The von Stauffenberg plot is the basis for the upcoming Tom Cruise film "Valkyrie," in which the American actor plays the aristocratic colonel.
Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers. Hitler, however, escaped the blast because someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force.
Almost immediately afterward, von Stauffenberg and many of his cohorts were arrested and executed in revenge killings where some were hanged with piano wire. Though many of those rounded up by Nazi officials were tortured in the hopes they would give up conspirators, Mr. von Boeselager's name was never divulged and he was never found out.
Still, he carried a cyanide capsule with him until the end of the war, in case his secret was revealed.
Mr. Von Boeselager, who lived in Altenahr, near Bonn, was first recruited by von Stauffenberg coconspirator Major General Henning von Tresckow in 1942, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview three weeks ago that was published today.
He said he knew that Jews were being systematically killed and that Germany was waging a war of annihilation along the Eastern Front with Russia. He said he never considered not taking part in the plot.
By 1942, he said, "It was no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Assigned to the army high command as an aide to Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, the plotters first arranged for Mr. von Boeselager to try to shoot both Hitler and SS chief Heinrich Himmler at a meeting in 1943.
Von Kluge, who committed suicide a month after the 1944 attempt on Hitler, called the assassination off at the last minute after learning that Himmler would not be at the meeting.
Mr. von Boeselager followed von Kluge's orders, but told the newspaper the decision to do so never ceased to haunt him.
"I always see Hitler from here to the fireplace in front of me and think, 'What would have happened if you had shot him?' " he told the newspaper, describing a distance of about 2 feet with his hands.
He also recalled when he joined the von Stauffenberg plot: His brother called him in the spring of 1944, asking for his help in providing explosives.
