We know too little about the lives of saints. If we knew more, they probably wouldn’t be saints. We know that St Augustine was a happy sinner, once, and that he repented; but we don’t know what the Virgin Mary was like when she had a headache; maybe, as she was the Virgin Mary, it is at best to assume that she never did.
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was the man who placed the bomb near Hitler’s chair on 20 July 1944 and who was executed later that day. As the story goes, he sacrificed his life for Germany’s honour. Without Stauffenberg and his circle, Germany would find it even more difficult to come to terms with its recent past. Early biographers were therefore inclined towards hagiography, although it has to be said that Peter Hoffmann’s classic account of 1998 – revised in 2009 – is pretty ‘warts-and-all’.
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