Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband

Nikolaus von Üxküll-Gyllenband ( Kőszeg , Hungary , 14 of February of 1877 - Plötzensee , Germany , 14 of September of 1944 ) was an aristocrat Austro-Hungarian colonel of the Wehrmacht , businessman and one of the plotters of the Bombing of July 20, 1944 against Hitler .

Biography

Count Nikolaus von Üxküll was born in Kőszeg when he was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1877, his parents were Germans of the Baltic nobility: Count Alfred Richard von Uxküll-Gyllenband and Valerie Gräfin von Hohenthal (related to Count and Prussian August Neidhardt von Gneisenau ).

Both parents died with a difference of one year between 1877 and 1878, reason why it was orphan almost to the year of being born, being the only male of three brothers. Her older sisters were named Alexandrina and Caroline, born Countess von Üxküll Gyllenband.

They were sponsored by their aunt, Countess Olga Uxkiill-Gyllenband who was a noblewoman of Württemberg who raised them as if they were their own children and never married for this cause. He attended the high school of nobles in Stuttgart .

World War I

Following the nobiliary traditions, was incorporated in 1895 like ensign to the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When his sister Caroline was related in 1906 with Alfred Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg became part of the Prussian nobility and therefore uncle in the first degree of her children: Claus , Alexander and Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg .

In 1908 he married Baroness Ida von Pfaffenhofen-Chledowsky. The marriage conceived three children: Alexander Graf Uxküll-Gyllenband (1909-1999), Elisabeth Gräfin von Üxküll-Gyllenband (1911-1980) and Olga Reichsgräfin von Üxküll-Gyllenband (1911-1980).

He was promoted to captain and served as an officer of the General Staff of the Cavalry during the First World War . He later served as a military attache at the German embassy in Turkey until the end of the conflict in 1918, leaving the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel .

After the Great War , he worked as a successful businessman in the lumber business representing the interests of Tiele Wincklerschen Asset during the Weimar Republic .

World War II

In 1933, he entered the NSDAP embracing at first the ideas of emerging Nazism. He held administrative positions as Reich commissary at the University of Berlin until 1941, then joined the army again with the rank of colonel . ¹ Nikolaus von Üxküll served on the Eastern Front until 1943 in the southern sector of Leningrad organizing the Chudovo defense and in Priluki ( Ukraine ) where he noted the massacre of civilians and the reality of concentration camps.

In 1943, Nikolaus von Üxküll acted as liaison officer of the Army in the Prague Command, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia .

Attack of the 20 of July of 1944

Since 1939, Nikolaus von Üxküll had become disenchanted with the Nazi ideology and was part of a closed group of conspirators against Hitler , who secretly sought to overthrow the Nazi leader. He was accompanied by his nephew Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg . After the service in Ukraine at the end of 1943, von Üxküll activated plans to overthrow the regime as soon as possible, and in 1944 they were joined by Claus von Stauffenberg involving a vast network of conspirators ranging from the upper social and military strata to ordinary civilians .

After the failure of the Putsch against Hitler , Nikolaus von Üxküll was arrested on 23 of July of 1944 by the Gestapo along with Nina , her mother, Baroness Anna von Freiin Stackelberg and Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg at the castle of Stauffenberg in Lautlingen, And taken to a prison in Rottweil . During the interrogations Count Nikolaus von Üxküll gave as a reason for his participation the atrocities that occurred in the concentration camps.

He was tried before the People’s Court ( Volksgerichtshof ) supervised by the Nazi judge, Roland Freisler , and was found guilty of the charge of high treason and condemned to the gallows, being executed the same day of the sentence, 14 of September of 1944 in The Plötzensee Prison .

Alongside him were also other noblemen and intellectuals, Heinrich Graf zu Dohna-Schlobitten , Hermann Josef Wehrle and Michael Graf von Matuschka . Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg had been executed atrociously on 10 August 1944 in the same prison.

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