If He'd Only Had Tell's Accuracy

Most have heard of the failed Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944, but few know of the November 9, 1938 attempt by a prescient Swiss theological student, Maurice Bavaud. Today is the 70th anniversary of that failed attempt. Bavaud was captured, tortured, and finally guillotined in May, 1941.

"He seems to have anticipated the doom that Hitler would bring to the whole world," President Pascal Couchepin said in a statement posted on his official Web site. "For this he deserves our remembrance and recognition."

Bavaud, who regarded the Nazi leader as a danger to Switzerland, Christianity and all of humanity, was arrested several days after his failed assassination attempt and tortured into confessing his plans to the Gestapo, the secret police.[...]

By coincidence, Bavaud made his attempt just hours before Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany and Austria.

Those of Swiss heritage are like that. Yeah, they are.