Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff (14 October 1896-15 August 1944) was a German NSDAP member of the Reichstag from 1933 to 1944, Potsdam Police President from 1933 to 1935, and Berlin Police Chief from 1935 to 1944. He was executed for his participation in the 20 July plot in 1944.
Biography[]
Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff was born in Merseburg, Saxony, German Empire in 1896. He served in the 12th Thuringian Hussars during World War I, after which he served in the Freikorps and joined the Stahlhelm in 1924. He joined the National Socialist Freedom Movement in 1924, and he was elected to the Landtag of Prussia in 1924 on the NSFB list. He formally joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SA in 1931, and he took command of all Brandenburg later that year. He was responsible for anti-Semitic riots, and he went on to serve in the Reichstag from 1933 to 1944 and as the SA commander in northeast Germany. After the Nazi seizure of power, he became Police President of Potsdam and later of Berlin. He allied himself with Joseph Goebbels, overseeing the harassment and plundering of Berlin's Jewish population in the 1930s. However, he secretly became involved with the German Resistance as soon as 1938. During Operation Valkyrie, he failed in his task of directing all police forces in Berlin to stand down and not interfere with the Wehrmacht's coup, and he was arrested on 24 July and confessed his role in the plot to the Gestapo. He was executed by hanging at Plotzensee Prison after watching his fellow conspirators be hanged; he was the most senior Nazi convicted of involvement in the plot.