Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck
Otto Christian Archibald, Prince of Bismarck (25 September 1897 in Schönhausen, Brandenburg – 24 December 1975), was a German politician and diplomat, and the Prince of Bismarck from 1904 to his death (since 1919 only as a part of his name). Life He was the eldest of the three sons of Herbert von Bismarck, as well as the grandson of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck and elder brother of German Resistance figure Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen. Bismarck was six when his father died and he inherited his family estate in Schönhausen. A lawyer, he joined the diplomatic service in 1927, serving in Stockholm (1927–28), London (1928–1937), with the Foreign Ministry in Berlin (1937–1940), as Envoy to Rome (Kingdom of Italy) (1940–1943), and finally as head of the Italian section of the Foreign Ministry (1943–44). Bismarck was a member of the DNVP (a far-right national-conservative party) in the Weimar Republic, and served as a Member of Parliament from 1924 to 1928. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power, he joined the Nazi Party, which he represented in the Reichstag until the very end of the Second World War in 1945. The Reichstag wielded no real influence but was an important part of the propaganda apparatus of the Third Reich and in joining he allowed the regime to use the most prestigious name in Germany to increase its credibility. In 1935 he became a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. World War II Whilst stationed in Rome during the Second World War, Bismarck would pass on German intelligence to the Italian Foreign Office and privately speak ill of the Nazi regime, in particular Ribbentrop, Goering, and Hitler. "The Prince used to tell Italian Foreign Office officials much of what he knew, but, as Ciano discovered, 'he was hellishly afraid of being found out, and implored me in Heaven's name not to pass his confidential information to anyone.' He was convinced of the inevitability of Germany's defeat but did not, unfortunately, mount the big political guns which had so often enabled his grandfather to avert disaster." Of Bismarck and the Nazi alliance with Italy, King Umberto II said, "The military element is strong in Germany, and even Bismarck who was truly exceptionally intelligent, had to submit to it." In 1942, Bismarck played a role in the disclosure of Nazi intelligence that allowed Balkan Jews to be saved. Jews, mostly from Croatia, had fled to the parts of Yugoslavia which the Italian army occupied during 1941 and had since that time lived in peace under the protection of the Royal Italian Army. They had run from the unsystematic butchery of the Croatian fascists, the Ustaši, but by the middle of 1942 they were threatened with the systematic extermination planned for them under the Nazi "new order" in Europe. In August of 1942 the German government formally asked the Italian government to hand them over. Mussolini agreed; a handful of Italian diplomats and generals said no. By refusing the German request and disobeying an