While I'm sitting here, doing paperwork, 61 years ago it was slowly becoming obvious to the conspirators that "Operation Valkyrie" would not reach its objective, and that Stauffenberg's assassination attempt had failed.

If I were in Berlin, I'd be in the former Bendlerblock tonight.

Since I'm not, I will lean back for a moment around midnight and remember them.

I still wonder what the world would look like today if they had succeeded. Would it really have been the "other Germany" Stauffenberg cried out for? Would it be better, or worse? We will never know; it died with them next to the badge and the flowers on the grey stone wall in today's Stauffenbergstraße.