When the 20 July plot failed, she was arrested with the rest of the Stauffenberg family. Although her two brothers-in-law, Claus and Berthold were executed and the other adult members were held in concentration camps, she was released on 2 September, because of the military importance of her work. As the name von Stauffenberg was anything but popular among the Nazis, she was now officially addressed as "Gräfin Schenk" instead of "Gräfin Schenk von Stauffenberg". Her husband and her sisters-in-law, one of them pregnant, were confined in concentration camps, and the Stauffenberg children were taken away from their mothers. Melitta used her prominent position to help as much as she could.