Today, as 82 years have passed to the day since the fateful 20th of July plot that almost took Hitler’s life, the democratic government of the Federal Republic of Germany comemorates all acts of German resistance against the Nazis.

This is the opportunity for me to bring to the front an incredible story, about which I had heard comments in the family but which has recently been thoroughly investigated by my distant cousin, Thies Marsen. In short, “Tante Ini”, as she was known to us, a cousin of my grandmother, (unknowingly, or at least ignoring the exact purpose of the leather case) provided the briefcase that was to be placed, full of explosive, by Graf von Stauffenberg at the feet of the large briefing table around which Hitler and members of the General Stabb were discussing the military situation a few weeks after the Allied landing in Normandy. ‘The rest is History” as they say (popularised in the movie Valkyrie featuring Tom Cruise): Hitler, shielded from the explosion (with less explosive than intially planned) by the heavy oak table, was only lightly wounded (unlike some other attendees, 3 dead, severall severely wounded). The attempted coup failed (despite the Wehrmacht briefly arresting SS units and taking over power in some key locations of Berlin and in some military districts in the West, notably in Paris) and lead to a brutal repression that ended in the execution of thousands of high ranking Officers and members of the Wehrmacht and of other branches of the regime (such as the Abwehr).

Thiers Marsen, Ini’s grandson and a journalist at the radio Bayern Rundfunk, had also heard the story, directly from his grandmother but never quite believed it. Until he investigated. The research lead to an astonishing podcast “Omas Tasche und das Hitler-Attentat”, and also to some uneasy soul-searching. His grandfather, Ini’s husband, Walter Rudolph, was indeed directly involved in the plot to kill Hitler, and paid dearly for it. But as Thiers explores, it is a complex story, where not all is black and white. Many officers involved in the attempted coup of July 20 1944, weren’t staunch anti-Nazis and accepted Hitler’s leadership far too long, at least as long as the Wehrmacht was advancing on all fronts and victory seemed possible. And whatever the regime’s crimes against humanity, of which they knew (or worse, participated in, at least indirectly).