ROMAN CHRISTENDOM: German martyrs

"Es lebt unser heiliges Deutschland!"

"Long live our sacred Germany!"

These are reputedly the last words of 37-year-old Bavarian Catholic aristocrat and cavalry officer, Colonel Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg, before he was summarily shot in the courtyard of German Army Headquarters in Bendlerstrasse, Berlin, for his attempt upon the life of murderous Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler.

Accurately, the film released yesterday in Britain, and titled Valkyrie, includes this memorable and dramatic scene, played well by American actor, Tom Cruise, as Colonel Count Stauffenberg.

The film is, in my humble view, an excellent portrayal of this true story of patriotic German officers, civilians, politicians, aristocrats and commoners alike, who opposed the Hitler regime and took courageous action to overthrow it from within, risking their lives so to do.

I have followed the Stauffenberg story for decades and got to know his son, Major-General Berthold von Stauffenberg, when he was German military attaché in London.

It is my belief that the film is an accurate portrayal, well handled and well presented. It is also a gripping story presented with all the excitement and drama that it so well deserves.

A clip from the film Valkyrie

Hollywood's homage to the men who risked - and lost - their lives in this courageous attempt is long overdue but now it has come and it will, I am sure, have a considerable impact on the way many cynical moderns view the story of Germany and its people who found themselves governed by a brutal tyranny.

Numerous famous actors play the parts of the key figures in the plot (from left standing) Carl Goerdeler, the Mayor of Leipzig, Stauffenberg, Colonel-General Ludwig Beck (who had resigned in 1938), Major-General Henning von Treskow, (seated) Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, Lieutenant-General Friedrich Olbricht and one other.

What was the "sacred" or "holy" Germany which Stauffenberg cried allegiance to?

Quite simply it was the holy empire which had placed Germany and Germans at the centre of a Christian, Catholic Europe for 1,000 years and which had built up, lead, governed, protected and enhanced European Christian civilisation for most of its history.

We are apt to forget this when we lump the thousands of years of German history into those very few short years when, after a period of anarchy, the political elite turned its back on the past and installed a new and diabolical ideology in place of the Christian past.

That ideology was a materialist, Socialist, racist, secular, anti-monarchist and anti-Catholic creed called National Socialism.

Goering surveys the bomb damage

As is crystal clear from his early autobiography, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), its devilish leader hated all that was associated with the Catholic and Habsburg empire of the past whilst he - schizophrenically and contradictorily - claimed to be restoring the ancient, thousand-year old, empire of the past, albeit in a new and "modern" guise.

The real, thousand-year old, empire of the past was, in truth, the Holy Roman Empire, a Catholic, not a Socialist, empire sometimes called Das heilige römische Reich der deutschen Völker or "The Holy Roman Empire of the German People".

This empire was begun in what later became France by the Emperor Charlemagne, a Frank, a race of people who were ancestors of both French and German people.

Later the Empire was restored to glory by the Emperor Otto the Great and gradually became centred upon what is now Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy and parts of France, Poland, Ukraine and Hungary.

This Empire was Roman and Catholic. Its Emperor - successor to the Roman emperors of old - was the first Catholic layman of Christian Europe and recognised as such by all Christian countries and political leaders. This Empire and its rulers recognised their duty of allegiance to the Roman Pontiff as their spiritual superior.

And for this reason it was called "holy" or "sacred". It was titled Sacrum Romanum Imperium and recognised as such by all the popes who ever ruled.

This was the "sacred" or "holy" Germany to which Stauffenberg referred and which he had come to realise was - and must always be - implacably opposed to the dirty little Social Darwinist, secularist tyranny that Hitler and the National Socialists had imposed upon a once noble Germany.

Stauffenberg (left) with Colonel Albrecht, Ritter (Knight) Mertz von Quirnheim, a fellow army officer and co-conspirator in the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler. He was shot with Stauffenberg outside Army HQ.

The decline and fall of religion in Germany, partly a by-product of the Protestant Reformation, had finally sapped all the life out of the true Germany and the vacuum had been filled with a legion of devils from Hell who inspired this new and grotesque National Socialist ideology, said to be based upon science but actually based upon the spurious findings of a entirely perverse, modern science, based upon Darwinism, among other ideas.

Many were opposed to Hitler - Social Democrats, liberals, Jews, Communists, Evangelicals, conservatives - but only one man summoned up the skill, courage, tenacity, perserverance and commanding personality to hatch a plan to deliver Germany and the world from the tyrant and, moreover, was willing to carry it out himself.

That man was Claus von Stauffenberg.

Stauffenberg with 2 of his children

He came from a noble family of a line 700 years old. That gave him a certain upbringing, education, moral formation and self-possession as well as a sense of responsibility arising from his family background.

His father was the last Oberhofmarschall of the Kingdom of Württemberg and Claus, from an early age, had had impressed upon him that his family heritage was not merely a social status but imposed a solemn duty to serve God, nation and conscience above self.

Interestingly, it was the aristocrats who really showed determination and courage to stand up to the tyrant.

Above all, however, let it not ever be forgotten what most went to make up the core beliefs of Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg and what was his source of strength, discernment and loyalty, as well as courage, and to which he turned for counsel before making his final decision to carry out his plans.

Before deciding to take part in the plot and lay the bomb, Stauffenberg went to confession.

It was his religion, first and foremost, that gave him the tools for reason, emotion and decisive action. His religion was one truly worthy of the name.

And that was because Colonel Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg was a traditional Roman Catholic.

Banner of the Holy Roman Empire

...

In this extraordinary newly discovered and release footage, one can see Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell, Major Ludwig Freiherr (Baron) von Leonrod and Rev Hermann Wehrle before the People's Court, their eloquent defences and their ill treatment at the hands of the odious Court President, Roland Freisler.

Freisler acts as both prosecutor and judge in a blatant breach of elementary natural justice and then, with all the venom he can muster, he screeches and screams at the victims earning himself the clandestine sobriquet "raving Roland". He ensured that his victims, the false accused, were further humiliated by having them dressed in old ragged clothes, often without any belt to keep their trousers up, so that they appeared before this Nazi kangaroo court looking shabby, scruffy and humiliated, particularly those who had been generals or high officials.

In these clips he finds Major Baron von Leonrod and his Father-Confessor, Fr Wehrle, guilty of knowing of the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, and of following Catholic theology in considering themselves not bound to reveal their knowledge (clearly because of Hitler's tyranny).

He then condemns them to death, to be hanged by wire, suspended from meat hooks, in the cells of Ploetzensee prison as "enemies of the Reich" but, in reality and in the eyes of God, as deeply heroic Christian martyrs.

We salute their courage in standing firm before the odious treachery, heathen villainy and pagan devilishness of the National Socialist German Worker's Party and its atrocious, diabolical leadership who, with their symbol of a cross with arms broken, the satanic swastika, declared war on the old, royal, noble and Catholic Germany of men like Count Claus von Stauffenberg, Baron Ludwig von Leonrod and Fathers Delp and Wehrle.

In so doing these National Socialists grossly besmirched and blackened the good name of Germany and the German people in the eyes of the world and poured filth upon the ancient history and heritage of a nation and people who, for many past centuries, had formed the political heart and centre of a once Christian Europe now banished by the evil of a modern, secularist, anti-Christian, neo-pagan, National Socialism.

Hail Christian martyrs of Catholic Bavaria
and of the old, once Christian, Germany!

Freisler, who had been a Communist in his youth, had been sent to the Soviet Union to learn how they conducted their show trials of dissidents. He learned his evil trade well at the hands of the equally brutal Soviet prosecutors and judges.

Freisler himself was killed in a bombing raid not long after the 20 July plot trials when the court building was struck by a direct hit. He was found with a file in his hands about to persecute yet another victim of the "People's Court".

His victims are now commemorated in modern Germany as national heroes.

RIP. May they rest in peace!

May we draw strength from their courageous stand against evil. Consider what a singular honour it will be to spend eternity in heaven with men such as these. Are we worthy of the company of these gentle giants?

God give us the strength to learn from them and live as they did!