The Ulrich von Hassell Diaries: The Story of the Forces Against Hitler Inside Germany

By Ulrich von Hassell, Agostino Von Hassell and Richard Overy

The memoir of a man who was a member of the Nazi Party—and ultimately became a martyr to the resistance.
 
Ulrich von Hassell began working for the German Foreign Office in 1909, then aged twenty-eight. Two years later, he married Ilse von Tirpitz, the daughter of Grand Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz. After being wounded in the First Battle of the Marne, he worked as the admiral’s advisor and private secretary.
 
Hassell joined the Nazi Party in 1933, but strongly opposed the Anti-Comintern Pact (1937) and was sacked by Joachim von Ribbentrop from his posting in Rome. After Poland was attacked, he led a delegation to allay European fears of further German aggression. He participated in plans to overthrow Hitler, acting as a liaison between Carl Goerdeler, Ludwig Beck, and the Kreisau Circle, and attempted to recruit Franz Halder, Friedrich Fromm, and Erwin Rommel to the idea of a military coup followed by a negotiated peace. He also used his position on the Central European Economic Council to discuss with Allied officials what could follow a coup d’état in Germany. Finally, he played the role of a principal civilian advisor in the July Plot of 1944—and was executed after a two-day trial.
 
Without doubt, Ulrich von Hassell was one of the most important members of the German Resistance: this is the first complete edition of his wartime memoir with new material from his grandson, Agostino von Hassell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781473820067

Book preview

The Ulrich von Hassell

Diaries, 1938–1944

Ulrich von Hassell in 1938. The photo was taken by the personal photographer of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Hoffmann.

The Ulrich von Hassell

Diaries, 1938–1944

The Story of the Forces Against

Hitler Inside Germany

Ulrich von Hassell

Foreword by Agostino von Hassell

Introduction by Richard Overy

Translated by Geoffrey Brooks

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by

the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Ulrich von Hassell Diaries, 1938–1944

This edition published in 2011 by Frontline Books, an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Limited,

47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

www.frontline-books.com

Copyright © Ulrich von Hassell, 1947

Introduction copyright © Agostino von Hassell, 2011

Foreword copyright © Richard Overy, 2011

Notes copyright © Friedrich Freiherr von Gaertringen, 1988

The edition © Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2011

The right of Ulrich von Hassell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in

accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-84832-553-1

PUBLISHING HISTORY

The first English-language editions of the Hassell diaries were published in 1947 in the United Kingdom by

Hamish & Hamilton and in the United States by Doubleday & Company with the title The von Hassell

Diaries. The first German-language edition of the diaries was published by Atlantis Verlag in Switzerland

in 1946 with the title Vom Anderen Deutschland. The diaries were later revised and published in the

German language in Germany in 1988 by Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag – Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938–1944–

with substantial explanatory notes by Friedrich Baron Hiller von Gaertringen, a German historian. Other

editions have been published in Spanish, Austrian, Italian, Danish and French.

This edition published in 2011 by Frontline Books includes a new foreword by Richard Overy and a

translation of Baron Hiller von Gaertringen’s notes (which retains his references to German language

sources rather than replacing these with references to equivalent English-language works). This edition

also includes an introduction by Ulrich von Hassell’s grandson, Agostino von Hassell, and a plate section

containing images graciously provided by the von Hassell family.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized

act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP data record for this title is available from the British Library

Typeset in 10pt Minion by Mac Style, Beverley, East Yorkshire

Printed in Great Britain by CPI Mackays

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction by Richard Overy

Foreword by Agostino von Hassell

Timetable of Events

1938

1939

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

Appendices

Events of Ulrich von Hassell’s Life

Notes

Index

List of Illustrations

Plate 1

Ulrich von Hassell, circa 1919

Plate 2

Painting of Ilse von Tirpitz; wedding portrait, 1911; a dance card of Ilse von Tirpitz

Plate 3

Ilse and Ulrich von Hassell in Bavaria; the Hassells shortly after their wedding in 1911

Plate 4

Postcard to Wolf; on the rooftop of the German Consulate, Genoa, Hassell with children

Plate 5

Ulrich von Hassell leaving for the front in the First World War; coat of arms

Plate 6

Hassell and family in Copenhagen, 1929; formal portrait, 1929; Ilse von Hassell, Belgrade, 1930

Plate 7

Ulrich von Hassell in Rome

Plate 8

A trip to the Italian Alps; Ulrich and Ilse von Hassell in Italy

Plate 9

Ulrich von Hassell in Rome with Mussolini; Hassell with Fulco VIII

Plate 10

Hassell family in the Villa Wolkonsky, Rome; Ulrich von Hassell and other diplomats in Rome

Plate 11

Ulrich von Hassell and Mussolini in 1934; Hitler and Mussolini meet for the first time

Plate 12

Ulrich von Hassell at a summer resort in Italy; the Hassells in Italy

Plate 13

A formal portrait of Ulrich von Hassell taken in Italy Plate 14

Trial at the People’s Court, Berlin, 7–8 September 1944

Plate 15

Trial at the People’s Court, Berlin, 7–8 September 1944; Chief judge Roland Freisler

Plate 16

Ulrich von Hassell with his grandchildren in 1943; Ilse von Hassell

Introduction

Ulrich von Hassell, German jurist and diplomat, was the Foreign Minister that Germany never had. He was one of a small group of conservative resisters to the Hitler regime who began to plan during the Second World War what a future German government and state might look like. His name on the list of a possible cabinet was always put against that of Foreign Minister, reflecting his lifetime’s experience in the world of diplomacy. In the end, his name on the list was a death warrant. After the attempted coup on 20 July 1944, Hassell was arrested, tried for treason and executed on 8 September. This diary, which survived the efforts of the Gestapo to unearth it as evidence, was described by his wife, Ilse, as his ‘bequest and mission’ when it was first published in Switzerland in 1946.¹

Hassell was by all accounts a remarkable man who won admirers and friends for his qualities of character and the steadfastness of his beliefs. He was, as one of his close associates, Gottfried von Nostitz, described him, ‘a German nobleman from top to toe’. Nostitz recalled Hassell’s ‘natural, often charming manner, his deep education, his excellent pen…a cool, sharp mind.’² One of his fellow conspirators, Hans Bernd Gisevius, who survived the war, remembered a man liked by all the circle of resisters ‘with his trenchant humour, his diplomatic finesse and his unshakeable political principles’.³ Even Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the soldier who tried to blow Hitler up on 20 July, a man much younger than Hassell, who placed much more worth on the military rather than the civilian resistance, found that Hassell made ‘an excellent impression’.⁴ It was for these many qualities that he was initially selected as a future minister in a reformed Germany.

Yet Hassell could also make enemies among those who regarded him as a reactionary representative of the traditional Prussian elite (though his family descended from the Hanoverian nobility). His most historically significant post, as German ambassador in Rome from 1932 to 1938, brought him face to face with a young generation of fascists. Italy’s foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, thought Hassell ‘unpleasant and treacherous’, a surviving relic from ‘that world of Junkers who cannot forget 1914.’⁵ Ciano disliked Hassell because of his opposition to a closer Italian-German relationship and helped to engineer his downfall when he was sacked in the spring of 1938 by the incoming National Socialist foreign minister in Berlin, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Hassell was not liked more by Hitler and the Party radicals around him. In a diary entry from March 1942, Hassell observed that Hitler had ‘a particular dislike for my wife and myself (p. 167). He thought that given Hitler’s character this was certainly a compliment, but throughout his diary he attributed this dislike to the deep prejudice and hostility of the National Socialist movement to the ‘hated upper strata’ (p. 4). This distrust even extended to the wartime Allies who Hassell and his fellow resisters hoped to win over to the idea of peace in return for regime change. The British regarded the ‘Reichswehr-Royalist-Goerdeler clique’, as they called it, as differing from Hitler only in method rather than aim.⁶

These very different judgements on Hassell reflect a profound ambiguity about his own position in the Third Reich, an ambiguity shared by a great many sensible, moral and conservative Germans who found themselves serving Hitler against their will. The central issue that all opponents of the Third Reich had to confront was to measure their own ambitions for Germany against the reality of the dictatorship. Hassell, like thousands of others, wanted to restore a strong German national state and to make it a central engine in a revived Europe; he wanted to revise the Treaty of Versailles and restore Germany fully as a member of the club of Great Powers; he disliked popular politics – and communism in particular – and was not averse to the idea of an authoritarian state of the old, monarchical kind that he had first served as a young man before 1914. In 1933 he joined the National Socialist party, though with reservations, and in his capacity as ambassador in Italy sought to revive Germany’s international fortunes and prepare for the revision of Versailles. Much of what was achieved in the 1930s, including the Anschluss with Austria, German re-militarisation, the incorporation of the Sudeten Germans in 1938, Hassell would have agreed with. This was, as he describes it in his diary, the ‘tragic conflict’ that German nationalists had to face. He explored that inner turmoil in his diary in a memorable passage from August 1942 in which he put side by side the terrible ‘clarity about the fearful destruction of all true values in Germany and the world’ with the picture of military successes on all fronts (p. 168). He did not want Germany utterly defeated, but nor could he imagine a triumphant Hitler. In June 1940, after the complete defeat of France, he recorded in his diary that for him it was ‘tragic not to be able to rejoice over such triumph’ (p. 95).

It is this ambiguity about the fate of Germany that made it difficult for many opponents of the regime to push their opposition to the full. The fact that the July Plot occurred only in 1944 when Germany faced utter ruin, and not much earlier, when the stakes were less high and the prospect of success perhaps greater, reflects the uncertainty among the resistance of how to be rid of Hitler without compromising Germany’s future. Hassell was a conservative, even a reactionary, and his political principles and social vision were out of step with the world of modern politics, both democratic and totalitarian. His model for politics was the Bismarckian Reich created in 1871. Bismarck was his great historical hero. In the months before the failed coup in 1944 he noted in his diary that he had been reading much about Bismarck recently; he was confirmed in his view that the prejudiced opinion of Bismarck as a sabre-rattling Prussian was mistaken. ‘In truth,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘the highest diplomacy and great moderation were his real gifts’ (p. 238). He saw statecraft as something that had to be conducted with a firm moral outlook, rooted in a pious Christianity, with prudence and good sense, and a consistent set of principles. For Hassell the monarchy was one of the safeguards of a realistic, conservative social outlook; a form of corporate state, ‘an organic state’ as he called it, derived from the Hegelian tradition of state theory, was in his view a safer path to a sound society than the parliamentary path.⁷ He was a firm opponent of Communism in all its guises and disliked the brand of populist socialism that he identified with Hitler.

Hassell also wanted a strong German national state. He believed that Germany was essential to Europe and that German cultural and economic domination would be in Europe’s interest. British and American culture he regarded as too crudely materialist – a view widely held in Germany in the first part of the twentieth century – but he hoped that the Western powers would recognise, even during the war, that German survival was necessary for them as well. He was one of a number of resisters who thought that Germany should be allowed to keep some of the spoils of the Hitler regime, including union with Austria, the annexation of the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia and a revised Polish frontier. It was this insistence on retaining a strong, sovereign German state – expressed in Hassell’s draft of a prospective constitution for a post-Hitler Germany – that made it so difficult for the Allies to take very seriously the idea of supporting the German resistance. The Allied commitment to unconditional surrender left the German opposition with few easy options.

The conservative outlook of Hassell and his close associates – Carl Goerdeler, Ludwig Beck, Johannes Popitz, Jens Jessen – was also difficult for some of the other resisters, who were drawn from very diverse political backgrounds. Hassell records in his diary the endless squabbles between the resisters, when they should have been united in their desire to overthrow Hitler (pp. 150–2, 186). His firm support of the idea of monarchy and his ideas about the organic ‘state of the future’ (in fact very much a state of the past) alienated the more democratic conspirators. By 1943 there was talk of replacing Hassell as prospective foreign minister with the youthful diplomat Adam von Trott zu Solz. In the end the former German ambassador to Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, was preferred. On 15 July 1944, shortly before the coup, Goerdeler proposed to Beck replacing Hassell as future foreign minister with Schulenburg, who it was thought might be better able to face the Russians than Hassell, most of whose experience had been in Italy and south-eastern Europe.⁸ It is still open to debate whether Hassell would really have had a major role to play in a post-Hitler German government if the coup had succeeded.

There is, of course, no doubt about the principled and consistent hostility to Hitler and National Socialism displayed by Hassell throughout the period from his dismissal in 1938, when his diary opens. It is interesting to ask just why Hassell decided to keep a diary from this point on, particularly as it constituted what the editor of the very first edition in 1946 called ‘a constant danger’ from the prying eyes of the security service.⁹ He had to write the diary in school notebooks and on scraps of paper which could be easily concealed. The first diaries up to 1941 were taken successfully to Switzerland, but the others were buried in a Ridgeway’s Pure China Tea box and buried in a wood outside Munich. The final entries were tucked into a photo album when the Gestapo came to search on 28 July 1944, but were not found.¹⁰ This was not a private concern; clearly Hassell wanted this diary to be a record of Germany’s disgrace, ‘a bequest’ to the future if the worst happened to him. The diary is an extraordinary document revealing the slow evolution of a state of complete moral despair and intellectual rejection of everything that Hitler and his cronies stood for. The key issue for Hassell was avoiding war at all costs. He was convinced that a second great war was not only an unnecessary risk for Germany, but would exaggerate precisely those traits of Hitler’s leadership – the deliberate mendacity, the persistent acts of bad faith, the violence extended to political and racial enemies – which so repelled man of traditional and conventional virtues. Despair at what he called ‘this frightful, senseless and unfathomable war’ runs throughout the diary from 1938, when Hitler ran risks over Czechoslovakia, to the terrible war on two fronts that Germany fought from the summer of 1941, and the remorseless pattern of defeat from 1943.

The problem for Hassell was his essential powerlessness throughout the period after his dismissal in 1938. He was convinced that staying inside and fighting against the regime’s actions was the better course, but he had no state position after 1938 and depended, as most of the conspirators did, on partial information, rumour and speculation. The increasing marginalisation of the opposition as the German people geared themselves up for the final struggles in 1943 and 1944 left Hassell in a state of alienation from the Germany he longed to save. ‘Our spirits are low at our meetings,’ he wrote in early 1943 (p. 187). The diary shows that he played a smaller role in the year before the coup and it is striking that at the end he confronted his fate with remarkable courage but also with a grim resignation provoked by a predictable failure. There were not among the apathetic and terrorised German people, trapped between bombs and the Gestapo, the resources to challenge the system that had put them there in the first place. In the end Hassell, like thousands of others, paid for his conscientious resistance to the Hitler dictatorship with his life. The secret police reports show that many ordinary Germans applauded the destruction of the opposition.

The biographer of Ulrich von Hassell, Gregor Schöllgen, has written of the failures of Hassell’s ambitions as a traditional nationalist and anti-Nazi. It is true that his ambition to see a monarchical, authoritarian state was never realised, and true too that the Versailles settlement could not be overturned without war and that Germany’s role in Europe became one of hated oppressor rather than a benign leader, the position that Hassell wanted Germany to take in some form of European union. But there is an important sense in which the Germany that was painfully reconstructed after 1945 and finally reunited in 1990 did embody some at least of Hassell’s aspirations. The Western Allies did find that they could not cope with a Europe in which a rearmed, economically powerful Germany was absent. West Germany became integrated fully and very successfully into the world market and also played a central part in constructing the EEC and later the wider European Union without the resort to violence and without the demagogic defence of national interest evident in the interwar years. Germany became a constitutional state in which the rule of law, tolerance for its citizens (unless they were communists) and cultural pluralism have become hallmarks. Germany has an important part to play without any of the xii exaggerated politics of the Hitler dictatorship. The values that sustained National Socialism have been disgraced and never revived. Ulrich von Hassell might not have approved the democratic credentials of West Germany, and would have disliked Communist East Germany; his views on monarchy and the ‘organic state’ were old-fashioned when he held them in the 1930s, and quite out of place in the postwar world. Yet there is in his ‘bequest’ a commitment to public decency, a moral view of politics, a preference for skilful diplomacy over the resort to violence, an aversion to state terror and arbitrary justice which make him a modern European as well.

The core of Hassell’s legacy lies in the end not in his ideas for a possible united Europe or the restoration of the rule of law and political decency in a country characterised by ‘spiritual confusion and moral deterioration’ (p. 228), but in his resolute recognition that there must be those willing to step forward to challenge the criminal character of dictatorship whatever the price to be paid. This was a brave decision, even more so as it was not spontaneous but sustained through a long period of time when there was every pressure to abandon the effort. When Hassell discussed with Carl Goerdeler and Ludwig Beck in November 1943 the possibility that at such a late stage in the war it might not be better to await the final catastrophe than risk a failure, he found them united with him in the firm belief that in spite of everything ‘it is imperative, for moral reasons and for the future of Germany, that an attempt be made before the end.’ (p. 219) The moral stock of post-war Germany has been built on the courageous affirmation of resistance in the face of a criminal state which Hassell defines with such clarity and conviction in his diaries.

Richard Overy

University of Exeter

  1.

Ulrich von Hassell, Vom andern Deutschland: Aus den nachgelassenen Tagebüchern 1938–1944 von Ulrich von Hassell Zurich, 1946, ‘Nachwort’ by Ilse von Hassell, p. 375.

  2.

Cited in Gregor Schöllgen, A Conservative Against Hitler: Ulrich von Hassell: Diplomat in Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reick 1881–1944, London/Oxford, 1991, p. 122.

  3.

Hans Bernd Gisevius, To the Bitter End, London, 1948, p. 427.

  4.

Christian Müller, Stauffenberg: Eine Biographie, Düsseldorf, 2003, p. 347 for Stauffenberg’s relations with the civilian conservatives.

  5.

Ray Moseley, Mussolini’s Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano, New Haven, 1999, pp. 38, 39.

  6.

Klemens von Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad 1938–1945, Oxford, 1992, p. 21 ff.

  7.

On his political thought see Schöllgen, A Conservative against Hitler, pp. 1–3, 122–5.

  8.

Kenneth Sears, Opposing Hitler: Adam von Trott zu Solz 1909–1944, Brighton, 2009, p. 72; Klemperer, German Resistance Against Hitler, p. 375.

  9.

Vom andern Deutschland, p. 5.

10.

Ibid., pp. 372–3, Ilse von Hassell, ‘Nachwort’.

Foreword

The large wooden desk on which I am writing this introduction to the new edition of the diaries written by Ulrich von Hassell between the years 1938 and 1944 was made in Rome in 1936.¹

At that time my grandfather was ambassador to Italy. He used this desk in the famous Villa Wolkonsky, which served as the German chancellery and ambassadors residence in Rome from 1920 until 1945. This magnificent building fell into British hands the Second World War. The drawers of the giant desk – which was also used during the war by Hassell in his Berlin office at Fasanenstrasse – still bears the marks where Gestapo officers broke open the locks to search for papers and incriminating evidence.

After the failed assassination attempt on 20 July, my grandfather chose to wait for the foreseeable consequences rather than attempt to flee. So Ulrich von Hassell was sitting at this desk in his office at Fasanenstrasse, when he was arrested by the Gestapo on 29 July 1944.

All my life I have lived with the memory of my grandfather Ulrich – getting to know him as both a private person and at the same time a larger-than-life historical figure, a top civilian leader in one of multiple plots to rid Germany of Hitler.² The resistance was multifaceted and its size substantial; yet most names have been strangely familiar to me, part of an intensely personal fabric of history that overshadowed our childhood and years of coming of age.

The key opposition to Hitler’s and the Nazi regime’s atrocities came from a relatively small group of men and women who belonged to the same class in terms of education, social values, and cultural heritage. They had plotted and undertaken repeated attempts since at least 1937. Depending on who is counting, anything from thirty to forty-one assassination plans were contemplated, and some unsuccessfully attempted. I personally knew Axel Baron von dem Bussche-Streithorst very well; as an officer returned from the front he strapped a bomb to his waist intending to blow Hitler and himself up during a uniform show. Yet Hitler left just minutes before he came close to Axel.

The same names recur over and over in the history of the principal German resistance against Hitler: Moltke, Stauffenberg, Yorck von Wartenburg, Goerdeler, Schulenburg, Popitz, Dohna-Schlobitten, Schwerin von Schwanenfeld, Beck, Mertz von Quirnheim, Schlabrendorff, Bussche-Streithorst, Kleist, and many others. Their final – and failed – attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944 led to Hassell’s arrest and his execution on 8 September 1944. Over 8,000 men and women were executed in connection with the July plot.³

From our (my family’s) perspective, many of these names were those of relatives and close friends; these plots almost appeared to be a family affair. Only as I grew up I gained awareness that the resistance movement included a far wider range of people, among others socialists, communists, university students, and a large group of upright Christians such as Cardinal Clemens August Count von der Galen, Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Still, the names of many principals evoke the history of Prussia over the last 300 years. It seemed as if these principals of that proud kingdom arose out of the shadows of the past just one last time before the Allies were going to dissolve Prussia forever in 1947.

My overly imposing grandmother Ilse von Hassell dominated and sought to control how history was taught to my sister, my brother, and me as well as to our cousins. Only over time did we develop a more balanced view. On the other hand, history as it was written and discussed in the postwar period was rarely balanced or devoid of a skewed perspective.

Much has been written about Hassell from various angles and perspectives.⁴ For my brother Adrian, my sister Malve, and me, Ulrich von Hassell was both a guiding light and a burden. The name was well-known, so we could not just fade into obscurity. Rather, his deeds, his writings, his leadership committed us to living up to his values.

September 8 was an important date, reflecting key events as cornerstones in the history of this man. Exactly 30 years before his death, on 8 September 1914 Hassell had received an almost fatal wound, when he was shot in the heart during the Battle of the Marne. On 8 September 1944 he was executed in Berlin with the remnants of that French bullet still in his heart.

Like many members of the 20 July plot, Hassell was educated in a world of absolute fealty to the King of Prussia and the idea of Prussia, which implied service and, if needed, sacrifice for the greater good. The many battle paintings and etchings in my grandparents’ house in Bavaria attested to this heritage.

Ulrich von Hassell was born in Anklam, Prussia, on 12 November 1881. He came from an old Hanoverian family of lower nobility; for centuries the acceptable (and by royal edict permitted) professions chosen or assigned to the males of that family were soldier, judge, civil servant, or churchman. At a time when much of Germany was under Swedish occupation, some Hassells served – under Charles XII of Sweden during the ill-fated war against Russia. Other Hassells served at Waterloo or had senior commands in the Royal Hanoverian Army. Hanover, so we were taught over and over again by our grandmother, had been seized ‘unjustly by the Prussians in 1866. Ulrich von Hassell’s father, also named Ulrich (creativity regarding first names was and is lacking in the family – Ulrich, William, Christian – all these appear time and again) fought against the Prussians and was at times rather upset that his son married a true Prussian – Ilse von Tirpitz.

My grandfather had the most typical upbringing of a young Prussian noble. His father had transferred from the Royal Hanoverian Army to the Prussian military. As an officer he served in multiple assignments and retired with the rank of colonel. Ulrich von Hassell attended the famous Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in Berlin and earned the Abitur (signifying graduation from high school) in 1899. He then studied law in Tübingen where he was active in the Corps Suevia, a well-known student association, which also counted among his members Ulrich’s father as well as his son, Wolf Ulrich.

During his education and later diplomatic career he developed strong relationships and at time true friendships with numerous individuals, many of whom, in turn, shared his fate in being sent to the gallows after 20 July 1944.

After additional law studies at the University of Lausanne and the University of Berlin he entered the practical phase of his legal training, which included sitting in on the famous trial of the ‘Captain of Köpenick’. This 1906 trial and the entire episode laid bare the absurdity and bitter ironies of a heavily militarized society: the ‘Captain’ – a homeless man – had obtained an officer’s uniform and, based on that very authority, commanded some infantry to accompany him to the city hall to confiscate the cash treasury. The later play of that name by Carl Zuckmayer does not portray the impostor, Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt, as a criminal, but rather as a folk hero and a victim of official prejudice, who was caught in the paradox of not being able to get work without a passport, while not being able to have a passport without an established place of employment. Until this day his story is taught in German schools as an example of courageous standing up against government insanity.

After his initial legal training Hassell moved to the German colony of Tsingtao (now Qingdao) where he continued his education in the local courts. In 1905 Hassell visited Japan. The voyage provided him with insights into the web of complex international relations around the globe, dominated by trade, money, and deep-seated historical jealousies and resentments. When he travelled to Japan by ship he met the famous American financier Jacob H. Schiff. Schiff had been one of two players who raised through Kuhn, Loeb & Cox the then incredible sum of $200 million to finance Japan’s part in the Russo-Japanese War. The other funds were raised by Lehman Brothers, an action that gave that storied investment firm an edge in a grateful Japan.⁵

The entrance hall of Hassell’s house in Ebenhausen, Bavaria, contained imposing Chinese vases and incense burners – some had been brought back by him, while others had come from his father-in-law, who had himself spent time in Tsingtao, when it was under consideration as a possible German colony. As a child I was always fascinated by the fact that a spare house key was hidden in a partially broken porcelain incense burner, later destroyed by the kick of a Gestapo boot. I was also terrified of the ancient bronze incense burners decorated with fierce Fu dogs.

Hassell then spent a brief time in London. In his memoirs he wrote that during that time in London he amused himself by teaching some hunting dogs at a country estate to bark only when he reached the number twelve, preceded by the question: ‘How many Dreadnoughts should Germany have?’ These years witnessed the most intense debate over fleet expansion, forcing a proud and very naval United Kingdom to oppose the massive fleet expansion led by Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz whose goals remain widely misunderstood.⁶ Hassell’s association with Tirpitz later hurt his efforts to enlist the British as supporters for the German resistance.

Tirpitz’s oldest daughter became the wife of Ulrich von Hassell. The young Ilse and her sister Margot had spent time at a finishing school in England. Ilse in particular was a favourite of Emperor Wilhelm II who often asked her about her views of England. He nicknamed her ‘The Little Cruiser’ and even had calling cards printed up for her to use during the many balls at the Royal Palace in Berlin. After Ilse became engaged to Hassell, Wilhelm II renamed her ‘Little Destroyer’.

For Hassell, the 1911 marriage to Ilse von Tirpitz opened up numerous contacts in the highest echelons of Prussia and Germany. It did not, however, overcome the traditional lack of money of the military nobility. In those days, joining the diplomatic service still required a fortune of one’s own to be able to sustain the cost of heavy entertainment. Eventually Hassell chose the less costly consular path and was posted to Genoa in 1912. The consular offices required far less in terms of monetary resources for entertaining – at that time before the First World War virtually no government paid ambassadors expenses allowances and these diplomats had to pay their own way.

In Genoa, Hassell developed his love for Mediterranean culture. Two children were born, his oldest daughter Almuth and his son ‘Wilhelm’ Wolf Ulrich. On the birth of Wolf Ulrich, Wilhelm II telegraphed and appointed himself as godfather. This gesture forced Hassell to negotiate with the Italian courts – an impossibly cumbersome undertaking at that time as much as now – to change the young Hassell’s birth certificate from ‘William’ after the Kings of Hanover to ‘Wilhelm’ after Wilhelm II.

Like many Germans, prior to commencing his professional career Hassell had trained in the military and earned the rank of 1st Lieutenant in the prestigious 2nd Regiment of Foot Guards in Berlin (the famous ‘Zweites Garderegiment zu Fuß’). Upon the outbreak of the war in 1914, Hassell requested his passport – it is a little-known fact that until that war only diplomats had passports, which they had to obtain from their host governments; all others could travel freely. He linked up with his regiment and was wounded in the First Battle of the Marne. Barely surviving, he was quite ill for much of the war. He joined up with his father-in-law, subsequent to Tirpitz’s resignation in 1916. Hassell assisted Tirpitz in multiple political actions as well as with sorting and editing his memoirs and papers. In this respect he followed in his father’s footsteps – he had already written a biography of Tirpitz.⁷

After the war ended in 1918, Hassell joined the German National People’s Party, Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP). In 1919 he returned to the Foreign Office. His first posting was as the Chargé d’Affaires in Rome.

In 1854 a Prussian ambassador had purchased the Palazzo Caffarelli right on the Capitoline Hill. This had been serving as the residence for the ambassador of the King of Prussia in some form or other since 1817 when the Prussian Legate to the Holy See, Christian Josias von Bunsen established his quarters there. After Germany’s unification it became the embassy of the German Empire. The Italians, among the victors in the First World War, forced Germany to surrender the Palazzo Caffarelli. Hassell had to vacate that location and purchased the Villa Wolkonsky for Germany.

His time in Rome also provides insights into Hassell’s character. He fought for the return of German properly seized by the Italians during the war. However, he made one exception: the large plantation with over 10,000 olive trees on Sardinia, owned by his father-in-law Tirpitz. My grandfather said that using official power for personal gain would be an improper use of such power.

As a child I traced his career through a series of objects and artwork. A gong brought back from China, an elegant chair that had come from the Palazzo Caffarelli in Rome, a giant ‘brazier’ or foot-warmer he acquired at his next posting to Barcelona, a painting of a Madonna from the school of Rogier van der Weyden that he found in a flea market in Madrid – the list is endless.

In the 1920s Barcelona was gripped by unrest that turned into the brutal Spanish Civil War. Many visitors graced the home of Germany’s Consul-General. Paula Göring, the sister of Hermann Göring, and Albert Einstein were among the individuals appearing in the carefully maintained guestbook. Another frequent visitor was the future Admiral Wilhelm Canaris who worked on ‘black projects’ in Spain – weapons tests of a type prohibited to Germany under the Versailles Treaty.

From Barcelona Hassell moved to Belgrade to head the embassy there. He was a close confidant of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. Visible remnants of that time are elaborate candlesticks of Serbian make.

At each of their postings Hassell and his wife made an effort to learn the local language. As a child I would discover books in Danish, Serbo-Croat, Italian, and Spanish, next to more conventional English, German, and French editions. My grandparents spoke all these languages well; my grandmother at times conversed with my father in Danish, for instance, to make sure ‘the children’ would not understand whatever might have been sensitive to young ears.

The sojourn in Belgrade was followed by a posting as the German minister in Copenhagen. Under the rules of the Vienna Congress, the Danish capital did not rate a full embassy. Hassell struck up a friendship with King Christian X of Denmark. The King, early on in 1929 during a parade, responded to Hassell’s question on how to best learn Danish by saying ad coram publico, ‘My dear Ambassador, you need to take a Danish mistress.’ At least this is what my otherwise rather strait-laced grandmother told me. During journeys to Sweden and Norway, my grandfather also developed close relationships with the reigning sovereigns in those nations. When I myself, in the course of US Marine Corps Winter Warfare Exercises in Northern Norway in 1981, was presented to King Olav V, the king recalled Hassell from the years in Copenhagen as well as later visits from before Germany attacked both Norway and Denmark. Somewhat to my embarrassment, the Norwegian king proceeded to embrace me – somewhat awkward as we were heavily wrapped in winter-warfare gear. Hassell had – upon request of the German Foreign Office – travelled to the Scandinavian countries in a failed effort to allay their fears.

Copenhagen was the last respite before Hassell’s return to the world stage. Old photographs show the small and elegant residence with a Danish military band playing for Ilse and Ulrich. My grandmother took up mahjong in those years; twice weekly she met to play with the wives of the ambassadors of China, Japan, and the Soviet Union. They did not have a single language in common and played the game with a set that Tirpitz obtained in China and that is now used to teach mahjong to my own children.

Copenhagen was followed by Rome and – for Hassell – his entry into the history books. He became Ambassador to the King of Italy in 1932 and also developed a good relationship with Benito Mussolini.⁸ My grandparents valued Mussolini as an individual; my grandmother blamed the eventually disastrous development of Mussolini on Hitler. In the night of 7/8 September 1944, ‘Good Old Musso’ – as my grandmother called him – sent several telegrams pleading for the execution of my grandfather to be stopped.

Hassell’s mission in Rome was to develop strong relations between these two major European countries. What was Hassell’s role in Italy? Hassell spoke at great length on how important the link between these two countries was and how Germany would always be the core of a good Europe sustained by neighbouring countries such as France and Italy. In many ways – as I saw when my father served at the German Mission to the European Commission in Brussels – Ulrich von Hassell had described a future unified Europe.

When Hitler took power in 1933, Hassell joined the NSDAP, albeit reluctantly. Very early on in 1934 he started to have severe misgivings about Hitler’s well-known and well-documented plans. He attempted to oppose the 1937 Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan. He was also vocal about Germany’s disconcerting development during Hitler’s visits to Rome and Venice. Hassell was not seen as a friend, neither by Berlin nor by Mussolini’s son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was serving as Italy’s foreign minister.

One might argue that the seeds for Hassell’s decision to participate actively in the opposition to the Nazi regime were laid in Rome. He was increasingly appalled by the actions of Hitler’s regime and afraid for the future of his country. In 1938, he was recalled abruptly and placed on stand-by. Ciano wrote in his diary that he welcomed that recall and also, that ‘Hassell knows Dante too well as a foreigner.’⁹ Hassell wrote essays on Dante and his enormous library contained wonderful editions of Dante’s work, some of which I eventually inherited from my father and treasure deeply. His library, a large part of which passed on to my father, was to me like a passport to his educated mind and vast interests.

Once Hassell returned to private life’, he activated his many links to key people in Germany, thus commencing his active involvement in the German resistance movement detailed in his diaries. Hassell played several roles in the opposition. He helped shape the concept for the new Germany and also served as a vital link between key groups such as those surrounding Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and the Kreisau Circle led by James Count von Moltke. Hassell was to be foreign minister in the foreseen transitional government.

Hassell was not part of the operational plans. However, in the years leading up to the assassination attempt he met frequently with senior generals in the hope of convincing them to join the opposition. He spent much of his time also working on freely shared concepts of a new German government and republican system governed by the ‘absolute majesty of the law’.

During the early part of the war, he – and at times his eldest son Wolf Ulrich also – repeatedly travelled to Arosa in Switzerland to meet first with British and later American officials in attempts to gain Allied support for the opposition.¹⁰ All efforts failed.¹¹ The British government, led in the Foreign Office by the ‘Grey Fox’ Lord Halifax, dismissed Hassell out of hand.¹² Notes in the British National Archives make reference to Tirpitz, implying that Hassell’s attempts just continued the same old story.¹³

The Nazis’ reaction to the failed plot was terrible. It swept up not only the principals but also their family members all over Germany, many of whom were eventually put into concentration camps. My grandmother and her oldest daughter Almuth were arrested. My uncle, Johann-Dietrich von Hassell then serving as a major on the Russian front, was arrested in the middle of a combat operation. The youngest sister Fey, who had married Italian aristocrat and resistance fighter Detalmo Pirzio-Biroli, was arrested at her estate in Brazza, near Venice. She was robbed of her two young boys who were placed into a Nazi-operated children’s home under different names. They were not be found until 1946. The search for the children was in part made possible by a grateful Allen Dulles, who had worked with my grandfather and father in Switzerland.¹⁴ With his help, my grandmother was able to obtain a vehicle and fuel in war-torn Germany, which allowed her to scour the countryside, driving from one children’s home to the next in search for the boys. Fey, together with other family members of people involved in the plot against Hitler, was taken into Sippenhaft, interned in a concentration camp and not released until the end of the war.¹⁵

My father – in a singular act of courage – particularly so in that he himself was a direct participant in the movement against Hitler – went to the Gestapo in Berlin and practically dared them to arrest him by requesting to see his father. His request fell on deaf ears, although he succeeded in having some cigarettes and other small favours delivered to his father. The Gestapo was perplexed by my father’s apparent willingness to ignore the danger to his own life. After Hassell’s execution my father repeatedly went to the prison, aware that his father had written extensively in the short period left to him. Just before the Soviets occupied Berlin, my father managed to retrieve from the Gestapo his father’s signet ring, his sewing kit, and, most importantly, his memoirs written on assorted tiny scraps of paper. These notes were eventually published by my sister Malve in 1994.¹⁶

My grandfather wrote his diaries on tiny pieces of paper that he could quickly shove under carpets in case of a Gestapo search. As common with police forces in totalitarian societies, the all-powerful Gestapo was curiously inept and naïve in certain respects. They never found much concrete evidence to accuse him with. Hassell used to stuff his notes into Ridgeway tea cans which, wrapped irr oil-cloth, were then buried in the garden of his house in Ebenhausen, a village outside of Munich. After the war these cans were eventually taken to Switzerland to be transcribed.

To this day I cherish a newer Ridgeway tea can – a good reminder – and the tea ain’t bad.

Agostino von Hassell

New York

Timetable of Events

The Diaries

1938

17 September 1938, on train between Berlin and Weimar

International atmosphere stormy. At home there is growing despondency under the weight of Party rule and fear of war. Heydrich in Nuremberg again in full regalia. Hitler’s speeches are all demagogic and spiced with attacks on the entire upper class. The closing speech at the Party rally was of the same sort, delivered in ranting tones.¹ The mounting hatred against the upper class has been inflamed by the warnings from the generals (except Keitel) against war. Hitler is fired up against them and calls them ‘Cowardly’. At the same time there is a growing aversion to all independent people. Whoever does not grovel is regarded as haughty. One of Ribbentrop’s adjutants told Frau Schöningh recently that I am very full of my own importance. Therein lies the explanation of my own situation. Heydrich told Plessen in Rome that the Party considered me haughty. Ribbentrop cannot abide me either. During the past weeks I have asked myself repeatedly whether it is right to serve such an immoral system. However, ‘on the outside’, the slight chance of successful opposition would be even smaller.

On the other hand Keitel told me the day before yesterday he had suggested Ribbentrop call up old musty types for the Foreign Service, to which Ribbentrop retorted he had such people on hand, so perhaps something is coming my way soon! I have told everyone I can that this idea of ‘being supplied’ is not acceptable. I am only interested in being needed. The business will soon be cleared up, either ‘up one’s sleeve’ or on the outside. Outwardly the affair is burning because Schmitt² has offered me a unique job for the present with the German insurance companies (negotiating with the Spanish government regarding the civil war claims) and now Herbert Göring³ (additionally I am in Berlin), in agreement with Schacht, is proposing that he will, if I am agreed, advise Olex [Anglo-Iranian] to use me to fill the Director-General vacancy (which is well remunerated). The British Admiralty is behind the undertaking. Olex’s purpose is to supply oil to Germany (also Four-Year Plan). In the opinion of Schmitt and [Herbert] Göring there is no conflict of interest, that is to say my primary duty is to safeguard German interests and not British. Naturally different in the case of war. Most of all the project is of course dependent on the political situation. Ninety-nine percent of people would not wobble for an instant before accepting the offer. I feel sour but will basically tell them I am prepared to do it. [Talks of possibility of other jobs in business and industry.]

I arrived on the evening of Tuesday 13th. [Dinner with family.] Wednesday morning various appointments. At 12.45 I went to see Raeder, who is still very much impressed by Hitler’s foreign policy. Hitler, he said, has had luck, and one must be lucky. However, Raeder had received false information, which he passed on to the naval commands rather prematurely, that the Czechs had mobilized, by which they would, of course, have placed themselves in the wrong. In the afternoon he hastened to let me know that he had been misinformed.

The political situation on Wednesday morning was this: in spite of all the bombast, Hitler’s speech on Monday left the door open for diplomacy and referred only to the right of self-determination. The deliberate brutality of Hitler’s policies has once more repelled all the Great Powers, reluctant to go to war, so that today the British and French are discussing a plebiscite quite calmly – unthinkable only a few months ago. What Hitler really wants is another matter. In spite of this step-by-step retreat on the part of the Western Powers, war at the time of my arrival seemed ninety per cent probable, due to the irresponsible assumption of Ribbentrop and others that Britain would not fight.

Then came the great coup de scène of Chamberlain’s visit. It was another tremendous success for Hitlerian bluff; on the other hand it amounted to the strongest possible moral pressure by Britain on Germany. Knowing nothing about all this I breakfasted alone with Henderson.⁴ He was very frank and friendly, but at the same time visibly agitated. He explained the British position to me convincingly as follows:

1.

To work with all their might to preserve peace, even if this involves sacrifices:

2.

if Germany resorts to force, and France finds it necessary to act, the British will march with France.

He complained bitterly about Ribbentrop, who was chiefly responsible for the fact that Britain and Germany were not getting along better, and furthermore Henderson was of the opinion that all might yet go well if the Nazi regime did not make itself so terribly hated throughout the whole world, and especially in Britain. Finally he said that he had made a last attempt and induced the British Cabinet to propose Chamberlain’s visit to Hitler. It was decided yesterday evening. This morning at eight o’clock he had informed Weizsäcker⁵ (Woermann) and he was now waiting for an answer. Unfortunately Ribbentrop was off somewhere with the Führer. In my presence he then telephoned Göring at Karinhall and explained developments. He said something like: ‘You will admit it is of the greatest importance that the seventy-year-old British Prime Minister is ready to fly to meet the Führer this very day.’ Göring answered, ‘Yes, of course’, and promised to telephone Obersalzberg.

Henderson had sworn me to secrecy, but when he heard that I was to see Keitel in the evening he asked me to pass on to him what he had revealed to me. I did so and was surprised to observe that Keitel was manifestly astonished that Britain would declare war with France in the case of conflict. During the conversation he betrayed himself as quite uninformed politically, and figured out with the free-and-easy mathematics of a milkmaid the chances for war and the possibility that Britain would be against us. I told Weizsäcker about this conversation today and he was of the opinion that Keitel was simply too stupid to understand such things. The Keitel family, however, showed themselves to be a lot more sober. For instance, his daughter said many young officers thought the SA Brownshirts should be the first to be sent to the front because they talked too freely. I went to the People’s Opera with Ilse Göring⁶ (Trovatore). She was very judicious as usual and really concerned at Hitler’s cast of mind.

Thursday forenoon I went to see Schacht,⁷ who was extremely pessimistic about economic and financial matters. He is completely opposed to the regime. At the very beginning he called Hitler a swindler, with whom Britain would find it impossible to make binding agreements. He said Chamberlain’s visit was a mistake, for it would not prevent war.

Today I met Schacht at the Foreign Office, where he went so far as to make the senseless remark that if Hitler now gets only the Sudeten borders districts he will have suffered a serious defeat in foreign policy! Economically we had pumped ourselves more and more dry; the secret funds, foreign exchange reserves (from Austria, etc.) had already been used up in an irresponsible way. He thinks right now we are in the red. So far as the finances of the Reich are concerned, it is often impossible to meet claims on the government. I referred cautiously to his share of responsibility in the matter, but he denied he had any. To be a Cabinet Minister no longer meant anything – one was not even kept informed. He did not know, he said, how they expected to get