The scene was portrayed in War & Remembrance and again in Mr. Cruise’s Valkyrie.
Here is the real man from this story, who escaped with his life. The last survivor has died in Munich.
Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, who volunteered to assassinate Hitler with suicide bomb, dies at 90
Despite his family’s opposition to the Nazis, younger von Kleist joined the German army in 1940, and was wounded in 1943 in fighting on the Eastern Front.
During his convalescence, he was approached in January 1944 by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, another officer from an aristocratic family, and presented with a plan to kill Hitler. Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest underneath, and detonate it when he stood next to the dictator.
Years later von Kleist remembered explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly before telling his 22-year-old son: “Yes, you have to do this.”
Raise a toast of your choice to the bravery.
And remember, Hitler was Hitler. Don’t make Mike Godwin make another meme.
cross-posted in orange.
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