Attempting to kill the un-killable.

Valkyrie

by

Philip Freiherr Von Boeselager,

with

Florence Fehrenbach, Jerome Fehrenbach,

Steven Rendall (Translator)

Published by

Alfred A. Knopf

This is a work of history, biography and fiction combined; no mean achievement in such a small volume. It is a history of Germany prior to, and during the Second World War. It is a biography of the Von Boeselager family, and it is fiction in its selection of facts.

Ostensively, this is the story of the attempt by army officers to assassinate their Führer, Adolf Hitler, when it became apparent that his fanatical proclivities would not win the Second World War. A war, it should be remembered, started by Germany, and fought overwhelmingly by the German army, and not by the Waffen SS (10% of the army), Gestapo or any other of extreme group conjured up by an insane dictator.

As history, it introduces the reader to the world of privilege and luxury in pre-war Germany. We get a good idea what it was like to be born into the nobility, and the trials and tribulations of hunting shooting and fishing, and the extension of that bucolic existence into the army of the 1930’s.

As a biography; and that is essentially, what the book is, we learn about Von Boeselager’s elder brother Georg. Boeselager confers almost god-like status on this sibling, and based on this information it would be justified. When he was not riding off into the woods destroying wildlife, he was busy riding the Russian steppes destroying Russians. He was wounded, and ultimately killed by them

Boeselager himself was no shrinking violet when it came to fighting, he was wounded five times and lived to tell the tale until he was ninety. The infusion of shot and shell did nothing to prejudice his longevity, and he has been able to relate his story to Florence and Jerome Fehrenbach whose prose has been admirably translated by Steven Rendall.

This work was originally published in Germany in 2008 as ‘We Wanted To Kill Hitler’, or something close to that in German. Someone had the great idea of bringing it to the USA to coincide with the release of Tom Cruse’s movie ‘Valkyrie’, so they did, and changed the name. I do not know if the idea worked. I am inclined to hope that it did not, as the two stories are very different. The 60 or so years, which have passed since the occurrences referred to, have taken their toll on the authors memory. This fact is very convenient as it enables Boeselager to distance himself by omission from the unpleasant activities occasioned by the German army in their relentless blitz-krieg of Western and Eastern Europe.

We are all soft and gullible these days, but it stretches credulity to its limits to suggest that these fine upstanding army officers were unaware of the atrocities meted out daily upon hundreds of thousands of people. The book refers only to the murder of five Gypsies. According to Boeselager, when the war was over and they were thoroughly beaten, his regiment strolled back to Paderborn and amused themselves with equestrian pursuits until America put their country back together.

A thorough investigation into Operation Valkyrie this book is not, but it is a good read nonetheless. I enjoyed reading it and would read it again.