Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven

Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven (10 November 1899 – 26 July 1944), was a colonel in the High Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW) and a member of the German Resistance (Widerstand) against Adolf Hitler. Loringhoven was a friend of Claus von Stauffenberg, who was the leader of the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

Loringhoven came from an aristocratic Baltic German family in Courland descended from Westphalia. He grew up in Adiamünde (Skulte) in Livonia. After his Final Exams (Abitur), Loringhoven joined the Baltic-German Army (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 Army of Weimar Germany (Reichswehr).

Loringhoven initially sympathized with the National Socialist program for Germany. But, in 1934, he was disaffected by the Night of the Long Knives massacre. After more negative experiences with war crimes during the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Loringhoven joined the resistance against Nazi Germany.

In 1943, with the help of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Loringhoven was relocated to the High Command of the German Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) as a colonel.

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