Ewald - Heinrich von Kleist - Schmenzin Ewald - Heinrich von Kleist - Schmenzin ( 10 July 1922 – 8 March 2013 ) was a German Army officer in World War II , and later worked as a publisher . A member of the von Kleist family , his parents were active in the German resistance against Adolf Hitler . Ewald - Heinrich von Kleist - Schmenzin , who lived to be 90 , was the last surviving member of the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler . Biography . Early life . Kleist was born on the family ' s manor Gut Schmenzin at Schmenzin ( Smęcino ) near Köslin ( now Koszalin , Poland ) on the Oder ( Odra ) River in Pomerania . The family were firm monarchists and his father Ewald von Kleist - Schmenzin ( 1890 – 1945 ) had been an active opponent of Nazism well before the Second World War broke out . The young Ewald grew up in this milieu . Like his father , who had criticised Nazi ideology in print as early as 1929 , Ewald - Heinrich loathed Hitler and National Socialism from the beginning . The Nazi murders of 30 June 1934 — the " Night of the Long Knives " — further intensified young von Kleist - Schmenzin ' s hatred of the Nazi régime . The Wehrmacht years . In 1940 , aged 18 , he joined the Wehrmacht as an infantry officer . Kleist was personally recruited for the resistance by Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg . In January 1944 , with his father ' s blessing , he volunteered to replace the wounded Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche - Streithorst in another suicidal assassination attempt on Hitler . Kleist , the company leader , and his men were scheduled to show Hitler new uniforms that had been tested at the front . Kleist planned to set off explosives hidden in his briefcase . He believed that he might have been able to escape alive , even if the briefcase exploded in his hands . But like earlier attempts , the plan was not carried out , as Hitler kept putting off the scheduled uniform demonstration . 20 July 1944 . Kleist , at 22 , was the youngest of the many supporters and helpers at the Bendlerblock in Berlin who carried out an attempt on Hitler ' s life at the Wolf ' s Lair near Rastenburg in East Prussia on 20 July 1944 . He was in the group that was to stage the coup in Berlin , had the assassination been successful . After the plot ' s failure , he managed to cover up his resistance activities and proceedings against him were dropped in December 1944 for want of evidence . He was , thereby , spared a trial before the " Volksgerichtshof " , which would almost certainly have ended with a death sentence , as it did for many of his fellow plotters , including his own father . However , he was imprisoned at the Ravensbrück concentration camp , and subsequently sent to the front , where he remained until the war ended . The post - war years . After the war he was left homeless when most of Pomerania was transferred to Poland and all Germans expelled . Kleist went into the publishing business and founded his own publishing house , the Ewald - von - Kleist - Verlag which became a leading German publishing house . He joined the Protestant Order of Saint John ( Bailiwick of Brandenburg ) , to which his executed father had belonged , and was admitted as a Knight of Honour in 1957 and promoted to Knight of Justice in 1975 . In 1962 , Kleist founded the " Wehrkundetagung " in Munich , called , the Munich Conference on Security Policy in English . He was the convenor of this conference until he retired in 1998 . Although Kleist remained active in German public life after the war and expressed his views openly on a variety of subjects including the German armed forces and unilateral nuclear disarmament , which he criticised , he never spoke publicly about the failed 20 July 1944 plot . Death . Ewald - Heinrich von Kleist died at his home in Munich on March 8 , 2013 . He was 90 . Portrayal in the media . In the 2004 German production , " Stauffenberg " , von Kleist - Schmenzin is portrayed by actor Sebastian Rüger .