Background
Hassell was born in Anklam, Province of Pomerania, to First Lieutenant Ulrich von Hassell and his wife Margarete.
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Hassell was born in Anklam, Province of Pomerania, to First Lieutenant Ulrich von Hassell and his wife Margarete.
Hassell passed his Abitur at Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in 1899. Between 1899 and 1903, he studied law and economics at the University of Lausanne, the University of Tübingen and in Berlin. He was active in the Corps Suevia Tübingen (de) (a Studentenverbindung). After spending some time in Qingdao (then known as the German colony of "Tsingtao") and London, he began in 1909 to work as a graduate civil servant (Assessor) in the Foreign Office.
Hassell became a diplomat of the old school, rising to be ambassador to Copenhagen (1926-30), Belgrade, and Rome (1932-38). Although mildly sympathetic to Nazism, he was known in Rome as U Freno (The Brake) for opposing much of Hitler's aggressive foreign policy. In Hitler's purge of 4 Feb 1938 Hassell was ousted along with Foreign Minister Neurath. Quickly concluding that prospects for a coup d'dtat were dim, Hassell used the cover of lecturer and economics expert to support Beck and Gofdeler. On 27 Apr 1942 Hassell was warned by Ernst von Weizaecker that he was under surveillance. Although not incriminated in the 20 July 1944 assassination plot, Hassell and Schulenburg were listed by the conspirators as candidates for the foreign minister post. Arrested on 28 July, the diplomat was tried by the People’s Court and hanged on 8 Sep 1944 at Ploetzensee Prison.
To the good fortune of historians he kept a journal, which was found in his garden and published in 1948. His alluring daughter. Fey, published an enthralling and historically valuable war memoir in 1989. Publication data are in the main bibliography.
In 1933, Hassell joined the Nazi Party. He was very much against the Anti-Comintern Pact concluded by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Empire of Japan in 1937, and favoured instead Western-Christian unity in Europe (he was, in fact, a member of the Order of Saint John, a German Protestant noblemen's association, to which he had been admitted as a Knight of Honor in 1925 and in which he had been promoted to Knight of Justice in 1933). In 1938, as a result of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, Hassell was recalled from his posting as ambassador in Rome by Adolf Hitler, without, however, being cast out of the diplomatic service. Then, soon after the German attack on Poland on 1 September 1939, Hassell led a delegation to allay north European governments' fears of a forthcoming German strike on their countries.
In 1911, Hassell married Ilse von Tirpitz, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's daughter. The couple would have four children. Also in 1911, he was named Vice-Consul in Genoa.
