Fabian von Schlabrendorff (1907–1980)

Fabian von Schlabrendorff was born to an aristocratic German family. He became a lawyer and in World War II, joined the German Army, and was promoted to adjutant to Major General Henning von Tresckow. With von Tresckow, he joined the anti-Nazi military conspiracy against Adolf Hitler. In March 1943, he placed a bomb aboard Hitler's plane returning to Germany after a visit to Army Group Centre near Smolensk on the Eastern front, but the device failed to explode. Von Schlabrendorff was arrested after the failure of the July 1944 plot involving von Tresckow, Claus von Stauffenberg, and others. He was tortured by the Gestapo but refused to talk. On February 3, 1945, he was on trial for treason in Berlin when an Allied bombing raid hit the courthouse. In the ensuing chaos, he was hustled off to detention without being sentenced, and he survived the last months of the war being transferred from one concentration camp to the next. After the war, he became a constitutional court judge in West Germany and wrote his memoirs.