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News & ArtsTuesday, March 12, 2013
Death / History RIP, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, Would-Be Suicide Bomber
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 1:14 PM
This obituary of Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist in the Guardian has some strange tidbits from the historical locker. The man was surrounded by death, and volunteered for death, but somehow survived to the age of 90.
Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and Von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest underneath, and detonate it when he stood next to the dictator.
Years later, Von Kleist remembered explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly before telling his 22-year-old son: "Yes, you have to do this."
"Fathers love their sons and mine certainly did, and I had been quite sure he would say no," Von Kleist recalled. "But, as always, I had underestimated him."
That plot didn't work out. Neither did the more famous plot Von Kleist was involved in, but somehow survived.
But when news spread that Hitler had survived, the plot crumbled and Von Stauffenberg, Von Kleist's father and scores of others were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings. Some were hanged by the neck with piano wire. Von Stauffenberg was shot by firing squad.
Von Kleist himself was arrested and questioned at length by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp, but then inexplicably let go and returned to combat duty.
He survived that, too. Von Kleist died at home instead.
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en…
http://www.nordbayern.de/polopoly_fs/1.2…
http://mi-cache.legacy.com/usercontent/n…
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