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Replied Remer: "I will not take one sentence back."
For three days the tribunal of three judges and two laymen deliberated, then brought in a verdict: "The Nazi state was not a state of justice but of injustice. The people of the July 20 plot were moved by patriotic instincts." For the first time, a German court had declared Hitler's Reich illegal.
Nazi Hero Otto Ernst Remer, arms crossed, face impassive, heard himself sentenced to three months' imprisonment for slander.
* The conspirators had planned to explode the bomb, hidden in a briefcase, in Hitler's concrete bunker in East Prussia, but that day the Führer moved his conferences to a wooden shack, and the explosion dissipated its strength through the flimsy walls. Four officers died from the blast, but Adolf Hitler, blown through the walls, emerged with only bruises and burns.