In 1943, having recovered from a severe wound he had suffered on the Eastern Front, Haeften became adjutant to Oberst Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, one of the leading figures in the German Resistance.

After the detonation, Stauffenberg and Haeften rushed to Berlin and, not knowing that Hitler had survived the explosion, attempted to launch the long-planned coup d'état, which would swiftly fail.

In the Eastern Bloc co-production Liberation: Direction of the Main Blow (1971), Haeften was depicted by the East German actor Hans-Edgar Stecher.

In the 2000 alternate history novel Fox on the Rhine, the bomb delivered by Haeften and Stauffenberg succeeds in killing Hitler, but Heinrich Himmler avoids their attempts to arrest him and seizes control of the Third Reich (although his reign lasts for less than a year).

The sequel novel, Fox at the Front, mentions that his brother Hans-Bernd managed to escape to neutral territory and, along with other surviving plotters, has formed a government-in-exile.