There are some dates on the calendar that quietly gather meanings over a lifetime. For me, 20th July is one of them.
As a child in Delhi, I was fascinated by the Second World War. That fascination began at home. My father had an extraordinary gift for storytelling, and through his words I travelled to battlefields, cities in ruins and moments when the fate of the world seemed to rest on the decisions of a handful of people. Those stories led me to books, documentaries and films, and much later, to Berlin itself.
Over the years, I visited Berlin many times. Once, I even stayed in what had once been East Berlin, long after the Wall had disappeared. Yet the city still carried memories that no bulldozer could erase. Every street seemed to whisper history. Years ago, I wrote a blog titled Those Faces of Berlin (https://esgeemusings.com/2013/04/01/those-faces-of-berlin/ ) , reflecting on that remarkable city and, among other things, the failed attempt by Claus von Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators to assassinate Hitler with a bomb hidden in a briefcase on 20th July 1944.
Operation Valkyrie failed. Hitler survived. Many of those who dared to resist paid with their lives. Yet what has stayed with me is not merely the failure of the plot but the courage behind it. Sometimes history remembers victories. Sometimes it remembers those who knew they would probably lose, yet chose to act because conscience demanded nothing less.
Bendlerblock, Berlin – Where the conspirators were executed
Exactly twenty-five years later, on another 20th July, humanity wrote a very different chapter.
I was a small boy then. I still remember my father listening intently to the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 Moon landing on the Voice of America. Later that day, we went to the United States Information Service near Mandi House in New Delhi to see the full-size replica of the Lunar Module. Like countless others of my generation, I stared at it in wonder. For days afterwards, our classroom conversations revolved around rockets, astronauts and a future that suddenly seemed limitless. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey, set what then felt like the distant future, no longer appeared to be science fiction.
Decades later, I travelled to that Mecca of Space travel, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. For me the trip was a pilgrimage in more sense than one. As I roamed between the life size models of the Saturn V rocket, the command and the lunar modules of the Apollo program, my mind once again went back to the 20th July of more than half a century back. I also came to know of the Artemis program tasked to once again send Man to the Moon. I wrote a blog on that visit : https://esgeemusings.com/2022/05/19/the-children-of-zeus/
Apollo 11 Lunar Module on the moon
It strikes me that these two events, separated by a quarter of a century yet sharing the same date, reveal the astonishing range of the human spirit.
On one 20th July, people risked everything to rid the world of tyranny. On another, human beings stepped onto another world altogether.
One date reminds us of humanity’s darkest impulses. The other celebrates its brightest possibilities.
Perhaps that is why every year, when 20th July arrives, I think not only of history but also of choice. We are capable of building dictatorships, and we are capable of building spacecraft. We can choose fear, or we can choose courage. We can remain trapped by our past, or we can reach for horizons that once seemed impossible. History does not merely tell us who we were. It quietly asks us who we wish to become.
What does 20th July evoke for you—a lesson from history, or a reminder of humanity’s endless capacity to dream?
In musing…… Shakti Ghosal
A New Beginning 