Henning von Tresckow (10 January 1901-21 July 1944) was a Generalmajor of the German Wehrmacht during World War II and a major leader of the German Resistance.
Biography[]
Von Tresckow in 1943
Henning von Tresckow was born on 10 January 1901 in Magdeburg, Saxony, German Empire. His family had produced 21 generals over 300 years, and he was from a notable family of aristocrats. In June 1918, he became the youngest Lieutenant in the Imperial German Army during World War I, and his regimental commander told him that, later in life, he would either become Chief of the General Staff or die on the scaffold as a rebel. In 1920, he resigned from the Reichswehr to study law and economics, and he married the daughter of German general Erich von Falkenhayn. In 1934, he entered the War Academy and trained to join the General Staff, and he served on the general staff of Army Group A during the Battle of France, but he had begun to lose faith in the war by October 1940. He told Alfred Jodl's wife that the war would be lost if the United States was persuaded to join the war by the United Kingdom. Von Tresckow would serve under his cousin Fedor von Bock as chief of Army Group Center's operations during Operation Barbarossa, and he also served as Chief of Staff of the German Second Army in the Ukraine.
Von Tresckow became a member of the German Resistance during the course of World War II, although he had opposed the Nazi Party since the 1930s; he was opposed to the SS' Night of the Long Knives purges, the accusations of homosexuality against Werner von Fritsch and Werner von Blomberg, the pogroms against Jews in Germany, and the massacre of Jews in the Soviet Union. On 13 March 1943, Gunther von Kluge convinced him to postpone a coup, saying that a coup could only occur if both Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler could be killed; Himmler would lead the SS against the Wehrmacht in a civil war if only Hitler was killed. In late 1943, Von Tresckow began planning Operation Valkyrie, but he would be unable to take part in the plot due to being sent to command a battalion against the Soviet Red Army. The operation took place on 20 July 1944, but Hitler was unscathed, and the bomb plot failed. Von Tresckow feared for his life, as many other conspirators had been arrested and were awaiting execution. The day after the attack, he detonated a hand grenade below his chin near Bialystok, Poland after firing shots with his pistol, creating the illusion that he was killed in a partisan attack.