Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin
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Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin (born 1922 in Schmenzin, Pomerania, then Germany (now Smęcino near Koszalin in Poland)), sometimes known simply as Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist or Ewald von Kleist, is a former Wehrmacht officer and resistance fighter, active in the Third Reich against Adolf Hitler. He was involved in the July 20 Plot.
Von Kleist-Schmenzin never had any great love for Hitler or National Socialism, influenced as he was by his father, Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin who loathed the Nazi régime. The events of June 30, 1934 – the Night of the Long Knives – further solidified von Kleist-Schmenzin's opposition to the Nazi régime.
Infantry Officer Kleist was personally recruited for the resistance by Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. In January 1944, at his father's urging, he volunteered for a suicide assassination attempt against Hitler which would have involved setting off two hand grenades hidden under his uniform, and jumping on Hitler just before they went off. The plan was not carried out, however, as Hitler failed to show up for the scheduled uniform demonstration.
On 20 July 1944, he functioned at the Bendlerblock in Berlin as one of the many supporters and helpers in the attempt on Hitler's life at the Wolf's Lair near Rastenburg in East Prussia. After the plot's failure, he managed to cover up his resistance activities. Proceedings against him were later dismissed for want of evidence in December 1944, thereby sparing Kleist the horror of a trial before the Volksgerichtshof, which almost certainly would have ended with a death sentence, as it did for so many fellow plotters. However, his exoneration did not come before a stay in Ravensbrück concentration camp, and afterwards he was posted to the front for the rest of the war.
After the war, he went into the publishing business, founding his own publishing house, the Ewald-von-Kleist-Verlag.
In 1962, he founded the Wehrkundetagung in Munich, later called, in English, the Munich Conference on Security Policy. He moderated it up until 1998.
[edit] External links
- Biography
- Interview with Ewald von Kleist (English)
- Interview with Ewald von Kleist (German)
