Sid Guttridge wrote: ↑24 Mar 2021, 16:01
Hi Stg44,
What page is it on?
Are you talking about Trott in Sweden?
Cheers,
Sid.
I conflated two different approaches; the Dulles one in early 1944 and the the Moltke one in Turkey in late 1943, thought they were linked and presented the same terms.
Not the Trott one in Sweden.
Page 32:
But Bonhoeffer said that the Christian conscience was not at ease with Schonfeld's ideas on the terms of a settlement, and that "There must be punishment by God. We should not be worthy of such a solution.
We do not want to escape repentance. Our action must be understood as an act of repentance." This evidently applied to the Resistance activities, including submission to Allied surrender terms. On the Bishop's prompting, Schonfeld agreed that an occupation of Berlin by the Allied Armies "would be a great help for the purpose of exercising control" (over Germany and her military and other resources).102
Page 34-5.
Moltke sought to launch his approaches through Turkey in July and December 1943. His contacts for this were Dr. Paul Leverkuehn, a law partner of Moltke's before the war and now the Abwehr Resident in Istanbul; Dr. Hans Wilbrandt, a banker who had lived there since 1934 and whom Moltke knew from before 1933 when he managed his parents' Kreisau estate; and Professor Alexander Riistow, a sociologist with connections to the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) whom Wilbrandt had brought in. Moltke spoke on behalf of many conspirators, indeed, probably a broad spectrum of the Resistance. But it must be stressed that the proposed plan for action coincided with his own thinking. He spoke, as Schonfeld had done, more
"politically" than might have been Bonhoeffer's inclination.
Moltke proposed some considerable modification of the unconditional-surrender formula, and a separate arrangement with the Western Allies.108
In return, the Resistance would overthrow Hitler. After his initial visit to Turkey from 5 to 10 July 1943, Moltke waited for word that a contact with American authorities had been set up, received it, and managed to have Admiral Canaris once more arrange for his trip. He was in Istanbul from 11 to 16 December 1943. Moltke's principal points were: retraction of the unconditional-surrender formula (he abandoned this point when his friends in Istanbul told him there could not be any contacts on this basis); support for the overthrow of Hitler from within; cooperation from the Resistance to enable the Western Allies to occupy Germany.
There were also in the expose resulting from Moltke's visit references to a wing in the Resistance tending "eastward," but the stress, indeed the insistence, was on the swift occupation of Germany by the armies of the Western Powers and on the maintenance of a front against the Red Army along a line from Tilsit to Lemberg. The unmistakable defeat of Germany and the occupation of her territory were considered necessary, but it had to be a Western occupation
Page 35-37
The answer to the approach was the same as ever: silence. In a memorandum dated 29 July 1944 to President Roosevelt, the Director
of the OSS, Colonel William J. Donovan, described the approach, in substantially the terms of the expose, as having been made by Moltke,
who was code-named "Hermann" in OSS correspondence. Donovan commented: "The approach in Istanbul was made at a time when it
was clear that our relations with the Russians would not permit negotiation with such a contact, especially since the plan advanced involved
an attempt to permit Anglo-Saxon occupation to the exclusion of Russia. [. . .] I directed our representative in Istanbul to enter into no
negotiations with Hermann but to keep open the channel of contact.
The American Military Attache was apprised of this contact and of
the outlines of the proposal. Although subsequent to the delivery of
the group's proposal to our representative in Istanbul further overtures
were made and a meeting was requested, this meeting could not take
place due to the arrest of Hermann who, so far as we know, has remained in custody."111
"Further overtures" included those received in Bern since January 1944 and particularly in April, on which Allen
Dulles had reported in detail at the time, and which contained essentially the same offer of cooperation and a separate arrangement excluding the Soviet Union.112