NOTEWORTHY DEATH

Would-be assassin of Hitler in 1944

BERLIN - As a 22-yearold German army lieutenant, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist volunteered to wear a suicide vest to a meeting with Adolf Hitler and to blow himself up along with the Nazi dictator.

The assassination didn’t come to pass, but von Kleist went on to play a key role in the most famous attempt on Hitler later that same year, and was the last surviving member of the group of German officers who tried and failed to kill the Fuehrer on July 20, 1944.

Von Kleist died Friday at age 90 at his home in Munich, his wife Gundula von Kleist said.

Von Kleist was born July 10, 1922, on his family estate Schmenzin in Pomerania in an area of northeastern Germany that is today Poland.

Von Kleist’s father, Ewald von Kleist, was an early opponent of Hitler even before he rose to power, and was arrested many times after the Nazi dictator took control in 1933. Despite his family’s opposition to the Nazis, younger von Kleist joined the German army in 1940, and was wounded in 1943 in fighting on the Eastern Front.

During his convalescence, he was approached in January 1944 by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, another officer from an aristocratic family, and presented with a plan to kill Hitler. Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and von Stauffenberg proposedthat he wear a suicide vest underneath, and detonate it when he stood next to the dictator. The suicide attack plan never came to fruition.

Months later, however, von Kleist was approached again by von Stauffenberg to take part in what would become known as the July 20 plot - for the day in 1944 that the assassination was attempted. Von Kleist was supposed to play a key role as the person who was to carry a briefcase packed with explosives to a meeting with Hitler. In a change of plans, however, von Stauffenberg decided to plant the bomb himself.

Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers at his East Prussian headquarters. Hitler escaped the full force of the blast when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force.

Von Stauffenberg, von Kleist’s father, and scores of others were arrested and executed in the plot. Von Kleist himself was arrested, questioned at length by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp, but then inexplicably released and returned to combat duty.

In 1963 he founded what would become the annual Munich Security Conference - a forum that draws together the world’s top diplomats and defense officials, in an informal setting for talks on global security policy.