Berlin - The German government honoured military opposition
to Nazi Germany and remembered victims of Nazism on Monday in a
ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of a failed plot against
Hitler.
Politicians and soldiers laid wreaths at the Bendler Block in the
interior ministry, where Colonel Claus Schenk Count of Stauffenberg
was executed alongside three fellow plotters on July 20, 1944.
Earlier that day in 1944, Stauffenberg had planted a bomb hidden
in a briefcase in Hitler's eastern front headquarters, the
Wolfsschanze in what is now Poland. However the bomb blast was
shielded by a heavy table and Hitler received only minor injuries.
In the mean time however, Stauffenberg had travelled back to
Berlin and put in motion Operation Valkyrie, in an attempt to
overthrow the Nazi dictatorship.
The plotters were tried and executed as soon as their failed plan
came to light. July 20 has since become a symbol of the military
anti-Nazi resistance in Germany.
Victims of Nazi Germany were also remembered at Ploetzensee, a
lake on the outskirts of Berlin where more than 2,500 people were
killed between 1933 and 1945.
Later on Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defence Minister
Franz Josef Jung were due to join young army recruits giving their
military pledge in front of the parliament.
Anti-military demonstrators seized the opportunity to protest
against war at a rally on Potsdam Square, out of earshot of the
parliament building. Police had previously banned them from marching
through Berlin's Tiergarten park.
The secretary-general of the Christian Democrats (CDU), Ronald
Pofalla, said it was important for young soldiers to take their oat
of allegiance in public. 'In this way we Germans show that the army
stands in the centre of our society,' he said.
Earlier in the day, the parliamentary commissioner for the armed
forces, Reinhard Robbe, said the military received insufficient
recognition in present-day Germany.
'In our society, too little attention is shown towards our
soldiers,' Robbe told German daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. This
weighed heavily on German troops, the parliamentarian added.
Speaking at Ploetzensee, German Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu
Guttenberg said resistance to Nazi Germany came from all
areas of society, including trade unionists, politicians, scientists,
public servants and members of the Jewish community.
'July 20 is a warning to the future, and not an annually recurring
nostalgic event,' Guttenberg said.
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