Axel von dem Bussche

Axel Ernst-August Clamor Franz Albrecht Erich Leo Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst (24 April 1919 – 26 January 1993) was a German officer during World War II and was a member of the German Resistance.

Axel von dem Bussche was born in 1919 and came from the old East Westphalian noble family von dem Bussche.

He was the son of Georg Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst and his Danish wife Jenny Lassen.

Anders Lassen, a Danish resistance hero who fought in the British Army against Germany during World War II, was his first cousin.

He had two siblings; his older brother Cuno died in World War II.

After graduating from high school, he joined the 9th Infantry Regiment of the 23rd Infantry Division in Potsdam (called "Count Nine Regiment" because of its high proportion of noble officers) as an officer candidate.

As it turns out, a whole series of resistance fighters would emerge from this regiment.

He attended elementary school in the town of Thale and passed his Abitur in Munich in 1937.

In 1938-1939 he attended the war school in Hanover.

During World War II, he first took part in the Polish and French campaigns, and later in the war against the Soviet Union.

As early as 1940, during a stay in Breslau, he learned of pogroms against the civilian population.

In 1942, von dem Bussche witnessed by chance an SS-organised gruesome massacre of more than 3,000 mostly Jewish civilians carried out by the SD at the old Dubno airport.

This experience traumatized him and turned him decidedly against Hitler.

He joined an ad hoc resistance group within Army Group Centre later to be led by Count Claus von Stauffenberg.

On 5 October 1942, at the age of 23, the highly decorated first lieutenant happened to witness the systematic mass execution of over three thousand mostly Jewish civilians—men, women, and children—at the Dubno airfield in the Ukraine.

The killings were carried out over two days by SD (Sicherheitsdienst) officers, who were led by eight SS (Schutzstaffel) officers.

Von dem Bussche described this crime: "SS people led the Jews to a pit. There they had to undress, then climb into the pit where a layer of convulsing bodies was already lying: obeying orders, they had to lie face down on the murdered victims and were then shot in the back of the head."

Until then, the career officer von dem Bussche had felt bound by the personal oath to Adolf Hitler.

After these events, he asked himself and a small circle of like-minded individuals in the regiment (to which Richard von Weizsäcker, later elected President of Germany, also belonged), why he should still be bound by this oath, which is based on respect and reciprocity, when the Führer had already broken it with the crimes he had ordered.

Three months after his traumatic witnessing of the mass execution, Bussche's decision was clear: it could no longer be a question of sacrificing one's own life on the battlefield, but of using it for Germany against Hitler.

This experience, from which he never recovered until his death many years later, motivated him to consciously join the resistance group around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg against the Hitler regime through the mediation of Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg.

He planned to assassinate Adolf Hitler in coordination with Claus von Stauffenberg in November 1943 at the Wolfsschanze.

In 1943 he volunteered for a suicide assassination attempt on Hitler while modeling uniforms.

In October 1943 he traveled to Lieutenant Colonel von Stauffenberg in Berlin.

Von dem Bussche, who had been promoted to captain and now worked as a battalion commander in the 9th Grenadier Regiment, was deeply impressed by the encounter with Stauffenberg.

He later spoke of "the bright glow of this man's assured composure".

Bussche explained that in view of the crimes he witnessed involuntarily, there were only three ways for an officer to protect his honor "by joining the group of victims" — i.e. to die in battle, to desert, or to rebel against the government that had ordered this and all other massacres.

Von dem Bussche was initiated into the conspiracy plans against Hitler by Stauffenberg.

When Stauffenberg asked him, he agreed without hesitation to sacrifice his life in a suicide attack on Hitler.

He later justified his intention to kill with the emergency aid paragraph of the German penal code (§ 32 StGB), which he had had to memorize as a recruit in Potsdam.

In November 1943 von dem Bussche volunteered to carry out a suicide bombing to kill Hitler.

The principal difficulty for any would-be Hitler assassin was getting near Hitler with a weapon or explosives.

Henning von Tresckow, who came from the same regiment as von dem Bussche and was the head of the conspiracy alongside von Stauffenberg, suggested using a planned demonstration of the Army's new winter uniforms at the Wolfsschanze headquarters near Rastenburg because fellow Nazis and SS officers Göring and Himmler would also be present.

Von dem Bussche volunteered and was chosen to explain the advantages of these new uniforms to those present.

His appearance, standing over two meters tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed, exemplified Hitler's "Nordic" racial ideal, and he was therefore considered an ideal model.

The plan was to arm and detonate a modified landmine hidden in his uniform.

He used a hand grenade detonator to rig the device.

He rejected a chemical detonator proposed by Stauffenberg because he felt that the ten-minute period from arming to detonation was too long.

This assessment was based on the experience previously made by Rudolf von Gersdorff.

Hand grenade fuses, on the other hand, explode after just four to five seconds.