The Stauffenberg Myth
It's alive and well in Germany. He is hyped almost into sainthood.
The reality, however is...
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, who, in case Stauffenberg had been successful, would have been German chancellor, wrote after he was imprisoned:
“We must not gloss over what has happened ((in regards to the Holocaust)), but we must also note the great guilt of the Jews, who broke into our public life in forms, that lacked all necessary/bidden reservation/restraint.”
Before the coup he was worried primarily about the stain on Germany's honor that the mass murder of the Jews would bring in the future, but not about the bloodshed itself.
In fact, Goerdeler and the rest of the conspirators were part of the society of reactionary national-conservatives that held the stirrups for Hitler in the first place. Stauffenberg wrote very positively about Adolf in his diary. He even wrote “Der Kerl macht Krieg!” (the guy/lad makes war), which, of course, his worshippers try to construct into a negative meaning. But let's face it “Kerl” itself isn't negative at all and certainly wasn't negative then. Even today it has a very positive notion and can easily border admiration in a manly way, being a/the “Kerl” turning into something like being the man. Had it been negative, Stauffenberg would have written “Saukerl” or similar.
Many of them supported the Madagascar Plan (deportation of all Jews to Madagascar.) To them Hitler's mass extermination simply took it a bit too far. Deporting all Jews from Germany would have been enough. Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler were “liberal” enough to plan on how to exclude the Jews from the future, post-Hitler German society. How nice of them, right?
Artur Nebe, as part of one of the Einsatzgruppen (Einsatzgruppe B), organized the murder of thousands of Jewish men, women and children. General Hoeppner ordered the execution of Soviet POWs. Henning von Tresckow and Phillip von Boeselager were commanding officers of units that took part on anti-partisan operations, which were nothing else but massacres of the civilian population. Tresckow, as a staff officer of the army group Mitte, was informed of the massacres committed by the Einsatzgruppen. Boeselager (who organized the explosives) was not caught in the wake of the coup and he kept defending his actions as anti-partisan fighter (aka butcher of women and children) even after the “controversial” Wehrmacht exhibition back in the 90s (oh the screaming that one caused among certain elements, after all it dispelled the myth of the clean and honorable Wehrmacht.) His opinion on the legacy of July 20 was “duty to the fatherland”.
Today the Bundeswehr uses these people as a role model for standing up for human rights, human dignity and freedom and liberty, which, in fact, none of them supported. The connection between opposition against Hitler and the nationalist militarism of the old Prussian nobility has been successfully made. It doesn't matter that they supported Hitler in the beginning, embraced his war, took part in war crimes and were anti-Semites until the end, no, just that they tried to kill Hitler to save Germany is enough to absolve them from everything else.
Stauffenberg is sold as a saint. Even making fun of him, no matter how harmless, is forbidden, as German comedian Oliver Pocher had to experience.
Henning von Tresckow said it: “The assassination must be done, no matter the cost. The practical effect is no longer relevant, but rather is it important that the German resistance makes the decisive move in front of the world and history. Compared to that everything else is irrelevant.”
It was about “saving” their “holy Germany”. The reputation of Germany in the world had to be saved, the mass murder in Auschwitz and the slaughter on the Eastern Front mattered not.