“The law, which has been trampled on, must be restored and given authority over all orders of human existence.Freedom of belief and conscience is guaranteed.Destruction of the totalitarian constraint upon conscience and acknowledgement of the invioable dignity of the human person as the foundation of the legal and international order has to be aimed at.”- Basic Principles for the New Order. [Third Reich Source book]
As we the comrades of
Unit 1012: The VFFDP, admire and respect the German Resistance against Nazism,
we will post information about the Kreisau Circle from Wikipedia and other
links where we will not forget these heroes.
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| The von Moltke mansion at Kreisau / Krzyżowa |
The Kreisau Circle (German: Kreisauer
Kreis ingle) was the name the Nazi Gestapo
gave to a group of German dissidents centered on the estate of Helmuth James
Graf von Moltke at Kreisau, Silesia (now Krzyżowa, Poland). It is regarded as
one of the main centers of German opposition to the Nazi regime. The difficulty
for all such dissidents was how to reconcile patriotic loyalty to Germany with
opposition to the Nazis, once the Nazis had subverted the state to such an
extent that the two were almost inextricable.
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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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Membership
The principal members were Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and Adam von Trott zu Solz. The leaders of the Kreisauer
Kreis included members of some of the most illustrious names in German history.
Helmuth James von Moltke was a great-grandnephew of the famous Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, who led
the Prusso-German armies to victory over France in 1870. Peter Yorck von
Wartenburg was a direct descendant of the Prussian general of the Napoleonic
era who had been instrumental in arranging the defection of the Prussian army
from the French side to that of the Sixth
Coalition in 1813. General Yorck had been rewarded with title of Count,
Graf von Yorck, and was allowed to append the name 'Wartenburg' to his surname
as a battle honour.
Most members of the group were
conservatives from the traditional German aristocracy and gentry, but the
circle also included people from a wide variety of backgrounds. They included
two Jesuit priests, two Lutheran pastors, conservatives, liberals, monarchists,
landowners, former trade-union leaders and diplomats. They were united in their
abhorrence of Nazism
and their desire to conceive of a new, humane Germany after Hitler.
Objectives
The Kreisau Circle maintained contact
with other resistance groups. Members of the circle worked
to inform the Western Allies, especially the United
Kingdom, about political conditions within the Third Reich
and the dangers and weaknesses of Nazism. The circle's main focus was to plan
and propose a peacetime government for Germany; they did not ever appear to
have made any plans to overthrow the Nazi state. As Moltke wrote to his wife
just before his execution "we are to be hanged for thinking
together."
The long meetings and discussions at
Kreisau developed a plan for society to be based on Christian
values, some of them also wanted to restore the German
monarchy to prevent another dictatorship. Most wanted the regeneration of
Germany after the end of Nazism to be based on Christian principles, for basic
freedoms to be restored, and envisioned a Germany consisting of a federal state
with a weak central government based on small self-governing communities, so as
to avoid a manipulation of the whole of society like the one Hitler had
achieved.
Dissolution
On 19 January 1944 Moltke was arrested
and the Kreisau Circle fell into disarray. The focus of some circle members had
been turning towards an active political coup, and some participated in the
failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944. After the failure of this
plot, many members of the Circle were arrested and were executed. These
included Trott but also members who had not been part
of the Plot, such as Moltke, Yorck and Delp.
In popular culture
The 1996 television movie Witness
Against Hitler starring James Wilby as Helmuth James von Moltke tells the story
of the formation of the Kreisau Circle and the arrest, trial and execution of
Moltke. The Kreisau Circle resistance group is featured in the 2008 movie Valkyrie
starring Tom Cruise. The movie focuses on a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at
the height of World War II.
The Kreisau Circle resistance group
appears prominently in the Wolfenstein video game series. First
described in Return to Castle Wolfenstein,
protagonist William "B.J." Blazkowicz
works closely with the group in sequels Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: The New Order. In The
New Order, the last legs of the Kreisau Circle even persist into 1960,
following Germany's 1948 victory in World War II.
See also
- Solf Circle (Frau Solf Tea Party)
- Category:Members of the Kreisau Circle
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