Background
Carl Heinrich von Stuelpnagel was born in Darmstadt on 2 January 1886.
Carl Heinrich von Stuelpnagel was born in Darmstadt on 2 January 1886.
A professional soldier of the old school, who like many of his fellow officers disapproved of the Nazi regime, von Stuelpnagel eventually became the main agent in Paris of the military conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. From November 1938 to June 1940, he served as Quartermaster-General on the Army General Staff and then for the next six months he was Chief of the Franco-German Armistice Commission. Stuelpnagel was then transferred to the eastern front following the invasion of Soviet Russia, commanding the Seventeenth Army until October 1941.
On 3 March 1942 he succeeded his cousin, Otto von Stuelpnagel, as Military Governor in Paris, a post he held until July 1944. The measures which he took against French Resistance activities, including the execution of relatives and the murder of hostages, were extremely harsh and brutal. Nevertheless, von Stuelpnagel, who had already been active in the Halder-Beck circle and involved in the putsch plans of 1939, was in the forefront of the plot to eliminate Hitler and end the war in the West before the anticipated Allied invasion of Europe. His followers succeeded in arresting over a thousand key Gestapo and SS men before news arrived from Germany that the conspiracy had failed.
Ordered to return to Berlin, von Stuelpnagel tried to commit suicide near Verdun, but succeeded only in blowing half his face off and blinding himself. The seriously wounded survivor was taken to Berlin, where he was eventually hanged in the courtyard of Plotzensee prison on 30 August 1944.
The blinded General had to be led by the hand to the gallow's. Like some of the other conspirators, his body was left to hang like an animal carcass on butcher’s hooks.