Wolf - Heinrich Graf von Helldorf Wolf - Heinrich Graf von Helldorf ( 14 October 1896 – 15 August 1944 ) was a German police official and politician , who served as a Member of the Prussian Parliament during the Weimar Republic , as a Member of the German Parliament for the Nazi Party from 1933 and as president of police in Potsdam and Berlin . From 1938 , he became associated with the anti - Nazi resistance , and was executed in 1944 for his role in the 20th July plot to overthrow Hitler ' s regime . Early life . Helldorf was born in Merseburg , a noble landowner ' s son , Helldorf served as a lieutenant from 1915 in the First World War . He was a member of the Prussian Parliament from 1924 to 1928 , and again in 1932 . He was also friends with the stage magician and psychic , Erik Jan Hanussen , who constantly lent him money for his debts . " The count was always in debt , and his private life was a wreck . He was separated from his wife and was on bad terms with his mother after welching on his promise to pay her rent . Sometimes he was behind in his own rent . On one occasion he ' forgot ' to pay for a new Mercedes . And he was always late paying his personal tailor and the trainer he hire for his racehorse . There were other debts as well , all from a gambling habit Helldorf couldn ' t shake . Luckily , he could always count on a handout from Hanussen . All he had to do was sign an IOU , which Hanussen would add to his growing pile of chits he kept safe in his apartment . " Berlin chief of police . He became a member of the NSDAP in 1926 , and by 1931 had joined the SA , functioning as an SA leader in Berlin . The scope of his work got bigger in 1933 when he was also given responsibility for the SS ' s Berlin - Brandenburg leadership . At the same time , he was also elected to the Reichstag . In March of the same year , he was named Police President of Potsdam , and from July 1935 , he took on the same function in Berlin , a post in which he remained for the last decade of his life . Helldorf , an inveterate gambler , was notorious for arresting wealthy Jews , seizing their passports and then extorting huge bribes from them to secure their release and exit from Germany . He was closely allied with Dr . Joseph Goebbels , Gauleiter of Berlin and Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment . As chief of the Berlin Police , Helldorf played an instrumental role in the harassment and plundering of Berlin ' s Jewish population in the early and mid - 1930s . Joseph Goebbels mentioned in his diary on 2 July 1938 , that " . . . Helldorf wants to construct a Jewish ghetto in Berlin . The rich Jews will be required to fund its construction . " Helldorf was the organizational brains behind the arson and looting of Berlin ' s synagogues and Jewish businesses in the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 1938 . On November 8 , 1938 , the day Kristallnacht began , he was quoted in the New York Times saying , " as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been disarmed " Helldorf used his office for personal enrichment . In the Blomberg - Fritsch Affair , he first withheld from the top Nazi leadership evidence which contradicted the Gestapo ' s assertion that Werner von Blomberg ' s new wife had a criminal record for posing for pornographic photos , then later leaked to the Wehrmacht leadership the same exculpatory evidence to create the implication that it had been in the possession of but withheld by the Gestapo . Similarly in the Fritsch affair , Helldorf possessed documentary information that would have exonerated Fritsch from the allegations that Fritsch paid for the services of homosexual prostitutes , it was a cavalry captain with a similar surname . After Fritsch ' s consequent dismissal as Commander in Chief of the Army , Helldorf then leaked to the army leadership the misidentification upon which Fritsch had been framed and disgraced . 20 July Plot . From 1938 , it is asserted that Helldorf was in some form of communication with the military opposition to Hitler . This is especially the case in Hans Gisevius ' book " To the Bitter End " , in which Helldorf plays an important role in Gisevius ' circle of conspirators and anti - Nazis . On 20 July 1944 , he was in communication with the coup d ' état plotters . His place was to command his Berlin police during the coup , first to not interfere with the military takeover , then to aid the new government . The fact that Helldorf sided with the anti - Hitler movement in their attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler earned him a place in history as a German resistance fighter against the Nazi régime . Trial and execution . For his participation in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf ' s Lair in East Prussia , he was condemned by Roland Freisler at the " Volksgerichtshof " and later put to death at Plötzensee Prison . So enraged was Hitler at his participation in the plot that Hitler ordered that he be forced to watch all others hanged before him and then hanged last .