Hans Peters was born into a Catholic family; his father was a civil servant in administration. He studied law and political science. A member of the Center Party from 1923, Peters went into an administrative career and taught at the University of Breslau. It was during this time that he met Ruth Andreas-Friedrich. In 1928 he became a professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. He was a member of the Prussian parliament until it was forced to close in 1933.
As a major in the air force high command, he was in close dialog with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg from 1940 on, and maintained contact to several resistance groups. He connected Berlin’s Uncle Emil group to the Kreisau Circle, where he was seen as an expert on cultural and higher education issues.
At the end of February 1943, Peters brought the Uncle Emil group the last flyer produced by the recently arrested White Rose resistance group in Munich. His apartment in Berlin-Charlottenburg became a meeting place for people from the opposition.
Despite his close contacts to the Kreisau Circle, Peters’ connections were not discovered by the Gestapo after the attempted coup of July 20, 1944.