Hans-Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld (14 July 1904 – 21 August 1999), also known as Johnnie or Johann von Herwarth, was a German diplomat who provided the Allies with information prior to and during the Second World War. Biography Herwarth was born in Berlin. His paternal grandmother, Julia von Herwarth (née Haber), was Jewish. He graduated from high school in Berlin. He studied law and economics in Berlin, Breslau and Munich. In 1927 he entered the German Foreign Office (Auswaertiges Amt) and was first stationed in Paris. He was stationed in Moscow 1931–1939, where he met George F. Kennan, Charles W. Thayer and Charles E. Bohlen. Fitzroy Maclean, then a young diplomat in the British Embassy, states in his memoir Eastern Approaches that Herwarth condemned the appeasement of the Munich Agreement, predicted a Soviet–German commitment to non-aggression (which came to pass as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), and saw ahead to what he called "the destruction of Germany". After 1939, he worked at the German Army Headquarters (OKW), in the Abwehr department. From 1945 onward, Herwarth worked for the new German government, first in Munich, then in Bonn. In 1955, he became the first post-war German ambassador in London. In 1961, he was head of Bundespräsidialamt (the office of the Federal President); later he became ambassador to Rome. From 1971–1977 he was president of the Goethe-Institut, responsible for cultural relations. Herwarth, who by marriage was a cousin of Claus von Stauffenberg, belonged to the aristocratic opposition against the Nazi regime. Maclean, who thought of him as an old friend, assessed him as "a patriotic German ... strongly and genuinely anti-Nazi". Herwarth and his contacts In his memoirs (Witness to History, 1973), former U.S. ambassador to Germany Charles E. Bohlen reveals how, on the morning of 24 August 1939, he visited Herwarth at the German embassy and received the full content of the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, signed the day before. The secret protocol contained an understanding between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin on how to split Central Europe, the Baltic states and Finland between the two powers. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was urgently informed, but the United States did not pass this information to any concerned governments in Europe. A week later the plan was realised with the German invasion of Poland and the Second World War began. According to the website of the German embassy in London, Herwarth and his