German jurist during the Nazi era, a member of the German Resistance against Adolf Hitler, he was arrested and executed in the aftermath of the failed 20 July plot.
In 1940, Haeften became the leader of the cultural-political department of the Foreign Office, but refused to join the Nazi Party. He refused on religious and moral grounds to have anything to do with any attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, but supported the attempt to overthrow Hitler and stood ready to take power at the Foreign Ministry for the plotters. In January 1944 he stopped his brother, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, from shooting Hitler with a pistol with the argument that this would break the Fifth Commandment.
Haeften was arrested on 23 July 1944, three days after the July 20 Plot, the German military’s failed assassination attempt against Hitler at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. His brother Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, who was the adjutant of Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, had been summarily shot along with Stauffenberg in the early hours of 21 July at the Bendlerblock. On 15 August, Haeften was brought before the Volksgerichtshof, or People’s Court, and accused of treason in connection with the plot. He confessed to the charge, saying “Legally speaking it is treason; actually it is not. For I no longer feel an obligation of loyalty. I see in Hitler the perpetrator of evil in history.” He was sentenced to death and hanged the same day at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
Link to Wikipedia biography