page_title: Hellmuth Stieff
section_title: Resistance fighter
hierarchical_section_title: Hellmuth Stieff / Resistance fighter
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. This description has been identified as biased or incorrect: NS-PropagandaVolksgerichtshof, Hellmuth Stieff Vom Volk gerichtet. Vor den Schranken des Volksgerichtshofes fand am Dienstag [7.8.1944] nach zweitägigen Verhandlungen das verbrecherische Attentat des 20. Juli seine gerechte Sühne. Der Angeklagte Stieff bei der Vernehmung; in heller Jacke der Angeklagte Höppner. 8-8-44
context_page_description: Hellmuth Stieff was a German general and a member of the OKH during World War II. He took part in attempts by the German resistance to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 7 and 20 July 1944.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Hellmuth Stieff on trial at the People's Court on 7 August, the day before his hanging.
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