Remembering Valkyrie

While the attention today is focused, and rightly so, on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon (which I'll have more about in a post later tonight), there is also another anniversary of great importance: the 65th anniversary of Operation Valkyrie.

Sixty-five years ago today, World War II was still going on. Things were going bad for the German Wehrmacht on all fronts; the Russians were pushing further west, and the Western Allies were about to break out of the Normandy beachhead. Amidst all this, a group of Germans, desperately seeking to save their nation from a madman determined to destroy it, attempted to kill that madman, Adolf Hitler.

Led by a colonel in the German Army, Claus von Stauffenberg, these German patriots came close to overthrowing the Nazi regime, but because they had failed to kill Hitler, their noble effort was doomed to fail. In the end, all were executed or committed suicide. And of course, in less than a year, World War II in Europe would end with Germany in ashes.

Thanks in no small part to the release of the film Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise, the full story of Operation Valkyrie is now much better known than perhaps ever before, and Claus von Stauffenberg and all the German patriots who participated in the efforts to save their "sacred Germany" are remembered as the heroes they were. May they forever be remembered as heroes.