Treason, a new and highly engaging podcast, tells the remarkable true story of Claus von Stauffenberg and the plot to assassinate Hitler.
Creator and Barkers Creek resident, Brian Walters AM, told the Express that Stauffenberg was a great source of inspiration for him.
“I first read about Claus von Stauffenberg as a school boy. His courage and clarity of purpose, when all around others clamoured in support of the Führer, has stayed with me all my life,” Brian said.
“It would have been so easy for him to do nothing. To just sit it out. But he was the sort of person who tried to do what he could, and we need that in the world.
“This podcast is the result of that long fascination… and 25 years of research.”
Brian’s father lived in Nazi Germany in 1939, only narrowly making his escape. While there, he made contact with people who were against the Nazi regime and they talked to him at length about their experiences. Years later his father shared those stories with his son.
“I began to take an interest in research, which took me on quite a long, and fascinating journey,” Brian said.
“I have spoken to the Stauffenberg family and met Claus’s eldest son, Berthold, who was 10 years old when his father was shot.”
Brian describes Claus von Stauffenberg as a remarkable man – a poet and a protege of the German poet, Stefan George. Claus, who had considered a career as a solo cellist, joined the army in 1926. He was a star recruit who achieved very rapid promotion.
“He was a brilliant staff officer and seen by many, including Hitler as the most brilliant in the German Army, which gave him immense influence and access to Hitler,” Brain said.
“A decorated war hero, he had been badly wounded in North Africa, losing his right hand, two fingers of his left hand and his left eye, and could have sat out the war on a pension.
“He was married with four children and his wife was pregnant with his fifth,” Brian said.
“He had everything to live for, yet he was prepared to risk all that, to try and rid the world of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.”
Claus was the leader of the German Resistance from late 1943. He planned to take specially manufactured plastic explosives into a briefing conference to kill everyone and make sure Hitler was killed.
“While Stauffenberg was arming the bomb, which was very difficult for a person with three fingers and one eye to do, he was interrupted. He had two one-kilogram lumps of plastic explosives. He’d put detonators into one of them, when he was interrupted, and he was unable to arm the second explosive. As it was, four people were killed and a number of people were injured,” Brian said.
“Hitler was also injured. He was never seen in public without holding his right arm thereafter. He had broken eardrums and so on, but he was able to function.”
Follow the gripping audio narrative of Claus von Stauffenberg, the process of building an insurrection against Hitler and the many attempts on Hitler’s life by the courageous people in the German resistance who were prepared to act.
Check out the first three episodes of TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the plot to kill Hitler wherever you listen to your podcasts.
