Rudolf von Scheliha

Rudolf "Dolf" von Scheliha (31 May 1897 – 22 December 1942) was a German aristocrat, cavalry officer and diplomat who became a resistance fighter and anti-Nazi who was incorrectly linked to the Red Orchestra espionage group.

He fought in World War I, an experience that defined his politics and made him a pacifist. He joined the German Foreign Office, was trained to be a diplomat and was sent to the embassy in Warsaw, in position of trust in the Foreign Office. In the years leading up to the Second World War, he became a committed opponent of the Nazi regime and of its anti-Semitic policies. In 1937, he was recruited by Soviet intelligence, while he served in Warsaw. When World War II started, he passed documents to Soviet intelligence through his contacts Rudolf Herrnstadt and later Ilse Stöbe.

In September 1939, he began working in the information department in the Foreign Ministry, which was established to counter enemy propaganda. As part of his position, photographs of atrocities against Jews and other people passed through his department and were used in propaganda. Appalled at what he saw, he began to resist and built a dossier of the worst images over several years. In 1940, he helped several of his Polish friends flee abroad after the Invasion of Poland, In 1941, when he learned of the murders of the Polish intelligensia during operation Sonderaktion Krakau, he protested to Reinhard Heydrich, which enabled him to save the lifes of several Polish academics. During that period, he continued to save documents for his portfolio. It was eventually smuggled to London in January 1942. Later in the war, he tried to warn Swiss diplomats about the Aktion T4 campaign. In June 1941, after the invasion of the Soviet Union, his controller Ilse Stöbe lost contact. Soviet intelligence tried several times to reinitiate communications with her but were unsuccessful. A blunder by Soviet intelligence that exposed Stöbes address, led her and von Scheliha to being discovered in July 1942 by German military intelligence. Stöbe was arrested in 12 September 1942, Von Scheliha on 29 October 1942. He was tried by the Reichskriegsgericht and executed by hanging in Plötzensee Prison on 14 December 1942.

After the war, Von Scheliha was seen as a traitor and his wife Marie Louise von Scheliha and children were left destitute. In the decades after the war, she worked tirelessly to rehabilitate her husbands reputation, eventually succeeding in the late 1990's with the help of Ulrich Sahm, who wrote a biography of von Scheliha that described him as a "daring and honourable resistance fighter".