# Last survivor of plot to kill Hitler dies at 90 **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 12, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744 "2013-03-12T19:02:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744/1 "2013-03-12T19:02:24Z")
[Last survivor of plot to kill Hitler dies at 90](http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/03/12/2916722/anti-hitler-conspirator-von-kleist.html) > [@](#): > > BERLIN — As a 22-year-old German army lieutenant, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist volunteered to wear a suicide vest to a meeting with Adolf Hitler and to blow himself up along with the Nazi dictator. > > The assassination didn’t come to pass, but von Kleist went on to play a key role in the most famous attempt on Hitler later that same year, and was the last surviving member of the group of German officers who tried and failed to kill the Fuehrer on July 20, 1944. > > Von Kleist died Friday at age 90 at his home in Munich, his wife Gundula von Kleist told The Associated Press. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744/2 "2013-03-12T19:11:47Z")
How ironic that the only participant willing to do what was necessary lived to be a ripe old age while the rest, who wanted to live to seize power (let’s not romanticize Valkyrie) were promptly executed. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744/3 "2013-03-13T03:21:16Z")
RIP, Herr Leutnant Von Kleist. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744/4 "2013-03-13T06:06:53Z")
> **[20 July plot | Aftermath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot#Aftermath)** > > Over the following weeks, Himmler's Gestapo, driven by a furious Hitler, rounded up nearly everyone who had the remotest connection with the plot. The discovery of letters and diaries in the homes and offices of those arrested revealed the plots of 1938, 1939, and 1943, and this led to further rounds of arrests, including that of colonel general Franz Halder, who finished the war in a concentration camp. Under Himmler's new Sippenhaft (blood guilt) laws, many relatives of the principal plotters w... ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744/5 "2013-03-13T10:14:12Z")
_Spy_ magazine once wryly noted that 98% of Germans alive today are related to the handful of officers who tried to kill Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744/6 "2013-03-13T15:07:41Z")
If Stauffenberg had put the second bomb in his briefcase, even unprimed, Hitler would have been killed. The blast from the first bomb would have been sufficient to cause the sympathetic detonation of the second. The Mythbusters test, while interesting, was carried out in a steel container, not a concrete bunker. In a concrete bunker, the force of the blast would have been magnified manyfold. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-survivor-of-plot-to-kill-hitler-dies-at-90/652744/7 "2013-03-13T19:28:16Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > _Spy_ magazine once wryly noted that 98% of Germans alive today are related to the handful of officers who tried to kill Hitler. The running joke back in the day is you could never find a German who fought on the \*\*Western \*\*front in WW2.