Even on the 80th anniversary of the uprising of 20 July 1944, we will experience shame, embarrassment, disinterest and even open contempt at the public commemoration. The exemplary act of the resistance group around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg lies like an unwanted gift in the lap of the Federal Republic. Does this heroic example of attempts to eliminate the criminal Hitler regime, to stop the murder behind the front, in the camps and the total war, and last but not least to save the nation, contradict the simple image that the Germans are collectively condemned? nation of perpetrators and followers.
Stauffenberg’s closest comrade-in-arms, Major General Henning von Tresckow, aware of the great risk of failure, issued the slogan that the act must be carried out at all costs (“coûte que coûte”) because “the German resistance movement before the world and for “I must take the decisive plunge into history, risking my life. In case of failure or success, Stauffenberg, Tresckow and their co-conspirators knew that they would be branded as traitors by the masses.
July 20 is part of the patriotic desire for freedom
It took years for the example of the rebels to become a role model in the Bundeswehr, despite the persistent resistance of former front-line soldiers. Today, of all the people, the outcasts are the only remaining narrow bridge that is still officially commemorated among the millions of people. Soldiers of World War II stands.
July 20 is the link in a chain of patriotic will for freedom that runs through our national history. Time and again, Germans have had to deal with division, heteronomy, arbitrary rule and despotism. It is no coincidence that resistance groups in the Third Reich referred to the wars of liberation, asked the White Rose “As in 1813 the Napoleonic terror was broken, so in 1943 the National Socialist terror was broken” and Stauffenberg knew that he was the heir of Gneisenau.
There is no doubt that our community is confronted with today more than ever: Do we Germans still want to be a nation? Or do we see it as our destiny to surprise the rest of the world with the idea of national self-sacrifice?
It is not only the war in Ukraine that is upon our doorstep that shows us that no people on earth intends to follow our post-national special path. Ernst Jünger emphasized the significance of the sacrifice of the men of July 20 when he declared that it prevented “the nation as a whole, as a bloc, from falling into the terrible depths of fate.” By dealing with this date, we show whether we have taken this obligation as a mandate.