Helmuth James von Moltke

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. He was a founding member of the Kreisau Circle opposition group, whose members opposed the government of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, and discussed prospects for a Germany based on moral and democratic principles after Hitler. The Nazis executed him for treason for his participation in these discussions.

Moltke was the grandnephew of Helmuth von Moltke the Younger and 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.

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 in the Evangelical Church of Prussia when he was 14.

Education

From 1927 to 1929, Moltke studied law and political sciences in Breslau, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Berlin. In 1928, Moltke became involved with college teachers and youth movement leaders in the organization of the Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaften (Löwenberg working groups) in which unemployed young workers and young farmers were brought together with students so that they could learn from one another. 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 his travels through German-occupied Europe, he observed many human rights abuses, which he attempted to thwart by citing legal principles. Moltke was one of the few officials who argued for treating captured Soviet prisoners of war according to the 1929 Geneva Convention, a treaty that Germany had signed and was legally obliged to follow. 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 invoked international law and political reasoning to stop the shooting of hostages in Holland, and was involved in warning the Danish resistance movement of the impending planned deportation of Danish Jews, which led to their mass evacuation by boat from Copenhagen to Malmö, Sweden.

Dorothy Thompson, one of the most famous and celebrated journalists of the period, performed a radio show during the war called Listen, Hans! These broadcasts were addressed, in German, to a fictional Prussian Junker identified only as “Hans.” Thompson later explained that the figure of 'Hans' whom she addressed her broadcasts to was really Helmuth James von Moltke III.

In 1943, Moltke traveled to Istanbul on two occasions. The official reason was to retrieve German merchant ships impounded by Turkey. The real reason was participation in an effort to end the war by a coalition of anti-Hitler elements of the German Army, German refugees living in Turkey, members of the 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 Franklin Roosevelt. However, Roosevelt's advisers, including Henry Morgenthau Jr., counseled against the credibility of the report.

Nonviolent opposition to Nazi rule

Moltke also surreptitiously spread the information to which he was privy, on 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, but 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".

In the same letter, Moltke wrote that before World War II, he had believed that it was possible to be totally opposed to National Socialism 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. The meetings at Kreisau had an agenda of well-organized discussion topics, beginning 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, 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. 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 mitigate the consequences for its victims and to prepare the way for change. My conscience drove me to it – it's a man's duty, after all."

Recognition

right|thumb|Memorial stone to Moltke and his brother at Kreisau (now Krzyżowa, Poland)

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.

Publications

Bericht aus Deutschland im Jahre 1943 ("Report from Germany in the Year 1943").
Letzte Briefe aus dem Gefängnis Tegel ("Last Letters from Tegel Prison"). Letters to his wife Freya and his two sons from the time of the trial against him, first published in 1951, later published together with Bericht in many editions (latest: Diogenes, Zürich 1997 ).
Briefe an Freya. 1939-1945, ed. Beate Ruhm von Oppen. 2. Auflage, Beck, München 1991 . English edition: Letters to Freya: 1939–1945, New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

References

External links

German Resistance Memorial Center: Helmuth James Graf von Moltke – Biography (in German)
Daily Telegraph obituary: Freya von Moltke – Includes description of the von Moltkes' resistance activities