Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff - Wikipedia Wolf-Heinrich Julius Otto Bernhard Fritz Hermann Ferdinand Graf von Helldorff (14 October 1896 – 15 August 1944) was a German police official and politician, who served as a Member of the Landtag of Prussia during the Weimar Republic, as a Member of the Reichstag for the Nazi Party from 1933, and as Ordnungspolizei Chief of Police in 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. He was closely allied with Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Gauleiter of Berlin and Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. As chief of the Berlin Police, Helldorff played an instrumental role in the harassment and plundering of Berlin's Jewish population in the early and mid-1930s, a policy known as Aktionen. Goebbels mentioned in his diary on 2 July 1938, that "...Helldorff wants to construct a Jewish ghetto in Berlin. The rich Jews will be required to fund its construction." Helldorff was the organizational brains behind the arson and looting of Berlin's synagogues and Jewish businesses in the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 1938.[2][3][4] On 8 November 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" Goebbels certainly ensured that Hellsdorf took the blame for Kristallnacht, when he declared "the police act with an appearance of legality, the party provides spectators." The police took orders not to arrest nor to treat too harshly rioters who beat up Jews. . For his involvement in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia, Helldorff was condemned by Roland Freisler at the People's Court and later put to death at Plötzensee Prison. So enraged was Hitler at Helldorff's participation in the plot that he insisted Helldorff be forced to watch his fellow conspirators being hanged before his own execution.
