Hitler attack 81 years ago: Memory of resistance of July 20, 1944

On the 81st anniversary of the failed attack on Adolf Hitler, top representatives from politics and society called for a possible weakening of law and democracy and to keep the memory of the crimes of the National Socialists awake.

“This July 20th became the symbol of resistance to injustice, for justice and conscience, for a better Germany,” said Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) in the event of a public vow of around 250 Bundeswehr recruits in the Bendlerblock, the seat of the Federal Ministry of Defense in Berlin. July 20 is not for failure, but for the departure.

In the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, Hitler assassin Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and three other participants were shot on July 20, 1944 on the evening of the overthrow attempt.

Chancellor’s son warns of the forgetfulness of history

Actor and author Matthias Brandt, the son of the former Chancellor Willy Brandt, previously warned of growing historical forgetfulness in the main ceremony at the central ceremony in the Plötzensee memorial.

“We are experiencing again today, it can also be seen in election results how the poison of hatred, racism and exclusion seeps in and is noticeable in a brutalization of the handling, last but not least of linguistic nature, through violence and conscious flaring with language pictures of the Nazi propaganda,” said the son of the former Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD).

Suddenly people are “foreign bodies”, “not belonging”, should be “removed”. “All of this, citing an alleged biological or ethnic basis of German identity. What is the other way around than forgetting in history?” Said Brandt. His mother taught him that you had to decide. “The fact that doing nothing is also a decision – how many times this has been going through my head recently – namely a decision to look away, for whatever happened.”

Willy Brandt fled to Norway in front of the Nazis

Brandt’s father had fled from Nazi Germany in 1933 to protect himself from persecution. From Norway, the young man, born as Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm, then worked against the Nazi regime under the lid name Willy Brandt.

In the Former Pfiessensee penalty prison, more than 2,800 people were murdered in the Nazi dictatorship. 89 The Nazi judiciary in connection with the resistance of July 20 were killed between August 1944 and April 1945, according to the memorial.

On July 20, Wehrmacht officers around Stauffenberg tried in vain to kill Dictator Hitler with a bomb, to overthrow National Socialist rule and end the Second World War.

Responsibility and silent civil courage

Federal Minister of Justice Stefanie Hubig warned at the event in Plötzensee that Germany should not once again assume such a monstrous horror, as he prevailed at the time. “Out of guilt, this responsibility follows for all of us.” Law and democracy are under pressure again, said the SPD politician. “We and we should and have to say all the more undeterred and louder, we don’t let the rule of law and democracy destroy ourselves again!”

Minister of Culture Wolfram Weimer paid tribute to the role of members of the resistance fighters on July 20 and focused on silent civil courage. “Anyone who talks about resistance is not only allowed to speak of the assassins. Her families also show courage – and often paid a high price,” he wrote in an explanation on the 81st anniversary of the attack on Adolf Hitler.

“Relatives who hid letters between files. Women who were in prisons. Weimer writes of a “whisper against the roar of the totalitarian”. “Too quiet for monuments, but loud enough to shape our idea of freedom to this day.”