He then decided not to pursue a career as a military officer, the family tradition, but instead studied law at the universities of Göttingen and Marburg.

During that time, he became a member of the Corps Saxonia Göttingen, a German student fraternity, and he sustained several cuts as a result of the traditional dueling with swords.

As a member of a prominent old Prussian noble family, Schulenburg was part of the German Empire's ruling class, which was defined by the two pillars of the state, the military and the civil service.

His romantic vision of the farming community and of social justice soon earned him the nickname the "roter Graf" ("Red Count") from his colleagues.

Schulenburg could be counted among the followers of "north German" Nazism, characterized mainly by the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser.

The conflicts with Koch increased as time went on, but in 1937 he was promoted by the German Interior Ministry and posted to Berlin as vice president of police.

His immediate superior was the Berlin President of Police Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, who resisted having Schulenburg assigned for a long time.

On the Eastern Front, the crises that became apparent involving the provisioning, military leadership, and treatment of civilian populations in conquered lands gave Schulenburg reason to distrust the Nazis.

Schulenburg observed with growing anxiety and disgust the lawlessness of the Nazi régime, and he made contacts with like-minded opposition forces from a spectrum of political circles, including other Prussian aristocrats like himself.

One of the greatest friends to the circle at that time was Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, another scion of a historically famous Prussian noble family.

Due to these ties, especially with the civilian resistance circles surrounding Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and the socialist group (Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold) about Julius Leber, he stood out as an important link.