Quantcast
Channel: SAMURAI POLICE 1109
Viewing all 1603 articles
Browse latest View live

THE HANGING OF THE FOUR CONSPIRATORS IN ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION (JULY 7, 1865)

0
0


On this date, July 7, 1865, The Four conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln were hanged.


1865: Four for Abraham Lincoln’s assassination

On a sweltering July 7, 1865, a mere 12 weeks after Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater, four of his assassin’s accomplices were hanged in the courtyard of the District of Columbia’s Washington Arsenal — present-day Fort McNair, and specifically its tennis courts.

The exact nature of the conspiracy against the man who had seen the North to victory in the Civil War has been debated ever since actor John Wilkes Booth lodged a ball from his one-shot Derringer behind Honest Abe’s ear. But it was a conspiracy— an astoundingly bold one.

Simultaneous with Booth’s successful attack upon Lincoln, there was an unsuccessful attempt to kill Secretary of State William Seward; it would emerge in the investigation that another man had been detailed to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson, but got drunk and chickened out. The apparent upshot: with the President and Vice President dead, new national elections would be required to replace the Senator who would become acting president — and with the Secretary of State dead too, there’d be nobody to implement them. Booth was trying to paralyze the North with its own constitutional machinery in some desperate hope of reviving the defeated South.

Ten Against D.C.

Hundreds were detained in the stunning assassination’s immediate aftermath, but ten would ultimately be the federals’ targets. A massive manhunt pursued Booththrough southern Maryland and into Virginia, where he was killed in a shootout. John Surratt, who had conspired with Booth in an earlier plot to kidnap the president — that failed plot had been reconfigured into the assassination — escaped from the country.

The other eight were rounded up and stashed at the Arsenal to face a military tribunal. It was a highly controversial arrangement: the war had entered a gray area — Robert E. Lee’s surrender just days before the murder had effectively ended the war, but when the trial opened in May Confederate President Jefferson Davis was still at large, and the last Southern general wouldn’t lay down his arms until late June. The District of Columbia was still technically under martial law … so would it do to use a military court?

Military Tribunal

So the government asked itself: government, would you rather have looser evidentiary rules and a lower bar of conviction than you would have in civil court? The government duly produced for the government an opinion that the military characteristic of the assassination — that is, to help whatever southern war effort still obtained — licensed the government to use the military courts.

That didn’t sit well with everyone. One former Attorney General griped:


If the offenders are done to death by that tribunal, however truly guilty, they will pass for martyrs with half the world.


Indeed, a year later, the Supreme Court’s landmark ex parte Milligan ruling would forbid the use of military courts where civilian courts are open — which they were in Washington, D.C.

That, of course, was too late to help Booth’s comrades. It would be a military trial, with a majority vote needed for conviction and no right of appeal but to the president for the most infamous crime of the Republic. Everyone had a pretty good idea what the results would be.

Rogues’ Gallery

Two of the four today were doomed from the outset under any juridical arrangement imaginable: Lewis Powell (also known as Lewis Paine or Lewis Payne) had made the attempt on Secretary of State Seward; David Herold had guided him there with the getaway horse, and later escaped along with Booth. They were in way past their eyeballs. George Atzerodt, the schmo who couldn’t rise to the occasion of popping Andrew Johnson, looks a bit more peripheral from the distance of a century and a half, but in the weeks following the assassination he was much too close to the action to have any hope. All received death sentences.

Two others — Michael O’Laughlen and Samuel Arnold — had been involved in Booth’s earlier scheme to kidnap the president, but didn’t seem to have much to do with the murder. Still another two — Ned Spangler and Dr. Samuel Mudd* — were lesser participants. They all received long prison sentences for their pains, and the three of them still surviving were pardoned by Andrew Johnson as he left the presidency in 1869.

That left Mary Surratt, mother of the fugitive John and the only woman in the dock, the focus of attention and controversy. The 42-year-old widow owned a downtown boardinghouse, plus a tavern of sufficient importance at a Prince George’s County, Maryland, crossroads, that its community was called Surrattsville.**

The conspirators met frequently in her lodgings; Surratt maintained her innocence beyond that, but evidence and witness testimony began to pile up heavily against her … especially when Seward assailant Lewis Powell wandered into her place looking for refuge right while the police were questioning her. Booth and Herold turned out to have made a pit stop at her Surrattsville tavern to pick up a package of guns that Mary had prepared for them.

Though Surratt’s avowal of ignorance was not widely believed, a gesture of presidential mercy was anticipated — many thought (and think) she went on trial as a virtual hostage for her absconded son, who declined to take the bait. Strangely, five members of the nine-judge panel who condemned Mary Surratt turned around and asked President Johnson for clemency. Johnson claimed never to have seen the memo, but his mind seemed pretty made up — when Surratt won a habeas corpus stay on the morning of her scheduled hanging, he promptly “specially-suspended” the writ specifically to hang her:


I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States do hereby declare that the writ of habeas corpus had been heretofore suspended in such cases as this; and I do hereby specially-suspend this writ, and direct that you proceed to execute the order heretofore given upon the judgment of the Military Commission.


Harsh treatment, and possibly well-deserved, for the first woman executed by the U.S. government. Even so, it does seem a curious thing when all is said and done that the mother of “the nest that hatched the egg” was worth a special suspension of the Great Writ, and even the stagehand who just held Booth’s horse for him caught six years, but old Jeff Davis — who apart from having figureheaded a treasonous four-year insurrection was implicated for giving Booth’s kidnapping plot official Confederate sanction— got to retire to write his memoirs.


Walk of the damned: The condemned Lincoln conspirators can be seen on the scaffold at Fort McNair in Washington with officers on July 7, 1865, following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln


Long drop and sudden stop: The bodies of the four conspirators were hanged for around 25 minutes before being cut down


Bearing witness: Around 1,000 people gathered in the scorching Washington heat to watch the four conspirators hanged to death; reporters and military personnel can be seen in the background


A grave matter: The pine coffins and open graves await the bodies of the condemned; volunteers were asked to dig the shallow graves


Fine pages on the Lincoln assassination are here, here and here. There are also contemporary newspaper accounts posted online as filed for The Boston Post and The New York Herald.

The Surratt houses, by the way, are still standing. The Maryland tavern is kept as the Surratt House Museum by the Surratt Society. The downtown boarding house is a Chinese restaurant … marked with a plaque remembering more momentous doings than bubble tea.

* The panel voted 5-4 to hang Mudd, a Maryland doctor who not only set the leg Booth broke when he leaped onto the stage after shooting Lincoln, but then misdirected Booth’s pursuers. However, the rules for the trial said a two-thirds majority was required for execution.

** They changed the name after the unpleasantness. Today, it’s Clinton, Maryland.


IJA GENERAL MORITAKE TANABE (FEBRUARY 26, 1889 TO JULY 10, 1949)

0
0


            On this date, July 10, 1949, a Japanese War Criminal, General Moritake Tanabe, was executed. I will post information about him from Wikipedia.


Moritake Tanabe (田辺盛武Tanabe Moritake)
 
Born
February 26, 1889
Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan
Died
July 10, 1949 (aged 60)
Medan, Netherlands East Indies
Allegiance
Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service
1910 - 1945
Rank
Lieutenant General
Commands held
41st Infantry Division
25th Army
Battles/wars
Second Sino-Japanese War
World War II

Biography

A native of Ishikawa prefecture, Tanabe graduated from the 22nd class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1910 and from the 30th class of the Army Staff College in 1918.

After serving as instructor at the Toyama Army Infantry School from 1933–1934, Tanabe served as Chief of the Economic Mobilization Section in the Ministry of War. He returned to the field to command the IJA 34th Infantry Regiment from 1936–37, before returning to the Toyama Army Infantry School as its Commandant.

With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Tanabe was appointed Chief of Staff of the IJA 10th Army. He served as commandant of the Tank School in 1938, and returned to the field as commander of the IJA 41st Division in 1939 and as Chief of Staff of the Japanese Northern China Area Army in 1941.

Tanabe was recalled to Japan from 1941-1943 to serve as Vice Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, and was in this position at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which he had strenuously opposed. Once the war began, he favored a defensive strategy of luring the Allies into campaigns in areas away from their bases in hopes of stretching their supply lines to Japan's advantage. He was instrumental in helping put an end to the disastrous attrition of Japanese forces at Guadalcanal.

As conditions began to deteriorate for Japan along its southern front in the Pacific War. Tanabe was dispatched to Japanese-occupied Sumatra in the Netherlands East Indies to take command of the 25th Army under the Japanese Seventh Area Army at Fort de Kock, in April 1943. He remained at this post for the remainder of the war.

At the end of the war, he was arrested by Dutch authorities in Medan and faced a military tribunal which accused him of war crimes in connection with the treatment of Allied prisoners of war. He was sentenced to death on 30 December 1948 and executed in 1949.

DUKUN SERIAL KILLER FROM INDONESIA: AHMAD SURADJI (10 JANUARY 1949 TO 10 JULY 2008)

THE CHANGI PRISON HANGINGS OF JAPANESE WAR CRIMINALS (JULY 1946)

0
0





In passing sentence on the accused the court is merely carrying out the laws of British and international justice. We are not taking our vengeance, but protecting society from the ravages of cruelty and imposing a sentence to act as a deterrent to others who, in the years to come, may be like minded.

[Colonel J. L. McKinlay, Australian war crimes trials, Morotai, National Archives of Australia: A471, 80717.]
  

Two Australian military policemen guard Japanese prisoners outside the court on Labuan Island, Borneo, December 1945. The prisoners are (from left): Lieutenant Ojima, Lieutenant Yamamoto, Captain Nakata and Captain Takino. All four were sentenced to death by shooting for their ill-treatment of prisoners during the war. [AWM 123170] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]

 

Two Australian military policemen guard Japanese prisoners outside the court on Labuan Island, Borneo, December 1945. The prisoners are (from left): Lieutenant Ojima, Lieutenant Yamamoto, Captain Nakata and Captain Takino. All four were sentenced to death by shooting for their ill-treatment of prisoners during the war. [AWM 123170] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]


War crimes trials

Even before World War II ended Allied authorities began collecting evidence of war crimes committed by the Japanese in the countries they occupied. This culminated in a series of trials held throughout the Pacific between 1945 and 1951 which mirrored war crimes trials in Europe.

There were three levels of trials conducted. A Class trials (conspiracy to wage and start war) saw twenty-eight high-ranking Japanese officers and politicians, including Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, tried in Tokyo by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The IMTFE consisted of judges from eleven nations with an Australian High Court judge, William Webb, serving as president.

Class B (violations of the laws and customs of war) and C (crimes against humanity) trials were held by national governments — Australia, Britain, China, France, Holland, Philippines and the United States — at various locations throughout the Pacific. In total 5379 Japanese, 173 Formosans and 148 Koreans were tried. Of these 984 were sentenced to death, 475 to life imprisonment and 2944 to some form of punishment.

Neither the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, nor any member of his family, was tried in any category.


General Tomoyuki Yamashita arriving at the military tribunal in Manila, Philippines, in 1945. Yamashita was the commanding general during the conquest of Malaya and in the Philippines. He was held responsible for atrocities committed by troops under his command and found guilty of failing to prevent them. The trial set a controversial precedent known as ‘command responsibility’, which held that an officer could be charged if he failed to control the acts of troops under his command. Yamashita was executed by hanging in February 1946. [AWM 119134] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]
 

The Australian War Crimes trial, Darwin, 1946. National trials such as these were held throughout the Pacific. Four Australians comprise the members of the court: Major D. F. Field, Major G. J. Ruse, Lieutenant Colonel A. Brown, Captain W. T. Smith. Out of frame, are the Japanese accused. [AWM NWA1067] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]
The Australian B and C Class trials, which included crimes against prisoners of war and the execution of Allied air men, were conducted by military courts under the Australian War Crimes Act of 1945. They were held at Morotai, Wewak, Labuan, Rabaul, Darwin, Singapore, Hong Kong and Manus Island. In all, Australia conducted nearly three hundred trials, in which 924 Japanese servicemen were accused of war crimes. Of these, 644 were convicted and 148 were sentenced to death, although 11 had their sentences commuted.

Execution was carried out by firing squad or by hanging. This was the first and only time that the Australian military conducted executions. Indeed, such was the Australian inexperience that it was necessary to ask for British advice on gallows and firing squads.


Accused Japanese bow before the Australian court in Darwin, 1946. [AWM NWA1064]
Between June 1946 and July 1947 a total of 111 Japanese and Korean soldiers were convicted for crimes on the Thai–Burma railway in Singapore. Death sentences were given to 32 of these men.

Among those tried were some of the most feared men on the railway. Sergeant Seiichi Okada, also known as ‘Doctor Death’ for his role as a medical orderly in the Hintok–Konyu area, was sentenced to ten years in prison in Singapore. The Korean Arai Koei, also known as the ‘Boy Bastard’, was sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the ill-treatment of prisoners on the Burma side of the railway.

The Japanese soldiers who were sentenced to death reacted in different ways. Many maintained a pride in their service to the emperor. Lieutenant Seizo Tanaka, executed in 1946 on Morotai, wrote to a family member:



It is decided I will be shot 7 o’clock 6 mar. I was sentenced to death, but not because I did a shameful act. Rather I think it an honour for me ... By my culture, I am resigned facing death.

[AWM54 1010/1/29]


Initially the Australian government maintained a prison on Manus Island, north of New Guinea, for Japanese prisoners. However, by 1953 all Japanese held in Australian camps had been returned to Japan to complete their sentences.

Japanese prisoners playing cards, Morotai, 1945. These men had been sentenced to death for executing three Australian airmen and were waiting the outcome of their appeal. [AWM OG3692] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]
The war crimes trials have been criticised, particularly in Japan, as ‘victors’ justice’. Certainly much of the punishment fell on relatively lowly ranked Japanese who had little control over issues such as the pace of work or supply of food and medicine to the prisoners. The trials have also been criticised on procedural grounds; such as the fact that evidence was taken from witnesses, including POWs, who were not produced in court to be cross-examined. In addition, evidence that was prejudicial to the defendant but irrelevant to a particular case was introduced.

Yet the trials were not necessarily a manifestation of vengeance: 280 of the 644 Japanese accused in Australian war crimes trials were acquitted. Moreover, victims of the Japanese, such as Stan Arneil and Lieutenant-Colonel E.E. ‘Weary’ Dunlop, did not call for reprisals against the Japanese. Many simply wanted to go home. Dunlop himself worked for post-war reconciliation with Asia.

The gallows house in Changi gaol where eighteen Japanese war criminals were executed by hanging during 1946. [AWM P04279.005] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]


A convicted Japanese war criminal being led to the gallows at Changi gaol to be executed by hanging, 1946. A total of 18 Japanese war criminals were executed by hanging at Changi. [AWM P04279.007] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]            


A hangman positions a noose around the neck of a Japanese war criminal prior to his execution at Changi gaol, 1946. The condemned man is standing on a trapdoor which was opened to complete the execution. Done correctly, death by hanging was quick as death came from the snapping of the neck rather than strangulation. [AWM P04279.004] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#] 


A Japanese war criminal falls to his death, Changi, 1946. The trapdoor has just been sprung by the operator whose hands are visible on the left. [AWM P04279.011] [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/after-the-war/war-crimes-trials.php#]       


SERIAL KILLER, JOHN JOSEPH FAUTENBERRY (EXECUTED IN OHIO ON JULY 14, 2009)

0
0


            On this date, July 14, 2009, a serial killer by the name of John Joseph Fautenberry was executed by lethal injection in Ohio. He was the 30th person executed by the State of Ohio since 1976. Surprisingly, the abolitionists in Ohio kept quiet about his case. Please go to this previous Blog Post to learn more about this Serial Killer and please go to the Unit 1012 Blog Post to hear from his victims’ families.


John Joseph Fautenberry




THE RILLINGTON PLACE STRANGLER: JOHN CHRISTIE THE SERIAL KILLER (8 APRIL 1899 TO 15 JULY 1953)

0
0


On this date, 15 July 1953, The Rillington Place Strangler, John Christie was executed by hanging at Pentonville Prison, London, England. I had blogged earlier about Timothy Evans whom I have doubts if he was truly innocent of the crime. Please go to this previous blog post to learn more about this serial killer.

 

John Christie

THE SINGING SERIAL KILLER OF INDONESIA: VERY IDHAM HENYANSYAH

0
0


          On this date, July 15, 2008, the Singing Serial Killer, Very Idham Henyansyah, was apprehended. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.


Very Idham Henyansyah [PHOTO SOURCE: http://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/henyansyah.htm]

Very Idham Henyansyah
Born
February 1, 1978
Jombang, Indonesia
Other names
Ryan
Singing serial killer
Criminal penalty
Death

Conviction(s)
Mutilation, Murder
Killings
Victims
11
Span of killings
2006–2008
Country
Indonesia
Date apprehended
15 July 2008

Very Idham Henyansyah (born 1 February 1978), also known as Ryan, is an Indonesian convicted serial killer. Very confessed to killing 11 people and was sentenced to death by the Indonesia criminal court. Very is awaiting execution at Kesambi Penitentiary in Cirebon. He was arrested in 2008.

This case achieved notoriety throughout Indonesia due to the gruesome nature of the murders. The body of one of the victims was found at a roadside in Jakarta cut up into seven pieces and was skewered with a crowbar. Very buried his victims' bodies in the backyard of his home in Jombang Regency in East Java.

After his arrest, he became known as the "singing serial killer" after entertaining the court officers, fellow inmates and media audience in his jail cell by singing a song from his upcoming album.

In February 2009, Very released an autobiography titled The Untold Story of Ryan. In the autobiography, Very indicated that he was formerly a Qur'an recital teacher and later became a male model.

Very is openly homosexual and he confessed that most of his victims were also homosexual men. Very admitted to killing one of his victims after the victim offered him money and a car to have sex with his boyfriend. However, in October 2010, he announced that he was planning to marry a female convicted drug dealer, Eny Wijaya, whom he had met in 2008 when they were both detained at the Jakarta Police Narcotics Detention Center. Eny Wijaya has released from Pondok Bambu Penitentiary around September 2010. One of his reasons for marrying Eny Wijaya despite him being homosexual is to fulfill his mother's wish that he be married to a woman.

OTHER LINKS:

COP KILLER EXECUTED: TRACY ALAN HANSEN (EXECUTED IN MISSISSIPPI ON JULY 17, 2002)

0
0


            On this date, July 17, 2002, a Cop Killer, Tracy Alan Hansen was executed by lethal injection in Mississippi. He was convicted of shooting Trooper David Bruce Ladner on April 10, 1987, the trooper died 2 days later on April 12, 1987. Please go to this previous blog post to learn more about this cop killer. 


Tracy Alan Hansen
 

Trooper David Bruce Ladner

TEXAS SENATE BILL 5

0
0


            On this date, June 18, 2013, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law, Texas Senate Bill 5. I will post information from Wikipedia and another news source about this Pro-Life Bill.


An illustration of Texas on Senator Bill 5 [PHOTO SOURCE: http://mountiewire.com/senator-wendy-davis-fillibusters-abortion-bill/]

Texas Senate Bill 5 (or Texas SB 5) is a bill that was created on June 11, 2013, and was discussed during the First Special Session of the Eighty-third Texas Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Rick Perry on July 18, 2013.

Bill content

Texas Senate Bill 5 is a list of measures that would add and update abortion regulations in Texas. These measures include a ban on abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization and recognize that the state has a compelling interest to protect fetuses from pain. The bill would mandate that a doctor who performs abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and to require that clinics meet the same standards as other surgical health-care facilities in the state. Another provision would require oversight of women taking abortion-inducing drugs such as RU-486. The bill would not apply to abortions necessary to save the mother's life or to prevent permanent bodily damage from a pregnancy.

History

First Special Session

On June 25, 2013, Senator Wendy Davisbegan a filibuster in attempt to block the bill by maintaining the floor until midnight, when the Senate's special session ended, after which the state Senate would no longer be able to vote on the measure. After ten hours, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst ruled that Davis had gone off topic after Davis began talking about a sonogram bill, forcing a vote on whether the filibuster could continue. Despite efforts to pass the bill, parliamentary enquiries from Leticia R. Van de Putte and other senators, as well as disruption from the gallery caused the session to go on through midnight, the official closure of the special session. Following the deadline, Republicans indicated that a vote had taken place and passed 19–11, while Democrats declared that the vote had taken place after midnight, making the vote void. Dewhurst later conceded that the bill was passed after the deadline and was considered dead.

Timestamp issue

After the bill was thought to have been passed, a record was added to the official web page on the history of the bill. According to the page, the timestamp of the bill's passage was listed as the 26th. Later, the page was taken down and altered to say that the bill was passed on the 25th. According to Texas Penal Code, Section 37.10, it is a crime to make an alteration that is false in a government document or record. According to the Legislative Reference Library of Texas the Texas Legislature Online system "... is not the official record of those actions, and [the Legislative Reference Library staff] enters actions on TLO as a public service independently of the officers of the house or senate." The Public Integrity Unit has begun an investigation into the events after receiving complaints.

Second Special Session

On the 26th, Governor Rick Perry added the bill as part of three bills in a second special session, with the name Senate Bill 2. Perry stated that it was due to the "[...] breakdown of decorum and decency to prevent us from doing what the people of this state hired us to do."

The second session began on July 1, with supporters and opponents of the bill showing up in large crowds at the Texas Legislative building while wearing blue or orange shirts in support of their side.

The Texas House passed the bill on July 10, 2013, by a 96–49 margin and sent the measure to the Texas Senate.

The Texas Senate passed the bill on July 13, 2013 with a bipartisan vote with a 19-11 margin. The bill was signed by Gov. Rick Perry on July 18, 2013.

The bill was eventually passed by both the House and the Senate in the July 2013 second special session and was signed by Gov. Rick Perry, prompting one commentator to state that "Wendy Davis won the battle, but Rick Perry won the war."


Billy Joe and Tuesday's controversial placard, that went viral on the net.
Public response

Organizations and people on both sides used websites like Twitter and the Texas Tribune to share their side and learn more, with several hashtags becoming popular on Twitter. Coverage and a livestream of the Texas Legislature by the Texas Tribune has been said to have been the reason that the bill became national, and later international, news.

Images of the placard carried by pro-choice activists Billy Joe Cain, his daughter Tuesday, with the message "JESUS isn't a DICK; so keep him OUT of MY VAGINA!" went viral, the resultant controversy was reported nationally and internationally.

Debate

Many people who are against the bill have opposed the requirement that would force clinics to follow the same standards as surgical centers, since it could lead to the closure of the clinics and result in large areas of the state to not have access to a clinic. Supporters of the legislation have stated that the purpose of the new law is to protect women’s health and unborn children, citing precedents like the recent Kermit Gosnell case.

Abortion access in the state of Texas has seen a serious decline since the passage of Senate bill 5. There were 44 facilities that performed abortions in Texas in 2011, When the law is fully implemented in September, that number is expected to drop to six. Amy Hagstrom Miller, the chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, which has challenged provisions of the law in court. "I tried everything I can. I just can’t keep the doors open.”



Things to Know About Senate Bill 5 [PHOTO SOURCE: http://joshfults.com/2013/06/27/things-to-know-about-senate-bill-5/]
Things to Know About Senate Bill 5

On June 25, Senate Bill 5 was under consideration for legislature in the state of Texas. The bill would require that all abortion clinics be certified as ambulatory surgical centers and would not allow abortions to be performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Democratic Senator, Wendy Davis, had other plans. She filibustered the bill and delivered a 10 hour speech in hopes of delaying the vote. The bill was eventually voted on, amidst the chaotic circus of protesters, and passed, but it occurred after midnight and was rendered null. On June 26, Governor Rick Perry called for a special session on July 1st to reconsider the bill.

It is important for us to take into consideration the importance and dramatic scope of Senate Bill 5, for if it passes dramatic changes will take place involving how abortion services are delivered in the state of Texas. The passing of the bill would mean the closing of roughly 80% of abortion clinics in the second most populated state in the union! There are approximately 215 abortions performed daily in Texas. What would that number look like if Senate Bill 5 passes? How many lives will be spared from premature obliteration under surgical blades and suction hoses?

I hold to the view that life begins at the moment of conception and believe that abortion is a moral evil regardless of when it is performed. I stand firmly on the substance view of human personhood, which states that every organism is a substance of a particular kind of being that undergoes changes, but these changes do not affect what they are essentially. Many try to delineate when exactly life begins based on many different criteria. In other words, they may speculate that life begins when the fetus reaches certain development milestones such as cognizance or sentience. Yet, just because a human cannot exhibit all of it’s capacities all the time through life does not mean it is not a full-fledged human being! This is the idea behind the substance view of personhood.

When it comes to abortion, the argument about when life begins has become largely moot because many pro-choice advocates agree that the unborn child is alive. The issue has become that of autonomy and personal liberty. Many in favor of abortion view their right to personal liberty as taking precedence over the child’s right to life, which is completely absurd. One person’s freedom to choose overrides the unborn person’s right to live.

The question I would like to pose, is why shouldn’t late term abortions (after 20 weeks) be abolished? It has been well documented that babies in late term abortion feel pain, possibly as early as 6-8 weeks gestation. Many will argue, well drugs are administered to send the child into cardiac arrest so the surgical procedure is not felt, yet, who says that being sent into cardiac arrest is not painful? I personally have no desire to see what it feels like, but I have spoken to some that say it is not pleasant, to say the least. Why wouldn’t we want to stop late term abortions if they potentially cause the unborn to experience even the slightest amount of anguish? Is it not humane to refrain from doing so? Yet, the real issue at hand is the closing of so many abortion clinics across the state. It appears that the pro-choice advocates are more concerned about availability than the potential pain it might inflict on the unborn. It would also make sense that these procedures should take place at surgical centers. We wouldn’t want women having abortions at chop shops, butcher houses, or in coat hanger closets would we? Why not pass this legislation? Because it would bottleneck the availability of abortions, that’s why.

We should also be reminded of what late term abortions look like.  One must consider the development level the unborn has reached at this juncture. Francis Beckwith states that at 13 weeks the child can “kick his legs, turn his feet, curl his toes, make a fist, suck his thumb, bend his wrist, turn his head, frown, open his mouth, press his lips tightly together. He drinks amniotic fluid.” Then he says at 22 weeks, “He is now about a foot tall, weighs one pound. Fine baby hair begins to grow on his eye brows and head. He sleeps and wakes just as he will after birth.” If that sounds all too human, it is because it is human. This is the point of development reached by a child when late term abortions are performed.

Recently, the highly credentialed, Dr. Anthony Levatino, a former abortionist who is now pro-life, described late term abortion procedures in explicit detail. He was testifying in support of a bill that would ban all abortions after 20 weeks nationwide. The procedure he describes is known as “Suction D&E”. In his testimony, he placed in display the primary instrument used to extract the fetus called a Sopher clamp. He states, “This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go.” He continues, “Once you have grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard – really hard…You feel something let go and out pops a fully formed leg about six inches long. Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart and lungs.” He laments that the most difficult part is removing the head. “You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull pieces. Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you.

There have been 57 million legally induced abortions within the United States since 1973. Lets pray that Senate Bill 5 passes. It will save the lives of some, though the many will be killed.

Every life matters. Let’s weep with the 57 million that never experienced all that life offers. Let’s pray for legislation to be enacted that speaks for those without a voice. Let’s create a culture of life.

Walk good. Live wise. Be blessed.

Josh

OTHER LINKS:

THE 20 JULY PLOT TO ASSASSINATE ADOLF HITLER (20 JULY 1944)

0
0


            70 years ago on this date, July 20, 1944, the last attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. I will post information on this historical assassination from Wikipedia and other links. I will also honor and remember the German Resistance to Nazism. 

 

The Wolf's Lair conference room soon after the explosion

Date
  • 20 July 1944 (bombing)
  • 1944–1945 (arrests / executions of plot's supporters)
Location
  • Rastenburg, East Prussia, Germany
  • (today Kętrzyn, Warmia-Masuria, Poland)
  • 54.079344°N 21.493544°E
Result
Military coup d'état against the Nazi government fails. Nazi government victory.
Belligerents
Military-led German resistance
Nazi government
Commanders and leaders
  • Ludwig Beck
  • Henning von Tresckow
  • Eduard Wagner
  • Eugen Bolz
  • Albrecht von Bernstorff
  • Claus von Stauffenberg
  • C-H von Stülpnagel
  • Adolf Hitler
  • Wilhelm Keitel
  • Alfred Jodl
  • Walter Warlimont
Casualties and losses
  • 5,000 executed
  • 7,000 arrested
4 killed

The 20 July plot refers to the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führerof the Third Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, in July 1944. The apparent purpose of the assassination attempt was to seize political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the SS) in order to obtain peace with the Allies as soon as possible. The underlying desire of many of the involved high ranking Wehrmachtofficers was apparently to show to the world that not all Germans were like Hitler and the NSDAP. The details of the conspirators' peace initiatives remain unknown, but they likely would have included demands to accept wide reaching territorial annexations by Germany in Europe.

The plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government. The failure of both the assassination and the military coup d'état which was planned to follow it led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo. According to records of the Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 of these were executed.

Background

Since 1938, conspiratorial groups planning an overthrow of some kind had existed in the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) and in the German Military Intelligence Organization (Abwehr). Early leaders of these plots included Brigadier-General Hans Oster, General Ludwig Beckand Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. Oster was the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office. Beck was a former Chief-of-Staffof the German Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH). Von Witzleben was the former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command in the West (Oberbefehlshaber West, or OB West). They soon established contacts with several prominent civilians, including Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, the great-grandnephew of the hero of the Franco-Prussian War.

Military conspiratorial groups exchanged ideas with civilian, political and intellectual resistance groups in the Kreisauer Kreis (which met at the von Moltke estate in Kreisau) and in other secret circles. Moltke was against killing Hitler; instead, he wanted him placed on trial. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle it". Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical. Hitler and National Socialism had turned "wrong-doing" into a system, something which the resistance should avoid.

Plans to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 1938 and 1939, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army Generals Franz Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch, and the failure of the western powers to oppose Hitler's aggressions until 1939. This first military resistance group delayed their plans after Hitler's extreme popularity following the unexpectedly rapid success in the battle for France.

In 1942, a new conspiratorial group formed, led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's staff, who commanded Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa. Tresckow systematically recruited oppositionists to the Group's staff, making it the nerve centre of the Army resistance. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him.

During 1942, Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective resistance network. Their most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units throughout Germany. Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created a viable coup apparatus.

In late 1942, Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and stage an overthrow during Hitler's visit to the headquarters of Army Group Centre at Smolensk in March 1943, by placing a bomb on his plane. The bomb failed to detonate, and a second attempt a week later with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin also failed. These failures demoralised the conspirators. During 1943 Tresckow tried without success to recruit senior Army field commanders such as Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to support a seizure of power. Tresckow in particular worked on his Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge to persuade him to move against Hitler and at times succeeded in gaining his consent, only to find him indecisive at the last minute. Despite their refusals however, none of the Field Marshals reported their treasonous activities to the Gestapo or Hitler.

Planning a coup

Main article: Operation Valkyrie

Stauffenberg joins the conspirators

By mid-1943 the tide of war was turning decisively against Germany. The Army plotters and their civilian allies became convinced that Hitler should be assassinated, so that a government acceptable to the western Allies could be formed, and a separate peace negotiated in time to prevent a Soviet invasion of Germany. In August 1943 Tresckow met, for the first time, a young staff officer named Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Badly wounded in North Africa, Count von Stauffenberg was a political conservative, a zealous German nationalist and a Roman Catholic. From early in 1942, he had come to share two basic convictions with many military officers: that Germany was being led to disaster, and that Hitler's removal from power was necessary. After the Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942, despite his religious scruples, he concluded that the Führer's assassination was a lesser moral evil than Hitler's remaining in power. Stauffenberg brought a new tone of decisiveness to the ranks of the resistance movement. When Tresckow was assigned to the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg took charge of planning and executing the assassination attempt.

A new plan

Olbricht now put forward a new strategy for staging a coup against Hitler. The Reserve Army (Ersatzheer) had an operational plan called Operation Walküre (Valkyrie), which was to be used in the event that the disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities caused a breakdown in law and order, or an uprising by the millions of forced labourers from occupied countries now being used in German factories. Olbricht suggested that this plan could be used to mobilise the Reserve Army for the purpose of the coup. In August and September 1943, Tresckow drafted the "revised" Valkyrie plan and new supplementary orders. A secret declaration began with these words: "The Führer Adolf Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of party leaders has attempted to exploit the situation by attacking our embattled soldiers from the rear in order to seize power for themselves." Detailed instructions were written for occupation of government ministries in Berlin, Himmler's headquarters in East Prussia, radio stations and telephone offices, and other Nazi apparatus through military districts, and concentration camps. Previously, it was believed that Stauffenberg was mainly responsible for the Valkyrie plan, but documents recovered by the Soviet Union after the war and released in 2007 suggest that the plan was developed by Tresckow by autumn of 1943. All written information was handled by Tresckow's wife, Erika, and by Margarethe von Oven, his secretary. Both women wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. Tresckow had tried on at least two other occasions to assassinate the Fuhrer. The first plan was to shoot him during dinner at the army base camp, but this plan was aborted because it was widely believed that Hitler wore a bullet proof vest. The conspirators also considered poisoning him, but this wasn't possible because his food was specially prepared and tasted. This left a time bomb as the only option. Operation Valkyrie could only be put into effect by General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, so he must either be won over to the conspiracy or in some way neutralised if the plan was to succeed. Fromm, like many senior officers, knew in general about the military conspiracies against Hitler but neither supported them nor reported them to the Gestapo.

Previous failed attempts

During 1943 and early 1944 there were at least four attempts organised by von Tresckow and von Stauffenberg, to get one of the military conspirators near enough to Hitler, for long enough to kill him with hand grenades, bombs or a revolver:
As the war situation deteriorated, Hitler no longer appeared in public and rarely visited Berlin. He spent most of his time at his headquarters at the Wolfsschanze(Wolf's Lair) near Rastenburg in East Prussia, with occasional breaks at his Bavarian mountain retreat Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden. In both places he was heavily guarded and rarely saw people he did not know or trust. Himmler and the Gestapo were increasingly suspicious of plots against Hitler and rightly suspected the officers of the General Staff, which was indeed the source of many conspiracies against Hitler.

Now or never, "whatever the cost"

By the summer of 1944, the Gestapo was closing in on the conspirators. There was a sense that time was running out, both on the battlefield, where the Eastern front was in full retreat and where the Allies had landed in France on 6 June, and in Germany, where the resistance's room for manoeuvre was rapidly contracting. The belief that this was the last chance for action seized the conspirators. By this time, the core of the conspirators had begun to think of themselves as doomed men, whose actions were more symbolic than real. The purpose of the conspiracy came to be seen by some of them as saving the honour of themselves, their families, the army, and Germany through a grand, if futile gesture, rather than actually altering the course of history.

The conspirators scored a major coup in early July when they managed to initiate Erwin Rommel, the famed "Desert Fox", into their ranks. Rommel was by far the most popular officer in Germany and was also the first active-duty field marshal to lend support to the plot. (Witzleben had been inactive since 1942.) Although Rommel felt he had to, as he put it, "come to the rescue of Germany," he thought killing Hitler would make him a martyr. Like some others, he wanted Hitler arrested and hauled before a court-martial for his many crimes.

When Stauffenberg sent Tresckow a message through Lieutenant Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort asking whether there was any reason for trying to assassinate Hitler given that no political purpose would be served, Tresckow's response was: "The assassination must be attempted, coûte que coûte[whatever the cost]. Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin. For the practical purpose no longer matters; what matters now is that the German resistance movement must take the plunge before the eyes of the world and of history. Compared to that, nothing else matters."

Himmler had at least one conversation with a known oppositionist when, in August 1943, the Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz, who was involved in Goerdeler's network, came to see him and offered him the support of the opposition if he would make a move to displace Hitler and secure a negotiated end to the war. Nothing came of this meeting, but Popitz was not immediately arrested (although he was later executed towards the end of the war), and Himmler apparently did nothing to track down the resistance network which he knew was operating within the state bureaucracy. It is possible that Himmler, who by late 1943 knew that the war was unwinnable, allowed the plot to go ahead in the knowledge that if it succeeded he would be Hitler's successor, and could then bring about a peace settlement.

Popitz was not alone in seeing in Himmler a potential ally. General von Bock advised Tresckow to seek his support, but there is no evidence that he did so. Goerdeler was apparently also in indirect contact with Himmler via a mutual acquaintance, Carl Langbehn. Wilhelm Canaris biographer Heinz Höhne suggests that Canaris and Himmler were working together to bring about a change of regime, but this remains speculation.

Tresckow and the inner circle of plotters had no intention of removing Hitler just to see him replaced by the dreaded and ruthless SS chief, and the plan was to kill them both if possible – to the extent that Stauffenberg's first attempt on 11 July was aborted because Himmler was not present.



Countdown to Stauffenberg's attempt

1–6 July

On Saturday 1 July 1944 Stauffenberg was appointed chief of staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters on Bendlerstraße in central Berlin. This position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler's military conferences, either at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia or at Berchtesgaden, and would thus give him an opportunity, perhaps the last that would present itself, to kill Hitler with a bomb or a pistol. Meanwhile new key allies had been gained. These included General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the German military commander in France, who would take control in Paris when Hitler was killed and, it was hoped, negotiate an immediate armistice with the invading Allied armies.

7–14 July

The plot was now fully prepared. On 7 July 1944 General Stieffwas to kill Hitler at a display of new uniforms at Klessheim castle near Salzburg. However, Stieff felt unable to kill Hitler. Stauffenberg now decided to do both: to assassinate Hitler, wherever he was, and to manage the plot in Berlin. On 15 July Stauffenberg attended Hitler's conferences carrying a bomb in his briefcase, but because the conspirators had decided that Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring should be killed simultaneously if the planned mobilisation of Operation Valkyrie was to have a chance to succeed, he held back at the last minute because Himmler was not present. In fact, it was unusual for Himmler to attend military conferences.


At Rastenburgon 15 July 1944. Stauffenberg at left, Hitler center, Keitelon right. The person shaking hands with Hitler is General Karl Bodenschatz, who was seriously wounded five days later, by Stauffenberg's bomb.
15 July: Aborted attempt

By 15 July, when Stauffenberg again flew to the Wolfsschanze, this condition had been dropped. The plan was for Stauffenberg to plant the briefcase with the bomb in Hitler's conference room with a timer running, excuse himself from the meeting, wait for the explosion, then fly back to Berlin and join the other plotters at the Bendlerblock. Operation Valkyriewould be mobilised, the Reserve Army would take control of Germany and the other Nazi leaders would be arrested. Beck would be appointed provisional head of state, Goerdeler would be chancellor, and Witzleben would be commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Again on 15 July the attempt was called off at the last minute. Himmler and Göring were present, but Hitler was called out of the room at the last moment. Stauffenberg was able to intercept the bomb and prevent its discovery.

17 July: Erwin Rommel strafed

On 17 July, Erwin Rommel's staffcar was strafed by a Spitfire in France. The Field Marshal was hospitalized with major head injuries.


The conference room after the bomb exploded
20 July

Operation Valkyrie initiated

On 18 July rumours reached Stauffenberg that the Gestapo had wind of the conspiracy and that he might be arrested at any time—this was apparently not true, but there was a sense that the net was closing in and that the next opportunity to kill Hitler must be taken because there might not be another. At 10:00 on 20 July Stauffenberg flew back to the Wolfsschanze for another Hitler military conference, once again with a bomb in his briefcase.

The conference took place in the main room of Wolf's Lair instead of the underground bunker due to weather.

At around 12:30 as the conference began, Stauffenberg made an excuse to use a washroom in Wilhelm Keitel's office where he used pliers to crush the end of a pencil detonator inserted into a 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) block of plastic explosive wrapped in brown paper, that was prepared by Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven. The detonator consisted of a thin copper tube containing copper chloride that would take about ten minutes to silently eat through wire holding back the firing pin from the percussion cap. He then placed the primed bomb quickly inside his briefcase, having been told his presence was required. A second block of explosive was retained by the pair rather than put into the suitcase. He entered the conference room and with the unwitting assistance of Major Ernst John von Freyend placed his briefcase under the table around which Hitler and more than 20 officers had gathered. After a few minutes, Stauffenberg received a planned telephone call and left the room. It is presumed that Colonel Heinz Brandt, who was standing next to Hitler, used his foot to move the briefcase aside by pushing it behind the leg of the conference table, thus unwittingly deflecting the blast from Hitler but causing his own death with the loss of one of his legs when the bomb detonated. Between 12:40 and 12:50 the bomb detonated, demolishing the conference room. Three officers and the stenographer were seriously injured and died soon after. Hitler survived, as did everyone else who was shielded from the blast by the conference table leg. Hitler's trousers were singed and tattered (see photograph below) and he suffered from a perforated eardrum, as did most of the other 24 people in the room. Had the second block of explosive been used, it is probable that everyone present would have been killed.


A soldier holding the trousers Hitler wore during the failed assassination attempt.
Escape from the Wolf's Lair and flight to Berlin

Stauffenberg, hearing the explosion and seeing the smoke issuing from the broken windows of the concrete dispatch barracks, assumed that Hitler was dead, climbed into his staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften and managed to bluff his way past three checkpoints to exit the Wolfsschanze complex. Werner von Haeften then tossed the second unprimed bomb into the forest as they made a dash for Rastenburg airfield, reaching it before it could be realised that Stauffenberg could be responsible for the explosion. By 13:00 he was airborne in a Heinkel He 111 arranged by General Eduard Wagner.

By the time Stauffenberg's aircraft reached Berlin about 16:00, General Erich Fellgiebel, an officer at the Wolfsschanze who was in on the plot, had phoned the Bendlerblock and told the plotters that Hitler had survived the explosion. As a result, the Berlin cohort to mobilise Operation Valkyriewould have no chance of succeeding once the officers of the Reserve Army knew that Hitler was alive. There was more confusion when Stauffenberg's aircraft landed and he phoned from the airport to say that Hitler was in fact dead. The Bendlerblock plotters did not know whom to believe. Finally at 16:00 Olbricht issued the orders for Operation Valkyrie to be mobilised. The vacillating General Fromm, however, phoned Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at the Wolf's Lair and was assured that Hitler was alive. Keitel demanded to know Stauffenberg's whereabouts. This told Fromm that the plot had been traced to his headquarters, and that he was in mortal danger. Fromm replied that he thought Stauffenberg was with Hitler.

Meanwhile, Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, military governor of occupied France, managed to disarm the SDand SS, and captured most of their leadership. He travelled to Günther von Kluge's headquarters and asked him to contact the Allies, only to be informed that Hitler was alive. At 16:40 Stauffenberg and Haeften arrived at the Bendlerblock. Fromm, presumably to protect himself, changed sides and attempted to have Stauffenberg arrested. Olbricht and Stauffenberg restrained him at gunpoint and Olbricht then appointed General Erich Hoepner to take over his duties. By this time Himmler had taken charge of the situation and had issued orders countermanding Olbricht's mobilisation of Operation Valkyrie. In many places the coup was going ahead, led by officers who believed that Hitler was dead. City Commandant, and conspirator, General Paul von Hase ordered the Wachbataillon Großdeutschland, under the command of Major Otto Ernst Remer, to secure the Wilhelmstraßeand arrest Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In Vienna, Prague, and many other places troops occupied Nazi Party offices and arrested Gauleitersand SS officers.


Soldiers and Waffen SS at the Bendlerblock
The coup fails

At around 18:00 the commander of Military District (Wehrkreis) III (Berlin) General Joachim von Kortzfleisch was summoned to the Bendlerblock; he angrily refused Olbricht's orders, kept shouting "the Führer is alive", was arrested and held under guard. General Karl Freiherr von Thüngen was appointed in his place, but proved to be of little help. General Fritz Lindemann, who was supposed to make a proclamation to the German people over the radio, failed to appear and as he held the only copy, Beck had to work on a new one.

The decisive moment came at 19:00, when Hitler was sufficiently recovered to make phone calls. He called Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels arranged for Hitler to speak to Major Remer, commander of the troops surrounding the Ministry. After assuring him that he was still alive, Hitler ordered Remer to regain control of the situation in Berlin. Major Remer ordered his troops to surround and seal off the Bendlerblock, but not to enter the buildings. At 20:00 a furious Witzleben arrived at the Bendlerblock and had a bitter argument with Stauffenberg, who was still insisting that the coup could go ahead. Witzleben left shortly afterwards. At around this time the planned seizure of power in Paris was aborted when Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, who had recently been appointed commander-in-chief in the west, learned that Hitler was alive.

As Remer regained control of the city and word spread that Hitler was still alive, the less resolute members of the conspiracy in Berlin began to change sides. Fighting broke out in the Bendlerblock between officers supporting and opposing the coup, and Stauffenberg was wounded. By 23:00 Fromm had regained control, hoping by a show of zealous loyalty to save himself. Beck, realising the situation was hopeless, shot himself—the first of many suicides in the coming days. Although at first Beck only just managed to seriously wound himself, he was shot in the neck by soldiers. Fromm convened an impromptu court martial consisting of himself, and sentenced Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, to death. At 00:10 on 21 July they were executed in the courtyard outside, possibly to prevent them from revealing Fromm's involvement. Others would have been executed as well, but at 00:30 SS personnel led by Otto Skorzeny arrived and further executions were forbidden.

Alternative possibilities

In 2005, the Military Channel's show Unsolved History aired an episode titled Killing Hitler in which each scenario was re-created using live explosives and test dummies. The results supported the conclusion that Hitler would have been killed had any of the three other scenarios occurred:
  • both bombs detonated;
  • the meeting was held inside Hitler's bunker;
  • the briefcase was not moved.
Had Hitler in fact been killed by the plotters, some historians argue that the plot would have unfolded (and failed) in relatively the same fashion, but with Hermann Göring taking Hitler's place, and in turn ordering Major Remer to switch sides and arrest the plotters. A Nazi State under Göring would have been more receptive to peace with the allies and might also have "cleaned house" of several fanatical Nazis, including many senior SS and Nazi Party leaders.

Participants at the meeting

  1. Adolf Hitler - Führer und Reichskanzler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Armed Forces as Head of State[a]
  2. Lieutenant-General Adolf Heusinger– Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army[a]
  3. General Günther Korten– Chief of General Staff of the Air Force[b]
  4. Colonel Heinz Brandt– Aide to General Heusinger[b]
  5. General Karl BodenschatzHermann Göring's liaison officer at Führer Headquarters[c]
  6. Lieutenant-Colonel Heinz Waizenegger – Senior staff officer to Jodl
  7. General Rudolf Schmundt– Chief of the Army Staff Office[b]
  8. Lieutenant-Colonel Heinrich Borgmann– Hitler's army adjutant[c]
  9. General Walther Buhle– Chief of Army Staff at the OKW
  10. Rear Admiral Karl-Jesco von Puttkamer– Hitler's naval adjutant[a]
  11. Stenographer Heinz Berger[b]
  12. Captain Heinz Assmann– Naval staff officer in the OKW
  13. Major Ernst John von Freyend– Keitel's adjutant
  14. Major-General Walter Scherff– OKW historian[a]
  15. Rear Admiral Hans-Erich Voss– Naval liaison officer at Führer Headquarters
  16. Otto Günsche– Hitler's SS adjutant[a]
  17. Colonel Nicolaus von Below– Hitler's air force adjutant
  18. Lieutenant-General Hermann Fegelein– Waffen-SS representative at Führer Headquarters
  19. Stenographer Heinz Buchholz
  20. Major Herbert Büchs– Jodl's second adjutant
  21. Franz von Sonnleithner– Foreign Ministry representative at Führer Headquarters
  22. General Walter Warlimont– Deputy Chief of Staff of the OKW
  23. General Alfred Jodl– Chief of Staff of the OKW[a]
  24. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel– Chief of the OKW
  • Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
1.    Slightly injured
2.    Killed
3.    Seriously injured

All at the meeting except Keitel suffered perforated eardrums and Hitler had 200 wood splinters removed from his legs; his hair was singed and his uniform torn to ribbons.


Approximate positions of the participants at the meeting in relation to the briefcase bomb when it exploded.

The courtyard at the Bendlerblock, where Stauffenberg, Olbricht and others were executed


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 Franz Halder, who finished the war in a concentration camp. Under Himmler's new Sippenhaft (blood guilt) laws, all the relatives of the principal plotters were also arrested.

More than 7,000 people were arrested and 4,980 were executed. Not all of them were connected with the plot, since the Gestapo used the occasion to settle scores with many other people suspected of opposition sympathies. Alfons Heck, former Hitler Youth member and later historian, describes the reaction many Germans felt to the punishments imposed onto the conspirators:


When I heard that German officers had tried to kill Adolf Hitler ... I was enraged. I fully concurred with the sentences imposed onto to them, strangling I felt was too good for them; this was the time, precisely, when we were at a very ... precarious military situation. And the only man who could possibly stave of disaster ... was Adolf Hitler. That opinion was shared by many Germans, Germans who did not adore Hitler, who did not belong to the [Nazi] Party.
— Alfons Heck


 

Hitler visits Admiral Karl-Jesco von Puttkamer in the hospital
 
Funeral of General Günther Korten at the Tannenberg Memorial

The British radio also named possible suspects who had not yet been implicated but then were arrested.

Very few of the plotters tried to escape or to deny their guilt when arrested. Those who survived interrogation were given perfunctory trials before the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof), a kangaroo court that always decided in favour of the prosecution. The court's president, Roland Freisler, was a fanatical Nazi seen shouting furiously and insulting the accused in the trial, which was filmed for propaganda purposes. The officers involved in the plot were "tried" before the Court of Military Honour, a drumhead court-martial that merely considered the evidence furnished to it by the Gestapo before expelling the accused from the Army in disgrace and handing them over to the People's Court.

The first trials were held on 7 and 8 August 1944. Hitler had ordered that those found guilty should be "hanged like cattle". Many people took their own lives prior to either their trial or their execution, including Kluge, who was accused of having knowledge of the plot beforehand and not revealing it to Hitler. Stülpnagel also tried to commit suicide, but survived and was hanged.

While Stülpnagel was being treated, he blurted out Rommel's name. A few days later, Stülpnagel's personal adviser, Caesar von Hofacker, admitted under gruesome torture that Rommel was an active member of the conspiracy. The extent to which Rommel had been involved has been debated, but many historians have concluded that he at least knew of the plot even if he wasn't involved directly. Hitler, however, knew it would cause a major scandal to have the popular Rommel branded as a traitor. With this in mind, he opted to give Rommel the option of suicide via cyanide or a public trial by Freisler's People's Court. Had Rommel chosen to stand trial, his family would have been severely punished even before the all-but-certain conviction, and they would have been executed along with his staff. Knowing that being hauled before the People's Court was tantamount to a death sentence, Rommel committed suicide on 14 October 1944. He was buried with full military honours; his role in the conspiracy didn't come to light until after the war.

Tresckow also killed himself the day after the failed plot by use of a hand grenade in no man's land between Russian and German lines. Before his death, Tresckow said to Fabian von Schlabrendorff:


The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours' time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. None of us can bewail his own death; those who consented to join our circle put on the robe of Nessus. A human being's moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.


Fromm's attempt to win favour by executing Stauffenberg and others on the night of 20 July had merely exposed his own previous lack of action and apparent failure to report the plot. Having been arrested on 21 July, Fromm was later convicted and sentenced to death by the People's Court. Despite his involvement in the conspiracy, his formal sentence charged him with poor performance in his duties. He was executed in Brandenburg an der Havel. Hitler personally commuted his death sentence from hanging to the "more honourable" firing squad. Erwin Planck, the son of the famous physicist Max Planck, was executed for his involvement.

The Kaltenbrunner Report to Adolf Hitler dated 29 November 1944 on the background of the plot, states that the Pope was somehow a conspirator, specifically naming Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, as being a party in the attempt. Evidence indicates that 20 July plotters Colonel Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven, Colonel Erwin von Lahousen and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris were involved in the foiling of Hitler's alleged plot to kidnap or murder Pope Pius XII in 1943, when Canaris reported the plot to Italian counterintelligence officer General Cesare Amè, who passed on the information.

Arthur Nebewas implicated in the plot due to his anti-Nazi feelings, even though he was a full member of the SS and had even commanded an Einsatzgruppe. Nebe's "fall from grace" was considered due to his many years as a civilian police detective and how he saw most SS security police as incompetent. Nebe himself was quoted, upon investigating the death of Reinhard Heydrich, that the Gestapo seemed more concerned with reprisals than actually investigating the crime.

A member of the SA convicted of participating in the plot was Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, who was the Orpo Police Chief of Berlin and had been in contact with members of the resistance since before the war. Collaborating closely with Nebe, he was supposed to direct all police forces in Berlin to stand down and not interfere in the military actions to seize the government. However, his actions on 20 July had not much influence on the events. For his involvement in the conspiracy, he was later arrested, convicted of treason and executed.

After 3 February 1945, when Freisler was killed in an American air raid, there were no more formal trials, but as late as April, with the war weeks away from its end, Canaris' diary was found, and many more people were implicated. Executions continued to the last days of the war.

Hitler took his survival to be a "divine moment in history", and commissioned a special decoration to be made. The result was the Wound Badge of 20 July 1944, which Hitler awarded to those who were with him in the conference room at the time. This badge was struck in three values; Gold, Silver and Black, a total of 100 badges, and 47 are believed to have been awarded, along with an ornate award document for each recipient personally signed by Hitler, making them among the rarest decorations to have been awarded by the Third Reich.

For his role in stopping the coup, Major Remer was promoted to Colonel and ended the war as a Major General. After the war he co-founded the Socialist Reich Party and remained a prominent Neo-Naziand advocate of Holocaust Denial until his death in 1997.

Philipp von Boeselager, the German officer who provided the plastic explosives used in the bomb, escaped detection and survived the war. He was the second to last survivor of those involved in the plot and died on 1 May 2008 aged 90. The last survivor of the 20 July Plot was Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, the thwarted plotter of just a few months before. He died on 8 March 2013 aged 90.

As a result of the failed coup, every member of the Wehrmacht was required to reswear his loyalty oath, by name, to Hitler and, on 24 July 1944, the military salute was replaced throughout the armed forces with the Hitler Salute in which the arm was outstretched and the salutation Heil Hitlerwas given.


Tombstone/Rememberance stone for the 20th July victims. Memorial at the cemetery (Alter St.-Matthäus Kirchhof, Berlin) where the corpses were buried but afterwards removed to an unknown place.
Planned government

The conspirators were earlier designated positions in secret to form a government that would take office after the assassination of Hitler were it to prove successful. Because of the plot's failure, such a government never rose to power and most of its members were executed. The following were slated for these roles as of July 1944:
Note: Party allegiances as shown here indicate party membership before the dissolution of all political parties apart from the NSDAP.

Albert Speer was listed in several notes of the conspirators as a possible Minister of Armaments; however, most of these notes stated Speer should not be approached until after Hitler was dead and one conjectural government chart had a question mark beside Speer's name. This most likely saved Speer from arrest by the SS in addition to Speer being one of Hitler's closest and most trusted friends.

Films and television
OTHER LINKS:


THE GOOD GERMAN SOLDIER WHO ALMOST KILLED ADOLF HITLER: CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG (15 NOVEMBER 1907 TO 21 JULY 1944)

0
0


            I will always remember and honor Claus Von Stauffenberg as a World War II Hero. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.

 

Claus von Stauffenberg’s Quote [PHOTO SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/176861]


Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg portrait, cut out from a german stamp


Born
Claus Philipp Maria Schenk
15 November 1907
Jettingen, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Died
21 July 1944 (aged 36)
Berlin, Nazi Germany
52.507892°N 13.36219°E
Cause of death
Execution by firing squad
Nationality
German
Employer
Wehrmacht Heer
Known for
20 July plot coordinator
Home town
Albstadt, Germany
Religion
Roman Catholicism
Spouse(s)
Children
GmBerthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg,
Heimeran Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg,
Franz-Ludwig Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg,
Valerie Ida Huberta Karoline Anna Maria Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg,
Konstanze Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg.
Parents
Alfred Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg,
Caroline Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg

Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, commonly referred to as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (German:[ˈklaʊs ˈʃɛŋk ˈɡʁaːf fɔn ˈʃtaʊfənbɛɐ̯k]), Claus von Stauffenberg, or Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944), was a German army officer and aristocrat who was one of the leading members of the failed 20 July plot of 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power. Along with Henning von Tresckow and Hans Oster, he was one of the central figures of the German Resistance movement within the Wehrmacht. For his involvement in the movement he was executed by firing squad shortly after the failed attempt known as Operation Valkyrie.

Family name

Stauffenberg's given name was Claus Philipp Maria Justinian, with the noble title at the end. He was born in the Stauffenberg castle of Jettingen between Ulm and Augsburg, in the eastern part of Swabia, at that time in the Kingdom of Bavaria, part of the German Empire. He was the third of four sons including the twins Berthold and Alexander and his own twin brother Konrad Maria, who died in Jettingen one day after birth on 16 November 1907. His father was Alfred Klemens Philipp Friedrich Justinian, the last Oberhofmarschall of the Kingdom of Württemberg. His mother was Caroline Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg, née Gräfin von Üxküll-Gyllenband, the daughter of Alfred Richard August Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband and Valerie Gräfin von Hohenthal.

The titles "Graf" and "Gräfin" mean count and countess, respectively. Schenk (i.e., cupbearer/butler) was an additional hereditary noble title. The ancestral castle of the nobility was the last part of the title, which would be Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and used as part of the name. The Stauffenberg family is one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic Catholic families of southern Germany. Among his maternal Protestant ancestors were several famous Prussians, including Field Marshal August von Gneisenau.

On 11 November 1919, a new constitutional law, as part of the Weimar Republic, abolished the privileges of nobility. Article 109 also stated, "Legal privileges or disadvantages based on birth or social standing are to be abolished. Noble titles form part of the name only; noble titles may not be granted any more." After this titles of nobility were incorporated as part of a surname.

Early life

In his youth, he and his brothers were members of the Neupfadfinder, a German Scout association and part of the German Youth movement.

Like his brothers, he was carefully educated and inclined toward literature, but eventually took up a military career. In 1926, he joined the family's traditional regiment, the Bamberger Reiter- und Kavallerieregiment 17 (17th Cavalry Regiment) in Bamberg. It was around this time that the three brothers were introduced by Albrecht von Blumenthal to the poet Stefan George's influential circle, Georgekreis, from which many notable members of the German resistance would later emerge. George dedicated Das neue Reich ("the new Empire") in 1928, including the Geheimes Deutschland ("secret Germany") written in 1922, to Berthold. The work outlines a new form of society ruled by a hierarchical spiritual aristocracy. George rejected any attempts to use it for political purposes, especially Nazism.

Stauffenberg was commissioned as a leutnant (second lieutenant) in 1930. He studied modern weapons at the Kriegsakademie in Berlin-Moabit, but remained focused on the use of horses—which continued to carry out a large part of transportation duties throughout World War II—in modern warfare. His regiment became part of the German 1st Light Division under General Erich Hoepner, who had taken part in the plans for the September 1938 German Resistance coup, cut short by Hitler's unexpected diplomatic success in the Munich Agreement. The unit was among the troops that moved into the Sudetenland, the part of Czechoslovakia that had a German-speaking majority, as agreed upon in Munich. However, Stauffenberg disliked the method by which the Sudetenland was annexed and strongly disapproved of the invasion of Prague.


"I would say that he had an extraordinary gift for making others feel naturally and completely at ease. This was all the more remarkable seeing that he was generally recognised as being well above average intellectually."Another peer describes von Stauffenberg as"a man of extraordinary personal charm."

- Peers thought of Von Stauffenberg


Pre-war misgivings

Although Stauffenberg agreed with some of the Nazi Party's nationalistic aspects, he found many aspects of its ideology repugnant and never became a member of the party. Moreover, Stauffenberg remained a practicing Catholic. Stauffenberg vacillated between a strong personal dislike of Hitler's policies and a respect for what he perceived to be Hitler's military acumen. On top of this, the growing systematic ill-treatment of Jews and suppression of religion had offended Stauffenberg's strong personal sense of Catholic religious morality and justice.

World War II

Conquest of Poland, 1939

Following the outbreak of war in 1939, Stauffenberg and his regiment took part in the attack on Poland. He supported the occupation of Poland and its handling by the Nazi regime and the use of Poles as slave workers to achieve German prosperity as well as German colonization and exploitation of Poland. The deeply rooted belief common in the German aristocracy was that the Eastern territories, populated predominantly by Poles and partly absorbed by Prussia in partitions of Poland, but taken from the German Empire after World War I, should be colonized as the Teutonic Knights had done in the Middle Ages. Stauffenberg said, "It is essential that we begin a systemic colonization in Poland. But I have no fear that this will not occur". It is certain that in the early stages of the war, he still held the usual aristocratic beliefs typical of late imperial times.

Early appeals to join resistance, 1939

While his uncle, Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband, had approached him before to join the resistance movement against the Hitler regime, it was only after the Polish campaign that Stauffenberg began to consider it. Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Ulrich Schwerin von Schwanenfeld urged him to become the adjutant of Walther von Brauchitsch, then Supreme Commander of the Army, in order to participate in a coup against Hitler. Stauffenberg declined at the time, reasoning that all German soldiers had pledged allegiance not to the institution of the presidency of the German Reich, but to the person of Adolf Hitler, due to the Führereid introduced in 1934.

Battle of France, 1940

Stauffenberg's unit was reorganized into the 6th Panzer Division, and he served as an officer on its General Staff in the Battle of France, for which he was awarded the Iron CrossFirst Class. Like many others, Stauffenberg was impressed by the overwhelming military success, which was attributed to Hitler.

Operation Barbarossa, 1941

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, was launched on June 22, 1941. The mass executions of Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and others, as well as what he believed was an already apparent deficiency in military leadership (Hitler had assumed the role of supreme commander in late 1941 after firing Hoepner and others), finally convinced Stauffenberg in 1942 to join with resistance groups within the Wehrmacht, the only force that had a chance to overcome Hitler's Gestapo, SD, and SS. During the idle months of the so-called Phoney War, preceding the Battle of France (1939–40), he had already been transferred to the organizational department of the Oberkommando des Heeres, the German army high command, which directed the operations on the Eastern Front. Stauffenberg opposed the Commissar Order, which Hitler wrote and then cancelled after a year. He tried to soften the German occupation policy in the conquered areas of the Soviet Union by pointing out the benefits of getting volunteers for the Ostlegionen which were commanded by his department. Guidelines were issued on 2 June 1942 for the proper treatment of prisoners of war from the Caucasusregion who had been captured by Heeresgruppe A. The Soviet Union had not signed the 1929 Geneva Convention. However, a month after the German invasion in 1941, an offer was made for a reciprocal adherence to the Hague Conventions. This 'note' was left unanswered by Third Reich officials. Stauffenberg did not engage in any coup plot at this time. The Stauffenberg brothers (Berthold and Claus) maintained contact with former commanders like Hoepner, and with the Kreisau Circle; they also included civilians and social democrats like Julius Leber in their scenarios for an administration after Hitler.

According to Hoffman (p. 131, 1988) citing Brigadier (ret.) Oskar Alfred-Berger's letters, Stauffenberg had commented openly on the ill-treatment of the Jews when he "expressed outrage and shock on this subject to fellow officers in General Staff Headquarters in Vinnitsa (Ukraine) during the summer of 1942." Being interrogated after his capture by the Red Army on September 2, 1944, Stauffenberg's friend, Major Joachim Kuhn stated that Stauffenberg had told him in August 1942 that "They are shooting Jews in masses. These crimes must not be allowed to continue." After his arrest in July 1944, Stauffenberg’s older brother Berthold told the Gestapo that: “He and his brother had basically approved of the racial principle of National Socialism, but considered it to be exaggerated and excessive”.


"Is there no officer over there in the Führer's headquarters capable of shooting that beast!"he says to a fellow officer in August 1942.

"The point is ... to kill him, and I am prepared to do that," von Stauffenberg says to another fellow officer later the same year.


Tunisia, 1942

In November 1942, the Allieslanded in French North Africa, and the 10th Panzer Division occupied Vichy France (Case Anton) before being transferred to fight in the Tunisia Campaign, as part of the Afrika Korps.

In 1943, Stauffenberg was promoted to Oberstleutnanti.G. (lieutenant-colonel of the general staff), and was sent to Africa to join the 10th Panzer Division as its Operations Officer in the General Staff (Ia). On 19 February, Rommel launched his counter-offensive against British, American and French forces in Tunisia. The Axis commanders hoped to break rapidly through either the Sbiba or Kasserine Pass into the rear of the British 1st Army. The assault at Sbiba was halted, so that Rommel concentrated on Kasserine Pass where primarily the Italians in the form of their 7th Bersaglieri Regiment and 131st Centauro Armoured Division had defeated the American defenders. During the fighting, Stauffenberg drove up to be with the leading tanks and troops of the 10th Panzer Division. The division, together with the 21st Panzer Division, took up defensive positions near Mezzouna on 8 April.
On 7 April 1943, Stauffenberg was involved in driving from one unit to another, directing their movement. Near Mezzouna, his vehicle was part of a column strafed by Kittyhawk(P-40) fighter bombers of the Desert Air Force– most likely from No. 3 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force– and he received multiple severe wounds.

Stauffenberg spent three months in a hospital in Munich, where he was treated by Ferdinand Sauerbruch. Stauffenberg lost his left eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand. He jokingly remarked to friends never to have really known what to do with so many fingers when he still had all of them. For his injuries, Stauffenberg was awarded the Wound Badgein Gold on 14 April and for his courage the German Cross in Gold on 8 May.


“We took this challenge before our Lord and our conscience, and it must be done, because this man, Hitler, he is the ultimate evil.”

- Claus Von Stauffenberg


In the resistance, 1943–1944

For rehabilitation, Stauffenberg was sent to his home, Schloss Lautlingen(today a museum), then still one of the Stauffenberg castles in southern Germany. Initially, he felt frustrated not to be in a position to stage a coup himself. But by the beginning of September 1943, after a somewhat slow recovery from his wounds, he was propositioned by the conspirators and was introduced to Henning von Tresckow as a staff officer to the headquarters of the Ersatzheer("Replacement Army"– charged with training soldiers to reinforce first line divisions at the front), located on the Bendlerstrasse(later Stauffenbergstrasse) in Berlin.

There, one of Stauffenberg's superiors was General Friedrich Olbricht, a committed member of the resistance movement. The Ersatzheer had a unique opportunity to launch a coup, as one of its functions was to have Operation Valkyrie in place. This was a contingency measure which would let it assume control of the Reichin the event that internal disturbances blocked communications to the military high command. Ironically, the Valkyrie plan had been agreed to by Hitler but was now secretly changed to sweep the rest of his regime from power in the event of his death.

A detailed military plan was developed not only to occupy Berlin, but also to take the different headquarters of the German army and of Hitler in East Prussia by military force after the suicide assassination attempt by Axel von dem Bussche in late November 1943. Stauffenberg had von dem Bussche transmit these written orders personally to Major Kuhn once he had arrived at Wolfsschanze(Wolf's Lair) near Rastenburg, East Prussia. However, von dem Bussche had left the Wolfsschanze for the eastern front, after the meeting with Hitler was cancelled, and the attempt could not be made. Kuhn hid these compromising documents under a watch tower of the OKW, located not far from the Wolfsschanze.

Kuhn became a prisoner of war of the Soviets after the 20 July plot. He led the Soviets to the hiding place of the documents in February 1945. In 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev presented these documents to then-German chancellor Dr. Helmut Kohl. These documents, produced by Stauffenberg and his fellow officers in 1943 in Berlin, evince the idealistic motivation of the resistance group. This had been doubted and was a matter of discussion for years in Germany after the war. Some thought the plotters wanted to kill Hitler in order to end the war and to avoid the loss of their privileges as professional officers and members of the nobility.

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies had landed in France. Stauffenberg, like most other German professional military officers, had absolutely no doubt that the war was lost. Only an immediate armistice could avoid more unnecessary bloodshed and further damage to Germany, its people, and other European nations. However, in late 1943, he had written out demands with which he felt the Allies had to comply in order for Germany to agree to an immediate peace. These demands included Germany retaining its 1914 eastern borders, including the Polish territories of Wielkopolskaand Poznań. Other demands included keeping such territorial gains as Austria and the Sudetenlandwithin the Reich, giving autonomy to Alsace-Lorraine, and even expansion of the current wartime borders of Germany in the south by annexing Tyrol as far as Bolzano and Merano. Non-territorial demands included such points as refusal of any occupation of Germany by the Allies, as well as refusal to hand over war criminals by demanding the right of "nations to deal with its own criminals". These proposals were only directed to the Western Allies – Stauffenberg wanted Germany only to retreat from western, southern and northern positions, while demanding the right to continue military occupation of German territorial gains in the east.


“It is now time that something was done. But the man who has the courage to do something must do it in the knowledge that he will go down in German history as a traitor. If he does not do it, however, he will be a traitor to his own conscience.”

- Claus Von Stauffenberg



Claus von Stauffenberg's former office at the Bendlerblock in October 2011

At Rastenburgon 15 July 1944. Stauffenberg at left, Hitler center, Keitelon right. The person shaking hands with Hitler is General Karl Bodenschatz, who was seriously wounded five days later, by Stauffenberg's bomb.
20 July plot

Main article: 20 July plot

As early as September 1942 von Stauffenberg was considering Hans Georg Schmidt von Altenstadt (de:Hans Georg Schmidt von Altenstadt), author of Unser Weg zur Meer, as a replacement for Hitler: "Bereits im September 1942 hatte er Kenntnis von Plänen von Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg zur Beseitigung Hitlers." From the beginning of September 1943 until 20 July 1944, von Stauffenberg was the driving force behind the plot to assassinate Hitler and take control of Germany. His resolve, organisational abilities, and radical approach put an end to inactivity caused by doubts and long discussions on whether military virtues had been made obsolete by Hitler's behaviour. With the help of his friend Henning von Tresckow, he united the conspirators and drove them into action.

Stauffenberg was aware that, under German law, he was committing high treason. He openly told young conspirator Axel von dem Bussche in late 1943, "ich betreibe mit allen mir zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln den Hochverrat..."("I am committing high treason with all my might and means...."). He justified himself to Bussche by referring to the right under natural law ("Naturrecht") to defend millions of people's lives from the criminal aggressions of Hitler.

Only after the conspirator General Helmuth Stieff on 7 July 1944 had declared himself unable to assassinate Hitler on a uniforms display at Klessheim castle near Salzburg, Stauffenberg decided to personally kill Hitler and to run the plot in Berlin. By then, Stauffenberg had great doubts about the possibility of success. Tresckow convinced him to go on with it even if it had no chance of success at all, "The assassination must be attempted. Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin", as this would be the only way to prove to the world that the Hitler regime and Germany were not one and the same and that not all Germans supported the regime.

“Can the Church grant absolution to a murderer who has taken the life of a tyrant?”
 - Claus Von Stauffenberg, after praying at a Catholic Chapel.

Stauffenberg's part in the original plan required him to stay at the Bendlerstraße offices in Berlin, so he could phone regular army units all over Europe in an attempt to convince them to arrest leaders of Nazi political organisations such as the Sicherheitsdienst(SD) and the Gestapo. Unfortunately, when General Helmuth Stieff, Chief of Operation at Army High Command, who had regular access to Hitler, backtracked from his earlier commitment to assassinate Hitler, Stauffenberg was forced to take on two critical roles: kill Hitler far from Berlin and trigger the military machine in Berlin during office hours of the very same day. Beside Stieff, he was the only conspirator who had regular access to Hitler (during his briefings) by mid-1944, as well as being the only officer among the conspirators thought to have the resolve and persuasiveness to convince German military leaders to throw in with the coup once Hitler was dead. This requirement greatly reduced the chance of a successful coup.

"Fate has offered us this opportunity, and I would not refuse it for anything in the world,"von Stauffenberg says, continuing,"I have examined myself before God and my conscience. It must be done because this man (Hitler) is evil personified."

After several unsuccessful tries by Stauffenberg to meet Hitler, Göring and Himmler when they were together, he went ahead with the attempt at Wolfsschanzeon 20 July 1944. Stauffenberg entered the briefing room carrying a briefcase containing two small bombs. The location had unexpectedly been changed from the subterranean Führerbunker to Albert Speer's wooden barrack/hut due to it being a hot summer's day. He left the room to arm the first bomb with specially adapted pliers, a task made difficult because he had lost his right hand and had only three fingers on his left. A guard knocked and opened the door, urging him to hurry as the meeting was about to begin. As a result, Stauffenberg was able to arm only one of the bombs. He left the second bomb with his aide-de-camp, Werner von Haeften, and returned to the briefing room, where he placed the briefcase under the conference table, as close as he could to Hitler. Some minutes later, he excused himself and left the room. After his exit, the briefcase was moved by Colonel Heinz Brandt.

When the explosion tore through the hut, Stauffenberg was convinced that no one in the room could have survived. Although four people were killed and almost all survivors were injured, Hitler himself was shielded from the blast by the heavy, solid-oak conference table leg and was only slightly wounded.

Stauffenberg and Haeften quickly left and drove to the nearby airfield. After his return to Berlin, Stauffenberg immediately began to motivate his friends to initiate the second phase: the military coup against the Nazi leaders. When Joseph Goebbels announced by radio that Hitler had survived and later, after Hitler himself personally spoke on the state radio, the conspirators realised that the coup had failed. They were tracked to their Bendlerstrasse offices and overpowered after a brief shoot-out, during which Stauffenberg was wounded in the shoulder.

The Wolf's Lair conference room soon after the explosion
Execution

In an attempt to save his own life, co-conspirator GeneraloberstFriedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army present in the Bendlerblock (Headquarters of the Army), charged other conspirators in an impromptu court martial and condemned the ringleaders of the conspiracy to death. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, his aide 1st Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, General Friedrich Olbricht, and Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim were executed before 1:00 am that night (21 July 1944) by a makeshift firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which was lit by the headlights of a truck.

Stauffenberg was third in line to be executed, with Lieutenant von Haeften after. However, when it was Stauffenberg's turn, Lieutenant von Haeften placed himself between the firing squad and Stauffenberg, and received the bullets meant for Stauffenberg. When his turn came, Stauffenberg spoke his last words, "Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland!" ("Long live our sacred Germany!") Others say the last words were: "Es lebe das geheime Deutschland!" ("Long live the secret Germany!") Fromm ordered that the executed officers (his former co-conspirators) receive an immediate burial with military honours in the Matthäus Churchyard in Berlin's Schöneberg district. The next day, however, Stauffenberg's body was exhumed by the SS, stripped of his medals and insignia, and cremated. Stauffenberg's family had already fled the country.

Another central figure in the plot was Stauffenberg's eldest brother, Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. On 10 August 1944, Berthold was tried before Judge-President Roland Freisler in the special "People's Court" (Volksgerichtshof). This court was established by Hitler for political offences. Berthold was one of eight conspirators executed by slow strangulation (reputedly with piano wire used as the garrote) in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, later that day. Before he was killed, Berthold was strangled and then revived multiple times. The entire execution and multiple resuscitations were filmed for Hitler to view at his leisure. More than 200 were condemned in show trials and executed. Hitler used the 20 July Plot as an excuse to destroy anyone he feared would oppose him. The traditional military salute was replaced with the Nazi salutealso known as the Hitler salute. Eventually, over 20,000 Germans were killed or sent to concentration camps in the purge.


 

Death certificate of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, shot on July 20, 1944; certificate from the city of Bamberg, written in 1951
Other views

Among the most active members of the German resistance and one of its few survivors, Hans Bernd Gisevius portrays Colonel Stauffenberg, whom he met in July 1944, as a man driven by reasons which had little to do with Christian ideals or repugnance of Nazi ideology. In his autobiographical Bis zum bitteren Ende ("To the Bitter End"), Gisevius writes:

Stauffenberg wanted to retain all the totalitarian, militaristic and socialistic elements of National Socialism (p. 504). What he had in mind was the salvation of Germany by military men who could break with corruption and maladministration, who would provide an orderly military government and would inspire the people to make one last great effort. Reduced to a formula, he wanted the nation to remain soldierly and become socialistic (p. 503).

Stauffenberg, was motivated by the impulsive passions of the disillusioned military man whose eyes had been opened by the defeat of German arms (p. 510). Stauffenberg had shifted to the rebel side only after Stalingrad (p. 512). The difference between Stauffenberg, Helldorf and Schulenburg — all of them counts— was that Helldorf had come to the Nazi Movement as a primitive, I might almost say an unpolitical revolutionary. The other two had been attracted primarily by a political ideology. Therefore, it was possible for Helldorf to throw everything overboard at once: Hitler, the Party, the entire system. Stauffenberg, Schulenberg and their clique wanted to drop no more ballast than was absolutely necessary; then they would paint the ship of state a military gray and set it afloat again (p. 513–514).

Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, wrote three books on the Third Reich, and covers various aspects of Stauffenberg's beliefs and philosophy. He wrote an article originally published in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23 January 2009 entitled "Why did Stauffenberg plant the bomb?" which states, "Was it because Hitler was losing the war? Was it to put an end to the mass murder of the Jews. Or was it to save Germany's honour? The overwhelming support, toleration, or silent acquiescence" from the people of his country for Hitler, that was also being heavily censored and constantly fed propaganda meant any action must be swift and successful. Evans writes, "Had Stauffenberg's bomb succeeded in killing Hitler, it is unlikely that the military coup planned to follow it would have moved the leading conspirators smoothly into power."

However, Karl Heinz Bohrer, a cultural critic, literary scholar, publisher, and visiting professor for German and Comparative Studies at Stanford University, criticized Evans' views in an article originally published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 30, 2010. Although agreeing that Evans is historically correct in much of his writing, Bohrer feels that Evans twists time lines and misrepresents certain aspects. He wrote of Evans, "In the course of his problematic argument he walks into two traps: 1. by contesting Stauffenberg's "moral motivation"; 2. by contesting Stauffenberg's suitability as role model." He further writes, "If then, as Evans notes with initial objectivity, Stauffenberg had a strong moral imperative – whether this stemmed from an aristocratic code of honour, Catholic doctrine or Romantic poetry – then this also underpinned his initial affinity for National Socialism which Stauffenberg misinterpreted as 'spiritual renewal.'"

In 1980, the German government established a memorial for the failed anti-Nazi resistance movement in a part of the Bendlerblock, the remainder of which currently houses the Berlin offices of the German Ministry of Defense (whose main offices remain in Bonn). The Bendlerstrasse was renamed the Stauffenbergstrasse, and the Bendlerblock now houses the Memorial to the German Resistance, a permanent exhibition with more than 5,000 photographs and documents showing the various resistance organizations at work during the Hitler era. The courtyard where the officers were shot on 21 July 1944 is now a memorial site, with a plaque commemorating the events and a bronze figure of a young man with his hands symbolically bound which resembles Count von Stauffenberg.


Tombstone/Rememberance stone for the 20th July victims. Memorial at the cemetery (Alter St.-Matthäus Kirchhof, Berlin) where the corpses were buried but afterwards removed to an unknown place.

Plaque at the Bendlerblock (Berlin) in 2007
Family

Stauffenberg married Nina Freiin von Lerchenfeld on 26 September 1933 in Bamberg. They had five children: Berthold; Heimeran; Franz-Ludwig; Valerie; and Konstanze, who was born in Frankfurt on the Oder after Stauffenberg's execution. Berthold, Heimeran, Franz-Ludwig and Valerie, who were not told of their father's deed, were placed in a foster home for the remainder of the war and were forced to use new surnames, as Stauffenberg was now considered taboo. Nina died at the age of 92 on 2 April 2006 at Kirchlauternear Bamberg, and was buried there on 8 April. Berthold went on to become a general in West Germany's post-war Bundeswehr. Franz-Ludwig became a member of both the German and European parliaments, representing Bavaria. In 2008, Konstanze von Schulthess-Rechberg wrote a best-selling book about her mother, Nina Schenk Graefin von Stauffenberg.

Describing her late husband, Nina von Stauffenberg said:

He let things come to him, and then he made up his mind ... one of his characteristics was that he really enjoyed playing the devil's advocate. Conservatives were convinced that he was a ferocious Nazi, and ferocious Nazis were convinced he was an unreconstructed conservative. He was neither.

Stauffenberg memorial site in Altes Schloss in Stuttgart
Assignments, promotions and decorations

Assignments
  • 1 January 1926 – 17th (Bavarian) Cavalry Regiment, Bamberg
  • 17 October 1927 – Infantry School, Dresden
  • 1 October 1928 – Cavalry School, Hannover
  • 30 July 1930 – Pioneer Course
  • 18 November 1930 – Mortar Course
  • 1 October 1934 – Cavalry School, Hannover / Adjutant
  • 6 October 1936 – War Academy, Berlin
  • 1 August 1938 – 1st Light Division (renamed 6th Panzer Division 18 October 1939) / Second Staff Officer (Ib)
  • 31 May 1940 – OKH / General Staff / Organization Branch / Section Head II
  • 15 February 1943 – 10th Panzer Division / Senior Staff Officer (Ia)
  • 7 April 1943 – Seriously wounded in Tunisia, assigned to Officer Reserve Pool
  • 1 November 1943 – OKH / General Army Office / Chief of Staff
  • 20 June 1944 – OKW / Chief of Replacement Army / Chief of General Staff
  • 4 August 1944 – (Posthumous) Expelled from Wehrmacht by the Führer at the recommendation of the Army Court of Honour
Promotions
  • 18 August 1927 – Fahnenjunker-Gefreiter
  • 15 October 1927 – Fahnenjunker-Unteroffizier
  • 1 August 1929 – Fähnrich
  • 1 January 1930 – Leutnant
  • 1 May 1933 – Oberleutnant
  • 1 January 1937 – Rittmeister (Hauptmann i.G. from 1 November 1939)
  • 1 January 1941 – Major i.G.
  • 1 January 1943 – Oberstleutnant i.G.
  • 1 April 1944 – Oberst i.G.
Decorations and awards
  • 17 August 1929 – Sword of Honor
  • 2 October 1936 – Distinguished Service Badge, IVth Class
  • 1 April 1938 – Distinguished Service Badge, IIIrd Class
  • 31 May 1940 – Iron Cross, Ist Class
  • 25 October 1941 – Royal Bulgarian Order of Bravery, IVth Class
  • 11 December 1942 – Finnish Liberty Cross, IIIrd Class
  • 14 April 1943 – Wound Badge in Gold
  • 20 April 1943 – Italian-German Remembrance Medal
  • 8 May 1943 – German Cross in Gold


20th anniversary memorial service

Stauffenberg memorial site in Altes Schloss in Stuttgart


Popular culture

Films

Television


A German stamp of Stauffenberg and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke in commemoration of their 100th birthdays.



See also
OTHER LINKS:







JUDGE KOZINSKI: BRING BACK THE FIRING SQUAD

0
0


           One of my beloved Judges, Alex Kozinski, the Chief Judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, suggested a return to the firing squad. It is an idea that I strongly support, given the fact that the execution of Amrozi the Bali Bomberchanged me from being an opponent to a supporter of capital punishment.

            Most of all…


If we can send The Seal Team Six to kill Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists. Why can we not use them as the firing squad to kill all guilty murderers in America?






Judge Kozinski: Bring Back the Firing Squad

One of the nation’s most prominent judges is urging states that have the death penalty to abandon lethal injection and switch to the “more primitive” but “foolproof” firing squad as their primary method of executing death-row inmates.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote a blistering critique of lethal injection in a dissenting opinion in the death-penalty case of Joseph Wood, an Arizona convicted murderer whose July 23 execution was delayed by a Ninth Circuit panel on Saturday.

The court on Monday refused to rehear the case before the entire bench, letting stand a panel’s decision to hold up Mr. Wood’s execution until more was disclosed about the drugs and the executioners to be used in his lethal injection. Mr. Wood, 51, was set to die July 23 for the 1989 murders of his estranged girlfriend and her father.



Whatever happens to Wood, the attacks will not stop and for a simple reason: The enterprise is flawed. Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful—like something any one of us might experience in our final moments. But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should it. . . .

If some states and the federal government wish to continue carrying out the death penalty, they must turn away from this misguided path and return to more primitive—and foolproof—methods of execution. The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos. And the electric chair, hanging and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps. The firing squad strikes me as the most promising. Eight or ten large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time. There are plenty of people employed by the state who can pull the trigger and have the training to aim true . . .

Sure, firing squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood.


Judge Kozinski’s opinion is certain to fuel more debate over the future of lethal injection in the U.S. Law Blog reported earlier this year about attempts by lawmakers in at least two states to authorize the use of firing squads for capital punishment.

No state employs firing squads as a primary execution method, but Utah and Oklahoma permit death-row inmates to be shot under certain, narrow circumstances, accordingto the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Arizona case comes in the wake of recent highly publicized flawed executions around the country, including a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma in April. The episodes have raised questions about the capacity of states to properly administer lethal injections as they struggle to obtain the drugs to carry them out.

Judge Kozinski is also the latest judge to attack dysfunction in the broader death-penalty system. A federal judge in California last week struck down the state’s death penalty, saying the system there is “plagued by inordinate and unpredictable delay.”

The case of Mr. Wood was the latest court clash over lethal injection secrecy.

Arizona has disclosed the type of drugs it intends to use — a combination of Midazolam and Hydromorphone — and the planned dosages. It also said the drugs are domestically obtained, Food and Drug Administration-approved, and more than a year away from expiring.

But the state has declined to reveal information about the manufacturers and suppliers of the drugs, as well as details about the qualifications of the state prison employees assigned to put Mr. Wood to death.

The state argued that releasing such information would deter manufacturers from providing the drugs and expose the identities of the executioners, whose qualifications were reviewed by a state inspector general.

In a departure from other courts confronting similar confidentiality questions, the Ninth Circuit panel ruled that Mr. Wood’s First Amendment claim to that information “raised serious questions” that warranted more review.


Firing Squad Comic [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.jantoo.com/cartoon/12237347]


JUDGE ALEX KOZINSKI CARES FOR THE VICTIMS’ FAMILIES [PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTES ~ JULY 23, 2014]

0
0



Judge Alex Kozinski

QUOTE 1:"Immanuel Kant said it best. He said a society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else's life is simply immoral. So the question really... when the system works and when you manage to identify somebody who has done such heinous evil, do we as a society have a right to take his life? I think the answer's plainly yes. And I would go with Kant and I would say it is immoral for us not to."(November 7, 2007 Hoover Institution Interview)

QUOTE 2:"Most of us continue to believe that those who show utter contempt for human life by committing remorseless, premeditated murder justly forfeit the right to their own life."

QUOTE 3:Brutal facts have immense power; they etched deep marks in my psyche. Those who commit such atrocities, I concluded, forfeit their own right to live. We tarnish their memory of the dead and heed needless misery on their surviving families by letting the perpetrators live.[Tinkering with death February 10, 1997]

QUOTE 4:It's late Saturday night. Another execution is scheduled for next week, and the machinery of death is humming through my fax. And, despite the qualms, despite the queasiness I still feel every time an execution is carried out in my jurisdiction, I tinker away. I do it because I have taken an oath. But there's more. I do it because I believe that society is entitled to take the life of those who have shown utter contempt for the lives of others. And because I hear the tortured voices of the victims crying out to me for vindication.[Tinkering with death February 10, 1997]

AUTHOR: Alex Kozinski (born July 23, 1950) is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, an essayist, and a judicial commentator. Kozinski was born in Bucharest, Romania. In 1962, when he was 12, his parents, both Holocaust survivors, brought him to the United States. The family settled in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California, where his father, Moses, ran a small grocery store. Kozinski graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving an A.B. degree in 1972, and from the UCLA School of Law, receiving a J.D. degree in 1975. Kozinski clerked for future Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Ninth Circuit from 1975 to 1976, and then for Chief Justice Warren Burger from 1976 to 1977. From June 5, 1981 to August 1982, Kozinski served as the first U.S. Special Counsel appointed by President Ronald Reagan. In 1982, Kozinski was appointed chief judge at the newly formed United States Court of Federal Claims. In 1985, at the age of 35, Kozinski was appointed to a new seat at the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan, making him the youngest federal appeals court judge. Defending the court against criticism because of a controversial decision, Kozinski went on record emphasizing judicial independence: "It seems to me that this is what makes this country truly great—that we can have a judiciary where the person who appoints you doesn't own you." He also took a stand against the charge that the Ninth Circuit is overly liberal, which led some to call it "The Notorious Ninth": "I can say with some confidence that cries that the Ninth Circuit is so liberal are just simply misplaced." On November 30, 2007, Kozinski was appointed the tenth chief judge of the Ninth Circuit. 


PLEASE GO TO THIS BLOG POST TO SEE JUDGE ALEX KOZINSKI IN A DEATH PENALTY DEBATE.
 



7 YEARS ON VIRGINIA DEATH ROW: CHRISTOPHER SCOTT EMMETT (EXECUTED: JULY 24, 2008)

0
0


            Christopher Scott Emmett was executed by lethal injection in Virginia on July 24, 2008. He murdered John F. Langley on April 27, 2001. Notice that he only spent seven years on death row after being sentenced to death on November 2, 2001! He is just like the D.C Sniper and Michael William Lenz, who also spent about 7 years on Death Row before being terminated from the face of the earth.

 
Christopher Scott Emmett

Citations:
Emmett v. Commonwealth, 264 Va. 364, 569 S.E.2d 39 (Va. 2002) (Direct Appeal).
Emmett v. Warden of Sussex I State Prison, 269 Va. 164, 609 S.E.2d 602 (Va. 2005) (Stae Habeas)
Emmett v. Johnson, --- F.3d ----, 2008 WL 2736034 (4th Cir. 2008) (Sec. 1983).
Emmett v. Kelly, 474 F.3d 154 (4th Cir. 2007) (Habeas).

Final/Special Meal:
Emmett requested a particular last meal but asked that his choices be kept private.

Final Words:
"Tell my family and friends I love them, tell the governor he just lost my vote. Y'all hurry this along, I'm dying to get out of here."

Summary: Emmett and John Fenton Langley were sharing a room in a Danville motel in April of 2001 as part of an out-of-town roofing crew. On the night Langley was killed, he bought food and grilled for Emmett and other co-workers. They then played cards at the motel. Later Langley was killed as he slept. In a taped confession to police, Emmett admitted striking Langley in the head with a lamp in the motel room they were sharing, robbing him of $100, buying and smoking crack cocaine, then calling the police to report that something had happened to his roommate.


"My brother died a horrible, horrible death,"said Gene Langley, 48, of Rocky Mount, N.C. "Christopher, he was a coward. ... He needs to be punished." Gene Langley and six other family members, including John Langley's adult daughter and son, plan to witness Emmett's execution. "It's not going to bring my brother back by no means in this world, but it does not allow him to live and that's what I'm after," Gene Langley said. "He didn't kill one person, he killed five — he killed a brother, he killed a son, he killed an uncle, he killed a father, and he killed a grandfather," he said.

PRISON KILLER EXECUTED: MICHAEL WILLIAM LENZ (EXECUTED IN VIRGINIA ON JULY 27, 2006)

0
0


On this date, July 27, 2006, Michael William Lenz was executed by lethal injection in Virginia for the murder of his inmate, Brent Henry Parker on January 16, 2000. Please go to this previous Blog Post to learn more.


Michael William Lenz


Victim, Brent Henry Parker




TEDDY ROOSEVELT CONDEMNED PACIFISM [SOLDIERS’ QUOTE ~ JULY 17, 2014]

MEET THE PRESIDENT OF LIVE ACTION: LILA ROSE

0
0


            The Founder and President of Live Action, Lila Rose is one of my favorite Pro Life Activists, she is one person I strongly admire and respect. She does remind me of the Sophie Scholl, who bravely spoke out against the Nazis during World War II. I will post information about her from Wikipedia and other links.


Lila Rose, President of Live Action
  
Born
Lila Grace Rose
July 27, 1988 (age 25)
San Jose, California, U.S.
Alma mater
University of California, Los Angeles
Known for
Pro-life activism
Religion
Roman Catholic

Lila Grace Rose(born July 27, 1988) is an American pro-life activist and the founder of the pro-life group Live Action. She conducts undercover investigations of abortion facilities in the United States, including affiliates of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Biography

Rose was raised in San Jose, California, the third of eight children. She was home-schooled through the end of high school and majored in history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She was raised Protestant and converted to Catholicism.

Rose founded the pro-life group Live Action when she was 15 and continued her activism at UCLA. She cites Joan of Arc, Mark Crutcher, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, and J. C. Willke as influences.


Live Action Logo [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.liveaction.org/]
Activism

At the age of 15, Rose founded Live Action and began giving presentations to schools and youth groups. While at UCLA, she partnered with conservative activist James O’Keefe III, who found inspiration in activist Saul Alinsky's grassroots organizing handbook Rules for Radicals. After further inspiration by Texas activist Mark Crutcher's taping of calls to Planned Parenthood locations featuring women posing as pregnant minors, Rose and O'Keefe donned hidden cameras in the fall of 2006 and recorded staffers in several Planned Parenthood facilities.

Rose has investigated abortion facilities, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, NAF affiliates, and others, across the country since then. Her activism focuses on issues such as the financial aspect of the abortion industry, the moral and ethical implications of abortion itself, and the activities of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the United States. Her "Racism Project," highlighting the high abortion rate in the African-American community, received support from Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rose's investigations generally comprise investigators (including Rose herself) portraying themselves as girls or women seeking abortion for some reason – for example, a 15-year-old girl impregnated by a 23-year-old male. (In 2007, Rose released videos in which she used this particular persona to document staff at Planned Parenthood facilities advising her to lie about her age and promising to cover up her partner's age.)

Rose has attended workshops at the conservative non-profit Leadership Institute. In 2009, as an invited speaker at the Values Voters Summit, she suggested that "if I could insist, as long as they are legal in our nation, abortions would be done in the public square, until we were so sick and tired of seeing them that we would do away with the injustice altogether. Maybe then we would value the unborn child as we value the one-year-old child just learning to walk[.]"

Undercover investigations

The Planned Parenthood Racism Project

In 2007, Rose, through her organization Live Action, released recordings of Planned Parenthood staff, including directors of development in Idaho and New Mexico, accepting racist donations specifically intended for abortions of African-American children.

The Mona Lisa Project

Another investigation, called the Mona Lisa Project, involved Rose posing as a 13-year-old minor impregnated by a 31-year-old man. In a video recorded at a Bloomington, Indiana Planned Parenthood facility, when told that she will need parental consent and must name the father, Rose balks. At first, the Planned Parenthood staffer says that the crime must be reported to Child Protective Services, but after a moment of silence, she says, "Okay, I didn't hear the age. I don't want to know the age. It could be reported as rape. And that's child abuse."

Also in the Mona Lisa Project, Rose shot an undercover video at a Planned Parenthood facility in Birmingham, Alabama that resulted in the state placing the clinic on probation for a year. This same facility shut down "temporarily" in early January 2014 and has yet to reopen.

Sex trafficking

In February 2011, Rose released undercover videos from Planned Parenthood facilities in several cities. These show an unidentified man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute, soliciting advice from Planned Parenthood staff on how to procure abortions and birth control for underage sex workers whom the pimp "manages." Rose said that the videos proved that Planned Parenthood intentionally breaks laws and covers up abuse. In response to the videos, Planned Parenthood claimed to have reported the incidents to the FBI but also stated that over 11,000 staffers "who have contact with patients and teens" would be "retrained." Planned Parenthood also claimed to have reported to the FBI at least 12 visits to its clinics by the man in the videos prior to their publication.

No criminal charges or investigations resulted from the videos. Rose asked Ken Cuccinelli, then the attorney general of Virginia, to investigate Planned Parenthood as a result of the videos. He conceded during a Fox interview that he lacks "an actual case of it on film"– meaning a case that involves victims instead of actors pretending to run a sex-slave business. Cuccinelli went on to say, "But what you do have is clearly an open willingness of several organizations, meaning subsidiaries of Planned Parenthood nationally in the same category, sex trafficking of minors, and an open willingness to participate in this."

Live Action national counsel Peter Breen said an actual case is not needed, comparing the Live Action videos to the undercover journalism in NBC's To Catch a Predator. United States Attorney General Eric Holder declined to pursue charges in the matter, stating, "It is my understanding that the FBI actually has looked at that matter" and that "prosecution was declined in that matter."

Gendercide

In May 2012, Rose released a series of videos showing employees at Planned Parenthood and NAF abortion centers advising patients on how to procure sex-selective abortions. The undercover investigator posed as a pregnant mother seeking an abortion on the grounds that her child was female, whereas she preferred a male.

After the first video (captured in Austin, TX) was released, Planned Parenthood denied supporting sex-selective elective abortion and fired the employee featured in the tape. Similar footage from Planned Parenthood locations in Maui and Honolulu, Hawaii – including a counselor's advice on how to fund a sex-selective abortion with state tax money – elicited no subsequent response from the organization.

Another release showed employees at two Arizona abortion facilities – Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix and the Tucson Women's Center in Tucson – instructing the investigator to suppress her reason for seeking the abortion. After hearing that the investigator desires to abort her fetus for being female, the Phoenix counselor tells her, "Don't let it be known!," while the surgical assistant in Tucson says, "I'll just forget about it ... but just be sure not to mention it [to the abortion doctor]." Sex-selective abortion is illegal in Arizona. Neither the two taped clinics nor the NAF took any action following the release.

Inhuman

In the Spring of 2013, Rose released a series of undercover videos documenting late-term abortion doctors' stated policy toward children born alive as the result of a failed abortion attempt. The video release coincided with intense media scrutiny of the ongoing Kermit Gosnell murder trial. These include a video where Cesare Santangelo, a Washington, D.C. abortion doctor, admits that he would let a child die if born alive during an abortion:


Technically – you know, legally we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive. But, you know, it probably wouldn't. It's all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point,' Santangelo tells the undercover activist working for the pro-life group Live Action. 'Let's say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know? Then we would do things – we would – we would not help it. We wouldn't intubate. It would be, you know, uh, a person, a terminal person in the hospital, let's say, that had cancer, you know? You wouldn't do any extra procedures to help that person survive. Like 'do not resuscitate' orders. We would do the same things here.


Commentators opposing restrictions on abortion have accused Live Action of editing the Inhumanvideos in a misleading manner. William Saletan of Slate criticized the videos as "orchestrated to embarrass doctors and their clinics." Saletan claimed that he "went through the raw footage to see what the video editors took out." Live Action includes raw footage with every video release.

On Thursday, May 23, 2013, U.S. Representative Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) showed Live Action's Arizona video from the Inhuman campaign as support for HR 1797, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban the majority of abortions after 20 weeks' (five months') gestation throughout the United States. The bill eventually passed in the House, by a vote of 228 to 196. Senator Lindsey Graham is expected to bring the bill up for consideration in the Senate.

Recognition and awards

Rose was featured in the 2010 CNN documentary Right on the Edge, which spotlighted young conservative activists. She has appeared on many cable television news shows, including The O'Reilly Factor,Hannity,, The Glenn Beck Program, and CNN's Crossfire.

In 2008, Rose was awarded $50,000 in the annual "Life Prizes" awards, sponsored by the Gerard Health Foundation, a pro-life charity. She also received the "Person of the Year Malachi Award" from Operation Rescue that same year.

In 2010, she was named a "Young Leader" by the pro-life non-profit Susan B. Anthony List.
In July 2013, National Journal included Rose in their list of "The 25 Most Influential Washington Women Under 35."

OTHER LINKS:



LIVE ACTION: A PRO-LIFE ORGANIZATION

0
0


            As I was a formerly Pro-Choice before I became Pro-Life, I would love to endorse this Pro-Life Organization, Live Action. I recommend Pro-Lifers to follow Live Action News to get updates daily. I will post information about this organization from Wikipedia and other links. I would start with a prayer to end abortion, in regards to praying for the success of Live Action.


Live Action Logo [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.liveaction.org/]


Prayer to End Abortion

Lord God, I thank you today for the gift of my life,
And for the lives of all my brothers and sisters.

I know there is nothing that destroys more life than abortion,
Yet I rejoice that you have conquered death
by the Resurrection of Your Son.

I am ready to do my part in ending abortion.
Today I commit myself
Never to be silent,
Never to be passive,
Never to be forgetful of the unborn.

I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement,
And never to stop defending life
Until all my brothers and sisters are protected,
And our nation once again becomes
A nation with liberty and justice
Not just for some, but for all.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen!


Live Actionis an American pro-life non-profit organization founded by Lila Rose in 2004. According to their website, they are a "youth led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending abortion." They are known for their undercover video exposés Planned Parenthoodclinics.

Operations

Live Action publishes The Advocate, a student-based magazine distributed on dozens of college campuses throughout the country.

Live Action also operates an online news and opinion outlet called Live Action News. The group maintains a Facebook page with over 650,000 fans and a Twitter feed, @LiveActionFilms, with over 22,000 followers.

As a youth advocacy organization, Live Action regularly organizes and participates in rallies and protests, demonstrations, and media events.

Activities

2010

In 2010, a sting by Live Action on a Birmingham Planned Parenthood clinic led to a state investigation and the clinic being placed on probation by the Department of Health for what the state described as a "technical violation." This same facility shut down "temporarily" in early January 2014 and has yet to reopen.

2011

Live Action gained attention in February 2011 for undercover videos at multiple Planned Parenthood affiliates. The videos show Planned Parenthood staff counseling an investigator posing as a pimp on how to procure clandestine abortions and STD testing for his underage sex workers. According to spokespeople at Planned Parenthood, the organization reported the activities of the individuals involved to the Federal Bureau of Investigation before the videos were made public. Neither the Justice Department nor the FBI would confirm that an investigation was launched.

After the video releases, Planned Parenthood denied Live Action's allegations that they condone or support sexual slavery and statutory rape. They also fired one of the employees in question.

On March 1, 2011, attorney general Eric Holder announced that there would be no prosecutions resulting from the video sting.

In March 2011, Live Action partnered with the Susan B. Anthony List for a bus tour through 13 congressional districts either condemning or praising their representatives for their votes on defunding Planned Parenthood of tax dollars through the Pence Amendment. Planned Parenthood sent a bus to follow the Live Action & SBA List bus in response. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director-turned-pro-life activist Abby Johnson joined Live Action's effort in early 2011 and partnered with the SBA List on ad campaigns to support the defunding.

2012

In May 2012, Live Action released a series of videos showing employees at Planned Parenthood and NAF abortion centers advising patients on how to procure sex-selective abortions. The undercover investigator posed as a pregnant mother seeking an abortion on the grounds that her child was female, whereas she preferred a male.

After the first video (captured in Austin, TX) was released, Planned Parenthood denied supporting sex-selective elective abortion and fired the employee featured in the tape. Similar footage from Planned Parenthood locations in Maui and Honolulu, Hawaii - including a counselor's advice on how to fund a sex-selective abortion with state tax money - elicited no subsequent response from the organization.

Another video showed employees at two Arizona abortion facilities - Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix and the Tucson Women's Center in Tucson - instructing the investigator to suppress her reason for seeking the abortion. After hearing that the investigator desires to abort her fetus for being female, the Phoenix counselor tells her, "Don't let it be known!," while the surgical assistant in Tucson says, "I'll just forget about it ... but just be sure not to mention it [to the abortion provider]." Sex-selective abortion is illegal in Arizona. Neither the two taped clinics nor the NAF took any action following the release.

2013

In the Spring of 2013, Live Action released a series of undercover videos documenting late-term abortion doctors' stated policy toward children born alive as the result of a failed abortion attempt. The video release coincided with intense media scrutiny of the ongoing Kermit Gosnell murder trial. These include a video where Cesare Santangelo, a Washington, D.C. abortion doctor, admits that he would let a child die if born alive during an abortion:


Technically – you know, legally we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive. But, you know, it probably wouldn’t. It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point," Santangelo tells the undercover activist working for the pro-life group Live Action. "Let’s say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know? Then we would do things – we would –we would not help it. We wouldn’t intubate. It would be, you know, uh, a person, a terminal person in the hospital, let’s say, that had cancer, you know? You wouldn’t do any extra procedures to help that person survive. Like ‘do not resuscitate’ orders. We would do the same things here.


Commentators opposing restrictions on abortion have accused Live Action of editing the Inhumanvideos in an intentionally misleading manner. William Saletan of Slatecriticized Live Action's Inhuman videos as "orchestrated to embarrass doctors and their clinics." Saletan claimed that he "went through the raw footage to see what the video editors took out." Live Action includes raw footage with every video release.

On Thursday, May 23, 2013, U.S. Representative Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) showed Live Action's Arizona video from the Inhumancampaign as support for HR 1797, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban the majority of abortions after 20 weeks' (five months') gestation throughout the United States. The bill eventually passed in the House, by a vote of 228 to 196, and now awaits consideration in the Senate.

OTHER LINKS:





EXECUTED TODAY: A TALE OF TWO WORST OF THE WORST JAPANESE KILLERS (BOTH EXECUTED ON 28 JULY 2009)

0
0


On this date, 28 July 2009, two Japanese murderers, Hiroshi Maeue and Yamaji Yukio were both executed by hanging in Japan. Hiroshi Maeue was a Serial Killer, while Yamaji Yukio committed murder when he was a juvenile and he murdered again when he was released.


Hiroshi Maeue


Yamaji Yukio 山地悠紀夫

RESPECTING THE ELDERLY: HAROLD LYON MCELMURRY III (EXECUTED IN OKLAHOMA ON JULY 29, 2003)

0
0


            On this date, July 29, 2003, Harold Loyd McElmurry III was executed for the murders of an elderly couple on August 2, 1999. He needed a suicide assist and he gave himself up to be put to death. I am grateful that he was repentant.


Harold Loyd McElmurry III

"I'd like to say I'm sorry to the Pendleys. I hope they can forgive me." 
- The last words of Harold Loyd McElmurry III

            Please go to this previous blog post to learn more about this killer.
Viewing all 1603 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images