'For a better Germany': Leaders mark failed Hitler assassination plot

Top politicians and civil society representatives on Sunday commemorated those behind a failed attempt to assassinate Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler 81 years ago, and warned against historical amnesia amid a rise of the far right.

"July 20 became a symbol of resistance against injustice, for justice and conscience, for a better Germany," said Defence Minister Boris Pistorius in front of around 250 recruits in the Bendlerblock, the headquarters of the Defence Ministry in Berlin.

Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and three other Wehrmacht officers were shot dead in the courtyard just hours after their failed attempt to kill Hitler with a bomb planted in his military headquarters on the eastern front on July 20, 1944.

Marking the events that unfolded about a year before the end of World War II, Pistorius stressed the day did not stand for failure, but for a new beginning.

Don't look away, former chancellor's son warns

Speaking at a commemoration ceremony at the Plötzensee memorial in Berlin, where Germany's war-time Nazi dictatorship carried out many executions, the son of former chancellor Willy Brandt warned Germans against forgetting the atrocities committed by the regime.

"We are seeing it again today, including in election results, how the poison of hatred, racism and exclusion is penetrating and shows itself in social coarsening," Matthias Brandt said.

He cited a number of racist terms used by the Nazis, noting they were increasingly being used again. Doing nothing to counter this was a decision to let things run their course, he warned.

His father Willy Brandt fled to Norway as a young man in 1933 to avoid persecution by the Nazis. He later returned to Germany and was elected chancellor at the head of a centre-left government in 1969.

Germany has seen an unprecedented rise of the far right in recent years, with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party coming in second in February's elections, the best-ever result for a far-right party since the Nazis rose to power.

Many in the party have trivialized the crimes committed by Hitler's regime, including the Holocaust, and have been accused of knowingly using Nazi slogans.

'The responsibility of all of us'

Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said that Germany could not again be the source of a horror of the kind that it produced in the 1930s. "This is the responsibility of all of us resulting from this debt," she said.

"We should and must say the more unflinchingly and louder, we will not allow the rule of law or democracy to be destroyed again," she said.

Hitler only sustained minor injuries in the July 20 assassination attempt and a subsequent coup plot was foiled. The Nazi regime then carried out a wave of executions of those suspected of being involved in the plans to bring down the regime.