Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin (10 July 1922-8 March 2013) was a German publisher who was a member of the German Resistance during World War II.
Biography[]
Ewald-Heinrich Hermann Konrad Oskar Ulrich Wolf Alfred von Kleist-Schmenzin was born in Schmenzin, Pomerania, Germany (Smecino, Poland) in 1922, the son of conservative politician Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin and a relative of Wehrmacht Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist. He was raised in a staunchly monarchist family which opposed Nazism from the beginning, and, while he joined the Wehrmacht in 1940 and served on the Eastern Front of World War II, he was wounded at Lake Ladoga in 1943 and was recruited into the German Resistance by Claus von Stauffenberg as he convalesced in Potsdam. In January 1944, he volunteered to kill Adolf Hitler in a suicide bombing, but he was unable to kill Hitler due to the latter's constant rescheduling of the uniform demonstration where Von Kleist was to kill Hitler with a briefcase bomb. He was able to cover up his Resistance activities after the failure of Operation Valkyrie, and he was sent to the front, surviving until the war's end. After the war, he became a publisher in West Germany, founding a leading publishing house. He died in Munich in 2013 at the age of 90.