Last Letters
Page 42
Crime according to §§ 80 para. 2, 81, 91b, 73, 47 of the Penal Code.
They have, within our borders, specifically von Moltke up to his arrest in January 1944, Dr. Haubach, Dr. Gerstenmaier, Stelzer, and Sperr up to the summer of 1944, Reisert and Fürst Fugger von Glött in 1943, undertaken with others to overthrow the National Socialist government, if necessary with an act of violence directed at the Führer, in order to put themselves or like-minded people into positions of power.
Pretrial detention is being imposed because there is a flight risk, as crimes that may entail a severe penalty constitute the object of the investigation.
Against this arrest warrant, legal redress of the grievance is permissible, and requires special authorization.
Signed Dr. Ehrlich, head of the district court.
THE KREISAU CIRCLE IN THE ASSESSMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S COURT, JANUARY 9, 19457
ASSESSMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S COURT, JANUARY 10, 1945
The Kreisau Circle was a group of defeatists and opponents of National Socialism that the former director of the international group in the Armed Forces High Command, War Administration Councillor (Attorney) Count Helmuth von Moltke, had been gathering around him at his Kreisau estate in Lower Silesia since approximately 1940. The group was composed of reactionary, federalist, religious, and syndicalist members. Meetings took place repeatedly in Kreisau, as well as in Berlin and Munich. The subject of the meetings was a so-called safety-net program that would be implemented if National Socialism collapsed. The program envisioned that in place of National Socialism the Christian churches of both denominations should step in as organizational institutions surviving the events. The powers of the state should not be dismantled altogether, but to a large extent transferred to twelve or so provinces organized along traditional lines, each headed by a provincial administrator. The workforce should be organized in labor unions according to syndicalist principles.
HELMUTH JAMES VON MOLTKE IN THE ASSESSMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S COURT, JANUARY 10, 19458
5. Count Helmuth von Moltke
Thirty-seven years old, jurist (specializing in international law), war administration councillor in the international division of the Armed Forces High Command, farmer at the Kreisau estate in Lower Silesia, related by marriage to Count York [sic] von Wartenburg, whose case has already been adjudicated.
In late 1942, Moltke learned about Gördeler’s [sic] plans by way of York von Wartenburg and von der Schulenburg. He adamantly rejected them. He regarded Gördeler as a second Kerensky, whose government would inevitably be burdened with both the murder of the Führer and the stab-in-the-back myth and would therefore be of brief duration. In a meeting that took place in January 1943 at Kreisau, and in which Gördeler, Beck, Popitz, von Hassel [sic], Schulenburg, Jessen, and others participated, he articulated his rejection of Gördeler in strong language, which meant that the planned “bridge to the activists” failed to materialize. But instead of reporting an offense, he responded to Gördeler’s “thirst for domination,” that is, Gördeler’s endeavor to bring people from the Kreisau Circle over to his side, only with a further activation of this circle. Consequently, despite his opposition to Gördeler, he was exactly like him in aligning himself with the camp of the enemies of the Reich from the outset. Over the course of numerous meetings, he developed his so-called safety-net program, about which I laid out the details in the telex message I sent yesterday. In the main hearing it emerged that he had obtained the map that he showed around at the meetings about the planned reorganization of the Reich, illegally (via York von Wartenburg) from the Ministry of the Interior, where it had been produced earlier in the framework of proposed structural reforms of the Reich.
A very tall, yet frail individual, he was questioned while seated on account of his health. Instead of honestly showing his colors, Moltke kept indulging in sophistry that had a supposed basis in the law or in philosophy, and even came up with the claim that on the basis of his official capacity in the Armed Forces High Command he considered himself authorized to develop his plans, that is, to prepare for the event of an enemy occupation of the Reich or of parts of the Reich “resistance movements” without involvement of the National Socialist Party and to select the appropriate people for this purpose. Freisler initially questioned Moltke in a calm manner. Eventually, however, he clearly lost patience. He barked at Moltke that he would not be made a fool of. During a brief recess, he gave Moltke’s defense counsel the opportunity to make this standpoint clear to the defendant. When Freisler explained that in the view of the People’s Court anyone who even considers the possibility of a German defeat is abhorrent, Moltke replied that he was not acquainted with this “judicature” of the People’s Court; in his official capacity at the Armed Forces High Command he had always considered a possibility of this kind without encountering opposition from his superiors (Freisler stopped him from amplifying this point). Down to the end, Moltke tried to don a mantle of morality for his “unfathomably indecent goings-on” (Freisler). Utterly consumed by defeatism, and at the same time a peculiar scoundrel. The only depressing fact was that his name was Count Helmuth von Moltke.
SECRET MESSAGE FROM HELMUTH JAMES TO CARL DIETRICH VON TROTHA, JANUARY 10, 19459
1. Death penalty requested against:
Moltke + seizure of assets
Delp + seizure of assets?
Gerstenmaier?
Reisert?
Sperr
Fugger: 3 years in prison.
Steltzer, Haubach, Gross separately.
In the opinion of the defense the court will accept these recommendations.
Sentencing tomorrow 4 p.m.
We anticipate the sentences to be carried out tomorrow evening.
2. Moltke + Delp are doing well.
Gerstenmaier somewhat worn out.
3. Moltke not uneasy for a single moment, even during the trial, in spite of some awful shouting; not even clammy hands.
4. If possible coffee again tomorrow, fine if cold.
5. Request visit from the pastor for tomorrow.
THE JUDGMENT AGAINST HELMUTH JAMES ON JANUARY 11, 194510
In the name of the German people!
In the criminal proceedings against
1. the former attorney, farmer, and former war administration councillor Count Helmuth von Moltke, of Berlin-Lichterfelde-West, born on March 11, 1907 in Kreisau [. . .] incarcerated at this time on charges of treason, etc., the first bench of the court in pursuit of the indictments received from the chief Reich prosecutor on October 23 and November 9, 1944, in the main hearing on January 9, 10, and 11, 1945 [. . .] ruled:
Count Helmuth von Moltke knew about Goerdeler’s treachery. Although he did adamantly reject working with him, and he also warned his political friends about Goerdeler, he did not report what he knew.
He himself, caught up in defeatism, formed a circle that planned to seize power with non–National Socialists in the event that our Reich collapsed.
All these things have rendered him permanently dishonorable.
He is punished with death.
1. See Freya von Moltke, Michael Balfour, and Julian Frisby, Die letzten Monate in Kreisau, Helmuth James von Moltke, Anwalt der Zukunft (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982), 317.
2. See Freya von Moltke’s report, in Freya von Moltke, Michael Balfour, and Julian Frisby, Die letzten Monate in Kreisau, Helmuth James von Moltke, Anwalt der Zukunft (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982), 317.
3. The family avoided the end of the war by temporarily fleeing to a village in the mountains just south of Kreisau.
4. Sister Helen ran a children’s home in Vlims in the Engadine, to which Freya had sent her ailing sons in the winter of 1943–1944 in order to cure them.
5. Freya saw parallels between the Soviet and the National Socialist system of government.
6. See Ger van Roon, Neuordnung im Widerstand: Der Kreisauer Kreis innerhalb der deutschen Widerstandsbewegung (Munich: Oldenbourg R. Verlag GmbH,
1967), 594.
7. From the text of the trial proceedings prepared for the head of the Nazi Party chancellery, Martin Bormann, dated January 9, 1945 (Bundesarchiv NS 6/20), in Walter Wagner, Der Volksgerichtshof im nationalsozialistischen Staat (Stuttgart: DVA, 1974), 773.
8. From the text of the trial proceedings prepared for the head of the Nazi Party chancellery, Martin Bormann, dated January 10, 1945 (Bundesarchiv NS 6/20), in Walter Wagner, Der Volksgerichtshof im nationalsozialistischen Staat (Stuttgart: DVA, 1974), 779.
9. The manuscript is housed at the German Literature Archive in Marbach.
10. Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 4: Im Gefängnis (Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Knecht, 1984), 409–12.
AFTERWORD
“BUT I see my hourglass running out and I’m thinking: Talk to her while you still can.”
Since reading Last Letters, it has taken me some time to reorient myself: London, spring 2019; sunshine beyond my kitchen window, tulips in the park. I have to keep looking up to remind myself. Inside, I am still in Berlin, Lichterfelde, Kreisau, or on trains between these places. In my mind’s eye, I see the People’s Court waiting rooms; the Tegel prison cell with the half-boarded window, and the desk and the open Bible. Having just finished the letters yourself, you may well be experiencing this too: a feeling of connectedness, a reluctance to let go.
Despite the desperation of the months described in these letters, I find myself closing my eyes to return to them; I leaf back through the pages too—most of all, to return to Freya and to Helmuth. The intimacy they forged during his imprisonment is astonishing, precious beyond words. The picture their letters afford of those blighted times is also a rare gift to the future, to all those who wish to understand the German twentieth century.
If, like me, you have a family connection to Germany, you may also have read these letters against the backdrop of your own family’s Third Reich experience. Mine could scarcely—regretfully—be more different.
My grandfather was an early adopter of the National Socialist cause; a “100-percenter,” as Freya and Helmuth might have called him. At the time they began writing these letters, in the autumn of 1944, my grandfather was serving on the eastern front as a doctor with the Waffen SS. His wife, my grandmother, was from a patrician Hamburg merchant family, which—like Freya’s—lost much in the hyperinflation and subsequent crash. Unlike Freya’s family, however, they threw in their lot with the Nazis, believing Hitler to be the country’s last and best chance against communism. Both of my grandparents found hope and purpose in the resurgent Germany of the 1930s; my Opa in his work as a GP in Hamburg’s harbor district, my grandmother in her voluntary social work for the party. Their eldest daughter, my mother, was born the summer Hitler became Führer and was brought up as a National Socialist. By the time these letters were written, she was ten years old: a Third Reich child.
I thought of her often while reading; how her life was to be changed so abruptly by the capitulation, just a few weeks after Helmuth’s death. Her world view, too, was to be profoundly altered: by the removal of her parents’ influence (both were imprisoned), by the coming of democracy, but most of all by the fellowship with others of her generation: Germans from East and West, Dutch and French, young Europeans all, many of whom she found through the church. My grandparents were far slower to adjust, as my Opa’s own, far more insular letters from his Russian captivity attest.
But I was reminded also of many other Germans as I read: the countless diarists and letter writers in Walter Kempowski’s Echolot, Marta Hillers’s record of the capitulation weeks in A Woman in Berlin. But perhaps key among them was Victor Klemperer: I heard echoes of his diaries in so many of the von Moltkes’ experiences.
Like Helmuth, Klemperer was taken into Schutzhaft (“protective custody”—the Nazis were masters of the awful euphemism); he too had to go from pillar to post to seek legal assistance, navigating the terrifying vagaries of the Third Reich bureaucracy after he lost his university post in Dresden when Jews were excluded from the civil service. Like Helmuth, too, Klemperer drew strength from his marriage; indeed it came to be his only protection, his wife having been deemed “Aryan” under the Nazi race laws. But while Helmuth was to find much-needed sustenance in the honey from Freya’s Kreisau bees, for Klemperer, the yearning for something sweet could only be soothed by a teaspoon of jam, filched from another resident of the “Jewish house”—the de facto ghetto—he and his wife were moved to. The jam provided the yearned-for calories, but also pointed up the indignity and deprivation he and his fellow Jewish Germans were forced to endure.
Still, while the echoes may provide an occasional counterpoint, both the Klemperers and the von Molkes faced the Nazi years with impressive resilience. Crucially, Klemperer’s diary and these Last Letters each show the reader what such courage looks like; what it feels like too, in all its rawness. They reveal that it often involves crippling doubt; that being resolute entails fighting off irresolution, over and again. And, counterintuitive though this may seem, they also show us that hope can be as difficult to live with as despair. Or, as Helmuth would have it: “It’s the old, difficult, difficult art of keeping it at the right level.”
Helmuth was hanged; I knew this long before picking up these pages. And yet, and yet, as I read, I could not keep my own hopes from rising—even in the face of historical fact. As he and Freya shared news of the collapse of the eastern front, I found myself yearning with them for a stay of execution, one long enough for the Russians to reach Berlin.
Klemperer hoped and despaired to the last. Shortly after Helmuth’s execution, Klemperer received notice of transportation, but Allied action saved him. The British bombed Dresden, and in the confusion of the ensuing firestorm, he and his wife fled the burning city, finding shelter in anonymity, indistinguishable from the thousands of homeless, paperless others.
For the majority of those under Nazi persecution in the end days, there was no such deliverance, of course. None for Helmuth and his Freya; none—even as late as April 1945—for so many of Helmuth’s fellow Tegel prisoners, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Close to my home in London is the Lutheran church where Bonhoeffer was the pastor in the 1930s. I walked there after reading these letters to pay my respects to all those imprisoned and executed for their “hope crime” of thinking beyond the Nazis. I was also, in truth, looking for some kind of solace. This spring of 2019, for all its sunshine and tulips, does not feel particularly hopeful. My country is bitterly divided over the question of whether to leave Europe; the rise of “populism” (as the current awful euphemism has it) across so many Western democracies—including Germany—has shaken me, as it has so many, jolting us out of our postwar certainties.
But at the church I think again of my mother, the Third Reich child who grew up to read Bonhoeffer, to take part in ecumenical gatherings and reconstruction works in Germany and beyond, together with young people from all across Europe who became her lifelong friends. I see echoes of the Kreisau Circle in these endeavors and connections: in the young woman she became, and in the mother who taught me to look at our family’s past with clear eyes.
Helmuth and Freya were clear-eyed too. In their struggle with hope and despair, they were always grounded on the bedrock of the harshest of realities. Indeed, they found a kind of grace there: “The earth is nice and hard under our feet once again, and the pink clouds have scattered.” Standing firm, they remained true to thoughts beyond their times.
The bond between them was one of ideas, a sensibility, unclouded by personal ambition, which sought connection, which believed in the human capacity to find common ground, to work together for the common good. It is a vision of the possible—at once profoundly hopeful and profoundly tangible—and I hold fast to it.
These letters are a gift indeed. Not only to those who wish to understand the Third Reich but also to any who see hope challenged in their own times.
We should listen to them while we can.
—RAC
HEL SEIFFERT
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
HELMUTH James von Moltke grew up in an unconventional household in Lower Silesia. Although he was born into one of Germany’s famous families on March 11, 1907, as the third heir of Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, neither his father nor he were typical representatives of the Prussian nobility. His father suffered from a severe illness as a young man and was able to recover with the help of members of the Christian Science movement, which made him a lifelong adherent of this sect. He met his future wife, Dorothy Rose Innes, when she and her mother came to Kreisau as “paying guests.” She was eighteen at the time and a South African of Scottish descent. Her father was a distinguished politician and attorney in South Africa and in time became the chief justice of the Union of South Africa, which came into being in 1910. Sir James Rose Innes was an adamant critic of Cecil Rhodes, and Dorothy came from a democratic, liberal home and raised her children in this tradition.
Helmuth did not excel as a schoolboy, but he flourished as a university student in Berlin, Breslau, and Vienna. Contacts with American journalists in Berlin and the circle around the progressive educator Eugenie Schwarzwald in Berlin and Vienna had a major impact on his thinking. In Silesia, Helmuth and his cousin Carl Dietrich von Trotha took an interest in the wretched social conditions of the coal miners in Waldenburg. With the support of Karl Ohle, the district administrator, they strove to improve the lot of the miners with a relief action. Carl Dietrich attended the university in Breslau, where he met Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a legal historian. The voluntary work-service camps, inspired by Rosenstock-Huessy, known as the Löwenberger Arbeitslager, brought together industrial workers, farmers, and students for discussions and collaborative work in 1927 and led to the von Moltkes meeting Rosenstock-Huessy. The young men assembled in these Arbeitslager formed the nucleus of what would later become the Kreisau Circle.