Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld
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Ulrich Wilhelm Graf von Schwerin und von Schwanenfeld (21 December 1902 – 8 September 1944) was a German landowner, officer, and resistance fighter against the Nazi régime.
Schwerin was born in the Danish capital Copenhagen. He found Nazism quite loathesome to his Christian social convictions. Already by 1935, he held the view that Adolf Hitler must be killed to be brought down. Beginning in 1938, Schwerin belonged to the tightest circle of the resistance along with his personal friends Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg, and later also to the Kreisau Circle.
From the beginning of the Second World War, Schwerin belonged to the Wehrmacht as an officer. In 1942, Hans Oster appointed Schwerin to the office of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht in Berlin. He participated in the failed attempt on Hitler's life and coup d'état on 20 July 1944 from a position at the Bendlerblock, where the plotters' headquarters were, although he had been saying for weeks that the chances for a successful coup were very slight. There, on the night of 21 July 1944, he was arrested, and on 21 August, he was sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof, with Roland Freisler presiding. On 8 September (or according to some sources, on the same day as the trial), Schwerin was hanged at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
[edit] Literature
- Detlef Graf von Schwerin, Die Jungen des 20. Juli 1944. Brücklmeier, Kessel, Schulenburg, Schwerin, Wussow, Yorck; Berlin 1991
- Hans-Joachim Ramm: ... stets einem Höheren verantwortlich. Christliche Grundüberzeugungen im innermilitärischen Widerstand gegen Hitler; Neuhausen u, Stuttgart (Hänssler) 1996 (ISBN 3-7751-2635-X)
