Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel

Born in Berlin, Stülpnagel joined the German military straight from school in 1904, and served as a general staff officer in World War I. After the war he served in the Reichsheer reaching the rank of Colonel in 1933. The same year, he was appointed head of the 'Foreign Armies' branch of the General Staff of the Army. In 1935 he published a memorandum in which he combined anti-Bolshevism with anti-semitism By 1936 he was a Major General and commanded the 30th Infantry Division in Lübeck.

On 27 August 1937 as a Lieutenant General he was appointed Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army. In 1938, after the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair and the Sudeten Crisis, he established contact with the Schwarze Kapelle, revealing the secret plan for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Stülpnagel took part in the military opposition's first plans to remove Hitler from power, but these plans were largely abandoned after the Munich Agreement.

Stülpnagel in German-occupied Poland, 1941

From 20 December 1940 to 4 October 1941, Stülpnagel was a General of Infantry (April 1939) and commanded the 17th Army. On 22 June 1941, after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, he successfully led this army across southern Russia on the Eastern Front. Under Stülpnagel's command, the 17th Army achieved victory during the Battle of Uman and the Battle of Kiev.

In February 1942, Stülpnagel was made German-occupied France's military commander, and in this position, he, along with his personal adviser Lieutenant-Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, continued to maintain contact with other members of the conspiracy against Hitler.

War crimes

Substantial archival evidence indicates that during his tenure as commander of the 17th Army and military governor of France, Stülpnagel was involved in war crimes. In the Soviet Union, Stülpnagel signed many orders authorizing reprisals against civilians for partisan attacks and closely collaborated with the Einsatzgruppen in their mass executions of Jews. He admonished his soldiers not for the murder of civilian population but for chaotic means in which it was undertaken, particularly early premature taking of hostages and random measures. He ordered his troops to focus on Jews and Communist civilians, remarking that Communists were Jews that needed capture anyway; in order to improve relations with Ukrainians, even in cases of Ukrainian sabotage, local Jews were pointed out for punishment.

20 July plot

On the day in question, 20 July 1944, Stülpnagel put his part of the plot into operation. This mainly involved having Hans Otfried von Linstow, who was only informed of the plot on that same day, round up all SS and Gestapo officers in Paris and imprison them. However, when it became apparent that the assassination attempt in East Prussia had failed, Stülpnagel was unable to convince Field Marshal Günther von Kluge to support the uprising and was forced to release his prisoners. When Stülpnagel was recalled from Paris, he stopped at Verdun and tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the head with a pistol on the banks of the Meuse River. He only succeeded in blinding himself.

Stülpnagel and his adviser were both arrested by the Gestapo, and Stülpnagel was brought before the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) on 30 August 1944. He was found guilty of high treason and hanged the same day at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 21 August 1941 as General der Infanterie and commander-in-chief of the 17. Armee