Ulrich von Hassell

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German diplomat Ulrich von H*ell in front of the National Socialist German Workers' Party Volksgerichtshof, which condemned him to death in September 1944 Coat of arms von H*ell c. 15th century

Christian August Ulrich von H*ell (12 November 1881 – 8 September 1944) was a German diplomat during World War II. A member of the German Resistance against German dictator Adolf Hitler, H*ell unsuccessfully proposed to the British the resistance would overthrow Hitler if Germany kept all of its territorial conquests. He was executed in the aftermath of the failed 20 July plot.

1 Family
2 Early life
3 World War I
4 World War II
5 Awards and decorations
6 Writings
7 See also
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links

Family

Von H*ell was descended from ancient landed nobility, born the son of First Lieutenant Ulrich von H*ell and Margarete (née von Stosch).

His mother was a niece of Albrecht von Stosch, the Prussian Minister of State and chief of the Admiralität. She was furthermore the great-granddaughter of Henriette Vogel, whom Heinrich von Kleist had accompanied in November 1811 in suicide. Ulrich von H*ell later did not exclude that his ever-growing admiration for the writer had been increased by that fact.

His maternal grandfather was the godson of count August Neidhardt von Gneisenau. This explains the special interest of H*ell in the Prussian reformer, which found its expression in some publications and elsewhere.

His paternal grandfather, Christian von H*ell, born in 1805, chose a lawyer's career, an exception in their old Hanoverian family. Their members had exclusively been landowners or had taken a career in the military.

H*ell is the father of Wolf Ulrich von H*ell, who helped the German resistance to Hitler during World War II. As amb*ador and deputy head of mission to the United Nations from 1971 to 1978, he oversaw the Federal Republic of Germany regaining its status from observer to full member. His previous diplomatic postings were in the Foreign Office in Bonn, in Belgium and in Italy. He also had a daughter Fey who Was 12 years old when he took up his post in Rome. Between 1933 and 1937, she noted her father‘s reaction to the rise of National Socialist German Workers' Partysm and the negative feelings he was unwilling to commit to paper, but which he confided to his family in a diary she kept.

He is also the grandfather of Agostino von H*ell, a noted author on military and war history; and of Corrado Pirzio-Biroli, former civil servant of the European Commission and amb*ador of the EU to Austria during the 1994 Austrian European Union membership referendum.

coat of arms of the von H*ell family

Early life

H*ell was born in Anklam, Province of Pomerania, to First Lieutenant Ulrich von H*ell and his wife Margarete. H*ell p*ed 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: (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 (*essor) in the Foreign Office.

In 1911, H*ell married Ilse von Tirpitz, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's daughter. The couple would have four children. That year, he was named Vice-Consul in Genoa.

World War I

In the First World War, H*ell was wounded in the chest in the First Battle of the Marne on 8 September 1914. Later in the war, he worked as Alfred von Tirpitz's advisor and private secretary. He later wrote his father-in-law's biography.

After the war ended in 1918, H*ell joined the nationalist German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei or DNVP). In the years that followed, he returned to the Foreign Office and worked until the early 1930s in Rome, Barcelona, Copenhagen, and Belgrade. In 1932, H*ell was made Germany's amb*ador to the Kingdom of Italy.

In 1933, H*ell joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party Party. He was strongly against the Anti-Comintern Pact concluded by National Socialist German Workers' Party Germany, Fascist Italy and the Empire of *an 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 *ociation, to which he had been admitted as a Knight of Honor in 1925 and he had been promoted to Knight of Justice in 1933). In 1938, as a result of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, H*ell was recalled from his posting as amb*ador in Rome by Adolf Hitler but without being cast out of the diplomatic service. Soon after the German attack on Poland on 1 September 1939, H*ell led a delegation to allay Northern European governments' fears of a forthcoming German strike on their countries.

World War II

Memorial plaque for Ulrich von H*ell where he lived in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, H*ell took part in plans to overthrow Hitler. H*ell's main function was to be a liaison between the conservative opposition groups centred about Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Ludwig Beck (H*ell once ironically called this group "His Majesty's most loyal opposition", using the English term) and the younger Kreisau Circle.

In 1940, H*ell met the amateur diplomat James Lonsdale-Bryans to discuss a possible pact between Germany and the British Empire. Lonsdale-Bryans proposed that Germany would be allowed control of Europe, and Britain would control the rest of the world. Over the next few years, H*ell used his position in the executive committee of the Central European Economic Congress to discuss with Allied officials what might happen after a possible coup d'état in Germany. He envisaged himself, along with Beck and Johannes Popitz, planning for Germany's post-Hitler internal organization after a successful coup.

Depending on the source, either he or the former amb*ador to the Soviet Union, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, would have become Foreign Minister in the foreseen transitional government. H*ell's offer in 1940 was based on the condition that Britain would let Germany keep almost all of the National Socialist German Workers' Party’s territorial gains in Europe, including Austria, Sudetenland and Poland. The British saw no reason to agree to a treaty that would be entirely beneficial for Germany alone.

However, on 29 July 1944, H*ell was arrested by the Gestapo for his involvement in the 20 July plot, something that he had foreseen. On 8 September, after a two-day trial at the German People's Court (Volksgerichtshof), over which Roland Freisler presided, he was sentenced to death and executed the same day at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

Awards and decorations

Order of St Alexander, 1st cl* (Bulgaria)
Order of the Rising Sun, 1st cl* (*an)
Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus (Italy)
Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of the Yugoslav Crown
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog (Denmark)
Knight Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (Spain)
Order of the Double Dragon, 3rd cl*, 1st grade (China)
Order of Osmanieh (Ottoman Empire)
Knight of Justice of the Order of Saint John

Writings

The Von H*ell Diaries 1938-1944: The Story of the Forces Against Hitler Inside Germany, Amb*ador Ulrich von H*ell, (Doubleday & Company, 1947, ASIN:B000VB0W42), (Hamish Hamilton, 1948, ASIN:B0014X98FU) (Greenwood Press, 1971, ISBN:978-0-8371-3228-0)

References

External links

Media related to Ulrich von H*ell at Wikimedia Commons

Ulrich von H*ell at WorldCat
Biography at DHM LeMO (in German)
Walter Lipgens, Wilfried Loth (1985). Do*ents on the History of European Integration. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN:3-11-009724-9.
Who in National Socialist German Workers' Party Germany
Newspaper clippings about Ulrich von H*ell in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW