Claus Von Stauffenberg - Early Life

Early Life

In his youth, he and his brothers were members of the Neupfadfinder, a German Scout association and part of the German Youth movement.

Like his brothers, he was carefully educated and inclined toward literature, but eventually took up a military career. In 1926, he joined the family's traditional regiment, the Bamberger Reiter- und Kavallerieregiment 17 (17th Cavalry Regiment) in Bamberg. It was around this time that the three brothers were introduced by Albrecht von Blumenthal to poet Stefan George's influential circle, Georgekreis, from which many notable members of the German resistance would later emerge. George dedicated Das neue Reich ("the new Empire") in 1928, including the Geheimes Deutschland ("secret Germany") written in 1922, to Berthold. The work outlines a new form of society ruled by a hierarchical spiritual aristocracy. George rejected any attempts to use it for political purposes, especially Nazism.

Stauffenberg was commissioned as a Leutnant (second lieutenant) in 1930. He studied modern weapons at the Kriegsakademie in Berlin-Moabit, but remained focused on the use of horses—which continued to carry out a large part of transportation duties throughout World War II—in modern warfare. His regiment became part of the German 1st Light Division under General Erich Hoepner, who had taken part in the plans for the September 1938 German Resistance coup, cut short by Hitler's unexpected diplomatic success in the Munich Agreement. The unit was among the troops that moved into the Sudetenland, the part of Czechoslovakia that had a German-speaking majority, as agreed upon in Munich. However, Stauffenberg disliked the method by which the Sudetenland was annexed and strongly disapproved of the invasion of Prague.