Wessel Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven (10 November 1899, Groß Born, Courland Governorate – 26 July 1944), was a colonel in the High Command of the German Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) and a member of the German Resistance against German dictator Adolf Hitler (Widerstand). Loringhoven was a friend of Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, who was the leader of the July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
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Loringhoven came from an aristocratic Baltic German family in Courland descended from Westphalia. He grew up in Adiamünde (Skulte) in Livonia. After his Final Exams (Abitur), Loringhoven joined the Baltic-German Army (Landeswehr) in 1918, and with the formation of independent Latvia he became an officer of the 13th Infantry Regiment of Latvia. In 1922, he left Latvia in order to enter the Army of Weimar Germany (Reichswehr).
Loringhoven initially sympathized with the National Socialist program for Germany. But, in 1934, he was disaffected by the Night of the Long Knives massacre. After more negative experiences with war crimes during the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Loringhoven joined the resistance against Nazi Germany.
In 1943, with the help of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Loringhoven was relocated to the High Command of the German Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) as a colonel.
Loringhoven's son Niki, testifying in Munich in 1972 and in recent revelations, reports that his father was involved in the foiling of Hitler's plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII.[1][2] Niki von Freytag-Loringhoven's reported that within days of the arrest of Benito Mussolini as ordered by King Victor Emmanuel III, the Führer commanded the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (the Third Reich’s Security Headquarters) to retaliate against the Italians via the kidnapping or murder of Pius XII and the Victor Emmanuel.[1]
The colonel’s son, Niki Freytag Loringhoven, now 72, recently coming forward to reveal new details about the plan, reported that on July 29 and 30, 1943 his father and Erwin von Lahousen, who were employed in the section of German intelligence dealing mainly with sabotage, attended a meeting in Venice where Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, top Gerrman counterintelligence officer, also part of the resistance, informed the Italian General, Cesare Amè, of the plot .[1][2] General Amè relayed the news which allowed the plot to be foiled.[1] The Italian paper, Avvenire, reports that the younger Freytag von Loringhoven’s accounts comport with the Von Lahousen’s Nuremberg war crimes trials deposition.[1] Both officers, von Lahousen and Freytag Loringhoven, participated with Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg in the failed July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.[1]
Loringhoven provided the detonator charge and explosives for the assassination attempt against Hitler on July 20th, 1944. He was able to obtain unrecognized English explosives from German intelligence (Abwehr) sources. However, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA), discovered the actions of Loringhoven. On 26 July 1944, immediately before he was to be arrested by the Gestapo and fully aware of the interrogation techniques utilized by them, Loringhoven committed suicide at Mauerwald in East Prussia.
After his death, Loringhoven's wife was imprisoned along with relatives of the other members of the plot. Loringhoven's four sons were separated from their mother. All were eventually liberated by Allied forces.
A close cousin, Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, was not implicated only due to the intervention of General Heinz Guderian. His cousin was an occupant of the Führerbunker in Berlin towards the end of World War II in Europe. Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven escaped Berlin, was captured by the British, and survived the war.
Freiherr was a title, translated as Baron, not a first or middle name. From 1919 Freiherr and its feminine equivalents are no longer titles but part of the surname, following the given name(s) and are not translated.