Talk:Adam von Trott zu Solz

stub, spelling

nice article already, not that stubby any more. the correct spelling of the name is 'Adam von Trott zu Solz', i will create a redirect soon. High on a tree 12:02, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Family member ???

Nice page, good info although more on family ties perhaps? I would be very interested to research whether Adam von Trott zu Solz was a family member ( my name is Emanuel William Stephen Solz)born 1966 in South Africa

• It's probably an "interesting" fact that he was 3G-grandson of John Jay, President of the Continental Congress and first Chief Justice of the United States... - Nunh-huh 21:25, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Any contact details regarding a possible family connection? Who would one contact in this regard —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.177.31.182 (talk) 12:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Dispute

Appeasement refers to all actions which were co-eval with the interests of Adolf Hitler(or whatever immoral equivalent before or since ) and this discussion which is apparently abstruse in fact leads inevitably towards contemporary conclusions. Readers should be made aware of the controversy into which this Wiki page enters :whether von Trott was seeking that the British Government abandon or, continue,it's policy of appeasement? .Von Trott is well known to have used the last visit to Britain to promote a shameful trade between a German Army withdrawal from the Sudetan lands of Czechoslovakia for an enforced Polish secession of Danzig and the "Polish Corridor" . Which is hardly other than an even greater appeasement.However this does not contradict von Trott's effort to enable some resistance to surface:by this time he appears to have been primarily aiming to forestall the outbreak of war as that would have,and did,set back the resistance for many years.The reference and witness to this apparently Goering inspired offer comes primarily from Grant Duff 's Book Parting of Ways(ISBN 0 7206 05865), a must read for students of pre-war events and German Resistance Against Hitler by Klemens von Klemperer ..It should be noted that von Trott's proposals were made to the Czech, Hubert Ripka ,in the house of Shiela Grant Duff . He made the astonishing proposition that since the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia was not proving too satisfactory , that perhaps Czech independence could be restored in exchange for these concessions of Polish territory and the international port of Danzig. Ripka believed such a manoeuvre to have emanated from Goering. Ripka went on to write articles about this offer and of course continued to reject it indignantly.At the time a decision was taken by SGD , Ripka and his wife , Noemi, that Ripka should write to Churchill. This letter was not in the Churchill files as of 1980 but Mme. Ripka kept the draft of it .The draft is in SGD's book ,p.210. Ripka is at pains to conceal Trott's's identity, which rather conflicts, as does the whole story ,with Trott's quoted undercover inability to come into the open ,even to his friends. What SGD says is that Trott knew immediately that Churchill had been informed.And that Ripka knew that Lord Halifax had been informed , which leads to more contradictions. Although SGD quotes at length a letter of Mme. Ripka's about her memories of this meeting , in fact there were two meetings, and two recollections by Mme.Ripka referring to this though this is not clear from SGD's Parting of Ways, as Mme. Ripka supplied the second recollection too late for inclusion in this book . These show the central contradiction of Trott's actual personal views through his behaviour on a visit to SGD's house on her Grandmother's estate, High Elms , which was evidently the first meeting with Ripka on this visit .To thank me for this posting seems hard to comprehend. To address the contradictions raised in the page , to correct the page , would be more to the point.It is not the case that there are other books which refer to the Trott position in this viewpoint and certainly none which raise these contradictions (with the general presentation of Trott now) from first-hand witness. There are many good books, MacDonough's is extremely good-but leaves a truthful taste of Trott foolishness and naivete. Christopher Sykes was himself displeased by the desire of the Trott Committee(who paid for the book) for a whitewash but was able to still be masterful . And none of this would need to be said , the martyr Trott could rest ,were it not for the essentially incorrect assertions repeatedly peddled by over-enthusiastic revisionist partisanship which finds SGD, and Churchill himself, most inconvenient. You yourself allude to this in repeating the desperate plaint concerning Allied stubbornness and wilful neglect of the resistance. This line ignores , as one can ignore the truth of Trott's danger to exposure, the necessity of the Allies to precisely do so . So writers, journalists respected by whom ? Or rather where? SGD allowed full use of her correspondence with Trott as referred to on the main page(Klemperer) and only barely avoided mis-representation, being un-usefully presented as over feminine and girlish,as this was the only manner to weaken her robust position . But the discussion at hand concerns the import of two words-abandon or continue and yet relates to a vast history of death and war affecting geo- politics in a way that only the Roman Empire still does. It also leads into the murky waters of Capitalist military-industrial complex conspiracy-what was Trott up to in the United States? With whom? Why them or what were their motives, and how come so much has been forgotten about major complicity with Nazism ? Why was there no holding to account for the destruction of nations across the whole globe? Why was the system of interlocking interests co-eval with War not brought to repair ? .Certainly here in this page there can be no refuting the correctness of the word "continue" as this is what Trott angled for and required. It is not a reflection on why he required it in 1939 , nor yet why in 1938 the resistance (in it's saner moments)needed the opposite . It certainly does not serve Trott in any way, but rather raises all the old questions,and considerable new one's that encapsulate nations' responses over time to unacceptable fact .The real controversy lies in how Trott came to and sustained his solutions for the world . Who re-inforced in him an ability to contemplate these solutions which were so shocking to the Ripkas and SGD? But outside there is arussian doll of internesting and deepening mysterious conspiracy that once opened is seen to be completely divorced from what are more superficial motives.

Thank you for this posting - you are raising valuable points. (I hope that you have some understanding for the fact that an anonymous edit which reverts an important statement by 180 degrees without any comment or reference, such as this, is likely to be reverted. Your comments make this a different matter. By the way, please sign your posts by placing '~~~~' behind them.)

The source that I have at hand right now is the popular book by Marion Gräfin Dönhoff (ISBN 3-442-72009-5), which I think is an important but difficult source. (Dönhoff, editor of Die Zeit, was certainly one of the most respected German journalists, but personally involved in this matter, having been associated with the resistance movement and a close friend to many of its actors.) It seems that the book can be trusted on its facts, but it is definitely POV.)

The point she is trying to make in her account of von Trott's trip to Britain in June/July 1939 (the first important duty that he was assigned after getting a permanent position at Ribbentrop's Auswärtiges Amt) is that he was in a very difficult position, caught between his order to make clear that Berlin was "feeling threatened" by British guarantees for Poland; his desire to make clear to his hosts how they could help the German resistance; and the life-or-death necessity to keep the latter secret. She also describes how, after returning to Germany, his description of the British determinedness angered Ribbentrop (who assumed the opposite) so much that he threatened to personally shoot any of his subordinates who would utter this view further.

To describe all this by saying that he used the last visit to Britain to promote a shameful trade... looks quite one-sided to me. It ignores the obvious fact that there is a difference between a diplomat's personal and official opinion; as well as the vital requirement - for von Trott - to keep the former undercover. (And by the way, it is also been argued that the German resistance movement, especially von Trott, has been let down by the Allied governments in a shameful way on many occasions.)

Of course, there are other 'must-reads' about the 'Trott controversy', such as the recent biography by Henric L. Wuermeling (ISBN 3421058229). I don't have a copy, but judging from the reviews [1] it seems to back up much of the above (in that his real aim during the visit was to bring London to keep Hitler from attacking Poland), without denying a certain ambigousness of his person.

You are welcome to suggest a compromise wording which mentions Duff's view, too.

Regards, High on a tree 17:13, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You seem to mistake me for the author of the text that you are disputing, which I am not. (While viewing any wikipedia article, you can click on the 'history' tab to view its past versions and who wrote them. You will see that users JackandJill wrote this part, who are most certainly not German, by the way.)

To thank me for this posting seems hard to comprehend. - Umm, why? I was being sincere - I learnt details that I was not aware of from your posting, and since you might very well be right that the article should mention the Duff issue in one way or the other, I was thanking you on wikipedia's behalf, too, because hopefully this will lead to an improvement of the article.

In local German terms there is an obvious interest in enabling Trott's memory to thrive ... So writers, journalists respected by whom ? Or rather where? - That you seem to discard all work by German scholars (just because of their nationality) while debating the biography of a German doesn't add to the credibility of your opinions. I gave you some context about Dönhoff above, as this didn't help, you might want to look her up [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9389549 in the Encyclopædia Britannica which describes her as the doyenne of German journalism for her nearly 60-year association with the liberal weekly Die Zeit. The historical debate in Germany about the Widerstand is, for the most part, far from idolizing (in fact there has been a lot of questioning from the left of the motives of the 20 July actors, for instance).

Again, the eyewitness accounts that you raise seem to be important sources and I'm not arguing they should be kept out of the article. But all the ranting about russian dolls, suspecting revisionism and world conspiracies doesn't help the article much. To address the contradictions raised in the page , to correct the page , would be more to the point. Exactly. I am willing to do so, but your one-dimensional view that this is about "continung" or "abandoning" appeasement makes that difficult. Couldn't the truth be more complex? For example it might be possible that on his visit to Downing Street 10 on July 7, 1939 von Trott indeed urged Chamberlain to send a clear signal to Hitler to warn him against attacking on Poland, - but that on the other hand he tried to broker a deal which, although liberating the Czech areas, would mean to sacrifice the smaller area of the Corridor - a shameful treatment of the Polish people in the area, definitely, but still a proposal which at the time would have von Trott gotten shot for treason once he returned to Berlin? (Which seems more likely than the unproven Goering connection.) Just a thought experiment to show that things are perhaps more complicated than one would wish them to be.

Why don't you put forward a compromise version as I suggested? If you want me to incorporate your points into the article, and since you seem to own the books that you are talking about: Could you quote verbatim some of the passages that you are referring to?

As an alternative, I could translate parts of the article about Trott from the German wikipedia, which (to falsify the idea once more that there should be different "truths" in issues according to national boundaries) has been mentioning since its very first version that von Trott's attempts to gain support for the resistance movement from the British government were hampered by its doubts about his credibility - because of his and his friends' unwillingness to offer withdrawal from the territories that Hitler had occupied. (Again, this doesn't contradict the claim that he tried to persuade the British government to stand up against Hitler, and that fact he vehemently opposed the Nazi persecution of the Jews, for example.)

For signing a post, put the four tildes right after it into the main text, not into the 'Edit summary' field. Most users on wikipedia prefer to be able to read discussions in a chronological way, so it is recommended that you add your answer below, not merge it with your previous posting. regards, High on a tree 07:41, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)Yes!Do supply a translation of it all...Flamekeeper 22:56, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Appeasement

Why should you accuse me of simplification and un-reasonableness concerning the use of abandon or continuewhen you take opportunities to support the thesis in general (and your presence over time on that page without questioning it could suggest support)? You seem to have some deep interest in this subject as whilst you offer repeatedly to change the text as presented you won't allow that it is actually wrong, so your offer is a conditional one requiring a diminution of real facts ,that I have referred to, down to the level of a POV. The offer was made by von Trott twice to Ripka as the Czech conduit and as you seem to be well aware , it was being made by him directly to those in power and presumably his hosts knew about this offer and encouraged him (another can of worms, there which won't go away, will it?). This is not a Grant Duff issue(she is referred to as Grant Duff in all books ) is it? It is a von Trott issue. You suggest that might it be von Trott presented something to the Prime Minister . Either he did or he didn't, I am referring to eye-witness reports anfd you are referring to speculation . Always revisionism can return to this catch-all that " he might have been shot" . Every other man in the street was getting shot at shortly afterwards and in fact as a consequence of Chamberlains appeasements. I fear , I'm sorry to have to say, that it is again a subject of well-known dispute what you have to mention about von Trott in regard to anti-semitism . There was always widespread suspicion about von Trott which has been continuous ever since his denial of German anti-semitic activities in the Manchester Guardian in the early thirties . This showed not anti-semitism to his friends but gullibility tinged with a nationalist's inability to reason . German revisionism emanates from two fronts: the national need for redemption in Germany ( and to non -Germans the Treskow line appears more redemptive in both thought and in action); and from the actual survivors or descendants of appeasers who cannot bring themselves to accept that it was wholly wrong. I repeat that your readers should beware and it must be said that revisionism isn't just perpetrated by Holocaust denial but also by the modest little nibbles and bites which are almost invisible to the unaware yet add up to a generalised changing of emphasis. I find this appears even within the Churchill wiki pages and I am shocked . The reader of the future gradually comes to receive the required picture, history is whitewashed and we can all sleep easier in our beds, can we ? I'm sorry that the Adam von Trott story and dispute is not left but perennially raised and in fact the central schizm between von Trott and Grant Duff remains . That impossibility of somehow buying off German, excuse me, German demands . Oh yes ! Versailles , let's get on to Versailles soon, after we have done with the Jews perhaps. There has been revisionism there since it's very signing and I can tell you now that Grant Duff is not half tough enough about that. No, I refer your readers to Edgar Ansel Mowrer-SGD's boss when she worked in the Paris office of the Chicago Daily News -a man who should have a whole section devoted to his un-paralled analysis from his first -hand experience of the rise of Nazism and Fascism Lastly ,as to your points about my incorrect because supposedly nationalist and anti-German thinking ,well , after a little perusal around this encyclopedia I can see that one has oneself to provide balance and that it is very needed certainly within this period of history and being such a new open and interactive medium of storage , that it is open to abuse of the kind I found on von Trott's page . Yet I still strongly maintain that whilst the Wiki presented the error or distortion or whatever we call it and that the word even were it to be changed ,as I have tried to explain, does not at all reflect on von Trott's justification for the shameful offer-ie. that in the light of say, his belief that an assassination attempt(well,at this stage the actual death of Hitler was still hard for many Christians to justify, itself a cause of delay and failure as you know) it was perfectly understandable if he used this just as a purely tricking activity to await the imminent coup . We know he did partly think this and it is to his eternal credit but we also know some of this thinking aligned to such a solution as(the Coup) was also tinged with many shades of unacceptability , stemming largely from a Versailles revisionism and a generalised ''pre'' nazi militarist slanted educational and national conciousness. I repeat , the offer was made . The offer had it's reason( & Ripka thought it bore the hallmarks of Goering's devious mind). Do you want to comprommise on that , because the only way to do so would be to simply write abandon/continue. I cannot treat this as an etiquette issue however , or consider that civility should reign over fact . The Wikipedia has a problem which is the same problem that Grant Duff faced . There is a need by some factions (who need not be specified though I supply this note in the interests of educational clarity )to re-write history . They try and do so . At length and under multifarious and apparently innocent guise , and it is very dangerous . And what do one do about it ? I talked earlier about unacceptable fact . What you do is uncover as much as possible the mind of man , analyse the factors social and , religious,political and historical that lead to tragedy ,in order not to repeat it . You don't distort it , don't chip away and belittle the facts unless you have a reason . I repeat that it is very understandable that Trotts terrible martyrship should be portrayed as completely the result of unequivocal goodness . I can revere that innate goodnes and believe that it was genuine but , can I accept that people who come after him should so much need to gain their strength from it as to be allowed to revise also some essential and important facts and factors? Von Trott himself would not want that . It is the case that ''resistance'' studies exist , as they are bound to , but I saw in Wiki a heading earlier emboldened to resistance ''fighters'' . There may have been but we don't seem to know much about them nor how many because it is an abuse of language and of the Wikpedia. Obviously hundreds of thousands were arrested and incarcerated and tortured and enslaved, even experimented on. But insurrectionaries shooting at cavalcades ? It returns too much to the overall subject, not the subject of Trott , but to the subject of revisionism by stealth , and its' requirements for cultural reasons ( the unacceptability of facts). Your final justification from one who didn't make the error in the von Trott wikipage is however interesting because it does open the von Trott mind and the resulting analysis that this poor Martyr of a man has further had to suffer . I refer to the plethora of books written about him in two languages which because of the ,to Trott tangential , issue of left-wing, right-wing thinking bring us back to the scandal of appeasement. Rightly ,indeed,the German resistance is questioned inside and outside Germany on this score and rightly your readers should be aware of these factors as motives now for this nibbling revisionism . The diplomacy conducted in this era should be examined under the facts of this matter , everyone's motives should be open for examination and dissection . So we go back into conspiracies that are never far from the usual families of course, & which require persistent minor manipulations of revision to obfuscate facts and scandal un-useful to said interests. It could be that your readers might not have thought about this,and that I rant or it could be that I serve a useful purpose of enabling already suspecting and unhappy minds with a rope,say, across a chasm . Yes , this history really , really stinks  ! And we don't know as much as we should but this need to revere Trott must be tempered with questioning if it can lead us to real culprits rather than at all think that this fine individual represents culpability that he does not. Von Trott maintained the values of his background , tempered with his insertion into an international sphere and we all know what happened to him for trying his best . This is not to say that his views were correct. He held them for himself and for the circumstances pertaining to his life and he was perhaps not a free man whether because of The Third Reich or because of his duty to his Family . Mind you , how free are each of us ? Don't we all largely and through multifarious plural reasoning stand by finishing our sand-wiches whilst actual people are clobbered and tortured today and every day ? This scheme in mid-1939 is revealing on many levels and von Trott does not constitute the most important aspect . Nothing is settled about any of this period. The Wikipedia presentation of the era leading up to the Munich settlement is by no means satisfactory but leaves out the major fact that by the British and (get this further sign of intolerance) ''The French'' abandonment of their cast-iron ''ally'' Czechoslovakia , Hitler gained a vast extra store and workshop of armaments all used to great effect by German soldiery far and wide. We should thank you for poking the old dog with a stick really ! 15:32, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)Flamekeeper In terms of quotes , I can say that MacDonough used SGD as source for his reference on this Ripka offer. He also mentions Trott quite openly describing a resistance plot in mixed company . A.L.Rowse thought the scheme emanated from Lord Lothian (Trott's British benefactor in the Rhodes Trust).Trott spoke of both to Chamberlain , who barely listened nor understood. Rowse suggests it was a very good thing that he didn't. Christopher Sykes' Biography as a deep reading .

===Conclusion === That Adam von Trott was an absolutely wonderful man and capable of the noblest,most beautiful thought. He did , though, possess the then current germanic capacity for firstly seeing war as occasionally necessary purification , just as Hitler persuaded most Germans to do, and secondly, he shared the Hitlerian belief in the justice of territorial gain for national/racial historical reasons . He therefore believed in this Scheme of Appeasement /offer even whilst using it for short-term and also separate possible longer-term purposes. He was wrong to do so then,he remains wrong and the presentation of Trott by his admirers tries actively to conceal this .User:Flamekeeper 01:07, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

See K. von Klemperer's German Resistance Against Hitler p.435 for references to Widerstand hegemonic aspirations and how von Trott only from 1943 relinquished his desire for the acceptance of German territorial increase .159.134.213.156 08:39, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Last paragraph

I couldn't understand a single word of the last paragraph. It has long and winding sentences and has grammatical and spelling error.

Pranesh Bhargava 13:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC) Pranesh Bhargava

Adding some sources

Since the page hasn't been edited by anyone in over a week, I'm making a note here of some changes I'm making. I've added some sources, more modern ones, than Chritopher Sykes's book, which was written 45 years ago, and is severe on Bose, and not considered unbiased. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:49, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

This article has been expanded with citations

It has a 2009 notice that it needs citations. It looks like it's been expanded with citations since then. Note: Many of the citations are corroborated by Marie Vassiltchikov's (aka Maria Vasilchilkova): Berlin Diaries 1940-1945. She worked for Adam von Trott zu Solz as his assistant and was part of the plot to kill Hitler (the July 20th plot). She recorded their interactions in her diary. They match the cited items in this article from other sources.

Is it time to take off the 2009 warning?

Oakbranch (talk) 08:48, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it is ok to take the warning, but this article still leaves much out and what is in is sometimes wrong. The statement Trott went to London in June 1939 ask the British government to end the appeasement of Germany is dead wrong. On 31 March 1939, in the House of Commons, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced the "guarantee" of Poland, stating that Britain would go to war if Germany did anything to threaten the independence of Poland, through Chamberlain notably left out the frontiers of Poland when announcing the "guarantee". What Trott asked for his visit to London in June 1939 was for Britain to abandon the "guarantee" of Poland and essentially let Germany attack Poland without fear of a war with Britain. I don't see how one possibly say that Trott went to London to ask to Britain to end the appeasement of Germany as he was asking for was the complete opposite. It is true that Trott promised that in exchange that Germany would end the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia and restore independence to the Czechs, through he made it very clear that he wanted Germany to keep the Sudetenland. Trott was a German nationalist and like almost all German nationalists in the interwar period was unwilling to accept the frontiers with Poland together the status of Danzig as a Free City. If one looks at the plans for a post-Nazi Germany drawn up by Carl Gordeler, it is striking that he wanted to keep all of the areas that belonged to Germany in 1914 plus Austria and the Sudetenland

The historian Hans Mommsen once wrote that for Germany's conservative elites that it is right to speak of "resistance as a process" as almost all of the German conservatives who tried to overthrow Hitler in World War II started out as as supporters of the Nazi regime in 1933 and gradually got disillusioned with the Nazis over the next ten years or so, so it is not write to treat the history of the Widerstand as being all black and white as many would like to have it. There are shades of grey with great many of the anti-Nazi conservatives approving of the anti-Semitic laws in the 1930s, but drawing the line at the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in the 1940s as the plan to round up and kill every single Jew in Europe was going too far for them. For those who to see the Widerstand as all black and white often have trouble understanding that. Sir Ian Kershaw, a historian whom I greatly respected, has suggested that along the lines of Mommsen's "resistance as a progress" to speak of three stages, namely dissent, opposition and resistance and furthermore, some people only got so far and never advanced to outright resistance. The Confessing Church, which was opposed to the attempt to apply the "Aryan paragraph" to Jews who converted to Lutheranism, but otherwise declared its support for the anti-Semitic law, would a good example of an organisation that engaged in opposition, but not resistance in the Third Reich. Getting back to Trott, I think this article should treat him as another example of "resistance as process". In that regard, his visit to London to try to restart appeasement makes more sense. On one final note. I'm not that Princess Vassiltchikov's diaries should be used as source. Henry Ashby Turner, another historian whom I greatly respect him, published certain calling her diaries post-war forgeries.--A.S. Brown (talk) 23:39, 22 July 2018 (UTC)