Oster, Stauffenberg, and Valkyrie

I haven’t yet seen “Valkyrie,” but I’m pretty familiar with the relevant history, and will be interested to see how accurately it is reflected in the film.

It appears that–as is the case with almost all writing/video dealing with the German military conspiracy against Hitler–the film is strongly focused on the activities of Colonel Count Stauffenberg. It’s easy to see why filmmakers would want to emphasize Stauffenberg’s role and story–with his aristocratic lineage, his good looks, his attractive wife, and his love of poetry (he was a devotee of Stefan George), the man makes a fine dramatic hero. Stauffenberg was a complex individual and a man of many quirks, some of them likeable–like his habit of lying on the rug with his wife and reading English novels together, each waiting for the other to finish the page–and some not so likeable, like his tendency to lose his temper if his boots weren’t lined up precisely by his adjutant. One can see why he would be attractive to writers and movie-makers.

However.

There were quite a few German officers involved in the plot against Hitler, and some of them committed themselves much earlier than Stauffenberg did. Hans Oster, in particular, could reasonably be considered as the driving force behind the whole enterprise. It’s interesting to note that no one playing the Oster role shows up in the cast list for “Valkyrie”–there may be legitimate dramatic reasons for this, but I hope that the movie at least gives credit in some form to Oster’s very important role.

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Incoming Links to this Blog (and Other Feeds)

In the list of feeds near the top of the right sidebar, I’ve added a link to a Google feed that displays links from other blogs to this blog. This feed seems like an improvement over trackback links on individual posts, which are a spam magnet. (And I removed the link to the feed from the Chicago Boyz Forum, which is currently inactive.)

Please note also that each post on this blog displays, at the top of the list of comments, a link to a comments feed for that particular post. There used to be a link in the blog’s upper-right sidebar to a feed that displayed all comments from the blog, but I removed it because I thought it encouraged trolling. I don’t know if this was the right thing to do.

Is the current array of feeds optimal or could it be improved? I welcome suggestions.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

For the past few days, Israel has been conducting military operations against terrorist targets inside Gaza. This is in response to Hamas launching repeated rocket attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

Although very interesting, events are still unfolding so I don’t want to discuss the current chapter of Israeli-Hamas conflict right now. But I thought you might be interested to know that Egyptian border guards have reportedly opened fire on Palestinians that have broken through the border defenses between Gaza and Egypt. (Hat tip to Glenn.)

No deaths have been reported, which indicates to me that the Egyptians really aren’t trying that hard to reseal the border. But I note with a great deal of Schadenfreude that the Egyptians probably wish they had built something like the Israeli security fence. You know, the same barrier that was condemned by Egypt back when construction was beginning.

Will Egypt begin building a similar barrier along their 9 mile border with Gaza? To be frank, I really doubt the Egyptians have the kind of money it would take to construct something as effective. But I think they will start to do what they can to beef up what they have.

The world press wasn’t very sympathetic to Israel when they started to build their security barrier. What do you want to bet that they won’t bother to report any activity by Egypt to seal their own border with Gaza?