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STUMBLING over an international obituary just last week, the name
“Baron Philipp Freiherr Von Boeselager” never struck a chord of
recognition except for the short acclamation describing him: “last
surviving member of an inner circle of the German Army that plotted
Adolf Hitler’s assassination.” Such brief eulogy said everything
necessary to describe the greatness of the man who had just recently
died. When a man, who had everything to gain with his stature,
social prominence, wealth, and political position, suddenly decides
to betray his superior, who just happens to be the most notorious
and diabolic genocidal criminal that ever walked the surface of the
earth, then such a hero must be given a proper eulogy by every
nation in this world. Even if his assassination attempts, together
with his colleagues, never succeeded in killing Adolf Hitler, such
great men deserve their just recognition.
Boeselager was born Roman Catholic, graduating
from the Jesuit-owned Aloysius College. He joined his brother Georg
in the German Army. In June 1942, Boeselager received news of five
Roma people shot in cold blood by Hitler’s Gestapo solely because
of their ethnicity. It was the turning point in his life and started
discussing his concerns with his brother Georg and friends over
senseless murders being committed by Hitler’s Nazis. Their
desperation and disturbance grew as the Nazis conducted a campaign
against the Jews and committed German atrocities, which Boeselager
witnessed as a twenty-five-year old lieutenant on the Eastern Front.
Soon after, Boeselager was approached and given the principal
assignment in the plot to shoot Hitler and his loyal murderous
Rotweiller, Heinrich Himmler.
On March 13, 1943, final strategy sessions were
conducted with Field Marshal Gunther Von Kluge, Boeselager’s
commanding officer and conspirator against Hitler. Armed with a
Walther PP pistol, Boeselager walked into a conference room with
Hitler in attendance. Unfortunately, Himmler absented himself, so
Von Kluge decided to call off Boeselager’s assignment at the last
minute. It was believed that Himmler would have merely taken over
the Nazi command. The plot was for the simultaneous killing of both
Nazi leaders so that the Holocaust could be stopped.
Subsequently, a more intricate scheme was
hatched regardless of Himmler’s attendance. Hitler must be killed
at all costs. This anti-Hitler conspiracy was organized by Col.
Claus Schenk Graf Von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff to Gen. Friedrich
Fromm of the Reserve Army Headquarters of Germany. Boeselager had
been assigned to an explosives research team of the German Army,
which acquired top grade English explosives. On July 20, 1944,
Boeselager was instructed to transport explosives in a briefcase
with a timed detonator to Stauffenberg, who would bring this
briefcase into a conference at Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s
headquarters in East Prussia. Boeselager, having a knee injury at
that time, was actually scared that if he allowed the soldiers to
carry the heavy briefcase as he was limping down the airplane, the
conspiracy would have been discovered. Stauffenberg would leave the
conference room, and the bomb would be detonated. Immediately after
the detonation, Boeselager was to lead one thousand two hundred
German troops to Berlin in an uprising codenamed Operation Valkyrie
(a Hollywood film featuring Tom Cruise and a documentary in History
Channel will be released in spring 2009 on this heroic conspiracy).
Unfortunately, the briefcase was moved under the
heavy oak table by Col. Heinz Brandt, who wanted a better look at
Hitler’s map. This blunted the impact of the explosion. Although
the whole conference room was demolished and three out of twenty
officers were mortally wounded, Hitler escaped with minor injuries.
Boeselager received the message from his brother: “Everyone back
in the old holes.” This meant that the plot failed. Thereafter,
most conspirators were discovered and fatally tortured. Philipp and
Georg were not discovered. But the Boeselagers retained their
cyanide capsules until Germany’s defeat, which were given to them
should they be discovered by Hitler’s Gestapo.
After the war, Boeselager studied law and
economics, served as adviser to West Germany’s armed forces
Bundeswehr, founded several charities and welfare organizations,
spoke at schools about German Resistance to the Third Reich, and
advocated the importance of taking active part in politics so that
tyrants and evil people do not rise to the highest pinnacles of
power in the governance of a nation.
A former Hitler Youth rose to become the
Catholic Pontiff justified his participation in Hitler’s Holocaust
on the principle: “Ejus nulla culpa est cui parere necessesit.”
(No guilt attaches to a person who is compelled to obey.) But
Boeselager hammered his impressive personal values in his family’s
coat of arms at his Kreuzberg residence: “Et si omnes ego non.”
(Even if all, not I.) It takes real heroes to stand against the
political tide and emerge unscathed and pure as Philipp Freiherr Von
Boeselager, his brother Georg Von Boeselager, and their colleagues
stand honored and immortalized in world history.
ericfmallonga@yahoo.com
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