Claus von Stauffenberg, Hitler's would be assassin, wasn't a Hollywood hero, but a Nazi villain.

On 20 July 1944 a failed assassination against Hitler was led by Claus von Stauffenberg, Generals Beck, Olbricht, von Tresckow, von Stülpnagel & others. To this day they are all celebrated and remembered as being “anti Nazi heores” in Germany and outside it, and countless of films were made and books were written detailing their “heroism” in trying to assassinate Hitler. The truth is that none of these people were “anti Nazi” to begin with. They all were extremely enthusiastic supporters of Hitler and Nazism, and did all they could to support him and his Nazi genocidal war machine for years. The only reason why they decided to turn on him was that they recognized that by 1944 the war was all but over, and that they were on the losing side. These people were not against Nazi Germany, these people were trying to save Nazi Germany. They thought that if they removed Hitler they could make peace with the allies and preserve most of their Nazi empire which was built on the corpses of tens of millions of innocent people. Out of the group of people the most remembered is Claus von Stauffenberg, who became famous after Tom Cruise played him in the Hollywood film “Valkyrie”. The film itself is basically a 2 hour bombastic celebration of the heroism of the brave Claus von Stauffenberg who, along with the other "Anti Nazi resistance" in the German army tried to stop Hitler and end the war purely out of self sacrificing and altruistic reasons. However, this could not be further from the truth even if they tried.

So who Claus von Stauffenberg really was? Claus von Stauffenberg was a high ranking officer in the Wehrmacht during WW2. Though the movie portrays him as being "anti Nazi" the truth was that he was Nazi through and through.

The fact that he had been an early and enthusiastic supporter of Nazism, and had welcomed Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and supported his policies. When the war broke out he served as an officer in the German army's invasion of Poland, France and other campaigns and took part in the insuing genocidal acts of terror the German army practiced in Poland.

Regarding Poland, he described the Poles as 'an unbelievable rabble' of 'Jews and mongrels' who were 'only comfortable under the knout'. He would go on to advocate the systematic colonisation of occupied Poland by Nazi Germany. Echoing Hitler's own views, He thought Poles were subhumans that should be only treated as slaves. Of course all of this doesn't appear in the movie or in most publications about him. No need to confuse the Hollywood fantasy with unpleasent truths.

Von Stauffenberg and Hitler

The only reason why Stauffenberg and his fellow German conspirators decided to turn on Hitler, whom they had all ardently supported up until 1944, was because they felt that the war was going badly, and if they don't do something drastic they would lose everything they gained in the last 5 years. Stalingrad and other failures in the eastern front convinced them that if they won't assassinate Hitler and replace him with a different leader, their newly acquired empire and everything they have stolen and up until then would be endangered. On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Kętrzyn, in present-day Poland. The aim was to kill Hitler and replace him with a military junta. The bomb went off but failed to kill Hitler. The failure of the assassination attempt and the intended military coup d'état, or putsch, that was to follow led the Gestapo to arrest more than 7,000 people, 4,980 of whom were executed.

Mussolini and Hitler examing the the room where von Stauffenberg bomb exploded. Had he succeded, all that would have changed was the fact that Hitler would have been replaced by a group of Nazi generals adhering to the Nazi ideology, who would probably continue with the German genocidal and colonialist effort they have been engaged with in the last 5 years in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and elsehwere in Central and Eastern Europe.

However, the fact that modern Germany and many people in the west consider Stauffenberg a national "hero" is appalling and disturbing to say the least. German historians and von Stauffenberg apologists go to great lengths to point out how he didn't really hate Jews, except Polish Jews who he also considered subhuman because he saw them as Poles, or wasn't as nearly as anti semitic as other Germans at the time. They forget, or purposly leave out, that what he lacked in anti Semitism he more than made up in anti-Polonism and other forms of racism, and the fact that he was a loyal Nazi soldier who only decided to turn on Hitler once his Fuhrer had become a burden to his beloved Nazi Third Reich.

Germans commemorating von Stauffenberg, who is considered as a "national hero" in modern day Germany. And lastly here is the current German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, repeating debunked national socialist propaganda. Claus von Stauffenberg and his companions *were not* against Nazi Germany as he claims, these people were trying to save Nazi Germany *from Hitler* by assasinating him.

Bibliography: Housden, Martyn. Resistance and Conformity in the Third Reich. Roger Moorhouse. Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death.