Only through the interaction of the most diverse people and circles was there a real chance of Germany and the rest of the world being liberated from Hitler.
Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg (1902-44), my grandfather, was one of those who brought people together, and was thus, in the judgement of some, the real engine of the conspiracy against Hitler 80 years ago - the 20 July plot.
He had joined the Nazi Party in 1932. As a young man, he was called the Red Count - he mocked the conceit of his peers and liked to quote Marx. The Prussian aristocrat and administrative lawyer’s thinking was ‘national’ and ‘socialist’ in character.
An idealist, as his widow Charlotte later said, he finally broke away from Nazi ideology and supported an attempted coup as early as 1938. It was based mainly on the national conservative resistance circle around Ludwig Beck, who had resigned as Chief of Staff of the Army shortly before, because of Hitler’s warmongering.
Through his father, who had served as a general in
