Werner von Haeften

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Werner Karl von Haeften (9 October 1908 - 20 July 1944) was an Oberleutnant in the Wehrmacht, who took part in the military-based conspiracy against Hitler known as the July 20 Plot.

Von Haeften and his brother Hans Bernd von Haeften were born in Berlin to Army officer and President of the Reichsarchiv Hans von Haeften. He studied Law in his hometown and then worked for a bank in Hamburg until the outbreak of World War II, when he joined the German army.

In 1943, having recovered from a severe wound he had suffered on the eastern front, von Haeften became adjutant to Oberstleutnant Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, one of the leading figures in the German military resistance movement.

On 20 July 1944 von Haeften accompanied Stauffenberg to the military high command of the Wehrmacht near Rastenburg, East Prussia, where the latter planted a briefcase bomb in Hitler's briefing hut. After the detonation, Stauffenberg and von Haeften rushed to Berlin and, not knowing that Hitler had survived the explosion, engaged in a coup d'état, which would eventually fail.

On the same day, Werner von Haeften, along with Stauffenberg and fellow conspirators General Friedrich Olbricht and Oberst Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, was arrested and condemned to death by General Friedrich Fromm. He was shot by a firing squad in the courtyard of the War Ministry, the Bendlerblock.

His brother Hans Bernd von Haeften was executed a few days later.