Werner von Haeften

Werner Karl von Haeften (9 October 1908 – 21 July 1944 ) was an Oberleutnant in the Wehrmacht, who took part in the military-based conspiracy against Adolf Hitler known as the 20 July plot. He is considered a hero of the German anti-Nazi resistance.

Early life
Haeften and his brother Hans were born in Berlin to Hans von Haeften, an army officer and President of the Reichsarchiv (German National Archives). 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.

War service
In 1943, having recovered from a severe wound he had suffered on the Eastern Front, Haeften became adjutant to Oberstleutnant Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the leading figures in the German Resistance.

On 20 July 1944, Haeften accompanied Stauffenberg to the military high command of the Wehrmacht near Rastenburg, East Prussia (now Kętrzyn, Poland), where Stauffenberg planted a briefcase bomb in a conference room at Hitler's Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) headquarters. After the detonation, Stauffenberg and Haeften rushed to Berlin and, not knowing that Hitler had survived the explosion, attempted to launch the long-planned coup d'état, which would swiftly fail.



On the same day, 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, who nevertheless was later executed by the Nazi regime. All four plotters were shot after midnight by a ten-man firing squad from the Grossdeutschland Guards Battalion in the courtyard of the War Ministry, the Bendlerblock. When Stauffenberg was about to be shot, in a last gesture of loyalty and defiance, Haeften placed himself in the path of the bullets meant for Stauffenberg.

Haeften's brother Hans, also involved in the anti-Hitler plot, was executed on 15 August at Plötzensee Prison.

Film portrayal
In the 1971 Eastern Bloc co-production Liberation: Direction of the Main Blow, von Haeften was depicted by East German actor Hans-Edgar Stecher. In the 2004 German production, Stauffenberg, von Haeften is portrayed by actor Hardy Krüger junior. In the 2008 film Valkyrie, Lt. von Haeften is portrayed by British actor Jamie Parker.