CHAPTER FIVE

HENNING VON TRESCKOW: A CHRISTIAN MOTIVE FOR KILLING HITLER?∗

Annette Mertens

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) was born in Magdeburg, Prussia. His family was conservative, Protestant, and ‘Prussian to the core’. After his school years in Goslar, Tresckow volunteered for military service in World War I. In 1926, he returned to the Army after having studied law and political science and worked for a banking house in Berlin. Hitler’s rise to power accelerated Tresckow’s military career: His highest rank was that of a major general ( July 1st, 1944). In World War II, he served mainly on the Eastern Front and became witness of the mass murder of Jews and the civilian Soviet population. This made him join the resistance circle around Count von Stauffenberg. Tresckow participated in the conspiracy of July 20th, 1944, and the plans for the coup d’état. Tresckow, who was married and father of four children, was in Poland when he heard about the failure of the assassination attempt. He committed suicide to escape from the Gestapo.

Henning von Tresckow— symbol of ‘the other Germany’

The assassination must be attempted, at any cost. Even should that fail, the attempt to seize power in the capital must be undertaken. We must prove to the world and to future generations that the men of the Ger- man Resistance movement dared to take the decisive step and to hazard their lives upon it. Compared with this object, nothing else matters (Schlabrendorff 1947, 103). Henning von Tresckow committed suicide after he had been told that the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20th, 1944, had failed. Tresckow had been one of the close conspirators around Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg who wanted to kill the dictator and take power from the National Socialists by a coup d’état. The attempt failed and ended in

* The author wishes to thank Felix Forster and Nadine Schulz for their help in translating the text into English. 120 annette mertens disaster for the conspirators. Tresckow had been aware of that risk and had accepted it from the beginning. By the words quoted above, which he is supposed to have said in June 1944, he had nevertheless given meaning to the undertaking. His words testify to his farsightedness and his sense of the historical importance of the conspiracy, and they are proof of Tresckow’s willingness to offer his services to a common cause, i.e. Germany’s image in the world, regardless of his own person. This attitude has made Tresckow one of the most prominent fi gures of the German resistance movement and a symbol of ‘the other Germany’, of the ‘conscience in revolt.’ 60 years after the war, Tresckow is still at the centre of attention not only of German historians, but also of a wider public. On the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2001, a commemorative book with texts and documents was published and printed in its third edition already in 2005 (Grabner and Röder 2005). In 2006, The Protestant Church in Germany published a voluminous catalogue of “Protestant Martyrs in the 20th Century”, which also contains an article about Henning von Tresckow, who is said to have lost his life in his struggle against National Socialism due to his Christian belief (Brakelmann 2006). In spite of the admiration bestowed on Tresckow, his character is no longer undisputed: the last four years have seen a heated debate about him, developed in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Hürter 2004; Ringshausen 2005; Römer 2005; Graml 2006; Hürter and Römer 2006). The central question was in how far the conspirators themselves were involved in the crimes of the National Socialist regime or at least knew about them. Before July 20th, 1944, Tresckow and other leading mem- bers of the Wehrmacht, the German Armed Forces, had witnessed the war on the Eastern Front and had been its very leaders. On the basis of military documents, it can be proved that a fairly long time before the assassination attempt, they were informed about the crimes that units of the Wehrmacht and the SS committed against the Soviet civilian population, especially against Jews and so-called partisans. This raises the question; which motivations were most decisive for the conspirators’ resistance—the National Socialist crimes or rather Germany’s threat- ening military defeat? The heat of the debate—not only among pro- fessional historians (Lahme 2006)—testifi es to the importance of the dispute: the core of the matter is not the analysis or interpretation of some particular historical documents, it is rather the aspect that the reputation of an identity and symbolic fi gure is at stake.