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“In the first stage Schlabrendorff’s hands were tied behind his back and his fingers encased in a contraption in which spikes penetrated into the fingertips; with the turning of a screw they penetrated deeper. When this produced no answer the prisoner was strapped down on a sort of bedstead and his legs were encased in tubes covered on the inside with sharp metal spikes; the tubes were slowly drawn tighter so that the spikes gradually penetrated deeper into the flesh. During this process his head was pushed into a sort of metal hood and covered with a blanket to muffle his screams. Meanwhile he was belaboured with bamboo canes and leather switches. In the third stage, using the same bedstead, his body was stretched either violently and in jerks or gradually. If he lost consciousness he was revived with douches of cold water. These tortures had extracted no confession from Schlabrendorff and so another method was tried. He was trussed up, bent forwards so that he could move neither backwards nor forwards, and then beaten from behind with a heavy club; with each blow he fell forward on his face with his full weight. All these tortures were applied to Schlabrendorff on the same day but the only result was that he lost consciousness. The next day he had a heart attack and could not move for several days. As soon as he had recovered, however, the tortures were repeated. Finally Schlabrendorff decided to say something. . . . [He implicated only a dead man the Nazis already knew about. As Hoffmann says on a previous page, “In fact Fabian von Schlabrendorff was so severely tortured that he was ultimately forced to abandon his initial policy of total silence and make statements implicating himself and those already dead. Only in this way, he thought, could he avoid tortures during which he might lose control of himself and his tongue.”] This seemed to temporarily satisfy the Gestapo; it was enough to prove complicity” (Hoffmann, 522, 521).

Those in power will stop at nothing: torture is routinely used by those in power today, as is known by those who already experience it. Would that we could emulate the courage of those who already resist, knowing the potential consequences.

356. Although pagans take a lot of heat because of Hitler’s dabblings in pseudo-paganism, the truth is that Hitler, and his atrocities, owe infinitely more to the mainstream Christians who supported him than to any pagans.

357. Previous paragraph from Hoffmann, and Mulholland. The Tresckow quote is from Mulholland, 8, although you can find it in many places. There are of course many heroes and heroines who resisted. And for right now for obvious reasons I’ve confined my list to those who tried to bring down Germany from within. There were also countless partisans and others in the occupied countries, and there were famous (and unknown) uprisings among those at concentration camps and among those about to be sent to concentration camps.

358. Montgomery, 62.

359. A modified version of the first two paragraphs appears in my book A Language Older Than Words.

360. Churchill, Struggle for the Land, 73.

361. The following several paragraphs were also used in a different form elsewhere.

362. I have to note that there were many who saw from the get-go that Hitler had to be killed, and there were many who tried to do something about this.

363. Hoffmann, 251.

364. Ibid., 253. Mason, 62, gives Hitler’s next two lines: “There is no time to lose! War must come in my lifetime.”

365. Of course, had Hitler been killed, the German economy would have trundled on as well.

Fulcrums

366. The Sun, October 2003, 48.

367. Fulcra, for those Latin aficionados keeping score at home.

368. One common way is through amassing money, but this power seeking takes many forms.

369. Or even talk about fighting back.

370. Hoffmann, 258.

371. Formerly the Bürgerbräu restaurant.

372. Mason, 80. I want to emphasize, it was as easy as that.

373. Some accounts make this a 180 mm shell.

374. Mason, 81-82.

375. Mason’s account states