Hitler's Traitors: German resistance to the Nazis by Ottaway Susan

Author:Ottaway, Susan [Ottaway, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Conspiracy

The lukewarm attitude of most of the military men who purported to be anti-Nazi must have been a great disappointment to those who genuinely felt the need to risk everything to rid the country of the Nazi scourge. It soon became clear to them that Hitler could only be deposed with the help of the army and that while the armed forces remained loyal to him there was no way for them to be able to oust him successfully.

One of the other main problems with those who did try to work against Hitler and his government was that they all had their own agenda and never managed to form a cohesive resistance movement which would encompass the views of the many different groups. Instead of people with purely anti-Nazi beliefs forming resistance movements, the groups were made up of Communist resisters or Social Democratic resisters and so on, who each had their own visions of what life should be once the Nazis had been eliminated. Most were fighting a battle on two fronts – to depose the Nazis and, equally, to impose their own preferred government when the first task had been accomplished.

One group did manage to include members from different backgrounds and beliefs who genuinely sought to organize a proper resistance with stated objectives and workable plans for a new administration once the Nazis were gone. This group, which began its life in the early days of the Nazi government but became most active at the start of the Second World War, was known as the Kreisau Circle. It took its name from the estate of the Moltke family in Kreisau in Silesia. The area in which it was situated is now called Krzyzowa and is part of Poland.

Count Helmuth James von Moltke and his friend Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg were the leaders of the Kreisau Circle, which had about 20 permanent members. Others joined and left, or merely visited it as representatives of other resistance movements wishing to exchange ideas and information. They came from such varied backgrounds as education, philosophy, journalism, commerce and trades unionism.

Both von Moltke and von Wartenburg were from wealthy backgrounds and had travelled extensively, the former having spent time in South Africa, homeland of his mother Dorothy, who was the daughter of the South African Minister of Justice, and in the United States where, for a time, he was a journalist. When he returned to Germany he studied to become a lawyer and went to work in the legal department of the Abwehr . It was through his work that he met Peter von Wartenburg who was also a lawyer, and von Wartenburg’s cousin, Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg. All three detested Nazi ideals and looked forward to the day when Hitler would be ousted and Germany would return to a saner form of government.

It became the aim of the Kreisau Circle to formulate a plan for a post-Hitler government. Although they wanted to get rid of Hitler as quickly as possible

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