Restless Conscience

Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg: martyr to the anti-Hitler cause

Despite my interest in films (Sophie Scholl, The White Rose, The Black Book) that illustrate German resistance to Hitler, I lacked the motivation to see “Valkyrie”, a movie that NYFCO colleague Armond White regarded as “intellectually insulting”. Fortunately, there is an alternative. You can now rent “The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler in Nazi Germany” from Netflix, a documentary that features survivors of the plot to kill Hitler as well as the wives of some of the martyrs to the cause. Since the movie was made in 1992, this is the only record we have of their testimony since most of the interviewees are likely now deceased.

The movie makes very clear that this was not just a General’s revolt. In addition to religious figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or social democrats like Julius Leber, the documentary focuses on the importance of lawyer Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who came from a long line of Prussian military officers and who used his professional skills to aid Jews and other potential victims of Nazi barbarism to leave the country. In 1941 he wrote a letter that expressed his horror over the exterminations that were beginning to take place: “Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day, and another thousand German men are habituated to murder… What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time?” In the same letter he said, “Since Saturday the Berlin Jews are being rounded up. Then they are sent off with what they can carry…. How can anyone know these things and walk around free?”

The wiki on Moltke states:

During Nazi Germany’s war with the Soviet Union, Moltke wrote a controversial opinion urging Germany to follow both the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention, in order to comply with international law and to promote reciprocal good treatment for German prisoners of war; however he was overruled on the grounds that Russia was not a signatory to the agreements, with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel describing the Geneva Convention as “a product of a notion of chivalry of a bygone era.”

One can only surmise that George W. Bush might have had one of his underlings study the writings of Keitel for tips on the war on terror.

“Restless Conscience” examines the participation of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and Major-General Henning von Tresckow in the plot against Hitler (they are played by Tom Cruise and Kenneth Branagh in the Hollywood movie.) These were not what you would call humanitarians in the mold of Bonhoeffer or Moltke. Both were very conservative military men who finally decided to move against Hitler because they saw the war as a disaster. Stauffenberg in particular knew firsthand about the costs of war, having lost a foot, an eye, and all but two fingers of one hand in combat. It was his disability in fact that allowed Hitler to escape with his life in the July 20, 1944 bombing attempt. Stauffenberg brought a briefcase to a planning meeting disguised as cognac bottles. He went to the bathroom to set the timers but his mangled hand allowed him to enable only one of the bombs. Went it went off, it killed three Nazi officers but Hitler escaped with his life.

One of the most interesting revelations in this documentary is how uninterested Great Britain was in hooking up with the anti-Nazi resistance, particularly around the time of the Munich Agreement widely regarded as “appeasement”. People like Moltke, who thought in moralistic rather than class terms, did not appreciate how much support there was in Great Britain ruling class circles for an “anti-Bolshevik” policy, even if it meant backing a madman bent on the destruction of their own country eventually.

“The Restless Conscience” is a very old-fashioned documentary relying on interviews with the principals and stock footage of the Nazi army on the march, etc. But that does not detract from its power. Highly recommended.

Trailer for “The Restless Conscience”