Wolf-Heinrich Graf Von Helldorf

Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf was a German career police officer who served both the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

In 1932 he held the post of leader of the Sturmabteilung in Berlin. General Kurt von Schleicher was Chancellor of Germany. Von Helldorf's first recorded involvement in politics was at this time, when Schleicher, who was having difficulties in creating a majority in the Reichstag, informed Helldorf that "wanted to change his course". Helldorf reported this to Goebbels. [Goebbels Diaries] . This contact was made because both Schleicher and Roehm, the commander of the SA, wanted it to replace the regular army. [N.S. Monatshefte No 39 (June 1933)] This ambition was, of course, annihilated in the Night of the Long Knives.

After the NSDAP came to power on January 30 1933, von Helldorf was made the chief of Police, or Police-President of Berlin. He filled this post without excitement or controversy until early in 1938. On January 12 of this year, Field Marshal von Blomberg, the defence minister of Germany, married his secretary, a lady called Erna Gruhn. Shortly after the marriage, and following a number of anonymous telephone calls, von Helldorf was shown a file on the new Frau von Blomberg, which showed that she had a police record as a prostitute. [William Schirer, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp312-313] Rather than taking the dossier to Himmler, his immediate superior, he took it to General Keitel. Keitel, however, gave them back and suggested that they be given to Goering. As Goering wanted Blomberg's post as Minister of War for himself, this sealed Blomberg's political fate, though he lived with his wife in retirement until after the war. [Telford Taylor, Sword and Swastika, pp149-150]

By 1938, the enthusiasm of Graf von Helldorf for Nazism had cooled, and he was involved in the conspiracy within the German armed forces, led by General Beck, to depose or to kill Hitler. [Unpublished diaries of General Halder] He was known to be ready to act at the time of the Munich agreement, but the leaders of the conspiracy decided that this agreement had removed their reason to act.

Apart from small and individual acts, which were all wholly ineffective, the anti-Nazi conspiracy did nothing until July 20 1944, when a serious attempt was made by von Stauffenberg to assassinate Hitler at his command bunker in East Prussia. Helldorf, who still commanded the Berlin police apparatus, had alerted his forces to be ready to take over the city, and waited all day for the word. But no word came, and late in the afternoon it became clear that the assassination attempt had failed. Helldorf was one of some 7,000 officers whom the Gestapo lists as arrested and executed. The exact date and manner of his death is not recorded. [Eberhard Zeller "Geist der Freiheit"]

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