Church and state leaders in Germany have commemorated "Operation Valkyrie", the July 1944 bomb plot led by Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, which narrowly failed to kill Adolf Hitler.
"We must be grateful to these people of 20 July", said Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne. "During the darkest chapter of German history 75 years ago, they cast a ray of light and gave courage to others by bravely following the voice of conscience".
The cardinal published his message during weekend commemorations of the plot, masterminded by the aristocrat and army officer von Stauffenberg with Generals Friedrich Olbricht and Ludwig Beck, in which a bomb was planted in the bunker briefing room of Hitler's Wolfsschanze, or Wolf's Lair headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia.
Meanwhile, Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin said the assassination attempt had occurred when "all humanity and human dignity" was being denied by the Nazis' mass killing of Jews and wartime occupation of neighbouring countries, adding that the complicity of Christian clergy in the plot, alongside people of various political views, had shown that "another Germany existed besides the Germany of nationalists".
Hitler was shielded by a heavy oak table and suffered only minor injuries in the explosion, for which the principal conspirators were shot by firing squad or strangled, and more than 7,000 others killed or sent to concentration camps in revenge.
Speaking at Stauffenberg's place of execution in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the anniversary was "a warning to all to be vigilant in opposing every form of racism and nationalism", while Germany's president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said the 1944 conspirators and other anti-Nazi groups deserved to be remembered for their "key part in the history of German freedom".
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