So really, who would YOU have cast in the leading role of Valkyrie? [View All]

[Tuesday Afternoon]

Who would YOU have chosen to play the part of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg?

Count Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf<1> von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 21 July 1944) was a German army officer and Roman Catholic aristocrat who was one of the leading officers of the failed 20 July plot of 1944 to kill German dictator Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power in World War II Germany. He was one of the central figures of the German Resistance movement.

Stauffenberg was the third of three sons (the others being the twins Berthold and Alexander) of Alfred Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the last Oberhofmarschall of the Kingdom of Württemberg, and Caroline Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg (née Gräfin (Countess) von Üxküll-Gyllenband). Claus was born in the Stauffenberg castle of Jettingen between Ulm and Augsburg, in the eastern part of Swabia, at that time in the Kingdom of Bavaria, part of the German Reich. The von Stauffenberg family is one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic Roman Catholic families of southern Germany.<2> Among his (Protestant) maternal ancestors were several famous Prussians, including Field Marshal August von Gneisenau.

In his youth, Claus and his brothers were members of the Neupfadfinder, a German Scout association and part of the German Youth movement.<3><4>

Like his brothers, Claus was carefully educated and inclined toward literature, but eventually took up a military career. In 1926, he joined the family's traditional regiment, the Bamberger Reiter- und Kavallerieregiment 17 (17th Cavalry Regiment) in Bamberg. It was around this time that the three brothers were introduced by Albrecht von Blumenthal to poet Stefan George's influential circle Georgekreis, from which many notable members of the German resistance would later emerge. George dedicated Das neue Reich ("The new Reich") in 1928, including the Geheimes Deutschland ("secret Germany") written in 1922, to Berthold.<5> The work outlines a new form of society ruled by a hierarchical spiritual aristocracy. George rejected any attempts to use it for mundane political purposes, especially Nazism.

more at link:
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0031768/bio