70 years ago on this date, January
23, 1945, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke,
a member of the German Resistance against Nazism, was executed at Plötzensee
Prison in Berlin. Let us not forget him as a hero where we respect and admire
the German Resistance. We will post information about him from Wikipedia and
other links.
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Photograph of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
"vor dem Volksgerichtshof" (before the People's Court), January 1945,
by Heinrich Hoffmann.
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Born
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11
March 1907
Kreisau, Prussian Silesia, German Empire |
Died
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23
January 1945 (aged 37)
Berlin-Plötzensee, Nazi Germany |
Cause of
death
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Execution
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Resting
place
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Hamburg-Wandsbek,
Germany
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Nationality
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Germany
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Other names
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Helmuth
James Ludwig Eugen Heinrich Graf von Moltke
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Education
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University
of Breslau, Oxford University
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Occupation
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International
law
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Known for
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Non-violent
resistance to the Nazi government of Germany as co-founder of the Kreisau
Circle
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Title
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Count
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Spouse(s)
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Freya
von Moltke
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Children
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Helmuth
Caspar, Konrad
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Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (11 March 1907 – 23
January 1945) was a German jurist who, as a draftee in the German Abwehr, acted
to subvert German human-rights abuses of people in territories occupied by
Germany during World War II and subsequently became a founding member of the Kreisau
Circle resistance group, whose members opposed the government of Adolf Hitler
in Nazi Germany.
The Nazi government executed von
Moltke for treason, he having discussed with the Kreisau Circle group the
prospects for a Germany based on moral and democratic principles that could
develop after Hitler.
He was the great-grandnephew of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the
victorious commander in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, from whom
he inherited the Kreisau Estate in Prussian Silesia, now Krzyżowa in Poland.
Early life
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was born
in Kreisau (now Krzyżowa, Świdnica County, Poland) in the Province of Silesia.
His mother, Dorothy (née Rose Innes), was a South African of British descent,
the daughter of Sir James Rose Innes, Chief Justice of the Union of South
Africa from 1914 to 1927. Moltke's parents were Christian Scientists, his
mother adopting his father's religion after marriage. His father became a Christian
Science practitioner and teacher and both parents were in the group that
translated the first German edition of the Christian Science textbook, Science
and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. For reasons of
family tradition, Moltke decided to become confirmed Evangelical when he was
14.
Education
From 1927 to 1929, Moltke studied
legal and political sciences in Breslau, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Berlin. In
1931 he married Freya Deichmann, whom he met in Austria.
In 1928 Moltke became involved with
college teachers and youth movement leaders in the organization of the Löwenberger
Arbeitsgemeinschaften (Löwenberg Labour Community) in which jobless young
workers and young farmers were brought together with students so they could
learn from each other. They also discussed civics, obligations, and rights. In
Kreisau, Moltke set aside an unused part of the estate for farming startups,
which earned him harsh criticism from neighbouring landowners.
In 1934, Moltke took his junior law
examination. In 1935, he declined the chance to become a judge because he would
have been obliged to join the Nazi Party. Instead, he opened a law practice in Berlin.
As a lawyer dealing in international law, he helped victims of Hitler's régime
emigrate, and traveled abroad to maintain contacts. Between 1935 and 1938,
Moltke regularly visited Great Britain, where he completed English legal
training in London and Oxford.
International law division of the Abwehr
In 1939, World War II began with the
German invasion of Poland. Moltke was immediately drafted at the beginning of
the Polish campaign by the Abwehr—specifically, the
High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando
der Wehrmacht—OKW), Counter-Intelligence Service, Foreign
Division—under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,
as an expert in martial law and international public
law. Moltke's work for the Abwehr mainly involved gathering insights
from abroad, from military attachés
and foreign newspapers, and news of military-political
importance, and relaying this information to the Wehrmacht. He maintained the connection
between the OKW and the Foreign Office,
but above all to provide appraisals of questions of the international laws of war.
Unusually, he chose not to wear a uniform.
In his travels through German-occupied
Europe, he observed many human rights abuses, which he attempted to
thwart by insisting that Germany observe the Geneva Convention (it continued not to) and
through local actions in creating more benign outcomes for local inhabitants,
citing legal principles. In October 1941, Moltke wrote, "Certainly more
than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day, and another thousand
German men are habituated to murder... What shall I say when I am asked: And
what did you do during that time?" In the same letter he said, "Since
Saturday the Berlin Jews are being rounded up. Then they are sent off with what
they can carry.... How can anyone know these things and walk around free?"
Moltke hoped that, with his
appraisals, he could have a humanitarian effect on military events, and was
supported in this by anti-Hitler officers such as Canaris and Major General Hans Oster, Chief of the Central Division.
During Nazi Germany's war with
the Soviet Union, Moltke wrote a controversial opinion urging
Germany to follow both the Geneva Convention and the Hague
Convention, in order to comply with international law and to promote
reciprocal good treatment for German prisoners of war; however he was overruled
on the grounds that Russia was not a signatory to the agreements, with Field
Marshal Wilhelm Keitel describing the Geneva Convention as "a product of a notion
of chivalry of a bygone era." He further acted on his opposition to the
brutalities of Nazism by ordering deportation of Jews to countries which
provided safe haven, and by writing reports emphasizing the psychological
problems German soldiers developed after witnessing and participating in mass
killings of Jews and Eastern Europeans. Having access to this information
reinforced Moltke's opposition to the war, and the entire program of the Nazi
party.
In 1943 Moltke traveled to Istanbul on
two occasions. The official reason was to retrieve some German merchant ships
impounded by Turkey. The real reason was his participation in an effort to end
World War II by a coalition of anti-Hitler elements of the German Army, German
refugees living in Turkey, members of the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS), the Abwehr (German military intelligence)
and the German ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen. This group passed a report
to the allies, which reached President Roosevelt.
However, Roosevelt's advisers, including Henry Morgenthau
Jr., counseled against the credibility of the report.
Non-violent resistance to Nazi rule
Moltke also surreptitiously spread the
information to which he was privy, regarding the war and the Nazi concentration camps, to friends
outside the Nazi party, including members of the Resistance in occupied Europe.
Declassified British documents reveal that he twice attempted to contact
British officials, including friends from Oxford, offering to "go to any
length" to assist them; however the British refused the first time,
confusing him with his uncle, the German ambassador to Spain, and replied to
the second offer by asking for "deeds" rather than "talk".
Moltke possessed strong religious
convictions and in a 1942 letter smuggled to a British friend Lionel
Curtis, Moltke wrote:
"Today, not a numerous, but an active part of the German people are beginning to realize, not that they have been led astray, not that bad times await them, not that the war may end in defeat, but that what is happening is sin and that they are personally responsible for each terrible deed that has been committed - naturally, not in the earthly sense, but as Christians".
In the same letter, Moltke
wrote that before World War II, he had believed that it was possible to be
totally opposed to Nazism without believing in God, but he now declared his
former ideas to be "wrong, completely wrong". In Moltke's opinion,
only by believing in God could one be a total opponent of the Nazis.
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The von Moltke mansion at Kreisau / Krzyżowa
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Kreisau
Circle
In Berlin Moltke had a circle of
acquaintances who opposed Nazism and who met frequently there, but on three
occasions met at Kreisau. These three incidental gatherings were the basis for
the term "Kreisau Circle". The meetings at Kreisau had an agenda of
well-organized discussion topics, starting with relatively innocuous ones as
cover. The topics of the first meeting of May, 1942 included the failure of
German educational and religious institutions to fend off the rise of Nazism.
The theme of the second meeting in the autumn of 1942 was on post-war
reconstruction, assuming the likely defeat of Germany. This included both
economic planning and self-government, developing a pan-European concept that
pre-dated the European Union by nearly sixty years, summarized in documented
resolutions. The third meeting in June, 1943 addressed how to handle the legacy
of Nazi war crimes after the fall of the dictatorship. These and other meetings
resulted in "Principles for the New [Post-Nazi] Order" and
"Directions to Regional Commissioners", works, which Moltke asked his
wife, Freya, to hide in a place that not even he knew.
Moltke opposed the assassination of
Hitler. He warned that if one succeeded, Hitler would become a martyr, whereas
if one were to fail, it would expose those few individuals among the German
leadership who could be counted on to build a democratic state after the
collapse of the Third Reich. On July 20, 1944 there was an attempt on Hitler's life, which the Gestapo used as a pretext to eliminate perceived
opponents to the Nazi regime. In the aftermath of the plot some 5,000 of
Hitler's opponents were executed.
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| Helmuth James Graf von Moltke |
Arrest, trial and execution by the Gestapo
Moltke's mindset and his objections to
orders that were at odds with international law both put him at risk of arrest.
Indeed, the Gestapo arrested him in January 1944. A year later, in January
1945, he stood, along with several of his fellow régime opponents, before the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof),
presided over by Roland Freisler. Because no evidence could be found that Moltke had
participated in any conspiracy to bring about a coup d'état, Freisler had to invent a
charge de novo.
Since Moltke and his friends had
discussed a Germany based on moral and democratic principles that could develop
after Hitler, Freisler deemed this discussion as treason, a crime worthy of
death. Hanns Lilje writes in his autobiography that as Moltke stood before the Volksgerichtshof,
he had "possessed, in the face of clear recognition of the fact that the
death penalty had already been decided, the moral courage for an attack on
Freisler and the whole institution". In two letters written to his wife in
January 1945 while imprisoned at Tegel, Moltke noted with considerable pride
that he was to be executed for his ideas, not his actions, a point that had
been underlined a number of times by Freisler. In one letter, Moltke noted "Thus it is documented, that not plans, not
preparations, but the spirit as such shall be persecuted. Vivat
Freisler!" In the second letter, Moltke claimed that he stood
before the court "...not as a Protestant, not as a
great landowner, not as an aristocrat, not as a Prussian, not as a German...but
as a Christian and nothing else". He wrote: "But what the Third Reich is so terrified of ... is ultimately the
following: a private individual, your husband, of whom it is established that he
discussed with 2 clergymen of both denominations [Protestant and Catholic] ...
questions of the practical, ethical demands of Christianity. Nothing else; for
that alone we are condemned.... I just wept a little, not because I was sad or
melancholy ... but because I am thankful and moved by this proof of God's
presence."
Moltke was sentenced to death on 11
January 1945 and executed twelve days later at Plötzensee Prison
in Berlin. In a letter written while in custody, he revealed his motivation for
resistance to his two sons:
"Since National Socialism came to power, I have striven to make its consequences milder for its victims and to prepare the way for a change. In that, my conscience drove me – and in the end, that is a man's duty."
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A German stamp of Stauffenberg and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke in
commemoration of their 100th birthdays.
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Recognition
In 1989, Moltke was posthumously
awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis
for his work, Briefe an Freya 1939–1945.
In 2001 the German Section of the
International Society for Military Law and the Law of War established the Helmuth-James-von-Moltke-Preis
for outstanding judicial works in the field of security policy.
As Germany continues to shed light on
the internal dynamics of the Nazi era, Moltke has become a prominent symbol of
moral opposition to the Nazi regime. On 11 March 2007, Moltke's centenary was commemorated in the Französischer Dom
in Berlin, where he was described by German chancellor Angela Merkel as a symbol of "European
courage".
His life was the subject of a 1992 documentary film nominated for an Oscar, The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler Within
Germany 1933-1945. A biography by Günter Brakelmann compiles
Moltke's letters, diary, and other papers shared by his wife.
Scott Horton,
chair of the New York City bar committee on international law cited parallels
between the attitudes of the German general staff during World War II and those
of the George W. Bush
administration during the Iraq War, regarding
adherence to the Geneva and Hague
Conventions, both having referred to those treaties as “quaint” and
“obsolete,” and not applicable to the mode of warfare practiced in either era.
He reported that von Moltke "pleaded in forceful terms for respect of the
Geneva Convention rights of enemy soldiers, civilians, and irregular combatants
on the East Front, mustering a series of arguments that bear remarkable
similarity to a memorandum sent by Colin Powell to President Bush 60 years
later".
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