Valkyrie
Attempting
to kill the un-killable.
This
is a work of history, biography and fiction combined; no mean achievement in
such a small volume. It is a history of Germany prior to, and during the Second
World War. It is a biography of the Von Boeselager family, and it is fiction in
its selection of facts.
Ostensively,
this is the story of the attempt by army officers to assassinate their Führer, Adolf
Hitler, when it became apparent that his fanatical proclivities would not win
the Second World War. A war, it should be remembered, started by Germany, and
fought overwhelmingly by the German army, and not by the Waffen SS (10% of the
army), Gestapo or any other of extreme group conjured up by an insane dictator.
As history,
it introduces the reader to the world of privilege and luxury in pre-war
Germany. We get a good idea what it was like to be born into the nobility, and
the trials and tribulations of hunting shooting and fishing, and the extension
of that bucolic existence into the army of the 1930’s.
As
a biography; and that is essentially, what the book is, we learn about Von
Boeselager’s elder brother Georg. Boeselager
confers almost god-like status on this sibling, and based on this information
it would be justified. When he was not riding off into the woods destroying
wildlife, he was busy riding the Russian steppes destroying Russians. He was
wounded, and ultimately killed by them
Boeselager
himself was no shrinking violet when it came to fighting, he was wounded five
times and lived to tell the tale until he was ninety. The infusion of shot and
shell did nothing to prejudice his longevity, and he has been able to relate
his story to Florence and Jerome Fehrenbach whose prose has been admirably
translated by Steven Rendall.
This
work was originally published in Germany in 2008 as ‘We Wanted To Kill Hitler’,
or something close to that in German. Someone had the great idea of bringing it
to the USA to coincide with the release of Tom Cruse’s movie ‘Valkyrie’, so
they did, and changed the name. I do not know if the idea worked. I am inclined
to hope that it did not, as the two stories are very different. The 60 or so
years, which have passed since the occurrences referred to, have taken their
toll on the authors memory. This fact is very convenient as it enables
Boeselager to distance himself by omission from the unpleasant activities
occasioned by the German army in their relentless blitz-krieg of Western and Eastern
Europe.
We
are all soft and gullible these days, but it stretches credulity to its limits to
suggest that these fine upstanding army officers were unaware of the atrocities
meted out daily upon hundreds of
thousands of people. The book refers only to the murder of five Gypsies.
According to Boeselager, when the war was over and they were thoroughly beaten,
his regiment strolled back to Paderborn and amused themselves with equestrian
pursuits until America put their country back together.
A
thorough investigation into Operation Valkyrie this book is not, but it is a
good read nonetheless. I enjoyed reading it and would read it again.