Berlin.- Germany commemorated this Monday in Berlin, in the presence of authorities from the German Government, Parliament, and the Armed Forces, an event in which German military officers attempted to kill Adolf Hitler through what is known as Operation Valkyrie, as part of the resistance against the totalitarian National Socialist regime.
In the complex that houses the German Resistance Memorial, which during the Third ‘Reich’ served as the headquarters for, among other bodies, the Nazi Ministry of Defense, the Minister of Education, Karin Prien, urged to remember the heroic attitude of those who acted against the National Socialist power.
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“The history of the Resistance reminds us that people are not born heroes,” but rather “learn to assume responsibilities when freedom and human dignity are in danger,” said Prien.
“That remains our task,” elaborated the Christian Democratic politician, who spoke in the presence of, among others, the Minister of Defense, the Social Democrat Boris Pistorius, and the Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces, Carsten Breuer.
During the ceremony, several wreaths were laid in honor of the victims of National Socialism, in particular the five officers who tried to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, with Operation Valkyrie.
In said attempt participated, among others, retired General Ludwig Beck, General Friedrich Olbricht, Colonel Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, as well as Colonel Claus Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg and First Lieutenant Werner von Haeften.
Several of them were executed by the regime at the site where this Monday’s ceremony took place.
“We honor their names on the memorial plaque located here, in the courtyard of honor,” as “they are representatives of all those who participated in the attempted coup d’état of July 20, 1944, against National Socialism,” said Valerie Riedesel, head of the July 20, 1944 Foundation, at the ceremony.
Von Stauffenberg was the one who personally tried in vain to kill Hitler with a bomb at a headquarters located near the current Polish city of Kętrzyn, formerly Rastenburg, and after the attack he was executed in Berlin in retaliation along with his accomplices.
Operation Valkyrie’s plans included, in addition to the assassination attempt on Hitler, the seizure of the Supreme Command Headquarters of the Nazi military forces, but the failed operation resulted in the arrest and death of its organizers at the hands of the regime.
A protestor destroys an AfD wreath
Before the ceremony began, an incident took place involving a member of the family of one of those executed by the Nazis, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in which the middle-aged man tried to remove the wreath for the victims of the Third ‘Reich’ laid by the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Several people intervened to prevent their act against the offering of the AfD, a party that is currently partially monitored as a case of “right-wing extremism” by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the name given in Germany to domestic intelligence, in several German federal states.
Bonhoeffer’s relative eventually dropped his stance and the memorial events for the German resistance to the Nazi regime were finally able to take place, although the AfD wreath was partially damaged.
