Non-violent Resistance To Nazi Rule
Moltke also surreptitiously spread the information to which he was privy, regarding the war and the 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; however 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".
Moltke possessed strong religious convictions and in a 1942 letter smuggled to a British friend Lionel Curtis, Moltke wrote: “Today, not a numerous, but an active part of the German people are beginning to realize, not that they have been led astray, not that bad times await them, not that the war may end in defeat, but that what is happening is sin and that they are personally responsible for each terrible deed that has been committed - naturally, not in the earthly sense, but as Christians.” In the same letter, Moltke wrote that before World War II, he had believed that it was possible to be totally opposed to Nazism 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.
Read more about this topic: Helmuth James Graf Von Moltke
Famous quotes containing the words non-violent, resistance, nazi and/or rule:
“Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every bit as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro.... this is no more a man’s world than it is a white world.”
—Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, African American civil rights organization. SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)
“The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed August 1789, published September 1791)
“We’ll build a democracy here, even if it’s with Nazi bricks.”
—Samuel Fuller, U.S. screenwriter. Samuel Fuller. Captain Harvey, Verboten! American Military Government officer explaining the practicalities of de-Nazification (1959)
“Here’s the rule for bargains: “Do other men, for they would do you.” That’s the true business precept.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)