Kohl Salutes ‘Patriots’ in Hitler Plot

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said today that the officers who tried to kill Adolf Hitler 46 years ago were “German patriots” who had helped Germany return to the fold of free nations.

In a speech marking the July 20, 1944, plot against Hitler, Kohl said the resistance to the Nazi regime “remains for us a warning and a duty for the future in a united Germany.”

East and West Germany are moving toward complete unification late this year following last year’s collapse of the Communist government in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“The men and women of the German resistance gave, in the darkest times, a bright example of the unbending will for freedom,” Kohl said. “Before history and before the eyes of the world, they made it clear with their courage that there is the indestructible other Germany--the Germany of freedom, of human dignity of peace and reconciliation.”

Eighteen people were executed for complicity in the assassination attempt that was planned by several high-ranking German officers.

The attempt was made after the German army had suffered several military reverses in the closing stages of World War II.

Col. Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a German count, put a briefcase containing a bomb at Hitler’s feet during a conference, then went outside the headquarters room to answer a prearranged phone call.

Another officer then inadvertently moved the briefcase because it was in his way. It was placed behind a partition that shielded Hitler from the blast. He survived and staggered from the rubble.

In East Berlin, deputies stood in silence as a statement marking the anniversary was read in Parliament.

“With greatest respect we bow to those honorable patriots, who tried . . . to put an end to the Hitler regime,” the statement said.