"This means that the Grand Master had already asked Boeselager for his resignation without any input from Cardinal Burke." How does it mean this? I honestly don't see how you could make that kind of inference?

And you missed the question about calumny. Burke admits to saying "the person who... should take responsibility" so how can he consider "he asked Boeslager to resign" to be a malicious misrepresentation or false charges? Again, I don't see how von R's remarks can be construed as calumny if you admit that Burke asked for the person to do the responsible thing, i.e. resign. Festing seems to have treated it as requesting Boeslager resign, why wouldn't we? What does Burke think is false?