Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff

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BIOGRAPHY Rudolf-Christoph, Freiherr von Gersdorff, was born on 27 March 1905 in Lüben, the second son of Ernst, Freiherr von Gersdorff, and Christine, Burggräfin und Gräfin zu Dohna-Schlodien.

Rudolf-Christoph attended schools in Lüben (now Lubin, Poland) and joined the Reichswehr as an officer cadet in 1923. He received his initial military education in Breslau at the Kleinburg Barracks, where his forefathers had for generations served in the 1.Schlesisches Leibkürassier Regiment 'Grosser Kurfürst' (First Silesian Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment 'The Great Elector'), later (post 1918) renamed the Reiterregiment 7 (Seventh Cavalry Regiment). In 1926 he was promoted to second lieutenant.

On 25 August 1934 in Matzdorf Rudolf-Christoph married Renata Kracker von Schwartzenfeldt, daughter of Eberhard Kracker von Schwartzenfeldt and Eleonore von Kramsta. Renata was a co-heiress of the rich Silesian industrialist family of von Kramsta. Their daughter Eleonore was born in 1937. Renata died on 14 January 1942 in Rehberg bei Rathenow.

In 1938 he was promoted to Rittmeister (cavalry captain). The following year he graduated from the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin. In 1939, von Gersdorff's unit was deployed in the German invasion of Poland, and he was subsequently in action as a general staff officer in the Battle of France.

In 1941, for Operation Barbarossa, he was transferred to Army Group Center, where he served as intelligence liaison with the Abwehr (German military intelligence). His cousin Fabian von Schlabrendorff had arranged this as a means to bring von Gersdorff into the resistance group active under Colonel Henning von Tresckow.

In April 1943, while he was an Army Group Center intelligence staff officer, von Gersdorff by coincidence discovered the mass graves of the Katyn massacre, which contained the remains of over 4,000 Polish officers shot by the NKVD in 1940.

After becoming close friends with Henning von Tresckow, von Gersdorff agreed to join the conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler. After von Tresckow's elaborate plan to assassinate Hitler on 13 March 1943 failed, von Gersdorff declared himself ready to give his life for Germany's sake in an assassination attempt that would entail his own death.

On 21 March 1943, Hitler visited the Zeughaus Berlin, the old armory on Unter den Linden, to inspect captures Soviet weapons. As an expert, von Gersdorff was to guide Hitler on a tour of the exhibition. Moments after Hitler entered the museum, von Gersdorff set off two ten-minute delayed fuses on explosive devices hidden in his coat pockets. His plan was to throw himself around Hitler in a death embrace that would blow them both up. Contrary to expectations, Hitler raced through the museum in less than ten minutes. After he had left the building, von Gersdorff was able to defuse the devices in a public bathroom. After the attempt, von Gersdorff was immediately transferred back to the Eastern Front where he managed to evade suspicion.

A plan was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944 inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg. Prior to the 20 July plot, von Gersdorff also had hidden the explosives and fuses that another conspirator, Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven, managed to procure from the Abwehr's cache of captured British weapons and which Claus Schenk, Graf von Stauffenberg was to use in his attempt to kill Hitler. Miraculously, and thanks to the silence of his imprisoned and tortured co-conspirators, von Gersdorff was able to escape arrest and certain execution. As a result, he was one of the few German military anti-Hitler plotters to survive the war.

In 1944, von Gersdorff was transferred to the Atlantic Wall. Later that year he was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his planning of the escape of the main German force from the Falaise pocket. In 1945, he was promoted to Major General, and was later captured by the Americans; he was released in 1947.

After the war, von Gersdorff tried to join the Bundeswehr, the armed forces of postwar West Germany. Despite his distinguished record and decorations, his attempt was opposed by Hans Globke, the poweful head of the German Chancellery and confidant of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and by various former Wehrmacht officers in the Bundeswehr who did not want a 'betrayer' in their midst.

Von Gersdorff later dedicated his life to charity in the Order of St. John. He was a founding president of the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe, which he chaired from 1952 to 1963.

On 3 December 1953 in Bielefeld, von Gersdorff married Marie-Eva von Waldenburg, the divorced wife of Kurt von Wallenberg-Pachaly and daughter of Siegfried von Waldenburg and Jutta von Alten. They were divorced on 27 April 1956.

On 5 April 1963 in München, von Gersdorff married Irmgard Löwe, divorced wife of Hans Holzach and daughter of Curt Löwe and Emma Kühn.

A riding accident in 1967 left von Gersdorff paraplegic for the last twelve years of his life, during which he wrote and published his military memoirs.

In 1979 he was awarded the Grosses Verdienstkreuz (Grand Cross of Merit), one of the eight classes of West Germany's only state decoration, in recognition of his accomplishments with the Order of St. John.

Rudolf-Christoph, Freiherr von Gersdorff, died on 26 January 1980 in München