Hans Bernd von Haeften

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Hans-Bernd von Haeften

Hans-Bernd August Gustav von Haeften (18 December 1905 - 15 August 1944) was a German jurist and German Resistance member.

Haeften was born in Berlin to Agnes (née von Brauchitsch) and Officer and President of the Reichsarchiv Hans von Haeften. His siblings were Elisabeth and Werner (1908-1944). After studying law, which had led him as an exchange student to Oxford University, he first found himself busy with the Stresemann Foundation, and then in 1933, he joined the Foreign Service. He worked mainly for the cultural-political department of the Foreign Office and as a cultural attaché in Copenhagen, Vienna and Bucharest.

In 1940, Haeften became the department's leader, but refused to join the Nazi Party. From 1933, he belonged to the Confessing Church. He had contacts with the Kreisau Circle, especially through Ulrich von Hassell and Adam von Trott zu Solz. He refused on religious and moral grounds to have anything to do with the attempt on Hitler's life that the Kreisau Circle was planning, but supported the attempt to overthrow Hitler and stood ready to take power at the Foreign Ministry for the plotters.

Haeften was arrested on 23 July 1944, three days after the assassination attempt at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia, for which his brother Werner von Haeften, as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg's adjutant, was summarily shot. On 15 August, Haeften was brought before the People's Court, where he described Hitler as the "executor of evil in history". He was sentenced to death and hanged the same day at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.