Ewald von Kleist: Hitler murder plotter
WALD von Kleist, who has died at the age of 90, was the last surviving member of the Stauffenberg conspirators, the group of Wehrmacht officers who hatched an elaborate plot in 1944 to kill Hitler.
A lieutenant whose father had been an active anti-Nazi before the war, Von Kleist was recuperating from wounds suffered on the Eastern Front when, in January 1944, he was approached by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, chief of staff to the commander of the German reserve army.
Knowing that Von Kleist was due to meet the Führer to show him new army uniforms, Von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest and detonate it in Hitler’s presence.
Von Kleist travelled home to discuss matters with his father. “He said at once: ‘ Yes, of course you have to do it . . . A man who doesn’t take such a chance will never be happy again in his life.’ ”
E“I had been quite sure he would say no,” Von Kleist admitted later. “But I had underestimated him.”
Von Kleist agreed to go through with the plan, but Hitler kept postponing the meeting and eventually cancelled it.
In July 1944, Von Stauffenberg hatched a new plot in which he would leave a bomb under a table during a meeting of Hitler and his aides at the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s field headquarters in East Prussia.
The second plot also failed and Von Kleist, then 22, was arrested and spent four months in Ravensbrück concentration camp. The charges against him were eventually dropped.
Von Kleist’s father was one of those executed in prison in April 1945, just days before Germany surrendered. — © The Daily Telegraph, London
1922-2013
ORN actor Harry Reems, who made his name starring opposite Linda Lovelace in the 1972 movie Deep Throat, has died at the age of 65.
His death comes just months before the release of Lovelace, a film starring Amanda Seyfried in the title role and Adam Brody as Reems, one of the 1970s’ most active porn actors.
Reems was born Herbert Streicher into a Jewish family from Brooklyn, New York, and joined the US Marine Corps after school.
After leaving the Marines he struggled to make a career as a stage actor in New York and so, needing money, worked in a number of pornographic films.
Then director Gerard Damiano hired him as lighting director on Deep Throat — and when the male lead failed to show up, Reems stepped in to
Pplay a doctor helping Lovelace with a sexually sensitive area in her throat.
Deep Throat was the first porn film widely shown in theatres and made an estimated $600million, although Reems claimed he only received $800 for his role.
The film also sparked outrage and Reems was