BAVAUD MAURICE (n. Neuchatel, 1916 - m. Berlin, 1941)
Kill Hitler is cool. It is strange and even disturbing as the machinery of Hollywood influence in the stimuli we receive through the media. The other day, while attending the book presentation
a friend in a bookstore in Madrid, the bookseller told me that for a while now books about plots to kill Hitler were sold like hotcakes, which is quite curious a country in which, speaking of books, almost nothing is selling like hotcakes. Begins to understand the other hand when the press makes front page news of actor fashion statements (which for me is every day more p'allá, what can I say) in which he says he grew up wanting to kill Hitler. Well, some grew up wanting to kill Dr. Hell
, which is more natural when it grows, I think. In short, fashion is at least I have discovered in the tent a book,
"Killing Hitler by Roger Moorhouse , catalog of all who tried to kill the dictator of truth, when he was alive (about 40 to Moorhouse .) And the book a couple of characters to highlight, for me more impressive than the
Von Stauffenberg and company, such as Georg Elser
, who already spent an entry in his day, and student Maurice Bavaud theology, which I will discuss today.
Bavaud Maurice was born in the Swiss town of Neuchatel in the midst of a middle-class Catholic family. Although trained as a draftsman, at age 19 decided to become a missionary, and it entered the École Saint-Ilan
Langueux , a French seminary located in Britain. There he became a member of a group of students, the Compagnie du Mystère
, which is currently discussing the troubled European thirties, and was led by a very peculiar person called Marcel Gerbohay. Gerbohay had a history of schizophrenia, delusions and asserted their descent from the past Russian tsars, and it was an anti-fan. To Bavaud but the danger facing Europe was represented best by the Nazis, so that in the summer of 1938 left school and decided to travel to Germany to kill Hitler.
first went to Baden-Baden, where he hoped his cousin, Nazi leader, will introduce in the game. But his cousin received with suspicion and even denounced him to the Gestapo
, so Bavaud had no choice but to continue on their own to Basel, where he bought a small pistol, and finally to Berlin.
In Berlin Hitler learned that would be the 8th and 9th November in Munich, where all years, celebrated the coup of 1923 (the same conclusion that he would use Elser next year) with a grand parade, so that on October 31 took a train to Bavaria. In Munich without much trouble got a press pass that allowed him to stand on a soapbox from which he had a good view of the procession. However, the crowd standing start over dictator from carrying out his plan to shoot, and the idea also had considered jumping from the stands and approached the car to kill the tyrant.
The failure did not discourage the Swiss, the next day forged a letter from a former French prime minister and traveled to Berchtesgaden with the idea of \u200b\u200bseeking an audience with Hitler. But there he was told that the Fuehrer was still in Munich, which had to turn back. Again in the Bavarian town, Bavaud forged another letter, this time by a French nationalist leader, and went with her to the Nazi party headquarters. Yet there he was told that was impossible to give audience, asked him to leave it there cast forth the letter or the post office and unceremoniously fired him.
the end, no money and tired of trying, Bavaud took another train without a ticket to go home and fate would have it, was arrested by one reviewer and turned over to police. The police arrested him for unlawful possession of a weapon and found in his luggage the two letters, so, suspecting something wrong, he was handed over to the Gestapo.
Under torture he finally confessed his plans to assassinate Hitler to save her country and the Catholic religion. He was sentenced by the People's Court in Berlin in December, and guillotined in Berlin on
prison Plötzensee the May 14, 1941. Maurice Bavaud
that, compared with Elser, it seems more a poor bungler idealistic than anything else, had to wait until November last year to be reinstated in his country, who once refused to defend against Germany and even prevented was exchanged for a spy upon request Germans. The Swiss government considered him a madman, but his family struggled at first to clear his name. In 1955 a court in the former FRG
commuted the death penalty but again condemned to 10 years for attempted murder, Hitler would do anything, but it was still a person who tried to kill, according to the court . In 1956 the family won the appeal and granted them 40,000 Swiss francs in reparations, but it took 70 years for Swiss President Pascal Couchepin
acknowledged that fellow had been a hero.
As in the case of Elser, the questions one asks are: Is it lawful the murder in a case like this? Can an individual claim the power to decide who is a danger to mankind? What is the boundary between the madman and hero?
At the time nor the Catholic Church, which signed a concordat
with the Nazis in 1933, or Switzerland, who spent the war looking the other way, I thought it had to stop Hitler's feet, although it might be one of the most obvious tyrants who have walked the face of the earth. In short some acts must judge the story that puts everyone in place, although sometimes painfully slow.