On this date, August 26, 1944, German
Resistance Member, Adam von Trott zu
Solz was hanged in Plötzensee Prison. As the German Resistance had
inspired the comrades of Unit 1012, let us not forget them and remember them as
heroes who stood against evil.
We will
post information about him from Wikipedia.
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Adam
von Trott zu Solz
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Friedrich Adam von Trott zu Solz (9 August 1909 – 26 August
1944) was a German lawyer and diplomat who was involved in the conservative opposition
to the Nazi regime, and who played a central part in the 20 July Plot. He was
supposed to be appointed Secretary of State in the Foreign Office and lead
negotiator with the western allies if the plot had succeeded.
Life
Adam von Trott was born into an
aristocratic Protestant Hessian family in Potsdam, Germany. He was
the fifth child of the Prussian Culture Minister August von Trott zu Solz and Emilie
Eleonore (née von Schweinitz). Adam von Trott zu
Solz spent Hilary Term of 1929 in Oxford studying theology at Mansfield College, Oxford, and returned
to the
UK in 1931 on a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Balliol College, Oxford where he became a
close friend of David Astor and an acquaintance of the eminent
philosopher R. G. Collingwood. Following his studies at
Oxford, he spent six months in the United
States. He was a great-great-great grandson of John Jay,
one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first Chief Justice.
Travels
In 1937, Trott was posted to China. He
took advantage of his travels to try to raise support outside Germany for the
internal resistance against the Nazis. In 1939, he lobbied Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax to pressure the
British government to abandon its policy of appeasement towards Adolf
Hitler, visiting London three times. He also visited Washington, D.C. in
October of that year in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain American support.
Foreign
office
Friends warned Trott not to return to
Germany but his conviction that he had to do something to stop the madness of
Hitler and his henchmen led him to return. Once there, in 1940 Trott joined the
Nazi
Party in order to access party information and monitor its planning. At the
same time, he served as a foreign policy advisor to the clandestine group of
intellectuals planning the overthrow of the Nazi regime known as the Kreisau Circle.
In late spring 1941, Wilhelm
Keppler, under-Secretary of State at the German Foreign Office, was
appointed director of Special Bureau for India (Sonderreferat Indien) created in the
Information Ministry to aid, and liaison with, Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, former president of the Indian National Congress, who had arrived
in Berlin in early April 1941. The day-to-day work with Bose became the
responsibility of Trott. Trott used the cover of the Special Bureau for his
anti-Nazi activities, traveling to Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Turkey, and in
addition, all of Nazi-occupied Europe to seek out German military officers
opposing Nazism. Bose and Trott, however, did not become close, and Bose most
likely did not know about Trott's anti-Nazi work. According to historian Leonard
A. Gordon, there were also tensions between Trott and Bose's wife or
companion, Emilie Schenkl, each disliking the other intensely.
20 July 1944
plot
Trott was one of the leaders of
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg's plot of 20 July 1944 to assassinate Hitler. He was
arrested within days, placed on trial and found guilty. Sentenced to death on
15 August 1944 by the Volksgerichtshof,
he was hanged in Berlin's Plötzensee Prison on 26 August.
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Trott zu Solz at the Volksgerichtshof
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Balliol
tributes
Trott is one of five Germans who are
commemorated on the World War II memorial stone at Balliol
College, Oxford. His name is also recorded among the Rhodes Scholars war
dead in the Rotunda of Rhodes House, Oxford.
In July 1998, the British magazine Prospect published an edited version of the
lecture given by the German historian Joachim
Fest at the inauguration of the Adam von Trott Meeting Room at Balliol
College, Oxford. Fest said:
Few witnesses have spoken up for the resistance and few sentences have survived to describe the debates of the "Kreisauer Kreis," the urgent pleas of Stauffenberg and Tresckow, the thoughts of Haefte, Moltke, York and Leber. Trott's final memorandum - he said he had put his heart into it - has also been lost. Even the minutes of the hearings in the People's Court, where the conspirators were able to proclaim the principles which had governed their actions for the last time, have only survived as fragments: some were manipulated by the censor.This silence from the original sources has prolonged the isolation which surrounded the resistance from its beginnings. In fact, it has contributed to what might be called its second defeat. Commemorating the name of Adam von Trott in a meeting room at Balliol College is thus an act of justice.
Clarita
von Trott
Adam von Trott married Clarita
Tiefenbacher in June 1940. He was survived by his wife, who was jailed for some
months, and by their two daughters, who were taken from their grandmother's
house by the Gestapo and given to Nazi Party families for adoption. Their
mother recovered them in 1945. Clarita von Trott died in Berlin, at the age of
95, on 28 March 2013.
Quotes
"I am also a Christian, as are those who are with me. We have prayed before the crucifix and have agreed that since we are Christians, we cannot violate the allegiance we owe God. We must therefore break our word given to him who has broken so many agreements and still is doing it. If only you knew what I know Goldmann! There is no other way! Since we are Germans and Christians we must act, and if not soon, then it will be too late. Think it over till tonight."(Adam von Trott zu Solz speaking in an attempt to recruit Lieutenant Gereon Goldmann, a Wehrmacht medic and former Roman Catholic seminarian. Lt. Goldmann had balked at violating the soldier's oath and had questioned the morality of assassinating Adolf Hitler. However, Goldmann overcame his qualms and joined the 20 July Plot as a carrier of dispatches).
Works
Adam von
Trott was the author of:
- Hegels Staatsphilosophie und das internationale Recht; Diss. Göttingen (V&R), 1932
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