BOOKS
471
"hadn't prepared me fo r such a n eventuality." Consequently, the
hi storic ac tion , as Wes t says, is "ventril oqui a lly tra nsfi gured": not as
we perce ive it objecti ve ly, but as Stauffenberg mi ght have seen a nd
said it. The da ring of thi s tra nsfo rma tion mounts in the las t hundred
pages of the book when , a fter hi s execution , Sta uffenberg continues
to na rra te a nd comes to know tha t hi s "poo res t hours - of gl ory a nd
of fame, of di sgrace a nd pa in - belong to others" - hi s accomplices,
"whose lives I stole a nd bruta lly cut off." H e also realizes : "I had se t
off my bomb in the dead center of my own famil y, slau ghtering a nd
j eopa rdi zin g them in the interes ts of their own future."
The conflicting realities - historical and fi cti onal, in their
na rrowes t definiti ons - a re the subj ec t of Stauffenberg's contempla–
tion a t the novel's end , when a group of stude nts visits the milita ry
offi ce building where he lived hi s las t hours on the stree t now named
for him :
O ut go the students, di sappointed , into the stree t I haunt. "H e
was onl y in hi s fo rties," babbles one, hav ing read some thing
somewhere. I was not eve n thirty-seve n . Away they go . These
too are among the death s a hero dies . T here is no thing to
see,
whereas ove r at Plo tze nsee the death shed sta nds, a shrine, near
which the bereaved gather once a year on simple cha irs to dream
the hero ic agony a ll a new.
Wha t the stude nts have not see n , wha t the plaque commemo ra ting
the place whe re he and some of hi s coconspira tors we re shot cannot
commemo ra te, is prec isely wha t Paul Wes t shows.
In
these las t
hours, a ma n's botched ac tion expresses a triumph of being. Of
course tha t o ther commemora ti on is he re too, a nd its excitement
will , qui te likel y, a ttrac t a nd hold mos t of the book's readers.
In
the
a ttes ted hi sto ric ity of Wes t's na rra tive, we rev iew the compounding
sensibilit y of a profess iona l soldier , who "never, neve r wan ted to see
Ge rma ny defea ted ," as he lea rns to ha te Hitler, then learns "not to
keep tha t ha tred in a vacuum , but to mobilize it , use it. " And in this
portrayal we witness both the inciteme nts of the count's Uncl e Nux,
a kind of prime move r to the young noblema n in hi s deadl y work ,
a nd a turning po int whe n hi s brother Berthold reveals bodi es of di s–
membered J ewe ses fl oating in lurid vats - the subj ec t of Naz i
"a na tomical" studi es - as well as the two times tha t Sta uffenberg
carries hi s bomb to Hitler's headqua rters befo re he finally se ts it ofl'
in Jul y 1944. With the pictori a l impac t of the fin es t books of hours,
all is prov ided tha t a ny reade r mi ght wa nt as suHicie nt cause in the
