Background
Von Haeften was born in Berlin to Agnes (née von Brauchitsch, a relative of Walther von Brauchitsch) and Hans von Haeften, an army officer and President of the Reichsarchiv.
Von Haeften was born in Berlin to Agnes (née von Brauchitsch, a relative of Walther von Brauchitsch) and Hans von Haeften, an army officer and President of the Reichsarchiv.
After studying law, which had led him as an exchange student to Oxford University, he first found himself busy with the Stresemann Foundation, and then in 1933, he joined the Foreign Service. He worked mainly for the cultural-political department of the Foreign Office and as a cultural attaché in Copenhagen, Vienna and Bucharest. In 1940, von Haeften became the department"s leader, but refused to join the Nazi Party.
From 1933, he belonged to the Confessing Church.
He had contacts with the Kreisau Circle, especially through Ulrich von Hassell and Adam von Trott zu Solz. He refused on religious and moral grounds to have anything to do with any attempt on Adolf Hitler"s life, but supported the attempt to overthrow Hitler and stood ready to take power at the Foreign Ministry for the plotters.
Von Haeften was arrested on 23 July 1944, three days after the failed German Generals assassination attempt or the July 20 Plot against Hitler at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. On 15 August, von Haeften was brought before the Volksgerichtshof or People"s Court, where he described Hitler as "a great perpetrator of evil." He was sentenced to death and hanged the same day at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
The Restless Conscience (United States of America 1991).