Paul von Hartmann (1909-) was a German civil servant who served as a translator in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin during the 1930s.
Biography[]
Paul von Hartmann was born in Munich, Bavaria, German Empire in 1909. He graduated from the University of Oxford in England in 1932, befriending the British student Hugh Legat and inviting him to visit him in Munich to experience the "new Germany". During the visit, a tipsy Hartmann expressed his strong support for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party at a beer hall, causing the other young patrons to toast to Hitler, while Legat and Paul's girlfriend Lena expressed their disappointment that Hartmann would vote for someone who was causing several Germans to leave the country for America. Hartmann argued with the two of them and broke off both relationships, going on to enter the civil service of Nazi Germany. During his time there, however, he grew disillusioned with Hitler's fascist regime and was recruited into General Hans Oster's 1938 coup plot by Eric Kordt, on the eve of the annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. When the announcement of negotiations in Munich and the postponement of German mobilization ended the threat of a German invasion to Czechoslovakia and thus thwarted a military uprising against Hitler, Hartmann decided to smuggle meeting notes from the Reich Chancellery obtained by his lover Helen Winter to Legat, by then a British civil servant, to expose Hitler's expansionist designs and persuade Britain not to allow Nazi Germany to have free rein in Europe. Hartmann was also tasked with personally assassinating Hitler with a pistol, but both of his plans fell through: Hartmann's old acquaintance and SS officer Franz Sauer prevented the document from reaching Legat, and Hartmann was unable to bring himself to shoot Hitler during one of their meetings. Ultimately, the Munich Agreement was signed, preventing a military coup in Germany, and necessitating the start of World War II in 1939.