Mr von Kleist later recalled how his father gave his blessing to the suicide mission.
"All are welcome if they meet our conditions and our requirements to operate in Greenland, " Mr Kleist said.
Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist died aged 90 at his home in Munich last Friday, his wife Gundula told the Associated Press.
Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist was arrested and sent to a concentration camp, but was later allowed to return to combat duty.
"Fathers love their sons and mine certainly did, and I had been quite sure he would say no, " von Kleist recalled.
Von Kleist died Friday at age 90 at his home in Munich, his wife Gundula von Kleist told The Associated Press.
Following the war, von Kleist founded the Ewald von Kleist publishing house, and became involved in public education on security issues and trans-Atlantic relations.
The von Kleist family was a long line of Prussian landowners, who had served the state for centuries in high-ranking military and administrative positions.
Von Kleist was born July 10, 1922, on his family estate Schmenzin in Pommerania in an area of northeastern Germany that is today Poland.
Mr Kleist, speaking in the Danish capital Copenhagen, said Greenland needed to develop its resources, as it was too reliant on fishing and subsidies from Denmark.
Col Von Stauffenberg, along with von Kleist's father - a known opponent of Hitler - and others involved in the plot were arrested and later executed.
Born in 1922 in an area of north-eastern Germany that is now part of Poland, Mr von Kleist came from a long line of Prussian landowners.
Von Kleist himself was arrested, questioned at length by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp, but then inexplicably let go and returned to combat duty.
Despite his family's opposition to the Nazis, younger von Kleist joined the German army in 1940, and was wounded in 1943 in fighting on the Eastern Front.
Von Kleist served as the conference's moderator until 1998, before handing it over to Chancellor Helmut Kohl's longtime foreign policy adviser Horst Teltschik, who has also since stepped down.
For his efforts leading the Munich Security Conference, von Kleist was awarded the U.S. Department of Defense's Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 1991, its highest award for a civilian.
But when news spread that Hitler had survived, the plot crumbled and von Stauffenberg, von Kleist's father, and scores of others were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings.
In later life, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist founded the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy - a powerful forum that brings together the world's top diplomats and defence officials to discuss global policy issues.
The elder von Kleist famously traveled to England in 1938, the year before World War II broke out, to try and determine whether other Western nations would support a coup attempt against Hitler, but failed to get the British government to change its policy of appeasement.
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