High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff was a military officer in Germany?s Weimar-period Reichswehr and Nazi-period Wehrmacht. He attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bombing, and he discovered the mass graves of the Katyn massacre. In 1979 he was awarded West Germany's Bundesverdienstkreuz. Rudolf Christoph von Gersdorff was born in the garrison city of Lüben in the Prussian Province of Silesia during the time of the German Empire. He was the second son of Captain Baron Ernst von Gersdorff and his spouse Christine. He attended schools in Lüben and joined the Reichswehr as an officer cadet in 1923. He received his initial military education in Breslau at the Kleinburg Barracks, where his forefathers had for generations served in the 1. Schlesisches Leibkürassier Regiment ?Großer Kurfürst?, later renamed the Reiterregiment 7.