Would-be Hitler assassin dies

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, believed to be the last surviving member of the inner circle of plotters who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944 with a briefcase bomb, has died. He was 90.

The German military said in a statement Friday that the former army major died Thursday night. It did not give a cause of death.
Von Boeselager was part of a group of officers who tried to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, supplying explosives for the operation led by Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg.

Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers. Hitler escaped harm when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the bomb's explosive force.

Almost immediately afterward, von Stauffenberg and many of his cohorts were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings that saw some hanged by the neck with piano wire.

Though many of those rounded up by Nazi officials were tortured in the hopes they would give up other conspirators, von Boeselager's name was never divulged and he was never found out.
Still, he carried a cyanide capsule with him until the end of the war in case his secret was revealed.

The von Stauffenberg plot is the basis for the upcoming Tom Cruise film "Valkyrie" in which the American actor plays the aristocratic colonel.

Von Boeselager, who lived in Altenahr, near Bonn, was first recruited by von Stauffenberg co-conspirator Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow in 1942, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview three weeks ago that was published Friday.
He said he knew that Jews were being systematically killed and that Germany was waging a war of annihilation along the Eastern Front with Russia and that he never considered declining taking part in the plot.

By 1942, he said that "It was no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes," the newspaper quoted him as saying.