Last of the German army officers who betrayed Hitler with bomb plot

Philipp von Boeselager, who died on 1 May, 2008, was the last survivor of the group of military men who conspired to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.

Field Lieutenant Boeselager was one of several high-ranking Wehrmacht officers who became disillusioned with the Führer midway through the war. Their efforts culminated in an attempt to kill Hitler with an exploding briefcase left under a conference table, but he escaped with only minor injuries.

The previous year Boeselager had been selected to shoot Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, but that plan was abandoned. After the war, Boeselager's treacherous exploits saw him heralded as a hero and he was given Germany and France's highest military honours.

He was born on 6 September, 1917, in Burg Heimerzheim in the Rhineland. He was raised a devout Catholic and had early ambitions to go into politics. However, he and his family had reservations about the Nazi Party from the beginning, so he abandoned his plan to join the Foreign Office and instead signed up with the Wehrmacht, the Third Reich's combined armed forces.

The course of the war led him onto the staff of Field Marshal Günther von Kluge on the Eastern Front. Following reports of indiscriminate killings of civilians, von Kluge lost faith in the German leadership and began drawing up plans for a coup d'état.

The first plot to kill Hitler was due to take place in March 1943. Hitler and Himmler would be coming to the front to discuss plans with Kluge. Boeselager was to walk into the officers' casino where the two men would be dining and shoot them with a Walther PP pistol.

But a change of dining plans on Himmler's part saw the plan abandoned at the last moment - if Himmler wasn't killed, the plotters felt, he could easily succeed Hitler so it wasn't worth risking the assassination.

The following summer they concocted another plot, known as Operation Valkyrie. This time a briefcase packed with explosives was to be taken into a conference room, set to detonate then left near Hitler. The assassination was delayed by five days amid fears that the conspiracy was in danger of being uncovered. The eventual date of the attack was 20 July.

Chief-of-Staff Claus von Stauffenberg took the loaded briefcase into the meeting room where Hitler was talking to a host of officers. He activated the detonator, made his excuses and waited outside for the explosion. After the blast, he assumed Hitler was dead and started his get-away. But though four men were killed, the briefcase had been positioned wrongly so Hitler avoided the full force of the blast. Stauffenberg was arrested shortly afterwards and was one of 200 people executed for their part in the German Resistance.

Boeselager's role in the 20 July Plot was supplying the explosive suitcase itself which he had to transport without detection to the meeting place. He was then to bring the troops in his unit away from the front to Berlin in order to carry out a timely coup upon the news of Hitler's death. When he learnt that the Führer had survived, he quickly reversed his orders and rushed back to the front.

None of his troops knew of the plot, their absence wasn't noted and Boeselager's part in the conspiracy was only revealed after the war, by which time he had been promoted to Major and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, one of the Wehrmacht's highest honours.

After the war Boeselager studied economics and forestry. He also did a great deal of charity work and campaigned for political awareness among young people to make sure the atrocities of the Nazi regime were never repeated. He received the Legion of Honour medal in Paris, sixty years after the failed plot.

In 2004 he revealed that he still had nightmares about the war, particularly his co-conspirators who were hunted down after the failed assassination and refused to give his name despite being severely tortured. "If you are the only one among some 100 who is still alive, that makes you think," he said. "I feel they are watching me and I have a certain responsibility towards them,"

When plans were announced for a film about the events of Operation Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise (due for release in 2009), Boeselager said: "I hope that the German resistance will become more well-known thanks to the film. People know so little about it in the United States."

He passed away at his home near Frankfurt at the age of 90, having regretted all his life that he never got the chance to shoot Hitler in 1943.