[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 95 (Wednesday, July 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      TRIBUTE TO BARON VON KLEIST

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, today is a day for commemorating great 
events in history.
  As other Senators have already noted, it was 25 years ago today that 
human beings, following the path blazed by our colleague from Ohio, 
Senator Glenn, first set foot on the Moon. The Apollo program is a 
story both of personal courage of the astronauts involved and of the 
commitment of an entire nation who supported them.
  I would like to call attention to another event that occurred on this 
date in history, one which also involved great personal courage of the 
individuals involved. In this case, however, the courage was of higher 
quality because these individuals acted in opposition to the prevailing 
will of their countrymen.
  It was 50 years ago today, Mr. President, that a small group of 
German military officers carried out an assassination attempt against 
Adolf Hitler in an effort to overthrow the Third Reich. Led by Col. 
Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, these men saw something that millions of 
others did not. As the patriots of their country in the best sense of 
this word, they decided that they could not passively watch their 
fatherland be led by the Nazis to the point of destruction.
  Had it been successful, the assassination attempt could have changed 
the course of history, sparing the lives of millions and possibly 
precluding the fall of half of Europe into a half century of Communist 
incarceration. Hitler, however, was only injured, not killed. And 
within hours, Count von Stauffenberg was executed, along with several 
of his conspirators. Others involved in the plot were later condemned 
by a show trial and hung with piano wires, their agonizing death filmed 
for the Fuhrer's viewing pleasure. One of the plotters, the famed Field 
Marshal Erwin Rommel, was forced to commit suicide.
  While many Americans are familiar with the names of Count von 
Stauffenberg and Field Marshal Rommel, the names of the other German 
patriots involved in the July 20 assassination attempt, other 
assassination attempts, and other resistance activities are not. One 
deserves special note, Mr. President, and that is von Kleist, a name 
familiar to quite a few Senators but, I suspect, not many other 
Americans.
  The von Kleist family has an illustrious heritage dating back more 
than eight centuries. It has given Germany more diplomats, generals, 
and field marshals than any other in history, as well as two of 
Germany's finest poets. Prussian Kings awarded their highest award, the 
Pour la Merit, to generation after generation of von Kleists, more than 
to any other family.
  Along with other Members of the Senate, I have had the privilege to 
come to know a prominent member of this family, Baron Ewald Heinrich 
von Kleist, who played a key role in the July 20 and other 
assassination attempts.
  In 1944, as a 22-year-old lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, von Kleist was 
asked by Count von Stauffenberg to strap explosives to himself and 
detonate it when he was standing next to Hitler. That attempt, however, 
was unsuccessful as circumstances prevented a close encounter between 
Hitler and the bomb-bearing young lieutenant.
  Lieutenant von Kleist was also asked to play a central role in the 
July 20 assassination attempt. He was to carry the briefcase bearing 
the explosive while giving Hitler a report on new uniforms, for which 
the unit he commanded was testing. Concerns about Gestapo infiltration, 
however, led to the decision that the briefcase would be placed next to 
Hitler by von Stauffenberg himself, who as chief of staff for the armed 
forces in the homeland was in Hitler's inner circle.
  Lieutenant von Kleist, however, still played a key role in the plan, 
known as Operation Valkyrie, to take control from the Nazis in the wake 
of the July 20 assassination. After the explosion in Hitler's East 
Prussian headquarters, von Kleist arrested the senior officer in the 
War Office in Berlin and others. But, in the end, the plot failed. Von 
Kleist himself was arrested, interrogated for several weeks by the 
Gestapo, then unexpectedly released, perhaps in the vain hope that he 
would lead the Gestapo to other conspirators. He later ended up in the 
concentration camp at Ravensbruch, north of Berlin.
  The unusual courage of the young Lieutenant von Kleist was a 
reflection, no doubt, of the noble heritage he received from his family 
and, in particular, his father, Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist-
Schmenzin. Long after the war, in one of the rare occasions he 
discussed those events, Baron von Kleist recalled that he sought the 
counsel and permission of his father to proceed with the suicide 
bombing.
  The elder von Kleist had long been an ardent anti-Nazi. In 1938, 
German resistance leaders sent him on a secret mission to London in a 
desperate effort to persuade British leaders to take a strong stand 
against Hitler's planned dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, helping to 
set the stage for a coup attempt in Berlin if and when Hitler invaded 
Czechoslovakia. In one of the worst miscalculations in history, then-
Major von Kleist was rebuffed by British officials suspicious of his 
true allegiances. Seven years and tens of millions of deaths later, the 
elder von Kleist was executed for his resistance activities by the 
Nazis in Berlin as Allied troops closed in on the city.
  Baron von Kleist reports that when his father was told of the suicide 
assassination plan, he pondered only briefly before unequivocally 
telling his young son, ``Yes, you have to do this.''
  In commenting years later on that solemn conversation, von Kleist 
said ``Fathers love their sons and mine certainly did, and I had been 
quite sure he would say no. But, as always, I had underestimated him.''
  After the war, von Kleist devoted himself to public education on 
security matters to help ensure that, as he says, ``that tremendous 
tragedy will not happen again.'' For the last 31 years, this has 
included sponsoring the annual Wehrkunde Conference in Munich that 
brings together prominent thinkers, policymakers, military officials, 
and journalists from the NATO countries in an informal setting to 
promote real dialogue on critical security issues. Many rate this 
conference as among the most important and productive forums held on 
international security policy.
  Three years ago, the Vice President presented Baron von Kleist with 
the Department of Defense Award for Distinguished Public Service, the 
highest honor to a civilian by the Defense Department. The citation 
accompanying the award specifically cited the Wehrkunde conference as 
the ``the premier international conference on NATO security issues'' 
and stated that:

       Baron von Kleist's unwavering stand against the horrors of 
     totalitarianism, forged through his personal experiences, has 
     certainly played a role on the undoing of the walls that have 
     separated his own Germany, and those that have separated all 
     of Europe and the world.
       Both the United States of America and the Alliance have 
     been generously served by this selfless patriot's dedication 
     to the concept of freedom.

  After the war, Churchill told the British Parliament that those who 
plotted to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime ``belonged 
to the noblest and greatest of resistance movements that have ever 
arisen in the history of all peoples.''
  In recognition of his role in that effort and the contributions he 
has made in the ensuing decades, Baron von Kleist was asked to 
participate with Chancellor Kohl in France's recent commemoration of 
Bastille Day. These ceremonies last week in Paris, in which German 
troops marched down the Champs-Elysees for the first time since the 
liberation of France, were intended to signal the irrevocable 
transformation of Franco-German relations and their combined commitment 
to a peaceful and secure Europe.
  It was very fitting therefore, for one of the honored guests at those 
ceremonies to be Baron von Kleist, who has done so much to build a 
cooperative security relationship between Germany and her allies and 
neighbors.
  And it is fitting, Mr. President, that we should pay tribute to him 
today, as well.
  I ask unanimous consent that several articles regarding the heroic 
efforts of Baron von Kleist and his collaborators be included in the 
Record, along with material related to his receipt of the Distinguished 
Public Service Award.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

Vice President Quayle Presents Baron Von Kleist With Defense Award for 
                      Distinguished Public Service

                                      The Vice President's Office,


                                Office of the Press Secretary,

                                                   April 24, 1991.
       Vice President Quayle presented Baron Ewald Heinrich Von 
     Kleist with the Department of Defense Award for Distinguished 
     Public Service in his Old Executive Office Building Office 
     today. The award is the highest honor given to a civilian by 
     the Department of Defense. Recipients must have distinguished 
     themselves in the area of national security.
       Von Kleist was recognized for his work with the independent 
     defense affairs association that he founded in 1952, 
     ``Gesellschaft fur Wehrkunde e.V.'' and for his work with 
     Europaische Wehrkunde, a magazine on European defense that he 
     founded in 1954. However, Von Kleist is most renowned for 
     founding the Wehrkunde Conference in 1963. This annual 
     meeting of the world's leading defense experts has long been 
     considered the preeminent conference on NATO security issues. 
     Von Kleist personally chooses all participants as well as the 
     topics for discussion.
       The Vice President's involvement with the Wehrkunde 
     Conference, and with Von Kleist, dates back to his days as a 
     freshman member of the Senate Arms Services Committee. In 
     1981, Senator Dan Quayle attended the Conference on the 
     recommendation of the late Senator John Tower, marking the 
     beginning of a longstanding friendship with Von Kleist.
                                  ____


           Recommended citation to Ewald Heinrich von Kleist

       For exceptionally distinguished service as the fonder and 
     guiding spirit of the annual International Wehrkunde 
     Conference held in Munich.
       Baron von Kleist's efforts in leading the Wehrkunde 
     Conference have contributed significantly to the maintenance 
     of a strong and unified defense posture for Europe and 
     America. In founding this conference in 1963, Baron von 
     Kleist sought to further the vibrant exchange of ideas on 
     political and military themes between the United States and 
     the countries of Western Europe. The Wehrkunde conference has 
     evolved throughout the years into the premier international 
     conference on North Atlantic Treaty Alliance security issues. 
     Baron von Kleist, in assembling respected and knowledgeable 
     experts from across the Alliance for this symposium, has 
     created an atmosphere in which the free exchange of ideas can 
     truly make our world a safer one.
       The Baron von Kleist's unwavering stand against the horrors 
     of totalitarianism, forged through his personal experiences, 
     has certainly played a role in the undoing of the walls that 
     have separated his own Germany, and those that have separated 
     all of Europe and the world.
       Both the United States of America and the Alliance have 
     been generously served by this selfless patriot's dedication 
     to the concept of freedom. I take great pleasure in 
     presenting Ewald Heinrich von Kleist the Department of 
     Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.
                                             Secretary of Defense.
                                  ____


                           Narrative Summary

       In 1952 Baron Ewald Heinrich von Kleist founded the 
     Gesellschaft fur Wehrkunde a.V. (Society for Defense Affairs) 
     for the purpose of provoking discussion in the fields of 
     security and defense policy. This organization has grown to 
     over 4,000 members in about 120 chapters. The Baron founded a 
     publishing house in 1954 and began publishing a monthly 
     magazine, Europaische Wehrkunde, which has achieved fame far 
     beyond the German borders for its contents. Von Kleist's most 
     noteworthy accomplishment, however, has been the founding and 
     managing of the annual Wehrkunde Conference, a defense and 
     security symposium which meets in Munich. When von Kleist 
     hosted the first Wehrkunde Conference in November 1963, some 
     of his guests included Helmut Schmidt, later to be Chancellor 
     of the FRG, and Henry Kissinger. Other early guests included 
     Zbigniew Brzezinski and Franz-Josef Strauss, later to be 
     Minister-President of Bavaria. Von Kleist has successfully 
     cultivated an atmosphere highly conducive to the honest 
     exchange of differing viewpoints.
       The Wehrkunde Conference has been an important forum for 
     the discussion of defense and security concerns within the 
     NATO Alliance. It is the most highly regarded of all 
     conferences in these matters, and the limited invitations 
     available each year are coveted. Baron von Kleist personally 
     selects all participants with the mind to assembling a wide 
     spectrum of opinions and views which will benefit the 
     Alliance. The invitations are extended to people that von 
     Kleist feels will be most able to contribute to the 
     conference. Invitees include Ministers of Defense, Foreign 
     Secretaries, Defense Secretaries and ASDs, Ambassadors, 
     respected defense Correspondents, professors, NATO and other 
     military leaders, Senators and Representatives, and other 
     respected businessmen. As Senator William Cohen, who has 
     headed the US delegation for several years, has said, ``Many 
     knowledgeable officials rate the Wehrkunde Conference as the 
     premier international conference on NATO security issues.''
       Each year the Baron personally chooses a topic for 
     discussion for the Conference. Recent topics have included 
     disarmament negotiations, the changes in Eastern Europe, and 
     the role of changing technology in defense planning. The 
     Baron has shaped the Wehrkunde Conference so as to allow for 
     much informal discussion over dinners, luncheons, and the 
     like. The environment is nothing like that of the stifling 
     official meetings often found among policymakers, but is one 
     of warmth and candor. The Baron, however, feels strongly that 
     he should avoid expressing his own opinions, and has done 
     so quite successfully.
       Much of the Baron's attitude toward the defense of freedom 
     and opposition to tyranny stems from his own experiences in 
     his early days. The von Kleist family has given to Germany 
     more generals, diplomats, and field marshals than any other 
     family in the history of Germany. Two von Kleists are ranked 
     among Germany's greatest pests as well. Members of the von 
     Kleist family, whose heritage dates back to 1175, have 
     received more of the highest Prussian honor, the Pour la 
     Merit, than any other family.
       Von Kleist, with the coming of war in 1940, abandoned his 
     own plans to study agriculture and joined the army to carry 
     on the tradition of his forefathers. Earlier, in 1938, his 
     father had made a little-known trip to England on behalf of 
     German leaders opposed to Hitler. He sought to persuade the 
     government of England to send Hitler a signal that they would 
     oppose him if he invaded Czechoslovakia. His attempt was in 
     vain, and Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia unopposed.
       The son, Ewald Heinrich von Kleist, served faithfully as a 
     soldier in the German army, and was wounded in July of 1943 
     as a lieutenant of infantry on the Eastern Front. He then 
     served in Potsdam with Infantry Regiment Nine, once known as 
     the ``First Regiment of Guards'' but better known to its 
     members as the ``First Regiment of Christianity'' because so 
     many of its officers were opposed to Hitler. In 1944, he was 
     asked to participate in the attempt to kill Hitler with an 
     explosive device placed in a briefcase. He was to carry the 
     briefcase while giving Hitler a report on new uniforms. 
     However, because of fears of Gestapo infiltration, a man 
     closer to Hitler's inner circle was chosen. Von Kleist, then 
     only 22 years old, was removed from the Wehrmacht and placed 
     in a concentration camp at Ravensbruch, north of Berlin. 
     During this time, toward the end of the war, von Kleist's 
     father was taken into custody by the Gestapo and beheaded.
       Because of his experience in the war, Baron von Kleist was 
     able to see the hideous effects of totalitarianism first-
     hand. After the war, he devoted his time and energy to 
     combating its spread and sought to ensure that ``that 
     tremendous tragedy,'' as he described World War II, ``will 
     not happen again.'' It is for this reason that he has played 
     the important role that he has in the post-war Western world. 
     Always as a private citizen, and always with the concern of 
     maintaining a strong defense against tyranny, von Kleist has 
     been a prime factor in the preservation, and eventual 
     victory, of the Western Alliance.
       Through Baron von Kleist's personal leadership and 
     exceptional dedication to the defense of Europe, he has made 
     invaluable contributions to the security of his own country, 
     NATO, and the United States. His understanding of the vital 
     ingredients of a successful security policy has contributed 
     greatly to the defense of freedom. The Baron von Kleist's 
     outstanding performance reflects great credit upon himself 
     and his country.
                                  ____


                 [From the Seattle Times, Oct. 9, 1992]

          Restless Conscience: What-Ifs From the Hitler Years

                            (By John Hartl)

       ``The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler Within 
     Germany, 1933-1945,'' documentary directed by Hava Kohav 
     Beller. Grand Illusion. No rating; includes footage of 
     concentration camps. In English and German, with subtitles.
       One of the recent batch of Academy Award nominees for best 
     feature-length documentary, this wide-ranging, slow-building, 
     ultimately quite moving Austrian production is based on nine 
     years of research by its producer-director.
       Born in Frankfurt in the 1930s and raised in Israel, Hava 
     Kohav Beller gives an urgent moral perspective to the film 
     that suggests what might have been if foreign governments had 
     recognized the continuing resistance movement within Germany, 
     if the Gestapo had not been quite so effective, and if Hitler 
     had not been so damnably lucky.
       Part One concentrates on German efforts to bring Hitler 
     down during his early years in power, including several 
     futile attempts to inform British politicians that their firm 
     opposition to Hitler could result in his defeat at home. 
     Testimony from survivors suggests again and again that he was 
     still quite vulnerable in the mid-1930s, and that once the 
     unopposed invasions began, there was no turning back.
       Part Two focuses on surprisingly high-level efforts to help 
     Jews escape to other countries, the short-lived 1943 student-
     protest movement known as the White Rose, organized 
     opposition by clergy and socialists, and several plots to 
     kill Hitler--most of them thwarted by his wiliness, cowardice 
     and/or what in hindsight can only be seen as a charmed life.
       It's curiously suspenseful to watch the elaborate 
     preparations for his murder, then see him slip away by 
     choosing a different route, unexpectedly leaving early from a 
     public appearance, exiting from a bomb-rigged plane unharmed, 
     and finally surviving the one bomb that came within inches of 
     killing him.
       Yet there are few regrets. ``Yes, you have to do it,'' one 
     man's father told him when he was given the opportunity to 
     kill Hitler. ``A man who doesn't take such a chance will 
     never be happy again in his life.''
       The mixture of interviews and archival footage includes 
     several starkly horrifying sequences, among them the 1944 
     show trials of would-be assassins and their cohorts and 
     relatives who were hanged or beheaded for their convictions. 
     As the interviews with survivors pile up, it becomes 
     depressingly clear that almost none of the heroes of ``The 
     Restless Conscience'' got out of World War II with their 
     lives.
       The Nazis were ruthlessly professional at crushing protest 
     and subterfuge, so much so that almost the only people left 
     to talk about what Germans of conscience did are widows, 
     children, other relatives and colleagues.
       ``The Restless Conscience'' is a genuinely inspiring film 
     about extraordinary courage. Most of the people celebrated 
     here knew that they had little chance of escaping torture and 
     death, yet their pride in their country and their sense of 
     decency allowed them no other choice. According to Beller, it 
     has not been widely shown in Germany because ``the fact there 
     was a resistance throws a long shadow on who didn't resist 
     and makes them feel uncomfortable.''

  Mr. COHEN. I ask unanimous consent that several articles that recall 
the stories about the bravery and heroism of von Kleist and his 
collaborators be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Evening Standard, July 11, 1994]

Should Germany Hail These Men? Controversy Over the Heroes Who Tried to 
                       Murder Hitler 50 Years Ago

                           (By Valentine Low)

       In nine days' time, Germany hails its heroes. They are that 
     rare thing, heroes from the Second World War, a time of shame 
     and national guilt for Germany which many people would 
     happily see forgotten. But these men are those who attempted 
     to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, and they can be remembered 
     with a clear conscience. Led by the charismatic Claus von 
     Stauffenberg, they are evidence that there really was 
     resistance to the murderous Nazi regime: if anyone needed 
     proof that there was such a thing as a ``good German'', the 
     officers involved in the conspiracy 50 years ago provided it. 
     So, in a ceremony in a courtyard of the old War Office in 
     Berlin, on the spot where Colonel von Stauffenberg and three 
     other conspirators were shot around midnight on the night of 
     the attempted coup, Germany will commemorate a failure. An 
     honourable failure, perhaps, and one which could have 
     succeeded were it not for simple bad luck--but at least it 
     provides some sort of recompense for Germany having had to 
     stand by while the Allies commemorated D-Day. Among those 
     crowded into the courtyard of what used to be Bendlerstrasse 
     -- now Stauffenbergstrasse--will be a 
     few of the plotters still alive today, together with families 
     of the other conspirators, including Lady Gowrie and her 
     husband Lord Gowrie, chairman of the Arts Council.
       Lady Gowrie is the youngest daughter of Count Fritz-Dietlof 
     von der Schulenburg, who was one of the most important 
     members of the anti-Nazi resistance. He was executed after 
     the attempt, but his family were treated relatively well 
     thanks to a friendly official who used to go shooting with 
     her grandfather before the war.
       However, what should have been a straightforward 
     commemoration has turned out to be riven with controversy, 
     with Chancellor Kohl facing problems remarkably similar to 
     those encountered by John Major over D-Day. A small but vocal 
     minority of Germans still exist who believe that Stauffenberg 
     and his colleagues were traitors who committed an 
     unforgivable crime by breaking their sacred oath of 
     allegiance to the Fhrer.
       Many young Germans are also critical. It was all very well, 
     they say, to try to kill Hitler when defeat for Germany was a 
     virtual certainty: what the plotters should have had was the 
     moral courage to kill him much earlier in the war.
       In addition, the ceremony has caused political problems 
     because the Social Democrats are not being allowed to make 
     any speeches, prompting accusations that Kohl is trying to 
     make the anniversary part of his re-election campaign. 
     Most embarrassingly of all, one of Stauffenberg's sons has 
     threatened to disrupt the ceremony, claiming it sullies 
     the reputation of his father and the other plotters. At 
     least one conspirator still alive has joined the angry 
     protests.
       It comes as something of a surprise to realize that anyone 
     survived the coup, Ewald von Kleist is now a semi-retired 
     publisher living in a prosperous suburb of Munich: then he 
     was a slim young lieutenant who played a crucial role. He was 
     arrested along with all the other conspirators, interrogated 
     and--miraculously--released.
       Of the scores of officers involved in the plot, only 10 
     survived the war. The leading conspirators were hanged by 
     piano wire from meat hooks--a slow and painful death which 
     Hitler filmed and watched time and time again.
       Although there were many plans to kill Hitler, the 1944 
     plot came closer than any other to success. The driving force 
     was the dashing, courageous Count von Stauffenberg, who at 37 
     was one of the most promising young officers in the German 
     army. In the Africa campaign he was severely wounded and 1944 
     found him as Chief of Staff of the Reich Reserve Army: 
     crucially, one of the few officers with access to Hitler.
       Stauffenberg, who already had the reputation of someone 
     whom senior officers were prepared to listen to, even take 
     advice from, was the man who overcame the inertia and moral 
     qualms of the older conspirators and got them to agree to the 
     unthinkable: that the only way to stop Hitler was to kill 
     him. But time was against them, and the plan had to be put 
     into action in July 1944 when it became clear that the 
     Gestapo was in danger of uncovering the conspiracy. As 
     Stauffenberg was the only of them who could get close to 
     Hitler, who at the time was based at Wolfsschanze (Wolf's 
     Lair) at Rastenburg in East Prussia, now part of Poland, it 
     fell upon him to plant the bomb. Shortly after 12:30, after 
     setting off the 10-minute fuse, Stauffenberg walked into the 
     conference room at the Wolf's Lair where Hitler was due to be 
     briefed on the situation on the Eastern Front and put the 
     briefcase containing the bomb under the table in front of 
     him.
       After a few minutes, pretending that he had to telephone 
     Berlin, Stauffenberg left the room and hurried to a shelter 
     across the compound to wait for the explosion. When it came, 
     at 12:42, the hut was reduced to rubble and Stauffenberg 
     bluffed his way to a plane waiting to take him to Berlin.
       For the next three hours he was convinced the Fuhrer was 
     dead. But one of those at the meeting, Colonel Brandt, had 
     barked his shin on the briefcase and moved it so that the 
     heavy support for the oak map table was now between Hitler 
     and the bomb. This, and the thick table top, saved Hitler's 
     life. Five people died, but Hitler suffered only minor 
     wounds.
       Those three hours that Stauffenber spent in the air proved 
     a fatal delay. When he arrived at the War Office around 4 pm 
     the other conspirators had only just begun to put into effect 
     the key elements of Operation Valkyrie--issuing orders, 
     arresting pro-Nazi elements. Lieutenant von Kleist, who at 22 
     was one of the youngest officers involved, was one of those 
     who arrested the senior officer there, General Fromm, and 
     also disarmed an SS colonel who tried to stop the coup. But 
     some lines of communication were still open from the Wolf's 
     Lair. It was only a matter of time before the War Office was 
     surrounded by troops loyal to Hitler. Stauffenberg and 
     three other conspirators were led down to the courtyard 
     and shot: General Beck, who would have been head of state 
     in the new government, was allowed to commit suicide. With 
     Hitler swearing vengeance on all who had been connected 
     with the attempted putsch, how did Kleist survive? Sitting 
     in the garden of his Munich home, the picture of genial 
     affluence, he explained that he had a relatively easy 
     interrogation. ``I played the role of being young and 
     stupid and unpolitical.'' There was even a sympathetic 
     Gestapo officer who would stand in during interrogations 
     and indicate by a nod of his head when they already knew 
     the answer to their questions. After three or four weeks 
     of this he was suddenly freed, and went to see the 
     friendly Gestapo officer to find out why. ``I know you're 
     free,'' he said, ``but there are some people who think 
     they are free, but really * * * the Gestapo were after a 
     fellow conspirator and close friend of Kleist's, Ludwig 
     von Hammerstein, and hoped he would contact him. For once 
     the Gestapo slipped up. Hammerstein is alive today.
       One should be thankful that men like Kleist are still here 
     to tell their story, for they answer--and raise--interesting 
     questions of what people could, and should, have done in 
     Hitler's Germany. As a boy, Kleist was turned against Hitler 
     after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, when Ernst Rhm 
     and the other leaders of the brown shirt SA were 
     assassinated, and his own father narrowly escaped.
       ``It was absolutely clear that the state had become a 
     murderer. Later on many people said they knew little or 
     nothing of what was happening, which was mostly true. But 
     this was in the newspapers. People knew about concentration 
     camps, but thought they were places where criminals were 
     concentrated, as well as Jews and people who didn't want to 
     work. I knew what was happening--I had excellent 
     information.''
       For years Kleist was in no position to do anything about 
     it. He was recruited to the resistance by Fritz-Dietlof von 
     der Schulenburg. A plot was hatched in early 1943 for a 
     suicide bomb attack against Hitler but when that had to be 
     cancelled, the leaders of the resistance turned to the young 
     Kleist.
       While the courage of the conspirators has never been in 
     question, there has been much debate about what they hoped to 
     achieve.
       Richard Leigh, co-author with Michael Baigent of a new book 
     on Stauffenberg (Secret Germany: Claus von Stauffenberg and 
     the Mystical Crusade Against Hitler, Jonathan Cape, L16.99), 
     said: ``In the context of the war its significance is 
     minimal. But for the men who did it its significance was 
     immense. It was necessary to demonstrate to the rest of the 
     world that there were good Germans who kept their honour 
     clean and their uniform unstained.'' The one thing that 
     provokes Kleist's ire is the suggestion that the putsch was 
     ill-planned. He exploded: ``That is just theoretical jibber-
     jabber from people who understand nothing. In a dictatorship 
     it is extremely difficult even to get near to Hitler. 
     ``Others will bring different memories to the wreath-laying 
     ceremony on 20 July. Stauffenberg's eldest son, Berthold, who 
     was 10 at the time and is now a major-general in the German 
     army, did not know Stauffenberg the plotter--only the fond 
     father who was away fighting so much of the time.
       At home in the Swabian Alps there was little clue for the 
     children of what their father's real beliefs were. ``In a 
     totalitarian state you have to be very cautious,'' said 
     Berthold. ``My parents didn't work openly against the 
     normal indoctrination that was going on everywhere. I had 
     an uncritical attitude to Hitler--he was the Fuhrer.''
       Two days after the plot, his mother Nina tried to explain 
     what had happened. ``She said it was my father who had 
     actually laid the bomb. By that time it was clear that Hitler 
     had survived. It was a terrible shock--first of all that my 
     father was dead, and then that he had attacked the Fuhrer.''
       Then their mother was arrested, and for the next few months 
     was shunted from prison to prison despite being pregnant 
     while the children were taken to a special home in central 
     Germany. Nina was finally freed when the elderly policeman 
     escorting her grew frightened of the advancing Russians.
       Berthold's younger brother, Franz Ludwig, a former Right-
     wing MP, has created the most controversy over the 20 July 
     commemorations. Backed to a lesser extent by Berthold, he is 
     objecting to an exhibition to be opened by Kohl which 
     includes exhibits commemorating two groups--the National 
     Committee of Free Germany and the League of German Officers--
     consisting of German officers captured by the Russians who 
     made anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts calling on German 
     soldiers to desert.
       Ewald von Kleist said: ``There is a group of people who 
     want to enlarge the resistance by including communists and 
     those officers captured by the Russians. These people insist 
     they resisted very strongly. A few people, like Franz Ludwig 
     von Stauffenberg and myself, disagree with that. To sit 
     somewhere safe and dry and shout `You must do something' is 
     not enough.''
       Berthold von Stauffenberg said: ``The post-1968 generation 
     didn't like the fact that the conspiracy was very 
     militaristic, rather aristocratic and very Christian--and not 
     very Marxist.''
       But there are other perspectives. Clarita von Trott, widow 
     of the diplomat Adam von Trott, who made frequent trips to 
     neutral capitals during the war in a forlorn attempt to 
     persuade the Allies to take the German resistance seriously, 
     and who was hanged for his part in the plot--describes it as 
     ``an awful, silly conflict''. There were other groups in the 
     resistance, and they all played their part. Lady Gowrie will 
     be attending the ceremony with mixed feelings, not least 
     because her late mother's birthday fell on the same day. She 
     has not been to the annual commemoration for 20 years, and 
     feels there is a certain irony in the way politicians and 
     diplomats get accorded places of honour at such occasions 
     rather than those who should really be the focus of 
     attention.
       She said, ``I have always had ambivalent feelings toward 
     this. Always the wrong people are in the first row. Twenty 
     years ago Nina von Stauffenberg didn't even have a seat--it 
     was by sheer mistake, but it was very embarrassing.''
       In the end, however, all the ceremony, all the political 
     rows about who should be honoured and who should make 
     speeches count for nothing against the one simple fact that 
     there were men prepared to give up their lives to stop the 
     greatest evil this century has known.
       Ewald von Kleist said: ``I am content with having been 
     there 50 years ago. I will go this year, and I will hope to 
     see two of the others who were my friends. I will go this 
     time, because it will be the last time.''
                                  ____


                   [From the Guardian, July 23, 1992]

                      How Whitehall Helped Hitler

                          (By Martin Gilbert)

       The Unnecessary War, by Patricia Meehan (Sinclair-
     Stevenson, pounds 18.95)
       This book delves into one of the murky corners of recent 
     history, the official British response to the German 
     opposition to Hitler. Even before the outbreak of the second 
     world war, individual Germans of some stature had asked the 
     British government for moral support in their opposition to 
     Hitler, and these approaches continued throughout the war. 
     Most of those who made them were eventually killed by the 
     Gestapo after the Hitler bomb plot in 1944. This book is the 
     fullest attempt yet to examine who these Germans were, how 
     serious and sustained their approaches to the British had 
     been, and how, almost without exception, their efforts to 
     enlist British support were dismissed and belittled.
       The crucial moment occurred during the Munich crisis in 
     September 1938. Those Germans who were opposed to an invasion 
     of Czechoslovakia, including several senior army officers, 
     hoped that a strong stand by Britain would force Hitler to 
     desist, and would perhaps even bring his regime down. German 
     emissaries to Britain put this case to leading politicians 
     and diplomats. But Neville Chamberlain's decision to accept, 
     and indeed to promote, a compromise--whereby Czechoslovakia 
     would cede the Sudetenland to Germany and Hitler get his 
     immediate desires without a war--dashed the hopes of those 
     Germans who wanted Hitler's order to march into 
     Czechoslovakia to be the signal for the Fuhrer's overthrow.
       Was all this a pipe dream? Patricia Meehan shows how little 
     the Foreign Office experts were prepared to follow up the 
     wartime efforts of German opposition leaders to make contact. 
     They feared that if Hitler had been got rid of, the Allies 
     would then have had to accept a non-Nazi Germany as a 
     negotiating partner, thus undermining the whole concept of 
     unconditional surrender.
       One of the most revealing documents published in this book 
     is a comment by the historian John Wheeler-Bennett, then a 
     member of the Foreign Office Political Intelligence 
     Department, written immediately after the failure of the 
     Hitler bomb plot. According to Wheeler-Bennett, ``the Gestapo 
     and the SS have done us an appreciable service in removing a 
     selection of those who would undoubtedly have posed as `good' 
     Germans after the defeat of a Nazi Germany.''
       It was Wheeler-Bennett who put the word ``good'' in 
     quotation marks. Yet those Germans whom the Gestapo were 
     killing were the very anti-Nazis who might have formed the 
     backbone of a post-war democratic German administration. 
     These were the men who, despite Gestapo terror, had tried 
     since before the outbreak of war to form groups and circles 
     of opposition to Hitler, based on a deep loathing of Nazi 
     ideology and military aggression.
       Patricia Meehan shows the embarrassment caused in official 
     circles in Britain by Churchill's declaration of June 22, 
     1941, that ``any man or State which fights against Nazism 
     will have our aid''. It was Richard Crossman, then head of 
     the German section of the Political Warfare Executive, who 
     asked for a ``clear ruling'' from the Foreign Office as to 
     whether the German people, as distinct from the Nazis and the 
     German military hierarchy, would ``be included among those 
     whose liberation will result from our victory''. The answer 
     Crossman got was ``no''.
       The villains in Meehan's account are the Foreign Office 
     experts who, with extraordinary consistency, refused to take 
     seriously the many manifestations of internal German 
     opposition. The widow of a clergyman who had died after ill-
     treatment in a Gestapo prison managed to get an account of 
     the torments of those who opposed the regime passed to 
     London. In response, the Deputy Permanent Under-Secretary of 
     State at the Foreign Office noted curtly: ``Very prejudiced 
     and exaggerated, I should say.'' The fate of the clergyman 
     and the struggles of his colleagues was further evidence of 
     the opposition to Nazism inside the Reich, but this made no 
     impact on the Foreign Office. Nor did the courage of a German 
     army officer, Major Ewald von Kleist, who made his way to 
     London in 1938.
       To all those whom he met in political and military circles, 
     Major von Kleist made an appeal for a strong stand by 
     Britain, not only in defense of Czechoslovakia, but to enable 
     him to report back to his fellow-dissidents that Britain 
     recognised their intention to use the invasion of 
     Czechoslovakia as a clarion call to overthrow Hitler.
       The major was rebuffed. Commented one senior British 
     official: ``There is always something suspicious about `anti-
     Nazis' coming to this country in fear of their lives, 
     especially if they get away with it.'' The words ``anti-
     Nazi'' were put in quotation marks, like the ``good'' Germans 
     of 1944. Yet in both cases, they were real: one and the same 
     people, fighting against a massive terror system to keep 
     their opposition alive, and to preserve decent values.
       This book shows, with an impressive wealth of archival 
     detail, just how scathingly the efforts of the German 
     opposition to Hitler were treated in Whitehall. Even after 
     the war, the Foreign Office was describing them as ``a small 
     minority acting from divergent motives, not always in line 
     with democratic principles or Western interest''. Meehan 
     makes a strong case for regarding this statement, and many 
     similar ones expressed both internally and publicly, as 
     untrue, short-sighted, self-congratulatory, and masking a 
     wilfully missed opportunity.
                                  ____


                        The Making of a Tragedy

                          (By Thomas Fleming)

       Fifty years ago tomorrow, Col. Claus Schenck von 
     Stauffenberg, the chief of staff of the 600,000-man army that 
     guarded Germany's home-front, joined Hitler and his military 
     advisers for a conference in the Fuhrer's headquarters, 
     Wolfschanze (Wolf's Lair), in East Prussia.
       Count Stauffenberg placed his briefcase beneath the table a 
     few feet from Hitler and left the meeting to take a 
     prearranged telephone call from an aide. Moments later the 
     briefcase exploded, killing two members of Hitler's staff and 
     badly wounding a half dozen others.
       But Hitler, the seat blown out of his trousers, his coat 
     ripped up the back, both eardrums ruptured, survived the 
     blast. By the end of the day, an impromptu firing squad had 
     executed Count Stauffenberg as Hitler launched a roundup 
     which wiped out virtually every member of a group whose 
     existence the British and Americans had repeatedly ignored, 
     dismissed or denied.
       It has not become apparent that the fate of the German 
     resistance was a tragedy not only for Germany but for Europe 
     and America as well. A negotiated peace with anti-Nazi 
     Germans in early or even mid-1944 probably would have saved 
     the lives of two million soldiers--and three million Jews. 
     East Germany and perhaps much of Eastern Europe would have 
     been spared 50 years of incarceration in the twilight world 
     of Soviet Communism.
       The resistance included leading politicians and diplomats. 
     They were protected, nurtured and in some ways led by Adm. 
     Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, the military 
     intelligence branch of the high command of the German armed 
     forces. For three years, they sent agent after agent to 
     various points on the borders of Hitler's Reich--Istanbul, 
     Stockholm, Bern, Madrid--vainly seeking negotiations with the 
     U.S. and Britian.
       As early as 1940, an aide of Canaris's leaked the plans of 
     Hitler's invasion of the Lowlands and France to the Dutch, 
     who passed it to the English, who dismissed it as a ruse 
     until they realized, too late, that it was authentic. 
     Thereafter, Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, head of British 
     intelligence, remained in shadowy contact with Canaris. But 
     Menzies' ability to negotiate was crippled by the British 
     Foreign Office influenced by the passionate anti-Germanism of 
     Robert Vansittart, for many years the permanent under 
     secretary and later chief diplomatic adviser.
       Then came Franklin D. Roosevelt's declaration of a policy 
     of unconditional surrender at Casablanca in January 1943. 
     Whatever the tactical considerations, such as allaying 
     Stalin's suspicions that his Western partners would make a 
     separate peace with Hitler, unconditional surrender was a 
     propaganda windfall for the Nazis. It played directly to the 
     Goebbels line that Germany's back was to the wall and that 
     defeat would mean Germany's total destruction.
       Among those who at various times questioned the wisdom of 
     unconditional surrender were Gen. George Marshall and Gen. 
     Dwight D. Eisenhower, Cordell Hull, Roosevelt's Secretary of 
     State, and Winston Churchill.
       At Casablanca, Roosevelt disingenuously claimed the phrase 
     unconditional surrender had just ``popped into my head.'' On 
     the contrary, we now know it was recommended by a State 
     Department policy committee that Roosevelt had appointed in 
     the spring of 1942, whose chairman was one of his 
     closest friends. Robert Sherwood, a confidant of F.D.R.'s 
     top aide, Harry Hopkins, concluded the idea was ``very 
     deeply deliberated * * * a true statement of Roosevelt's 
     policy.''
       Roosevelt was motivated, it seems, by his experience in 
     World War I, in which Woodrow Wilson had offered the Germans 
     terms that they accepted as a basis for a negotiated peace. 
     Wilson's chief critic, Theodore Roosevelt, insisted that 
     unconditional surrender was a better policy. The revived 
     German war machine that emerged in the 1930's, claiming that 
     the army had not been defeated but had been ``stabbed in the 
     back'' by German civilians, seemed to prove to F.D.R. that 
     Cousin Theodore had been right.
       But F.D.R. was wrong in trying to apply the lessons of 
     history, always a perilous business. It would have been far 
     harder for any German to talk about a stab in the back after 
     the catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad and the successful 
     Allied landings at Normandy. By July 1944, it was apparent 
     that Hitler had lost the war. And above all, there was the 
     Allied air war, which had leveled two-thirds of Germany's 
     cities.
       There was another, more morally regrettable element in 
     Roosevelt's motivation. He simply did not believe there was 
     such a thing as a good German. His conversations as recorded 
     in the diaries of his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry 
     Morgenthau, and his responses to Eisenhower's and Marshall's 
     pleas to repeal or soften unconditional surrender are studded 
     with expressions of sweeping condemnation of an entire 
     people.
       In light of the available evidence, it is reasonable to 
     suppose that if Roosevelt and Churchill had made even a 
     gesture of moderation or support for the resistance after the 
     July 20 bomb blast, the generals in command of the German 
     armies in France would have agreed to a unilateral surrender, 
     in spite of Hitler's survival.
       But Roosevelt said nothing and Churchill dismissed the bomb 
     as ``a disturbance in the German war machine.'' Ironically, 
     the only people who uttered a word on the plotters' behalf 
     were the Russians. ``Generals, officers, soldiers!'' said 
     Radio Moscow. ``Cease fire at once and turn your arms against 
     Hitler. Do not fail these courageous men!''
       When an Associated Press correspondent, Louis Lochner, 
     attempted to file a story on the resistance from Paris--he 
     had known many of the members when he was stationed in Berlin 
     before the war--Army censors told him the subject had been 
     barred ``by specific order of the President.''
       After July 20, Winston Churchill grew more and more dubious 
     about unconditional surrender. In a 1947 speech in 
     Parliament, Churchill went even further. He described 
     Canaris, Count Staffenberg and their fellow conspirators as 
     men who ``belonged to the noblest and greatest [of resistance 
     movements] that have ever arisen in the history of all 
     peoples.'' What a difference it could have made if he had 
     said just that in July 1944.

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________