Last member of briefcase bomb plot to kill Hitler who survived dictator's murderous revenge dies aged 90 | Daily Mail Online
Last man standing: Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, pictured in 2010, the last surviving member of the main plot to kill Adolf Hitler, has died aged 90
The last surviving member of the famous briefcase bomb plot to assassinate Hitler has died aged 90.
Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist took part in the July 20 conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler, a failed attempt on the Nazi dictator’s life in 1944.
Von Kleist, who once volunteered to act as a suicide bomber to kill Hitler, died at his home in Munich on Friday.
He became a member of the July 20 conspiracy, also known as Operation Valkyrie, after he was approached by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who eventually planted the bomb in Hitler’s conference room at Wolf’s Lair.
The assassination attempt was brought to the big screen in the 2008 film ‘Valkyrie’ starring Tom Cruise as von Stauffenberg.
Von Kleist was born into an aristocratic family in Pommerania, an area of northeastern Germany which today is part of Poland.
The von Kleist family had a long history of serving in high-ranking military and administrative positions for the German government.
His father, Ewald von Kleist, was an early opponent of Hitler who famously travelled to England in 1938 in a failed attempt to persuade the British government to support a coup against Hitler.
Despite his family's opposition to the Nazis, von Kleist joined the German army in 1940.
He was wounded fighting on the Eastern Front in 1943 and during his convalescence came in contact with von Stauffenberg.
A fellow officer from an aristocratic family, von Stauffenberg presented him with a plan to kill Hitler.
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Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest underneath, which he would detonate standing next to the dictator.
Years later von Kleist remembered  explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly  before telling his 22-year-old son: ‘Yes, you have to do this.’
‘Fathers  love their sons and mine certainly did, and I had been quite sure he  would say no,’ von Kleist recalled. ‘But, as always, I had  underestimated him.’
Survivor: Von Kleist, pictured left during his time in the army, and in 1997, right, was approached by Claus von Stauffenberg to wear a bomb vest to be detonated near Hitler - a plan which failed - before the July 20 plot
Plot to kill: Count Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, left, looks on as Adolf Hitler arrives at Wolf's Lair on July 15, 1944, five days before Operation Valkyrie was carried out
Coup d'etat: The picture shows Hitler's conference room at Wolf's Lair after the failed attempt on his life on July 20, 1944
However, the suicide attack was never materialised as Hitler kept postponing the uniform demonstration.
A few months later von Kleist was approached again.
Von Stauffenberg asked him to take part in the July 20 plot and carry a briefcase packed with explosives to a meeting with Hitler, a job which ended up falling on von Stauffenberg himself.
The colonel placed the bomb in a conference room at Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, known as Wolf’s Lair, where he was meeting with his aides and military advisers.
The plan failed after someone moved the briefcase with the explosives next to a table leg and Hitler escaped with his life.
Failed attack: The Nazi dictator survived the 1944 explosion as one of his aides moved the briefcase with the explosives and a nearby table protected him
On screen: Tom Cruise portrays Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie, the 2008 film about the July 20 bomb plot
Von Kleist remained in Berlin, charged with overseeing the arrest of officers and officials loyal to Hitler in the city.
But when news spread that Hitler had survived, the plot crumbled and von Stauffenberg, von Kleist's father, and scores of others were arrested and executed.
Von Kleist himself was arrested and questioned at length by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp, but then inexplicably let go and returned to combat duty.
He was posted at the front for the duration of World War II and went on to set up his own publishing house Ewald-von-Kleist-Verlag.
He also founded the Munich Conference on Security Policy, an annual conference on international security policy in 1962, which he moderated it 1998.