Mrs. Moltke, who disdained the title of countess, was the last living active participant in the group. She died of a viral infection on Jan. 1 at her home in Norwich, Vt., her son Helmuth said. She was 98.

In his book “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (1960), William L. Shirer said the Kreisau circle had provided “the intellectual, spiritual, ethical, philosophical and, to some extent, political ideas of the resistance to Hitler.”

They initially rejected violence, if only for fear of making Hitler a martyr. But as the killing went on, support for assassinating him grew. Indeed, military conspirators were pushing ahead. At 12:40 p.m. on July 20, 1944, a bomb they had planted in a suitcase beneath a table at which Hitler was sitting at the Wolf’s Lair field headquarters exploded. Hitler suffered only minor wounds.

Mrs. Moltke said she believed that her husband would have backed that assassination attempt — had he not already been in jail for warning a friend, Dr. Otto Kiep, who was plotting violence against Hitler, that Dr. Kiep risked imminent arrest. Count Moltke was never released. He was hanged, most likely by piano wire, in January 1945 after Gestapo agents had linked the assassination attempt at Wolf’s Lair to the Kreisau circle.

In fact, there is strong evidence that Count Moltke was in contact with the July 20 conspirators. Andreas Hermes, one of the few ringleaders who were not executed, told The New York Times in July 1945 that he “vividly” recalled Count Moltke’s participation.

Women who joined their husbands to oppose Hitler treaded the same dangerous ground as the men. Mrs. Moltke could have faced the death penalty simply for serving food and drinks to the conspirators. Her husband relied on her first impressions of people to make life-and-death judgments. She contributed ideas, particularly on legal issues, and her expertise.

In an enduring contribution, she gathered up Kreisau circle documents and letters from her husband and hid them in the estate’s beehives. In 1990 she published them as “Letters to Freya.” The papers have proved valuable to scholars for their gripping portrayal of heroic, almost certainly futile resistance, as well as for their glimpses at daily life in the Third Reich. In her later years, when the German government and others came to recognize her contributions, Mrs. Moltke expressed gratitude on behalf of other resistance widows as well. “We were all wives of our husbands,” she said.

Mrs. Moltke’s son said in an interview that the only surviving wife of a Kreisau circle member is Clarita von Trott, whose husband, Adam, played a central part in the July 20 plot and was executed in 1944.

Freya Deichmann, whose father was a banker, was born in Cologne on March 29, 1911. She attended idealistic work camps that brought young people of all classes together to share ideas and dreams. At 18, while on a vacation to Austria’s lake district, she met Count Moltke.

They married two years later, in 1931. He studied in Germany and Britain to become an international lawyer. In 1939, he was drafted to work in military intelligence. His boss, Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, a covert foe of Hitler, encouraged him to use his legal and political expertise to save Jews and curb German atrocities. On trips abroad, he met with Allied officials to discuss a possible coup.

Mrs. Moltke was haunted by the first time she saw Hitler in 1931 or 1932. She had noticed a man in a dark movie theater, she told Ms. von Meding in “Courageous Hearts.” “I thought to myself, what terrifying eyes,” she said.

When the house lights went on, she saw who he was.

Mrs. Moltke earned a doctorate in law from Humboldt University in Berlin in 1935. She then took over management of Kreisau, then in eastern Germany and now part of Poland. The Kreisau circle began informally among friends, then became more serious as members assembled in small groups in Berlin to discuss specific subjects, like a new constitution. Larger meetings at Kreisau occurred in the spring and fall of 1942 and the spring of 1943.

The circle and the Moltke family benefited from the immense prestige of Count Moltke’s military ancestor. Another protection was the fervent pro-Nazi views of the manager of the estate; his local stature helped contain public denunciations of a family that refused to say “Heil Hitler.”

Mrs. Moltke’s letters to Count Moltke in prison concerned farm matters, like the wisdom of keeping a pair of ducks. She told her husband that the Gestapo officer who read all his letters had spoken nicely to her on a visit.

“They’re not really so bad,” she ventured.

“Except when they tear out your fingernails,” Count Moltke answered (though he was not tortured in that way, he said).

After the war, Mrs. Moltke moved to South Africa and did social work, but she grew to hate the country’s official system of racial segregation and eventually returned to Germany.

She moved to Vermont in 1960 to join the philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whose wife had died. They had met in the youth camp movement and, after reuniting, remained companions until his death in 1973.

In 1998, she helped turn Kreisau — Krzyzowa in Polish — into a center to promote understanding between Germany and Poland. In 2004, a foundation named after her was set up to support it.

Besides her son Helmuth, Mrs. Moltke is survived by six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Another son, Konrad, died in 2005.

The letters Mrs. Moltke hid in the beehives remain poignant. In the last one he wrote before his execution, Count Moltke said he would “gladly accompany” his wife “a bit further on this earth.”

“But then I would need a new task from God,” he continued. “The task for which God made me is done.”

Miray Apak, MTO’s foreign relations director, said the works in Amos were part of the chamber’s ongoing project “Where will Marmaris be in 2010.”

“We have applied for the necessary permits,” said Apak. “The construction works will start once the permits are granted, which I believe will be very soon.”

Turunç Mayor Ali Fuat Fidan, a member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, said projects for the ancient city of Amos have been on the district’s agenda for years. “Today we are making a start,” he said. “I want to thank all the parties involved in the project and promise the municipality will support them in the best way it can.”

The head of Muğla University’s archeology department, Professor Adnan Diler, who acts as a scientific consultant to the project, noted not enough attention is shown to the historical assets of the Muğla region. “The ministry and gendarmerie cannot be enough; the local officials and nongovernmental organizations should take care of these remains,” said Diler.

Diler said he was excited with the stage of the ancient amphitheater. “I will support the project as a consultant,” he added. “For years, we have argued ‘don’t do that there, declare this area a protected zone,’ but this is not the way to preserve the ancient remains. We must do the right things and show that preservation is not that difficult.”

The ruins of the ancient city of Amos can be reached from Asarcık Hill, northwest of Kumlubük Bay. Amos dates to the Hellenistic era and now consists of an amphitheatre on the side of the hill, a temple and statue pedestals. Surrounded by ramparts dating back to the same time, this amphitheater is in good condition, including its seating area, side walls and stage with three chambers. Excavations in 1948 by Professor George Evards Bean revealed four inscriptions, which mentioned three rental contracts, thought to date from around 200 B.C.

While those involved in the debate over the underground are somewhat polarized, they agree on one thing: It's complicated.

To begin with, the underground was made up of many factions, subfactions and rivals. In hindsight, some look better than others. Meanwhile, for the majority of Ukrainian families, the experience of "the Great Patriotic War" was fighting with the Red Army to defend the homeland. Some descendants of Red Army soldiers view members of the underground as traitors.

The effort to recognize the insurgents also is taking place against the backdrop of centuries of persecution of Jews in Ukraine, where pogroms were common.

The Cossack chieftain Bogdan Khmelnytsky, whose statue stands in the Ukrainian capital, fought for independence during the 17th century. But he also presided over the killings of tens of thousands of Jews, said Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny, head of the Religious Union for Progressive Jewish Congregations of Ukraine. "Was he a hero or an anti-hero? Even after 350 years, it is difficult to know," Dukhovny said.

Considerable research on the underground is underway in Ukraine and Canada, a center of the Ukrainian diaspora.

One of the key figures involved in the research is Peter J. Potichnyj. Born in a Ukrainian family in a village in what was then eastern Poland, Potichnyj experienced the horrors of the war firsthand. Soviet secret police executed his father. Poles massacred most of the people in his village.

In 1945, at age 14, he joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, and fought against the Soviets until 1947. He eventually became a historian at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and helped edit 77 volumes about the Ukrainian underground.

Potichnyj, 79, said that although the underground may have had brief strategic alliances with the Germans, it was mostly fighting the Soviets. He said much of the anti-underground talk these days is orchestrated from Russia.

"You know the Russians don't want to admit there were people fighting them -- not because they were cooperating with the Germans but because they were fighting for their own culture and the liberation of their own countries," he said.

As for the killings of Jews and Poles, Potichnyj argues that no matter where guerrillas fight for liberation, it's a messy affair. The Poles provoked the Ukrainians, he said.

"With respect to Jews," he said, "obviously, in the situation there must have taken place some killing of the Jews, although in 1943, when the UPA was quite strong, there were hardly any Jews left because the Germans had, unfortunately, killed them all off. But there were some remnants, and the remnants were either working with the Ukrainian underground or they were working with the Soviets." Those allied with the Red partisans were obviously enemies of the underground, he said.

Potichnyj said the underground made a terrible mistake in not condemning the Germans' efforts to exterminate the Jews. But he strongly denies that there is any document showing that the underground ordered the "systematic" killing of Jews.

John-Paul Himka, a historian at the University of Alberta, believes there was a systematic killing of Jews in some Ukrainian areas. Himka has written extensively on the Holocaust and Ukrainian history. He said he has read hundreds of accounts, composed in different places and at different times, of Jews who survived; many mention killings by the Ukrainian militia.

Of the plan to honor UPA fighters, he says: "This is really a problem area because they killed so many people, civilians." In addition to Jews, he said, they killed 60,000 to 100,000 Poles, as well as political opponents, Orthodox clergymen, teachers of Russian and many prisoners of war from eastern Ukraine. He estimates that UPA fighters killed several thousand Jews, "but perhaps the number was much higher."

"Although what UPA did to the Jews may not have been, in the larger scheme of things, a major contribution to the Holocaust, it remains a large and inexpugnable stain on the record of the Ukrainian national insurgency," he said.

Olexiy Haran, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, said Russian "propaganda" distorted the extent of the atrocities. The Ukrainian insurgents were fighting for independence, he insists.

"I believe that these people deserve to be veterans, maybe with the exception of those who committed crimes," he said. "This was guerrilla warfare, and it's difficult to imagine guerrillas without atrocities."

Many academics say the debate over the underground is part of a larger tug of war over Ukraine's national identity. Russia ruled most of what is now Ukraine for more than three centuries. But relations between the countries have been testy, and since Yushchenko's election in late 2004, Ukraine has distanced itself from Russia while moving toward the West.

Yaakov Bleich, whose title is chief rabbi of Ukraine, said of Yushchenko's effort to legitimize the insurgents: "His goals are noble; the means stink."

"What I mean is that we all understand that Yushchenko is trying to build up national pride, and we all understand that that is needed," Bleich said. "After 350 years that the Ukrainian people were subjugated, they have to rebuild national pride.

"But should we take things that are controversial -- heroes that are still of questionable repute -- and use them to do that?" he said. "At this point you have people out there living today [who suffered], and the image is one that would hurt people. The Ukrainian insurgents fought alongside the fascists. And maybe their intentions were good, but I will say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media, at George Mason University, kicked off the discussion with a strong defense of Google's book digitization efforts.

"Is Google good for history? Of course it is," he said. "We historians are searchers and sifters of evidence. Google is probably the most powerful tool in human history for doing just that. It has constructed a deceptively simple way to scan billions of documents instantaneously, and it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars of its own money to allow us to read millions of books in our pajamas. Good? How about great?"

Cohen argued that Google is both expanding access and improving the quality of research. He noted that while he was trained at universities whose libraries had "Google Books scale," most aren't. "I’m now at an institution that is far more typical of higher ed, with a mere million volumes and few rare works. At places like Mason, Google Books is a savior, enabling research that could once only be done if you got into the right places," Cohen said. He reported that he regularly has students "discover new topics to study and write about through searches on Google Books."

From a research perspective as well, he said, the advances are significant. The vastness of the Google project will fight the "widespread problem of anecdotal history," in which scholars lack the points of comparison to determine the real significance of an event, text or person. "As more documents are scanned and go online, many works of historical scholarship will be exposed as flimsy and haphazard," Cohen said "The existence of modern search technology should push us to improve historical research. It should tell us that our analog, necessarily partial methods have had hidden from us the potential of taking a more comprehensive view."

Cohen stressed that he was under no illusions that Google is perfect. He is among those who -- before everyone was doing it -- shared a find he made of a scanned book by Google that featured a human hand that shouldn't have been visible. And he admitted -- anticipating the criticism that would follow -- that there are numerous mistakes in Google, of titles and categories (especially in the metadata used to classify books for search purposes).

But he said errors are inevitable and was more critical of Google for not releasing more of the tools it has created to classify books so that scholars could better understand them and use them. He said Google was uncharacteristically secretive about the digitization project, although he acknowledged that this is no doubt in part because of all the litigation over it.

Generally, Cohen said, academics are too quick to attack Google or any large corporation. Historians "can find fault with virtually anything," he said, and "this disposition is unsurprisingly exacerbated when a large company, consisting mostly of better-paid graduates from the other side of campus, muscles into our turf." Cohen said that "had Google spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build the Widener Library at Harvard, surely we would have complained about all those steps up to the front entrance."

And he questioned why so many academics are so angry at Google. "While it seems that an obsessive book about Google comes out every other week," he asked where the volumes were about other "large information companies that serve the academic market in troubling ways," arguing that "these companies, which also provide search services and digital scans, charge universities exorbitant amounts for the privilege of access. They leech money out of library budgets every year that could be going to other, more productive uses." (Cohen posted the text of his remarks on his blog.)

Paul Duguid, adjunct professor at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley and a professorial research fellow at the University of London, argued that in fact it's difficult to criticize Google or its various projects without being accused of being a Luddite or otherwise old-fashioned.

Duguid argued that the incorrect misclassification of work is too widespread not to be treated as a huge flaw. He note that when the Google Books Blog recently boasted about new tools to use illustrations for new book covers, he found errors in the books used as examples. For instance, he said that Studies of American Fungi had been classified as a cooking book. And he talked about how Google had once located King Lear in upstate New York (due to the Duke of Albany), and that Google had given Duguid credit for writing a book that appeared in 1879. (A podcast with Duguid, focusing heavily on his concerns about errors in Google Books, may be found here.)

Details like dates should matter to historians, Duguid said. "If you mess up dates, you guys, you haven't a lot left."

Once, when he published an essay critical of Google, Duguid said, a scholar wrote to him that he loved Google digitization because he didn't need to go to the library anymore. Duguid called that tragic, and said if that is the argument being used by scholars (and some librarians) to defend digitization, they should be ashamed. (Generally, he said librarians have been too quick to embrace Google.)

Digitization done right, Duguid suggested, could in fact be a great advance. But he said that Google has completely taken over the space. And he said that libraries with important holdings have called off digitization projects on the assumption that "Google will do it." Scholars "with expertise in what they are doing" are being told to stand aside for those who don't, he added.

Despite all of those concerns, Duguid said he worried as well about the possibility that Google might abandon its effort. What if Google should end the project, realizing that it took on more than it could handle, he asked. The result is that no one will ever do digitization right. “This is probably a once and for all scanning," he said. "Nobody is ever likely to take this task on again." (In the question and answer session, the same concern was raised by a historian who is much more enamored of the Google digitization than is Duguid, with this scholar saying he feared the day when "the suits" take over Google and could eliminate the program.)

Brandon Badger, project manager for Google Books, said that the scholars need not worry. He said that there is "passion" for book digitization throughout the company.

Badger didn't directly engage most of the criticisms, but he repeatedly talked about Google's desire to help scholars. When one historian talked about how easy the Web makes digital piracy, Badger said he saw Google Books creating the means to sell serious books to far more people in digital versions. He compared the idea to iTunes, in which the availability of music you can purchase in an instant created an alternative to downloading pirated versions.

On the topic of errors, Badger said Google was committed to improvements that would speed corrections. He said that he envisioned a system down the road where, if two scholars point out an error, it would be automatically corrected. But he also said that some errors (such as photos of the hands of those scanning books) were inevitable and were a cost of moving ahead on the project. Holding up a book he read on his flight to the conference, he said that Google could focus entirely on making perfect scans of every page of every book, with classifications that couldn't be disputed and perfect images without anyone's hands visible. But he said it would take 100 years "and we'd all be dead."

The book that Badger held up was later cited in the question period as an example of the culture clash between Google and academe. Google is in fact proud of a non-corporate culture, and Badger was the least formally dressed person on the panel. But although Badger could have passed for a graduate student, the book he held up -- tips on golf -- wasn't what an aspiring grad student would have read on a flight where future department colleagues might spot him.

The professor who cited the book said that when Badger held it up, "you could hear people's eyes roll." And the professor expressed fear that Google and academics might not be engaged in the conversation they need because of a culture clash. He asked Badger whether Google ever considers hiring academics or people who think like academics to handle such discussions and to contribute to the creation of projects.

Badger said that in fact he viewed the historians in the audience as "power users" and came to meetings such as this to learn from them. He said that Google doesn't want to produce products only for "geeky engineers." Badger joked that he would post something on Craigslist right away to seek out more academic advice. The professor, noting the culture clash once again, suggested H-NET might be a better place to seek advice from academics than would be Craigslist.

The good guys had not suffered a single combat fatality and things looked so bleak for the bad guys that Osama Bin Laden made out his will. "Our prayers were not answered," he radioed his followers. "I am sorry for getting you involved in this battle."

Of course, Bin Laden could not have imagined the Bush administration would rely on Afghan mercenaries to augment the 90 Special Forces operators.

"We're going to lose our prey if we're not careful," CIA chief of counterterrorism Henry Crumpton warned President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. "How bad off are these Afghani forces, really?" Bush inquired, as recounted in a Senate report. "Are they up to the job?"

"Definitely not," was the reply.

Crumpton repeated the plea to send in Marines and Rangers who were definitely up to the job. The plea was ignored; Bin Laden fled.

Special Forces kept up the hunt. Chapman seemed still in his usual high spirits two weeks later, when he made a Christmas Day call home with a satellite phone.

"I'm with my second family; they're a great bunch of guys," he said.

His kids had a video message that Chapman sent his first family. "I sure miss you guys," he said.

On Jan. 3, 2002, the hunt took Chapman and a small team to Khost. The next day, they approached a checkpoint set up by a local warlord. Gunfire erupted; Chapman was fatally wounded.

By one report, Chapman was shot by a 14-year-old Al Qaeda sympathizer who fled into Pakistan. Many believe he was killed on orders from the warlord, who was angry the Americans had chosen to do business with a rival.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai later appointed the warlord a provincial governor. He's now in the Afghan legislature.

Meantime, an American outpost in Khost was named Forward Operating Base Chapman. A suicide bomber burst in last Wednesday, killing seven CIA operatives, including the station chief, a mother of three. That was five days after a Nigerian extremist carried explosives onto a plane, triggering memories of pre-9/11 intelligence failures.

Today, our new President reviews how we are addressing a threat that has grown in the years since we had Bin Laden cornered and a fine young father became the first to die in combat.

"The day he left we all cried and cried," Chapman's wife remembered in a 2002 interview. He gave her a heart-shaped pendant that they broke, so each could take half.

"And he left."

Over the past decades, however, thanks to the development of Chinese archaeology and an increasing public interest in history, there have been attempts to revise this negative image, the most recent and successful one being CCTV's hit TV program Lecture Room, featuring Professor Yi Zhongtian lecturing on the Three Kingdoms.

He declared that numerous sculptural pieces lodged in the National Museum of Anthropology and Templo Mayor Archaeological Zone and Site Museum conserve vestiges of their original paint.

The "Sun Stone" is a good example: “It was cleaned and analyzed in 2000, as part of the remodeling of Mexica Hall, at MNA, celebrations. Although it was exposed to the elements almost a century, a group of INAH restorers directed by Mari Carmen Castro achieved to detect rests of red and ochre pigments in the stone pores.

“In 2007, the team leaded by archaeologist Fernando Carrizosa made the same observations at the lunar deity Coyolxauhqui monolith, finding evidence of red, ochre, blue, white and black paints. Other studies confirm it, concluding that Mexica palette was limited to these 5 colors; shades like brown or pink were never used in sculpture or mural painting”.

Lopez Lujan informed that studies made in 2008 and 2009 on the paint over Tlaltecuhtli monolith, found in October 2006 in Mexico City Historical Center, have deepened; “Soon after Tlaltecuhtli was exhumed by members of the Urban Archaeology Program, we took abundant samples of the pictorial layer, which had an excellent conservation state.

“A high-level multidisciplinary team, integrated by archaeologists, restorers, geologists and chemists conducted analyses with state-of-the-art technology, both in Mexico and the United States. These analyses determined raw material used by Mexica to elaborate pigments and agglutinants. We also identified pictorial techniques used by Tenochtitlan artists more than 500 years ago”.

The INAH archaeologist explained that among previous attempts to reconstruct chromatically the Sun Stone and Coyolxauhqui, some specialists like Robert Sieck Flandes, in 1942, and Carmen Aguilera, in 1985, based their studies on codices images, achieving interesting results.

The results presented now, however, part from using analytical methods and technological resources, proving that the palette of Tenochtitlan sculpture is more reduced that that from codices; in the future, reconstructions will have to be done based on direct observation of monoliths.

Lopez Lujan remarked that Mexica sculptors used mainly volcanic stone as basalt, andesite and tezontle, which natural hues are blackish, grayish and pinkish.

“These are the colors that dominate in pieces exposed at museums. Most sculptures have lost most of the pictorial layer, due to action of soil elements when buried, and once exhumed, to the action of weathering”.

This is why it is important to make computer chromatic reconstructions public, and be able to transmit today the visual sensations Mexica had during the Prehispanic period.

The last investigations in the field are part of Templo Mayor Project, headed by Leonardo Lopez Lujan, Maria Barajas and Fernando Carrizosa. The project has counted on with the important contributions of Jaime Torres, from the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography (ENCRyM) and Giacomo Chiari, from the Getty Conservation Institute, in Los Angeles.

Main results from investigations, announced Lopez Lujan, are to be published in Arqueologia Mexicana magazine and the books Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor (Sacred Mount-Main Temple) written with Alfredo Lopez Austin, and Escultura monumental mexica (Monumental Mexica Sculpture), written with Eduardo Matos Moctezuma.

Fewer than 10 percent of the city's nearly 1,000 historic-cultural monuments are located in the San Fernando Valley.

It was Aaron Kahlenberg, a teacher at Kennedy High School's Architecture & Digital Arts Magnet, who won historic-cultural status for his pristine post-war home in Granada Hills.

But it was his 20 architectural students who, working with the Los Angeles Conservancy, researched, wrote and presented nominations for three other Valley landmarks:

The Lankershim Reading Room, an octagonal folk-Victorian built in 1904 on the sprawling Lankershim Ranch, now located behind the Pico Adobe in Mission Hills.

The Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society sanctuary - a landmark that locals know as "The Onion" - that was designed by Neutra student Frank Ehrenthal in 1964 and became a renowned haven for Vietnam War protesters.

The Corbin Palms House, an impeccable ranch-style house in Woodland Hills built in 1955 by William Krisel and Dan Palmer. The duo designed many modernist homes in the Valley and Palm Springs.

"They're taking pride in their community," Kahlenberg said of his students. "They're working together to save valuable architecture for the future.

"The neatest thing about this is that, in high school, most people don't do things that are long lasting."

Each nomination, including the Idle Hour Cafe, has the support of its property owners.

It was Nichols, an urban architecture buff, who scoured Los Angeles for its last remaining barrel building.

The Idle Hour Cafe of North Hollywood, commissioned in 1941 by former hobo Michael D. Connolly, is also among the city's last so-called "programmatic" buildings - shaped like hot dogs, doughnuts and derby hats - for which it was once world-famous.

The cafe-tavern would later become a flamenco dinner-theater called La Ca a, which closed in 1984.

"Los Angeles used to be known for being creative, outstanding for building these crazy things," said Nichols, an associate editor for Los Angeles magazine, who lives in Altadena. "It's pretty outstanding to be stopped, driving down the street, by a giant barrel.

"I didn't want to see it turned into a mini-mall."