Hellmuth Stieff

Hellmuth Ludwig Gustav Arnold Stieff (6 June 1901 – 8 August 1944) was a German general and a member of the OKH (German Army Headquarters) during World War II. He took part in attempts by the German resistance to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 7 and 20 July 1944.

Early career Stieff was born in Deutsch Eylau (now Iława, Poland) in the province of West Prussia as the son of Artillery Major Wilhelm Bruno Walter Stieff and his wife Anna Laura Maria Carla néé Krause. He graduated early in July 1918 in order to enter the Imperial German Army and was assigned with the rank of Kriegsfreiwilliger (rough equivalent to Private) to the replacement battalion of Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 71 "Groß-Komtur". Stieff completed his training in September that year and was transferred to 2. Westpreußisches Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 36. He took part in the final combats on the Western Front and was accepted in the reduced Reichswehr following the Armistice.

Resistance fighter Hellmuth Stieff on trial at the People's Court on 7 August, the day before his hanging. Commemorative plaque dedicated to Stieff on the wall of a Berlin building where he once lived. Invited by General Henning von Tresckow, Stieff joined the German resistance in summer 1943. Taking advantage of being in charge of Organisationsabteilung, he acquired and kept all sorts of explosives, including some from foreign sources. He provided the explosives for von dem Bussche's canceled assassination attempt on Hitler at the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) in November.

As one of the officers who had occasional access to Hitler, he volunteered to kill Hitler himself in a suicide attack but later backed away despite repeated requests from Tresckow and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg to carry out the assassination. On 7 July 1944, during a demonstration of new uniforms to Hitler at Schloss Klessheim, a palace near Salzburg, Stieff was indisposed to trigger the bomb. Stauffenberg, therefore, decided to kill Hitler himself.

In the morning of 20 July, Stieff flew with Stauffenberg and Lieutenant Werner von Haeften in the Heinkel He 111 plane provided by General Eduard Wagner from Berlin to the Wolfsschanze. In the night he was arrested and brutally interrogated under torture by the Gestapo. Stieff held out for several days against all attempts to extract the names of fellow conspirators. Ousted by the Wehrmacht, he was tried by the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) under President Roland Freisler and sentenced to death on 8 August 1944. At Hitler's personal request, Stieff was executed by hanging in the afternoon of that same day at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

Decorations German Cross in Gold: February 16, 1942 Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (World War II) 1st Class (World War II) Eastern Front Medal Wehrmacht Long Service Award, 1st Class Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 Sudetenland Medal Bulgarian Order of Bravery IV. Class with Swords