would-be assassins in succession tried to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford in September, 1975.

But the Secret Service was totally in the dark about the intentions of John W. Hinckley, a 25-year-old college dropout who was rapidly sliding into psychosis.

Hinckley had become obsessed with actress Jodie Foster, who had starred in the 1979 movie, “Taxi Driver.”  Hinckley had seen the film at least 15 times and bceome convinced that Foster was his destined lover/wife.

He identified with the film’s protagonist, taxi driver Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro.  Toward the end of the film, Bickle attempts to assassinate a U.S. Senator who is running for president.

Hinckley wrote numerous letters and notes to Foster in late 1980.  He called her twice and refused to give up even when she made it clear she had no interest in him.

For Hinckley, there was only one solution: To make himself her equal in fame, he would assassinate the President.  It didn’t matter to him which one.

Throughout 1980 he stalked Jimmy Carter.  On October 2, 1980, Hinckley attended one of Carter’s campaign appearances, but left his gun collection, now totaling three handguns and two rifles, in his hotel room.

In October, 1980, Hinckley went to Nashville–the site of another Carter campaign stop.  There he was arrested at the airport when security agents detected handguns in his suitcase.

The guns were confiscated.  Hinckley was fined $62.50 but not arrested.

Even worse: The FBI did not connect this arrest to the President and did not notify the Secret Service.

Unable to get President Carter, Hinckley decided to go for President-elect Ronald Reagan

On March 30, Reagan delivered a luncheon address to AFL-CIO representatives at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Unaware of Hinckley’s intentions or even his identity, the Secret Service felt there was nothing to worry about.

The hotel was considered the safest in Washington due to its secure, enclosed passageway called “President’s Walk,” built after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Trips to the Hilton were routine events, and its interior had been thoroughly vetted.  Reagan’s walk to his bulletproof car was short.

The Secret Service had made Reagan wear a bulletproof vest for some events, but he did not wear one for the speech.  His only public exposure would be the 30 feet between the hotel and his limousine.

Secret Service agents spotted Hinckley milling among a crowd of reporters and assumed he was one of them.  Thus Hinckley got within 20 feet of Reagan, held back only by a rope line near the Hilton’s side entrance.

Unexpectedly, Reagan passed right in front of Hinckley. Knowing he would never get a better chance, Hinckley fired a .22 revolver six times in 1.7 seconds.

Incredibly, he missed the president with all six shots.

Even so, he left four victims in his wake:

  • Press Secretary James Brady, wounded in the head;
  • District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty, in the back of the neck;
  • Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, in the abdomen, as he shielded Reagan’s body with his own; and
  • President Reagan, when the sixth and final bullet richocheted off the armored side of the limousine and hit him in his left underarm, grazing a rib and lodging in his lung.  The bullet stopped only about an inch from his heart.

Hinckley was immediately arrested and tried for trying to assassinate the President.  He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has remained under institutional psychiatric care since then

The extent of Reagan’s injuries was not known at the time of the shooting, even to the Secret Service.

Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr had shoved Reagan into the limousine, and Reagan, having trouble breathing, thought Parr had broken his ribs.

Then Parr noticed bright red blood on Reagan’s lips, and realized that a lung had been punctured.  Parr had initially ordered the driver to speed to the White House, but now he gave different instructions: Head to George Washington University Hospital–fast.

At the hospital, Reagan stunned doctors and nurses by his humor and politeness in the face of possible death: “I hope you’re all Republicans.” To try to comfort his wife, Nancy, Reagan said: “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

He underwent emergency surgery for removal of the bullet.  Twelve days later, he was back in the White House and seemingly in good health.

Had any of number of factors turned out otherwise, the outcome would have been very different.

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A BRIEFCASE, A GUN–AND FATE: PART TWO (OF FOUR)

In Uncategorized on September 3, 2012 at 12:05 am

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
 For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
 For want of a horse the rider was lost.
 For want of a rider the message was lost.
 For want of a message the battle was lost.
 For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

For Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the moment of destiny had almost come.

He had just delivered a bomb–hidden in a briefcase–to a concrete building where Adolf Hitler, Germany’s Fuehrer, was holding a conference with his generals.

Ironically, Stauffenberg had chosen a spot where Hitler should have been absolutely safe: His military headquarters in East Prussia, known as “Wolf’s Lair.”

The war was not going well for Nazi Germany.  On June 6, 1944, American, Canadian and British forces had landed en masse on the coast of Normandy, France.  After facing brutal resistance from well-emplaced German troops, the Allies had broken through.

They now had a base on French soil.  And it was growing ever larger as seemingly inexhaustible quantities of American troops and material continued to unload.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern front, German armies continued to be pushed back–ever close to Germany.  The German Army and Air Force had killed millions of Russians–postwar estimates would put the figure at 25 million.

Most of Western Russia had been turned into a wasteland.  Buildings that hadn’t been destroyed by the Germans had been torched by the Russians–following a “scorched earth” policy to deny any shelter to the enemy.

And Germany’s two major allies–Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan–were doing just as badly.

In 1943, Benito Mussolini had been deposed by a coup and imprisoned.  Hitler had sent a commando squad to rescue him, and it had done so.  But despite being re-installed in power, Mussolini was now only a shadow of his former shelf–and now seen as entirely Hitler’s creature.

In the pacific, Japan’s winning streak had ended in 1942 at the battle of Midway.  Planes from U.S. aircraft carriers had devastated a Japanese naval task force.  From then on, the U.S. Navy relentlessly pressed Japanese ships ever closer to their own homeland.

So Stauffenberg now stood outside the concrete building where Hitler and his generals were holding yet another military conference.  He waited for his bomb to go off–and for the Third Reich to literally go up in smoke.

At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.

But the Third Reich didn’t come to an end–because, as if miraculously, Hitler had survived.

What had happened?

First, the conference location had been changed–from a wooden building to a concrete one.  The concrete absorbed much of the blast.

Second, owing to the summer’s heat, Hitler had ordered all the windows–about ten–opened to let in a breeze.  This allowed much of the force of the blast to be dispersed.

Third, and perhaps most important: Stauffenberg had carefully placed his briefcase near Hitler, who was standing next to a heavy oaken support of the conference table.

But after Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, who stood next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs.  So he moved it–to the other side of the havey oaken support.

When the bomb exploded, Hitler was partially shielded from its full blast.  Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer.

Not only had the conspirators missed their chance to assassinate Hitler, they failed to seize the key broadcast facilities of the Reich.  This allowed Hitler made a late-night speech to the nation, revealing the failed plot and assuring the Germans that he was definitely alive.

He swore to flush out the “traitorous swine” who had tried to kill him.  And he promised to wreak a terrible vengeance on them.

He proved as good as his word.  Among the first victims discovered and executed was Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.  Standing before a makeshift firing squad at midnight, he cried: “Long live our sacred Germany!”

At least 7,000 persons were arrested by the Gestapo.  According to records of the Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 were executed.

Had the conspiracy succeeded:

  • Erwin Rommel, Germany’s famed “Desert Fox,” might have been persuaded to assume command of the government.
  • His reputation as a military hero might have convinced the German armed forces to stand down.
  • If Germany had surrendered in July or August, 1944, the war would have ended eight to nine months earlier.
  • The Russians would not have been able to occupy the Eastern part of Germany.  (They did not reach Germany until April, 1945.)
  • As a result, many of the future conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union over access to West Berlin and/or West Germany would have been avoided.
  • Untold numbers of coming Holocaust victims would have probably survived because the extermination camps would have been shut down.
  • Untold numbers of Allied and German soldiers would have been spared from being wounded and/or killed.

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A BRIEFCASE, A GUN–AND FATE: PART ONE (OF FOUR)

In History, Politics on August 31, 2012 at 12:32 am

On July 20, 1944, a one-eyed, one-armed man tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler

Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941).

While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943 when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle.  He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.

Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.

For most of these officers, the motive was craven: Germany was losing the war it had launched on the world–and they feared the worst.  This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.

For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.

Thus, Stauffenberg–more than many Germans–knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect once the “1,000 year Reich” shattered in defeat.

Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans–even members of the Wehrmacht–were criminals.

Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces–well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany.

For Stauffenberg, arresting Hitler wasn’t enough.  Stauffenberg wanted him dead.

A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.

But–how to do it?  Hitler was a closely-guarded target.  He was surrounded by SS bodyguards who were expert marksmen.  He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.

But his single greatest protection–he claimed–was an instinct for danger.  He would often suddenly change his schedule–to drop in  where he was least expected.  Or to suddenly depart an event where he was scheduled to stay a long time.

On November 9, 1939, this instinct saved his life.  He had been set to give a long speech at a Munich beer hall before the “Old Fighters” of his storm troopers.

Sixteen years earlier on that day, Hitler had led them in a disastrous attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government.  Police had put down the effort, killing and wounding about a score of storm troopers in the process.  Hitler himself had later been arrested, tried and convicted for treason–and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.

But instead of proving to be the end of Nazism, the “Beer Hall Putsch” turned Hitler into a national celebrity.  And it launched his career as a legitimate, ultimately successful politician.

So Hitler was expected to speak to his longtime supporters for a long time that evening.

Instead, he suddenly cut short his speech and quickly left the beer hall.

Forty-five minutes later, a bomb exploded inside a pillar–before which Hitler had been speaking.

Since then, a series of other assassination attempts had been made against Hitler.  All of them involved time-bombs.  And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.

In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode.  In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off.  He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it went off.

So now it was the turn of von Stauffenberg.  He would carry his bomb–hidden in a briefcase–into a “Hitler conference” packed with military officers.

But Stauffenberg didn’t intend to be a suicide bomber.  He meant to direct the government that would replace that of the Nazis.

His bomb–also rigged with a time-fuse–would be left in the conference room while he found an excuse to leave.  Once the explosion came, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.

Then, the coup–”Operation Valkyrie”–would be on.

Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government.  The British and Americans would then be informed of Germany’s willingness to surrender.  Provided, of course, that the Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.

The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians.  Mny had died in combat.  Others had been murdered as captives.  Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the legendary Russian winter.

So the Germans–both Nazi and anti-Nazi–knew what they could expect if the Soviet Union landed its soldiers on German soil.

On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia.  Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it–appropriately enough–”Wolf’s Lair.”

Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the confernce was in session.  He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler–who was standing with his generals at a heavey oaken table.

Then Stauffenberg excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.

With only minutes to spare, he calmly left the conference–and waited for Hitler to die in a burst of fire and smoke.

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