Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin has passed away

The Knight Shift today is remembering and honoring the life of an army officer from Nazi Germany.  And for good reason...

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin was born in July of 1922.  More than two decades later at the age of 22, he was an infantry officer of the German army.  Ironic, since both Ewald-Heinrich and his father hated everything there was about Nazi ideology (the elder von Kleist-Schmenzin had even tried to arouse support from western countries for a coup against Hitler).

In January of 1944, Ewald-Heinrich was approached by Claus von Stauffenberg for a bold plan: to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a suicide bombing.  Von Kleist-Schmenzin volunteered to take the place of a wounded officer.  However the attempt had to be cancelled because Hitler kept postponing the event which would have him placed near the bomb.

Then came the following summer, and von Kleist-Schmenzin became involved with the now-famous July 20th Plot: the plan to kill Hitler - again by suicide bombing - while "Der Fuhrer" was at his Wolf's Lair retreat in the mountains of Poland.  This time it was von Stauffenberg who placed the explosive.  It went off: destroying the conference room but leaving Hitler himself virtually unscathed (the dictator later took it as a sign of divine intervention).  In the days that followed von Stauffenberg and most of his fellow conspirators were arrested and executed (some being hung with piano wire, with von Stauffenberg dying by firing squad).  Von Kleist-Schmenzin's father was one of those killed but almost miraculously, Ewald-Heinrich survived.  He wound up arrested and questioned, sent to a prison camp, then released and put back into army service.  All the while Ewald-Heinrich was helping the German resistance movement and doing a darned good job covering his tracks (obviously).

This past week, on March 8th 2013, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin - Nazi army officer and the last surviving conspirator of the plot to kill Hitler - passed away.  He was 90 years old.

Ewald-Heinrich, this blogger salutes you and your courage.  May you have a joyful reunion with both your beloved father and your Father in Heaven.

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"Hitler did nothing wrong"

Worst. Wi-fi network name. Ever.

That is a screen capture I made of my iPad this past Friday when I was at Mysticon at the Holiday Inn Tanglewood in Roanoke.  The hotel itself deserves bigtime props for opening up its own wi-fi network to all of the convention goers.  That's what I was doing when I was inside my iPad's network settings and saw... that.  We were waiting for the Peter Davison panel to begin in one of the hotel's ballrooms.  I haven't even made the image a JPG as usual: that's the original PNG file.  All I did was change the file name.

I know wi-fi SSID names need to be unique but c'mon: that is beyond the tasteless.

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Skull thought to be Hitler's is actually of a woman

In April of 1945, during the final days of the European theater and with the approaching rumble of Soviet tanks heralding the collapse of his "Thousand Year Reich", Adolf Hitler is said to have committed suicide within his Berlin bunker. His longtime mistress Eva Braun also joined him in death, rather than be captured alive. They took cyanide and then shot themselves. And according to surviving accounts, Hitler's aides took the bodies outside the bunker, doused them with gasoline and set them ablaze: an attempt to ensure that the Soviets could not make a trophy of the Fuhrer's remains.

But a year later, bones and skull fragments with bullet holes were found at the site by Russian forces. They were assumed to be all that was left of Adolf Hitler. The fragments sat in Moscow throughout the Cold War, and only in recent years have they finally come under the scrutiny of modern science.

And now, according to DNA studies... "Hitler's skull" is found to be that of a woman, most likely between the age of 20 and 40.

There's no telling who this skull might be then. My guess is that it might be Braun's, but absent any confirming DNA from possible relatives, there's no way we'll ever know. Just one more mystery then, among the myriad of enigmas, of World War II. But it also adds fuel to the fire about persistent theories that Hitler survived long after the war.

Or, maybe it really is Hitler's skull... and he was actually a woman? I've heard that one in my time too.

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No birthday cake for Adolf Hitler

Geez louise, is this a day for weird news or what?

A grocery store in Pennsylvania refused to decorate a birthday cake for three-year old Adolf Hitler Campbell. His parents Heath and Deborah eventually got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart. So now little Adolf will get to enjoy his cake along with siblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell.

Only in America...

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