Screw the Moon Landing. Celebrate (Would-Be) Hitler Killers!

Bill Flanigen | July 20, 2009

Once you're done remembering the moon landing (or, in the case of my generation, watching people much older than you remember the moon landing), take a moment to think about Claus von Stauffenberg and the anti-Nazi German resistance. Their July 20 plot to kill Hitler went down 65 years ago today.

To call von Stauffenberg a libertarian would be wildly inaccurate. "Catholic conservative aristocrat" would be more accurate (see pic at right for evidence). And his associates were a mixture spanning the entire non-Nazi German political spectrum, including some less-than-savory bits. That aside, their work—the attempted assassination of one of the great tyrants of the 20th century—was surely a blow struck in defense of liberty and humanity, and worth remembering as such.

There aren't any awe-inspiring pictures or videos or obscenely detailed interactive online exhibits to accompany this anniversary, but the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin has an English-language website with plenty of information on the Resistance and their July 20 coup.