Marie Vassiltchikov

Marie Illarionovna Vassiltchikov (Russian: Мария Илларионовна Васильчикова; January 11, 1917 - August 12, 1978) was a Russian princess who was acquainted with some of the people who plotted to kill kill Adolf Hitler in the July 20 Plot, but was not directly involved in the plot itself.

Early life

Princess Marie ("Missie") Vassiltchikov was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the waning days of the Russian Empire, on January 11, 1917. She was the fourth child of a member of the Fourth Duma, Prince Hilarion Sergueïevitch Vassiltchikov and his wife, the former Princess Lidiya Leonidovna Vyazemskaya. As members of the aristocracy, her parents fled Russia in 1919, following the Bolshevik October Revolution. Princess Marie lived as a refugee in Weimar Republic Germany, the French Third Republic, and Lithuania until the start of World War II.

Plot to kill Hitler

In 1940, Princess Marie and her sister, Princess Tatiana Vassiltchikova [1] (1915–2006), traveled to Berlin where, as stateless persons, they were able to obtain work permits. After a brief period of employment with the Broadcasting Service, Vassiltchikov transferred to the Auswärtiges Amt (AA), or German Foreign Ministry's Information Office, where she worked as the assistant to Dr. Adam von Trott zu Solz.

Due to the tendency of Nazi party members to bypass the Foreign Ministry staff when formulating policy as described in Princess Marie's diaries, the A.A. effectively became a gathering place for civilian members of the anti-Nazi resisters including Dr. von Trott zu Solz. In 1944, he was among the leaders of the July 20 Plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Princess Marie kept diaries of her life in the plotters' circle. She wrote in shorthand and kept the pages hidden in her A.A. office and in other locations but was not actively involved in the plot. In addition, her diaries detail the bombing of Berlin, the daily life of what remained of Berlin's cosmopolitan pre-war nobility and intelligentsia, and her own journey from privilege to near-death at the end of the war.

Following the failed attempt to kill Hitler, many of her friends and colleagues were imprisoned and a number were killed. Princess Marie and her friend Princess Elenore (Loremarie) von Schönburg went several times to Gestapo headquarters to plead for the life of Dr. von Trott zu Solz (among others) and to bring food and packages. Eventually, they were warned by a friendly guard not to return.

After Dr. von Trott zu Solz was executed, Princess Marie left Berlin and traveled to Vienna, where she worked as a nurse until the end of the war.

Post-war

Princess Marie was found by the United States Third Army under the command of US Army General George S. Patton outside Gmunden on May 4, 1945. She worked as an interpreter for the army, but contracted scarlet fever and was transported to a hospital unit.

On January 28, 1946, Princess Marie Vassiltchikov married U.S. Army Captain Peter G. Harnden of Military Intelligence. They settled in Paris, where Harnden opened an architectural firm. After Harnden died in Barcelona in 1971, she moved to London. After her husband's death, she bowed to the wishes of friends and relatives who had been encouraging her to publish her wartime diaries. She died in London of leukemia on August 12, 1978. At the time, the task of editing and polishing her diaries was still incomplete; this task was completed by her brother.

Princess Marie Illarionovna Harden was survived by her four children; her brother, Prince Yuri "Georgie" Vassiltchikov; and her sister, Princess Tatiana von Metternich-Winneburg, who was married to Paul Alfons von Metternich-Winneburg, a descendant of Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, the prominent Austrian state chancellor and diplomat of the Napoleonic era.

Legacy

Vassiltchikov's diaries are one of only two kept by participants in the July 20th Plot to kill Adolf Hitler. The other diary was written by Ulrich von Hassell. Also, her description of the repeated bombing of Berlin during the war is considered one of the best testimonies of that experience.

The diaries are also important in that they chronicle a little-known aspect of Hitler's war crimes: the destruction of the aristocracy of Europe. Hitler and the aristocracy had an uneasy relationship during the war. After it became clear that many of the July 20 Plot participants were members of the aristocracy, Hitler used the assassination attempt as an excuse to wipe out many members of the prominent members of the ruling families of Europe.

A poignant feature of Vassiltchikov's diary is its arc from the first pages in 1940 to its conclusion in 1945. She begins by recounting a night spent dancing at a ball at the Chilean embassy and ends with her flight from Vienna, which found her stumbling, filthy and half-starved, across a bombed railroad depot at the end of the war. Her account of wartime Berlin at times takes on an air of surreality as she writes about days that combined lunches at the Hotel Adlon and nights spent in half-ruined flats and conversations that ranged from gossip about her noble and royal friends to the intended killing of Hitler.

External links

• Marie Vassiltchikov: Berlin Diaries 1940-1945, 1988. ISBN 0-394-75777-7 Russian translation available online
• Tatiana Metternich: Five Passports in a Shifting Europe, 1976. ISBN 0-434-46525-9
• Random House Author's Page: Marie Vassiltchikov
• Amazon.com link to Tatiana Metternich
• Hilarion Vassiltchikov

Persondata
Name	Vassiltchikov, Marie
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	January 11, 1917
Place of birth
Date of death	August 12, 1978
Place of death