The Germans Who Fought Back Baron Recalls Resistance Against Hitler
A tragic history lesson that
could well be applied to policy
toward some Middle East nations
was offered here by a German
who saw his country succumb to
a madman.
"The p o l i c 37 of appeasement
when dealing with a totalitarian
state apparently is one of the most
dangerous lines to follow. Per-
haps we have reason to remem-
ber this now and again, although
Hitler is dead."
Baron Hans Christoph Freiherr
von Stauffenberg spoke at a pub-
lic meeting .Monday evening at
Mercy College. The talk, on the
G e r man resistance movement
against Hitler, was co-sponsored
by the University of Detroit and
arranged through the German
consulate here.
That there was a resistance
movement in Germany before the
famous July 20, 1944 plot on Hit-
--,\Ler's life may come as a surprise.
But Stauffenberg, whose family
name is revered for his cousin's
part in that very bomb plot, in-
sists that resistance did exist.
"Can you possibly realize what
abnormal times these were? What
it meant to resist? We, the re-
sisters, were committing treason!
"You can't know what propa-
ganda can do to a people who
have been exposed to one kind
only. Do you think this can't
happen here? Well, that's what -
we thought."
feated people. "As a young man,"
Stauffenberg recalled, "I swayed
from disgust to enthusiasm. Some
tried to resist individual acts, but
they couldn't go far. And many
left the country."
This explained the lack of re-
sistance in the beginning, he said.
But it came, this "treason" against
the government—in summer 1938
during the Sudeten crisis. Von
Stauffenberg was in on an at-
tempted deal between certain gov-
ernment officers and Great Bri-
tain to "preserve the peace." It
failed. The world remembers only
Neville Chamberlain the appeaser.
"We were supposed to believe
the Nazi Third Reich would last
1,000 years. It was punishable to
even think what would happen if
it crumbled. Yet, secretly we were
drawing up provisions for an
emergency government. It seems
like a small enough resistance,
but it would have been considered
high treason punishable by death."
Baron Von Stauffenberg, the
son of a member of the upper
house of the old Wurttenberg
Kingdom, could have been an
officer in Hitler's army. Called
into service in January 1941, he
chose to be a private.
One night, said Stauffenberg,
he and Count Heinrich Moltke
discussed for two to three hours
what could be done to stop Hitler.
"Moltke said we should not kill
Hitler, psychopath or no, be- him because to kill was evil, like
gan his infamous climb by bring- the very Nazism we did not want.
ing nationalistic pride to a de- He impressed me with his argu-
ments, but he did not quite con-
vince me."
IMPORTANT
Later, it was Moltke who, with
a change of heart, urged Stauf-
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fenberg to talk to his cousin Carl,
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There were other attempts
Stauffenberg remembered, all of
them failures. "A resistance
against a totalitarian regime is
doomed to failure," he explained,
"if it is not helped from the out-
side."
And the role of the church
in these "abnormal times"?
"People did have qualms about
swearing allegiance under God
to Hitler, but a father confes-
sor could never be sure that the
questions put to him, even in
private, weren't put by prova-
cateurs. So perhaps the answers
weren't quite satisfactory. It
came down to this: a decision
of one's own conscience."
20 to 25," said Baron Von Stauf- care. And that's more dead than
fenberg. "When they see old news- dead, isn't it?"
reels on Hitler, they ask, 'How
could you have taken such a bad
p-s-s-s-t . . .
joke seriously?' They're tired of
being held guilty just because
THINK KOBLIN,
WHEN YOU THINK
they're Germans . . . If Hitler
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What of today's Germany? Stauf-
fenberg finds more Nazism in
South America and Egypt than in
his own country. He told The Jew-
ish News he is sure that by the
end of the 41/2-year extension of
the statute of limitations, "all of
the last 5 per cent of the uncaught
criminals in Germany will be
caught, including major and
minor." Those in other countries
are another story.
(An article in the Chicago Tri-
bune Sunday named four arch
Nazi criminals living in South
America: Walter Rauff, SS 'gen-
eral who conceived and operated
the mobile gas chambers, living
in Chile; Gerhard Bonne, legal ad-
viser to the Nazis' euthanasia pro-
gram, in Argentina; Eduard
Roschmann, former commandant
of the Jewish ghetto at Riga, Lat-
via, in Argentina; and Dr. Josef
Mengele, chief physician at Ausch-
witz, in Paraguay. The four, in-
cluding thousands of others, are
known to authorities, but most
are considered safe in the South
American haven.
(Several living in Spain were
named in a Chicago Daily News
article, including Leon Degrelle,
founder of the Belgian fascist
"Rex" movement and SS officer.
Members of the Romanian Fascist .
Iron Guard also live there.)
As for Germany's youth?
"I have three grown sons, age
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, May 14, 1965-5
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Rabbi Feuer Supports
Viet Nam's Peace Vigil
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rabbi
Leon I. Feuer, president of the
Central Conference of American
Rabbis, called for an immediate
open debate by the government
of its Viet Nam objectives before
"it is too late" and the Ameri-
can public finds itself in "a worse
and bloodier situation than we
are already engaged."
The Reform Jewish leader key-
noted a two-day religious Peace
Vigil by Protestant, Catholic and
Jewish laymen and clergymen, at
the Mt. Vernon Methodist Church,
and told the assembled religion-
ists from various parts of the
country that they were gathered
in the nation's capital to express
"to our government our deep mis-
giving with regard to the policies
which it has been following in
Viet Nam and in South-East Asia
generally."
Rabbi Feuer said that instead
of steering towards peaceful solu-
tion, "we seem to be moving far-
ther from rather than nearer to
its attainment."
The head of the 875-member
rabbinic body in this country and
Canada (Reform Judaism) said
"non-violent ways of bringing
tranquility into the area must be
sought and found."
He urged President Johnson to
cease the bombings and "an-
nounce a time _interlude during
which there would be no bomb-
ing and thus provide a breathing
spell, an opportunity for those
nations and leaders and forces in
the world not unfriendly to the
United States—Pope Paul, Prime
Minister Shastri, the Secretary
General of the United Nations U.
Thant, Lester Pearson of Canada
and others to seek a formula for
a cease-fire and then for negoti-
ations toward the neutralization
of Viet Nam."
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