New York Newsday

July 4, 1990

A German Aristocrat's Resistance to the Nazis

Review of Letters to Freya 1939-1945, by Helmuth James von Moltke. Knopf, 441 pp., $24.95.

Here is a letter from the legal advisor to the High Command of the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany. See if you can guess when it was written:
           "Meanwhile, hunger, disease and fear are spreading under our rule. Nobody knows what the consequences will be or how soon they will set in. But one thing is quite certain: the Apocalyptic Horsemen are beginners compared to what is ahead of us: certus an, incertus quando. Every day brings new insights into the depths to which human beings can sink. But in many respects the bottom has been reached: the lunatic asylums are slowly filling with men who broke down during or after the executions they were told to carry out."
           Helmut von Moltke wrote this to his wife Freya on Nov. 17, 1941, when the Second World War had hardly hit its stride. It is noticeable that while Moltke fears the worst is yet to come, he also hopes that the bottom has already been reached. It's interesting, too, that by this stage an officer as well-placed as he already knew some chilling details of the extermination program.
           Moltke was an aristocrat and an Anglophile; Oxford-educated and legally trained. He was able to see what was in front of his nose, and to act upon it — two qualities which do not sound sensational or unique but which often are the sole equipment of a hero. Convinced that National Socialism was the enemy of Germany as well as of every other civilized country, he used his position in the Abwehr to alert outsiders to the menace and to mobilize like-minded Germans against it. He acted as a contact for Americans such as George Kennan, and as an antidote to pro-appeasement diplomats such as Joseph Kennedy.
           His letters contain an absorbing mixture of raw political and diplomatic material (Freya was the recipent of his first impressions) as well as much reflection on German philosophy, religion, morality and ethics. On occasion, there is also some shrewd analysis. Not long after the invasion of the Soviet Union, and amid the hysterical din of Nazi victory propaganda, Moltke noticed:
           "Moscow is to be bombarded now; that seems to me a sign of weakness, for what would be the sense of such an attack if we were going to be there soon. Today I have the impression that Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad won't fall this week either."
           At certain rather weird moments, viewed posthumously by courtesy of a brave widow, Moltke seems to suffer from a certain cognitive dissonance. He is against Hitler's war and believes that Germany deserves to lose. Yet he cannot actually welcome the idea of the defeat. As late as August 1943, he sends Freya a leaflet from Goebbels, saying contemptuously that it contains: "Not a word of confidence, of comfort, no call for calm and composure, not hint as to why these sacrifices are necessary." Necessary? Nonetheless there is a real interest to this tension in his personality. Like many of the Junker opposition, he wanted to spare Germany humiliation. But unlike many of them, he wanted to cooperate with the German socialists and communists who had led the prewar resistance to Hitler. The meetings of his clandestine opposition were always inclusive and non-sectarian, and they were meant for serious people who stood ready to risk their own lives.
           In January 1944, Moltke was betrayed, and disappeared into the Gestapo camp system. His letters continue to display cheerfulness and resilience and a remarkable absence of hatred, even though he never seems in much doubt about the outcome. There is a marked increase in biblical and religious allusions, with Miltke appearing at times to believe that he had been specially chosen by divine intervention, throughout his life, for this moment of sacrifice. These letters are very wrenching and very touching, and they must have been as difficult to receive as they were to compose. But they do make one ask, given the evidence of smoke over the ghettos that Molke mentions elsewhere, what God was doing for his other creatures at the time.
           The testimony contained in these pages can and will stand as a reproach to any German of Moltke's generation who pleads ignorance, and to many Allied statesmen who made the same defense. It also reminds us how late were the Christian churches and the "educated classes" in opposing the totalitarian campaign of superstition, conquest and murder. In a closing letter to Freya, Moltke leaves all his affairs and effects in her care, expressing a few wishes but giving her carte blanche and stating that "the dead hand cannot govern." In a different sense from the one intended, this proved true of Germany. In a very different sense, it proves to be untrue of Moltke himself, who may be more influential after his death than he was able to be when all the odds were against him.