Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff

Helldorff was born in Merseburg, a noble landowner's son. Helldorff served as a lieutenant from 1915 in the First World War.

He was also friends with the stage magician and psychic, Erik Jan Hanussen, who constantly lent him money for his debts. "The count was always in debt, and his private life was a wreck. He was separated from his wife and was on bad terms with his mother after welching on his promise to pay her rent. Sometimes he was behind in his own rent. On one occasion he 'forgot' to pay for a new Mercedes. And he was always late paying his personal tailor and the trainer he hired for his racehorse. There were other debts as well, all from a gambling habit Helldorff couldn't shake. Luckily, he could always count on a handout from Hanussen. All he had to do was sign an IOU, which Hanussen would add to his growing pile of chits he kept safe in his apartment."[1]

After World War I he was a member of the right-wing Freikorps and, later, of the nationalist paramilitary organisation Stahlhelm.

He became a member of the National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSFB) in 1924, which served as a legal front for the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) when it was banned after the Beer Hall Putsch, also joining its paramilitary force Frontbann. He was elected in the Landtag of Prussia in 1924 in the NSFB list.

The NSFP was reabsorbed into the NSDAP in 1925 after the latter was made legal again, and in 1928 Helldorff was re-elected to his post on their list. By 1931 he had joined the Sturmabteilung (SA), functioning as an SA leader in Berlin. The scope of his work got bigger in 1933 when he was also given responsibility for the Schutzstaffel's (SS) Berlin-Brandenburg leadership. At the same time, he was also elected to the Reichstag.

He was closely allied with Joseph Goebbels, Gauleiter of Berlin and Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. As chief of the Berlin Police, Helldorff played an instrumental role in the harassment and plundering of Berlin's Jewish population in the early and mid-1930s, a policy known as Aktionen. Goebbels mentioned in his diary on 2 July 1938, that "...Helldorff wants to construct a Jewish ghetto in Berlin. The rich Jews will be required to fund its construction." Helldorff was the organizational brains behind the arson and looting of Berlin's synagogues and Jewish businesses in the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 1938.[2][3][4] On 8 November 1938, the day Kristallnacht began, he was quoted in The New York Times saying, "as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been disarmed".[5]

It is asserted that Helldorff was in some form of communication with the military opposition to Hitler as early as 1938.[6] Goebbels certainly ensured that Hellsdorf took the blame for Kristallnacht, when he declared "the police act with an appearance of legality, the party provides spectators." The police took orders not to arrest nor to treat too harshly rioters who beat up Jews.[7]

By contrast is the case described in Hans Gisevius' book To the Bitter End, in which Helldorff plays an important role in a circle of conspirators and anti-Nazis. On 20 July 1944, he was in communication with the coup d'état plotters attempting to assassinate the Führer. His planned role would be to keep the police from interfering with the military takeover, and then to aid the new government.[8] The fact that Helldorff sided with the anti-Hitler movement in their attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler earned him a place in history as a German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.

• Miller, Michael (2015). Leaders Of The Storm Troops Volume 1. England: Helion & Company. ISBN 978-1-909982-87-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• Gisevius, Hans Bernd, To the Bitter End, Translated from German by Richard and Clara Winston, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1947 Reprinted 2009.

• List SS-Obergruppenführer

• Newspaper clippings about Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW