Philipp von Boeselager

May 6 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS a respectable Catholic boy, a keen horseman and, when he joined the Cavalry in 1936, full of patriotic intentions to mend a country ravaged by war and the Depression.

What Philipp von Boeselager could never have anticipated was, six years later, to be asked if he would kill his head of state. And what the young officer, who was the last of the surviving 1944 Hitler bomb plotters before his death, aged 90, could have expected even less was that opportunities he missed would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Von Boeselager was born in 1917 in the Rhineland. In the Army he enjoyed rapid promotion and was deployed to the Eastern front.

There, he came to realise what "special treatment" meant when it came to the Gypsies and Jews. He met Field Marshal Gunter von Kluge who was hostile to Hitler, and Henning von Tresckow, a leading figure in anti-Nazi circles. In 1942, von Tresckow asked him directly if he’d be prepared to kill Hitler.

But he now knew that Hitler, and the band of "murderers and criminals" who were entrusted with power, were breaking oaths to the German people "ten times a day" and set about discreetly trying to meet like- minded people.

A plan to open fire at Hitler, in 1943, was abandoned at the last minute when Himmler failed to show.

Von Kluge feared the killing of Hitler alone would prompt civil war between the army and the SS. Von Boeselager would be haunted by this moment for the rest of his life. "I see Hitler passing in front of me," he recalled, "and I think if only you’d shot him after all."

In 1944, the plotters decided to use a bomb. Von Boeselager’s unit delivered a suitcase full of explosives which was later left by Claus von Stauffenberg in Hitler’s East Prussian military headquarters in July, 1944. The bomb killed several but merely injured the Fuhrer.

Von Boeselager then turned his units back from Berlin where he had hoped to lead them in a coup against the SS, and towards the Eastern Front, fully expecting the Gestapo to catch up and exact bloody revenge, but he and his brother survived.

After the war, he visited schools and talked about the importance of civic courage.

He is survived by his wife, Rosa, and four children.

Philipp von Boeselager, soldier and member of the anti-Hitler resistance; born September 6, 1917, died May 1, 2008.