Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:28:45.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adam von Trott zu Solz and Resistance Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Klemens Von Klemperer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Resistance under conditions of close to total control is fraught with enormous, almost insurmountable, difficulties. And in the Germany of 1933–45 they were compounded by the fact that the “totalitarianism” of the state was effective not merely by virtue of controls it exercised, but also of the consensus it had managed to whip up. But the most agonizing difficulties were of an ethical order: unlike the Resistance movements in the Nazi-occupied countries, the German Resistance was bound to come into conflict with the “national interestü and it thus got involved in the dilemma of risking the charge of treason in order to assert the prerogatives of higher laws, natural or divine. The “foreign policy” of the German Resistance, involving contacts abroad before the war and during the war, takes us to the most exposed aspects of our problem.

Type
Symposium: New Perspectives on the German Resistance Against National Socialism
Information
Central European History , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 351 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. “In dem Kreis Oster-Dohnanyi-Müller war einfach Beck der Souverän”; “Protokoll der Besprechung mit Frau v. Dohnanyi am 1. Dezember 1952,” p. 10; Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Z.S. 603.

2. Sykes, Christopher, “Heroes and Suspects: The German Resistance in Perspective,” Encounter 16 (12 1968): 45.Google Scholar

3. Romoser, George K., “The Politics of Uncertainty: The German Resistance Movement,” Social Research 31 (Spring 1964): 79.Google Scholar

4. Hoffmann, Peter, Widerstand gegen Hitler: Probleme des Umsturzes (Munich, 1979).Google Scholar

5. Royal Institute for International Affairs. Reports 1959–1945.Google Scholar

6. Deutsch, Harold C., The Conspiracy against Hitler in the Twilight War (Minneapolis, 1970)Google Scholar; Ludlow, Peter, “Papst Pius XII, Die britische Regierung und die deutsche Opposition im Winter 1939/40,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 22 (1974): 299–341.Google Scholar

7. Lindgren, Henrik, “Adam von Trotts Reisen nach Schweden 1942–1944: Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Auslandsverbindungen des deutschen Widerstandes,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 18 (1970): 274.Google Scholar

8. Bielenberg's, Peter Critique of Sykes, p. 2Google Scholar; “Kritik Sykes,” Trott Archive.

9. Sykes, p. 47.

10. Conrad, Helmuth, letter to Ger van Roon, 11 1963: in “Chris [Bielenberg] Interviews,” Trott Archive.Google Scholar

11. Letter Adam von Trott to his father, Feb. 13, 1933; von Trott, Clarita, Materialsammlung (1958), p. 46f, Trott Archive.Google Scholar

12. Letter Adam von Trott – Clarita von Trott, Aug. 15, 1944, Trott Archive.

13. Braun-Vogelstein, Julie, “Adam von Trott zu Solz,” “Berichte,” Trott Archive.Google Scholar

14. Letters Adam von Trott zu Solz – Shiela Grant Duff, Canton, China, Aug. 31, 1937 and Shanghai, Oct. 6, 1938. Also cf. Duff, Shiela Grant, Fünf Jahre bis zum Krieg (1934–1939) (Munich, 1978), pp. 179f, 277, 289.Google Scholar

15. Sykes, Christopher, Troubled Loyalty: A Biography of Adam von Trott zu Solz (London, 1968), p. 178.Google Scholar

16. Boveri, Margret, “Variationen über die Treue,” Merkur 23 (07 1969): 666f.Google Scholar

17. Letter Adam von Trott – Lord Lothian, Shanghai, Oct. 11, 1938, Rhodes Trust.

18. Letter Adam von Trott – Shiela Grant Duff, Canton, China, Aug. 31, 1937, Collection Mrs. Sokolov-Grant.

19. Letter Adam von Trott – Lord Lothian, Peking, Dec. 4, 1937, Rhodes Trust.

20. Rothfels, Hans, “Adam von Trott und das State Department,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 7 (1959): 319.Google Scholar

21. Christabel Bielenberg Interview with Albrecht von Kessel, Trott Archive.

22. Aster, Sidney, 1939: The Making of the Second World War (London, 1974), p. 234.Google Scholar

23. Memorandum E. A. Tamm (F.B.I.), Washington, D.C., Oct. 13, 1939, F.B.I. File on Adam von Trott, vol. 1.

24. Memorandum for F. F., The White House, Jan. 17, 1940, in Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence 1928–1945, annotated by Freedman, Max (London, 1967), p. 514.Google Scholar

25. Rothfels, p. 321.

26. Astor, David, “Why the Revolt against Hitler was Ignored,” Encounter 16 (06 1969): 7.Google Scholar

27. Helmuth von Moltke somewhat cryptically in one of his letters referred to it as the “translation to the European level” (“Übersetzung auf das europäische Niveau”); letter Helmuth von Moltke – Freya von Moltke, Nov. 17, 1942.

28. Quoted in Rothfels, Hans, “Zwei aussenpolitische Memoranden der deutschen Opposition (Frühjahr 1942),” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 5 (1957): 391.Google Scholar

29. Christabel Bielenberg Interview with Albrecht von Kessel, Trott Archive.

30. Letter W. A. Visser't Hooft, Encounter 16 (Sept. 1969): 94.