Freytag-Loringhoven came from an aristocratic
Baltic German family in
Courland descended from an
Westphalia. He grew up in
Adiamünde (Skulte) in
Livonia. After his
Abitur he joined the Baltic-German
Landeswehr in 1918, and with the formation of independent Latvia he became an officer of the 13th Infantry Regiment of Latvia. In 1922 he left Latvia in order to enter the
Reichswehr of
Weimar Germany.
Freytag-Loringhoven joined the
Wehrmacht High Command as a colonel in 1943. He initially sympathized with the
National Socialist program for Germany, but was disaffected by the
Night of the Long Knives massacre. After more negative experiences with war crimes in
Operation Barbarossa, he joined the
German resistance. With the help of Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris he was relocated to Wehrmacht High Command in 1943.
Freytag-Loringhoven provided the detonator charge and explosives for the assassination attempt against Hitler on
July 20th, 1944. He was able to obtain unrecognized English explosives from German Intelligence (
Abwehr) resources.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Reich Security Main Office,
RSHA) managed to discover the actions of Freytag-Loringhoven. On
26 July 1944, immediately before he was to be arrested by the
Gestapo, aware about
Interrogation Techniques, Freytag-Loringhoven committed
suicide at
Mauerwald, East Prussia.
After his death, his wife was imprisoned along with relatives of the other members of the plot. Freytag-Loringhoven's four sons were separated from their mother. All were eventually liberated by
Allied forces.
A close cousin,
Bernd von Freytag-Loringhoven, was not implicated only due to the efforts of General
Heinz Guderian. His cousin was in
Berlin in the
Führerbunker towards the
end of World War II in Europe.
