An imaginative depiction of the July 20 plot against Adolf Hitler is Paul West's novel The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg (1980). Von Stauffenberg, Hitler's would-be assassin, was, like von der Schulenberg, an aristocrat, determined to rid Germany of the monstrous Fuhrer.

The book's title refers to the novel's structure as a "book of hours," a medieval prayer book, the layperson's equivalent of a priest's breviary. A book of hours is designed for particular times of the day and includes sections providing the opportunity to reflect and meditate. Among typical sections in a book of hours are sacred texts, such as the life of the Virgin; a section on one's own guilt and sinfulness; a memento mori section in which one considers one's own death; and a section describing the suffering of saints and martyrs. West arranges the relevant aspects of his story in similarly prearranged categories. For example, the penitential section of the novel focuses on Stauffenberg's guilt and self-recriminations for his enthusiastic participation in the invasion of Poland in the first months of the war.

As the novel opens, Stauffenberg lies wounded in the North African campaign, where he lost an eye and seven of his 10 fingers. While recuperating, he reflects on his past and begins to reexamine his values. He sees clearly now that Hitler is a mad fanatic who will lead Germany to destruction. He conspires in the failed plot and is executed, but he continues to narrate the story even after his death, which focuses on the aftermath of the attempt, when the vicious retaliation against the conspirators, their friends, and their families continues unabated right up to the end of the war.

What emerges in this novel, particularly in its analogue to the book of hours, is that this plot that ended so badly represented a moral triumph for its chief conspirator, a righteous man.

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