Helmuth James Graf Von Moltke - Non-violent Resistance To Nazi Rule

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.