During the course of the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair, Sponeck was recalled by contemporaries as having suggested his willingness to lead his troops in support of army commander-in-chief Werner von Fritsch if called to do so,[3] though no such plan ever came to fruition.

During the trial of General von Fritsch, Sponeck was called as a character witness but was roughly put down by Hermann Göring, who was serving as Court President.

In preparation for the invasion of Crimea, Sponeck's division was ordered in September and early October 1941 to attack east and north along the Sea of Azov to the cities of Henichesk, Melitopol and Berdiansk.

[citation needed] On 7 October 1941, Graf von Sponeck ordered his division to work closely with the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) by rounding up, identifying, and handing over Jewish civilians.

Mass shootings of Jews by units of Einsatzgruppe D of the SiPo and SD are documented in both Henichesk and Melitopol shortly after these cities were occupied by the 22nd Infantry Division in October 1941.

On 10 December 1941, General von Sponeck ordered that all Jews found within his area of command were to be treated in principle as "partisans", marked with the Star of David, and "deployed as labor."

He also ordered that any Red Army soldiers captured, even those in uniform, were to be shot immediately and approved reprisal actions against civilians for any local anti-German activity or sabotage.

He had the moral courage to refuse an order from Hitler to stand his ground when his troops were threatened with destruction, and he was court-martialed and later killed by the Nazis for it.

At the same time, he did not refuse to carry out the criminal Commissar Order, which gave cover for what became a genocidal war against ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ in the Soviet Union.

While von Sponeck was not a Nazi in the technical sense and was himself even critical of some aspects of the regime, his orders and the actions of his troops leave no doubt that he had internalized anti-Semitic racism.

After the war, Graf von Sponeck was commemorated in Germany, with an Air Force base in Germersheim, streets and monuments named after him.