Berlin - The German military honoured Monday officers who
opposed Adolf Hitler, swearing in recruits at a ceremony marking the
65th anniversary of a failed plot to kill the Nazi dictator.
Chancellor Angela Merkel told young army recruits giving their
military pledge on the lawn outside Germany's parliament the plotters
had set a good example.
'Sadly there were not many resisters, but the few that there were
preserved our nation's dignity and honour,' she said.
Politicians and soldiers also laid wreaths at the Bendler Block, a
defence ministry office building where Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von
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. The blast was deflected by the
leg of a table and Hitler received only minor injuries.
Stauffenberg had travelled back to Berlin and put in motion
Operation Valkyrie, 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 military
anti-Nazi resistance in Germany. The story featured in a movie,
Valkyrie, released late last year.
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.
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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