Talk:Carl Friedrich Goerdeler

Untitled

I am happy to see that you have fun with this article. Apparently the Gdansk article doesn't offer enough time for your edit warring hobby. Doesn't it become boring over the years? Anyhow, if you don't have anything to tell about the person in this article, then I suggest that you leave this article alone. This note is especially for Burschenschafter (formerly known as Nico) who started this edit war. -- Baldhur 07:56, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

List of Ministers?

The page notes that Goerdeler and the German anti-Hitler movement developed a list of potential ministers - is that available anywhere? It seems like it'd make a decent article 210.49.99.120 (talk) 10:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

In response to the above request, here is the final Cabinet list of 1944. Goerdeler went through several Cabinet lists over the years, but the final one that was agreed to in June 1944 that would formed the Cabinet of the provisional government had the July 20 plot succeeded ran as follows:

• Regent (Reichsverweser) : General Ludwig Beck
• State Secretary to the Regent: Count Ulrich Schwerin-Schwandenfeld
• Chancellor: Dr. Carl Goerdeler (DNVP)
• State Secretary to the Chancellor: Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg
• Vice-Chancellor: Wilhelm Leuschner (SPD)
• Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Jakob Kaiser (Christian Trade Union leader)
• Minister of War: General Friedrich Olbricht
• State Secretary to the Minister of War: Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg
• Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces: Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben
• Commander in Chief of the Army: General Erich Hoepner
• Minister of the Interior: Julius Leber (SPD)
• Minister of Economics: Dr. Paul Lejeune-Jung (lawyer and economist)
• Minister of Finance: Ewald Loeser (formerly of the DNVP)
• Minister of Justice: Joseph Wirmer (Zentrum)
• Minister of Education: Eugen Bolz (Zentrum)
• Minister of Agriculture: Andreas Hermes (Zentrum)
• Minister of Reconstruction: Bernhard Letterhaus (Christian Trade Union leader)
• Minister of Information: Theodor Haubach (SPD)

The position of Minister of Foreign Affairs would have went to either Ulrich von Hassell (former ambassador to Italy) or Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg (former ambassador to the Soviet Union) depending upon whatever the Western powers or the Soviet Union signed a armistice with the new German government first. All of this information is from pages 622-623 from the excellent The Nemesis of Power The German Army In Politics, Macmillan, London, 1964, 1967 by Sir John Wheeler-Bennett. I hope that this answers your question well enough. --A.S. Brown (talk) 04:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

That answers my question very nicely, thank you Xt828 (talk) 23:19, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Nothing about his demands as member of German resistance to keep annexed Polish territories by Nazis?

As member of German resistance he demanded that Germany kept its Nazi conquests of Polish territories. He wanted Poles to grab Lithuania instead and Germany to keep Poznan and other areas. --Molobo (talk) 23:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

"he demanded that Germany kept its Nazi conquests of Polish territories" - a typical example for your tendentious way with words. The entire political elite of he Weimar Republic had never accepted the eastern border per the Versailles treaty and wanted the border as of 1914 restored (except the communists). Goerdeler was no exception. Of course, this would have included some of the territories re-annexed to Germany proper after the invasion of 1939 (notably eastern Upper Silesia, Danzig, the Posen region, and the "Corridor"). It would definitely not have included Warsaw, Krakow, etc., which your post (quite intentionally, it seems) misleadingly suggests. --Thorsten1 (talk) 10:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

You are confusing annexed territories of Poland into the German Reich with General Gouvernment which Nazi Germany treated as occupied zone turned into concentration camp rather then annexed territory.And anyway Goerdeler demanded 1940 borders before the scale of German failure to win the war became visible.--Molobo (talk) 21:30, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not confusing anything. The consensus among the conservative opposition was that the borders of 1914 be restored. That Goerdeler demanded Germany keep the Generalgouvernement at some point is something I consider rather implausible, although not impossible. If you have a reliable source that stands up to scrutiny, we can include it here, of course... --Thorsten1 (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect to both sides, I think it is fair to say that Goerdeler altered his views several times depending on the circumstances. It is correct that like almost every German politican of his generation Goerdeler never accepted Germany's post 1919 frontiers, and as a minumum wanted nothing less then the restoration of lands Germany lost after World War I, plus Austria, the Sudetenland and the former German colonies in Africa. On the other hand, in several of Goerdeler's innumerable peace plans he dratfted during World War II, he considered the River Bug to be Germany's natural eastern frontier, which would definitely embrace much more then the borders of 1914. But on other times, Goerdeler's peace plans were somewhat more modest in their ambitions. Anyhow, Goerdeler never really understood how unacceptable it was after 1940 for any peace that included expanding Germany's frontiers was to public opinion in the West, so even if Goerdeler had overthrown Hitler, despite what countless counter-factual theories have claimed, World War II would not have ended with a compromise peace between Goerdeler's government and the Allies. Volume two of Gerhard Weinberg's massive two volume study of pre-1939 German foreign policy refers to Goerdeler's secret talks with the British in 1938-39, and mentions that Goerdeler simply did not accept that self-determination applied to Poles and Czechs, not just Germans. But on the other hand, German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945 by Klemens von Klemperer mentions that for a time in 1942 Goerdeler held talks with the AK about supplying arms to the Home Army, but only under the condition that the arms be used against the Red Army, not the Germans which is the talks failed (I so certain that it was Goerdeler who held the talks with AK, but am writing this from my memory, so I may be wrong). So on one hand, I think it is fair that Goerdeler had a great deal of trouble accepting that Germany's eastern neighbors had the right to self-determination, but on the other hand, his talks with the AK does indicate that he was not perhaps irredeemably anti-Polish. The point that needs to be stressed here was that Goerdeler was a complex character. Here was a man who was disgusted at the Holocaust and who planned after overthrowing Hitler to shut down the death camps, but on the other hand, intended after the overthrow to maintain all of the pre-1939 anti-Semitic laws in Germany. Indeed if Gerhard Ritter's memo to Goerdeler of March 1943 is any indication, Goerdeler was open to the idea of expelling all of the surviving Jews to North America after overthrowing Hitler (the idea being that this was the only way of stopping the surviving . To be fair, that particular idea was Ritter's, not Goerdeler, but the fact that Ritter would suggest something like that perhaps indicates the same sort of anti-anti-Semitism that was common to Goerdeler's circles. I think the best way of putting it is that Goerdeler was both a bigot and a humane man, and as such there were both appealing and appalling aspects of his character. --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:41, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks for this extensive answer. I am astonished that such great contributors still sometimes visit Wikipedia.--Molobo (talk) 12:49, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

There is no contradiction between being anti jewish and opposing the holocaust. In fact that is to be expected. Only a few people would actively support the idea of genocide of any community that they dislike, but most people dislike one or more community - whether it be jews or communists.

Picture Caption Incorrect

The caption to Goerdeler's picture in the People's Court is incorrect. It stated, "He is clearly having to hold his pants up. Belts were often denied to accused in the People's Court."

Goerdeler is actually holding a chair not his pants. While he may have been denied a belt, this caption is clearly incorrect.

I have deleted the portion that is incorrect.

Ofhistoricalnote (talk) 02:50, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, there's is a quiet wellknown scene showing Erwin von Witzleben holding his pants because he had no belt and Freisler shouting at him. Probably someone mixed it up. HerkusMonte (talk) 09:51, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Length problem

This article is waaaaaaaay too long. Jonas Vinther (talk) 14:36, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I concur. An encyclopaedia should not attempt to provide highly detailed coverage of a given subject - that's what specialized books, etc are for. To start with, the lengthy letters should be moved to Wikisource, and only relevant excerpts included here. Noel (talk) 15:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Unlikely claim about Stauffenberg

In this entry for July 20 conspirator Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, concerning the allegedly left-wing leanings of coup leader Stauffenberg, is written: “Stauffenberg was an ‘Easterner’ who favoured making contacts with the underground KPD, and wished for a post-Nazi Germany to ally herself with the Soviet Union.” Stauffenberg was a conservative German of clear aristocratic lineage—I’ve never heard, and very much doubt, that he was interested in an alliance with the USSR and the German Communist Party. This is the second dubious statement regarding the USSR and major German/Nazi WWII leaders that I have seen in the past 24 hours. In the entry on Otto Ernst Remer, who was instrumental in crushing the July 20 coup attempt, is the statement that Remer's post-war neo-Nazi party "received financing from the Soviet Union[1] and worked with the Communist Party of Germany." This seems very unlikely, and the listed sourcing for this claim is marginal.

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"Thoughts of a Man Condemned to Death"

I could not find this document no matter where I looked. I do not know when this information began to disseminate, but since everything mentioning this document is the same as wikipedia's, verbatim, I doubt the authenticity of this document. Searches in both English and German yield no results. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.167.17.125 (talk) 03:03, 9 August 2020 (UTC)