Theoretical
Puritan Board Professor
http://www.amazon.com/Helmuth-<WBR>Von-Moltke-Leader-Against/dp/<WBR>0333140303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&<WBR>qid=1293333323&sr=8-1
I cannot recommend this book heartily enough to those who are interested in World War II and its resistance movements, Christian lesser magistrates, and one of the most remarkable martyrs of the 20th Century.
This book is about Helmuth James Graf (Count) von Moltke, a fascinating member of the conscience-based German resistance in WWII. I first heard of him, interestingly enough, on a Christ the Center episode about Michael Haykin's collection of love letters The Christian Lover. While only two of his letters appear in that little book, and those are reflections on his trial, God's providence, and his love for his wife and children, this biography contains hundreds of his more than 1600 letters to his wife Freya from 1939 to 1945. Because both of their handwriting was wretched, Moltke's family name, and his work inside military intelligence, he was able to write quite openly and unhindered to his wife about countless details of the regime's atrocities, his office's attempts to blunt those evils, the development of his thought, and the rich love he had for his bride and their children.
Moltke was the great-grandson of Bismarck's Field Marshall and the man who founded the estate of Kreisau in what is now Poland. Incidentally he was also the grand-nephew of the Kaiser's Chief of General Staff in the first half of World War I. His parents were interestingly some of the most prominent Christian Scientists in Germany, including being the main translators of Science and Health into German, yet they raised their children as Lutherans.
As the family estate had become heavily indebted and because he did not wish to be a rural farmer vocationally, Moltke sought a legal career, pursuing it in both Germany and successfully passing the English bar. He would later use this career for great good, first as a lawyer in Berlin in the 1930s who assisted Jewish families in fleeing the country. Though offered a judgeship, he declined it because he would have to join the Nazi Party. In August 1939, he successfully got posted to the International Law section of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence.
From this posting, he did a number of remarkable things to blunt the evils of the Nazi regime. For instance, he successfully pushed for better treatment of POWs and captured resistance soldiers using international law. He also used his posting to warn Danish officials about the impending deportation of its Jewish population, ensuring that an overwhelming majority of them would safely escape the country. Moltke also arranged for a copy of the last phamplet the White Rose student resistance created to England for it to be distributed across Europe en masse. Moltke also provided assistance to various resistance movements agains the Nazi regime in Europe.
As if this weren't enough, he also helped informally gather a group of German clergy and laymen to help discuss ways that a crushed and defeated Germany could be rebuilt along Christian lines. While one may disagree with some of the ideas in it (he was quite socialistic despite being a Count who consciously stood to lose much of his personal estate by his desired policies)
What makes Moltke particularly intriguing for a Christian to study is that Moltke started in the 1930s as one who was unsure about Christianity and ended up a devout Lutheran by the early part of WWII. For reasons of conscience and out of fear for making him a martyr, Moltke opposed attempts to assassinate Hitler and rather would have sought to try him before the world.
After he was arrested in early 1944, he later eventually became linked to some of the July 20 assassination plotters and thus was slated for trial before the People's Court. Fascinatingly, all of the charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence and his vigorous defense. What he was eventually executed for was as he put it "how Christianity can prove a sheet-anchor in time of chaos." The German judge, Roland Friesler, actually openly admitted that "only in one respect are we (National Socialism) and Christianity are alike; we demand the whole man!" Similarly he asked the rhetorical question of Moltke "Who do you take your orders from? From the Other World or from Adolf Hitler? Who commands your loyalty and your faith?"
Moltke's final two letters to his wife are powerful farewell in this world letters that point deeply to his faith in Christ and hope in eternal life. Here is a man who had learned to live and die well for the glory of God. It is also a great look at a how a lesser magistrate can alleviate and blunt the evils of even the most totalitarian of states.
Finally, there's a reflection about God's providences within the timing of his imprisonment that is truly remarkable from one of his final letters to his wife, Freya.
I cannot recommend this book heartily enough to those who are interested in World War II and its resistance movements, Christian lesser magistrates, and one of the most remarkable martyrs of the 20th Century.
This book is about Helmuth James Graf (Count) von Moltke, a fascinating member of the conscience-based German resistance in WWII. I first heard of him, interestingly enough, on a Christ the Center episode about Michael Haykin's collection of love letters The Christian Lover. While only two of his letters appear in that little book, and those are reflections on his trial, God's providence, and his love for his wife and children, this biography contains hundreds of his more than 1600 letters to his wife Freya from 1939 to 1945. Because both of their handwriting was wretched, Moltke's family name, and his work inside military intelligence, he was able to write quite openly and unhindered to his wife about countless details of the regime's atrocities, his office's attempts to blunt those evils, the development of his thought, and the rich love he had for his bride and their children.
Moltke was the great-grandson of Bismarck's Field Marshall and the man who founded the estate of Kreisau in what is now Poland. Incidentally he was also the grand-nephew of the Kaiser's Chief of General Staff in the first half of World War I. His parents were interestingly some of the most prominent Christian Scientists in Germany, including being the main translators of Science and Health into German, yet they raised their children as Lutherans.
As the family estate had become heavily indebted and because he did not wish to be a rural farmer vocationally, Moltke sought a legal career, pursuing it in both Germany and successfully passing the English bar. He would later use this career for great good, first as a lawyer in Berlin in the 1930s who assisted Jewish families in fleeing the country. Though offered a judgeship, he declined it because he would have to join the Nazi Party. In August 1939, he successfully got posted to the International Law section of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence.
From this posting, he did a number of remarkable things to blunt the evils of the Nazi regime. For instance, he successfully pushed for better treatment of POWs and captured resistance soldiers using international law. He also used his posting to warn Danish officials about the impending deportation of its Jewish population, ensuring that an overwhelming majority of them would safely escape the country. Moltke also arranged for a copy of the last phamplet the White Rose student resistance created to England for it to be distributed across Europe en masse. Moltke also provided assistance to various resistance movements agains the Nazi regime in Europe.
As if this weren't enough, he also helped informally gather a group of German clergy and laymen to help discuss ways that a crushed and defeated Germany could be rebuilt along Christian lines. While one may disagree with some of the ideas in it (he was quite socialistic despite being a Count who consciously stood to lose much of his personal estate by his desired policies)
What makes Moltke particularly intriguing for a Christian to study is that Moltke started in the 1930s as one who was unsure about Christianity and ended up a devout Lutheran by the early part of WWII. For reasons of conscience and out of fear for making him a martyr, Moltke opposed attempts to assassinate Hitler and rather would have sought to try him before the world.
After he was arrested in early 1944, he later eventually became linked to some of the July 20 assassination plotters and thus was slated for trial before the People's Court. Fascinatingly, all of the charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence and his vigorous defense. What he was eventually executed for was as he put it "how Christianity can prove a sheet-anchor in time of chaos." The German judge, Roland Friesler, actually openly admitted that "only in one respect are we (National Socialism) and Christianity are alike; we demand the whole man!" Similarly he asked the rhetorical question of Moltke "Who do you take your orders from? From the Other World or from Adolf Hitler? Who commands your loyalty and your faith?"
Moltke's final two letters to his wife are powerful farewell in this world letters that point deeply to his faith in Christ and hope in eternal life. Here is a man who had learned to live and die well for the glory of God. It is also a great look at a how a lesser magistrate can alleviate and blunt the evils of even the most totalitarian of states.
Finally, there's a reflection about God's providences within the timing of his imprisonment that is truly remarkable from one of his final letters to his wife, Freya.
The decisive phrase in the trial was, "Herr Graf, we National Socialists and Christianity have one thing in common and one only: we demand the whole man." Was he clear what he said there? Just think how wonderfully God prepared this His unworthy vessel. At the very moment when the danger arose that I might be drawn into active preparations for a rising [Stauffenberg meeting a close associate of Moltke's right after the latter was arrested in January 1944]...I was taken away, which means that I was and remain free of all connection with the use of violence. Then He endued me with this socialistic leaning which frees me as a great landower from any suspicion of looking after my own interests. Then He humbles me as I have never been humbled before, so that I must lose all pride, so that at last after thirty-eight years I understand my sinfulness, so that I learn to pray for His forgiveness and trust in His grace. Then He lets me come here so that I may see you standing firm and can be free of thoughts of you and the boys, that is to say of worries about you. He gives me time and opportunity to arrange everything that can be arranged, so that all earthly cares may fall away. Then He lets me experiences to their utmost depths the agony of parting, the terror of death and the fear of hell, so that all these are behind me. Then He endows me with Faith, Hope, and Charity in such measure that it is really overwhelming. [He then describes specific providences that cause his trial to focus solely on Moltke's and others' Christianity] Then your husband is picked out and, as a Protestant, attacked and condemned primarily because of his friendship with Catholics, and therefore stands not as a nobleman, not as a Prussian, not as a German---no as a Christian and nothing else.
Last edited by a moderator: