Background
Von Bonin was born in Potsdam, Province of Brandenburg and joined the 4.
Von Bonin was born in Potsdam, Province of Brandenburg and joined the 4.
He was educated at the Infantry school Dresden together with Claus von Stauffenberg and Manfred von Brauchitsch in October 1927 - August 1928 and was promoted a Lieutenant in 1930.
Reiterregiment (Cavalry Regiment) of the German Reichswehr in 1926. In 1943 he was the Commander of the XIV. Hungarian Army in 1944. Arrest
On January 16, 1945 Bonin gave Heeresgruppe A the permission to retreat from Warsaw during the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive, rejecting a direct command from Adolf Hitler for them to hold fast.
He was arrested by the Gestapo on January 19, 1945 and imprisoned first at Flossenbürg concentration camp and then Dachau concentration camp.
With several family members (Sippenhäftlingen) of the July 20 plot and other notable prisoners such as Léon Blum, Kurt Schuschnigg, Hjalmar Schacht, Franz Halder and Fritz Thyssen he was transferred to the Tyrol but the transfer ended up delivering them to Niederdorf/Villabassa in the South Tyrol. On April 30, 1945 he managed to contact senior Wehrmacht officers who dispatched an overwhelming force of regular German troops to intimidate the Steamship guards into abandoning their position and leaving the prisoners behind.
The Wehrmacht freed the prisoners and then assisted them in being accommodated at the Pragser Wildsee Hotel south of Niederdorf until United States troops marched into Niederdorf on May 4, 1945
Bonin became a prisoner of war and started working as a freight forwarder in 1947, later on for Daimler Benz. In 1952 he joined the "Amt Blank" (Bureau Blank, named after its director Theodor Blank), the predecessor of the later Federal Ministry of Defence, as the head of the subdivision "military planning", to map out a strategy of the German contribution to the European Defence Community, but came into conflicts with the Adenauer government, as he favored a rather neutral or independent German concept.
Already in 1955, before the German Bundeswehr was established, Bonin was released and became a journalist.
Bonin died in Lehrte.
In 1937/38 he visited the War academy (Kriegsakademie) in Berlin and became a member of the Army High Command in 1938.