Carl Friedrich Goerdeler - Wikipedia

Thank you for the great WWII history share sir.

What a shame. So close to the end.

Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that July 31 is the anniversary of the birth of monarchist conservative German politician, executive, economist, civil servant, and opponent of the Nazi regime Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler who actively opposed Nazi anti-Jewish policies while he held office and was opposed to the Holocaust.

Images
1. Carl Goerdeler as an officer on the Eastern Front, 1916.
2. Carl Goerdeler as Price Commissioner, 1934.
3. Dr. Carl Goerdeler on trial at the People's Court [Volksgerichtshof] 1944
4. Leaders of the German conservative resistance Dr. Carl Goerdeler and Colonel General Ludwig Beck

The best documentaries are in German
The search for Dr. med. Goerdeler
Search for Dr. med. GoerdelerCarl Friedrich Goerdeler (born July 31, 1884 in Schneidemühl, Posen province, † February 2, 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee) was a German lawyer, national-conservative politician and resistance fighter against National Socialism. He was one of the leading civilian heads of the resistance movement. On July 18, 1944, a man said goodbye to Leipzig's main station from his wife, who was to become German Chancellor a few days later - as the first democratic head of government after twelve years of Nazi dictatorship. He is the former Lord Mayor of Leipzig, the head of the civil opposition: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. He is against the planned assassination attempt on Hitler, but he hopes that the coup will end the barbaric regime and save Germany from the final catastrophe. Goerdeler believes on this 18th of July, that he is already wanted by warrant, and says goodbye with the words: "It could be that I do not come back for a long time." This documentary is the first television portrait of this outstanding figure of German resistance to Hitler, a man honored for his achievements and heavily criticized for his conservative ideas. It is an attempt to search for a person who has used his life to end Nazi rule and war. In a frame story, the film tells Goerdeler's dramatic escape from the secrets of the Gestapo. When he learns of the failure of the coup attempt on July 20, he has to go underground. He always finds helpers, even as a profile is published in all newspapers: "Search for Dr.. his comprehensive statements in the Gestapo listening, even latent anti-Semitism. These criticisms are a challenge for a cinematic biography. A film by Jürgen Eike and Michael Kloft, 1994 Producer: Bengt von zur Mühlen's daughter Marianne Meyer-Krahmer in an interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q42WqblvkFs



1. Background from commissiononassisteddying.co.uk/carl-friedrich-goerdeler/
"Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
February 27, 2017Adolf Hitler, Attack of the 20 of July of 1944,
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler ( 31 as July as 1884 – 2 as February as 1945 ) was a politician, executive, monarchical economist and conservative German member of, opponent dogged the Nazi regime and participant of the movement “Widerstand” plot of July 20, 1944 to assassinate Hitler.
Had it been successful, he would have been the new German chancellor. When the conspiracy failed, he was arrested, tortured, tried and hanged.
Biography
He was born in Schneidemühl (Piła, Poland), the old Prussia. His parents were members of conservatism since 1899. [1] Born and raised in a cultured, Lutheran, conservative and nationalist family. [2]
He studied economics and law in Tübingen from 1902 to 1905, [2] [3] working in public office since 1911. That year he married Anneliese Ulrich, with whom he had five children.
During World War I he fought in the Eastern front being promoted to captain. [3] In 1918, it was part of the German military government in Minsk [3] and in Danzig (Gdańsk). [3] The relay was integrated in the conservative national party of the town and like the majority of the German town rejected the Treaty of Versailles.
In 1922, Goerdeler was elected mayor (Bürgermeister) of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad, Russia) and in 1930 mayor of Leipzig. [3][ 4] In 1931 Chancellor Brüning, entrusted the inflationary policies of the Reich. [5]
In 1932 it was candidate to chancellor but was Franz von Papen finally the chosen one. [6] Goerdeler initially opposed the Nazis when they rose to power and left the DNVP Popular Party when this movement began to collaborate with National Socialism.
In the early 1930s, he regarded Hitler as an “enlightened dictator” who, with appropriate advice, could draw Germany out of the economic meltdown [7] but after 1933 was one of the few personalities he strongly opposed. The 1 of April of 1933, when the first was ordered boycott of Jewish businesses, Goerdeler appeared dressed in his uniform Oberbürgermeister ordering the Sturmabteilung (SA) end the oppressive measure and releasing several prisoners Jews SA. .
In spite of the strong pressures that the Nazi party exerted in the German society, never adhered to the Nazi party [9] and by 1935 was completely disappointed by Hitler, considering that the economic policies based on the floating debt were highly irresponsible. [9] Appointed in 1934, he was again commissioner of the Third Reich to combat the galloping inflation originally generated. 1936 publicly opposed the demolition of the monument to composer Jewish-German Felix Mendelssohn. [12]
Before traveling to Finland he met with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, receiving the false promise that nothing would happen to the statue of the musician. [13] The statue was demolished and its return was questioned its prosemita attitude towards the “Jewish Question”. [13] Goerdeler resigned to propose again to its position of mayor in Leipzig resigning the 31 of March of 1937.
He was offered a high position in the firm Krupp AG. [14] but Hitler prevented it. [14] [3] From that moment he was actively involved in anti-Nazi plots, traveling to France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Balkans, Canada, warning of the dangers of Nazi policies. [14] [15]
He became a member of the private staff of General Ludwig Beck, an opponent of Hitler. [16] He met with Winston Churchill and Robert Vansittart. [17]
In November 1938, in the face of the policy of expulsion of the Jews, he tried to intercede for England to receive 10,000 Polish Jews that the Germans had expelled from Germany and which Poland refused to accept. [18]
In 1939-1940, Goerdeler joins Ulrich von Hassell, General Ludwig Beck, and Johannes Popitz, and an assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler is planned. [19]
In September 1943, Goerdeler asks Jacob Wallenberg to ask the British government to suspend the bombing of Berlin, Stuttgart and Leipzig.
Unlike the Kreisau Circle, Goerdeler, as an economist, was a propeller of capitalism. [20] Some historians as Christof Dipper and Martin Broszat claim that Goerdeler was as antisemitic as the Nazis. [21] In contrast Peter Hoffmann in “The German Resistance and the Holocaust” it rehabilitates. [22]
On Sunday, July 16, 1944, he saw his wife and children in Leipzig for the last time, marching to Berlin to prepare the attack in which Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg would intervene as executive promoter. If successful, he would be named chancellor. [2] [3]
Failed to “putsh”, he escaped from Berlin but was arrested on 12 August in Marienwerder (Kwidzyn). [3] Eight family members were sent to concentration camps, [24] his brother Fritz Goerdeler was sentenced to death and executed on 1 March 1945. [25]
Interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo admitted that the Holocaust was the main reason to overthrow Hitler. [26] On 9 September he was tried in the People’s Court and sentenced to death by the infamous Judge Roland Freisler. He was tortured for months. 27 Days before his execution he wrote a letter testifying that the “Jewish Reinstallation” was the worst of all Nazi crimes. [8] It was hung the 2 of February of 1945 in the prison of Plötzensee in Berlin. Earlier, he wrote a letter that ends with “I ask the world to accept our martyrdom as an apology to the German people. [28]
References
1. Ritter, Gerhard The German Resistance page 17
2. Ritter, Gerhard The German Resistance page 17
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 10 Garrison-Halibut, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, page 521-522
4. Rothfels, page 84.
5. Tooze, page 22.
6. Wheeler-Bennett, page 246.
7. Müller, Klaus-Jürgen “The Structure and Nature of the National Conservative Opposition in Germany up to 1940” pages 133-178 from Aspects of the Third Reich edited by HW Koch, Macmillan: London, United Kingdom page 148
8. Hoffmann, Peter “The German Resistance and the Holocaust” pages 105-126 from Confront! Edited by JJ Michalczyk, Peter Lang Publishers, 2004, page 112
9. Müller page 148.
10. Tooze, page 704.
11. Kershaw, Ian Hitler Hubris , New York: Norton, 1998, 1999 page 578.
12. Hoffmann, pages 113-114.
13. Error in quotation: <ref>Invalid label ; The content of the so-called references has not been definedHoffmann114
14. Wheeler-Bennett, page 386
15. Rothfels, page 85.
16. Müller, Klaus-Jürgen “The Structure and Nature of the National Conservative Opposition in Germany up to 1940” pages 133-178 from Aspects of the Third Reich edited by HW Koch, Macmillan: London, United Kingdom page 152
17. Rothfels, page 126.
18. Error in quotation:<ref>Invalidlabel; The content of the so-called references has not been definedHoffmann115
19. Wheeler-Bennett page 462.
20. Rothfels, pages 103-104.
21. Dipper, Christof “Der Deutsche Widerstand und die Juden” pages 349-380 from Geschichte und Gesellschaft , Volume 9, 1983; Broszat, Martin “Plaieyer für Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus from Merkur , Volume 39, 1985 pages 382-383.
22. Hoffmann, page 112.
23. Ritter, Gerhard, The German Resistance page 285.
24. Wheeler-Bennett, page 686
25. Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
26. Hoffmann, page 117.
27. Ritter, Gerhard The German Resistance pages 311-312
28. Rothfels, page 152

2. Background on the Mad Monarchist http://madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2012/06/monarchist-profile-carl-friedrich.html
"Carl Friedrich Goerdeler was another German monarchist who was a major figure in the anti-Nazi movement. If the now famous 1944 bomb plot against Hitler had succeeded, Goerdeler was expected to become chancellor of the new German government. He was born on July 31, 1884 into a conservative middle-class family of Prussian lawyers and bureaucrats in Posen (an area that is today part of Poland). He grew up in an atmosphere of close family, devout Lutheran faith and German nationalism, which included fidelity to the Prussian/Imperial German crown. He did well in school, went to university, studied law and economics, got married and had five children. During the First World War he served on the Russian front as a company officer and was particularly alarmed at the consequences for Germany of a vengeful Poland being created with Allied support. When he left the army he first entered politics by joining the right-wing DNVP (German National People’s Party) which joined the chorus of all those condemning the Versailles Treaty and for Goerdeler, given where he came from, the ceding of land to Poland was a point of particular outrage.

Nonetheless, Goerdeler was an even more committed anti-communist. When the Polish-Soviet War broke out in 1920 some dock workers in the isolated German city of Danzig wished to take advantage of the crisis by going on strike in an effort to cripple the Polish economy by shutting off imports. Goerdeler worked to stop this plan from going forward because, as much as he disliked the new Poland, he realized that the Soviets were an even greater threat and a Soviet victory over Poland would be disastrous for Germany. In 1922 he was elected mayor of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) and then in 1930 he was elected mayor of Leipzig, earning a reputation as a solid, determined civic official even by authorities of the Weimar Republic which he opposed. In 1931 Goerdeler was appointed Price Commissioner because of his economic expertise when Germany was going through spiraling deflation. Nonetheless, Goerdeler never wavered in his opposition to the Weimar Republic which he described as a proven failure.


More than once Goerdeler was considered as a possible Chancellor of Germany, first by General Kurt von Schleicher and later as a possible replacement for Franz von Papen. However, President Hindenburg opposed him because Goerdeler (and others in the DNVP) blamed Hindenburg for presiding over the armistice and urging the Kaiser to abdicate. In 1932 he was offered a cabinet position in the von Papen government but Goerdeler refused to have anything to do with the Weimar regime. Like many, Goerdeler originally had a favorable impression of Adolf Hitler when he and his Nazi Party first appeared on the scene, though he never joined the NSDAP. He hoped that Hitler could bridge the gap between the failed republic and a more traditional conservative government. Soon, however, he found himself increasingly at odds with the Nazi Party. As mayor of Leipzig he blocked Hitler’s Brown shirts from enforcing a boycott of Jewish businesses and he helped Jews in the city avert punitive Nazi laws against them. Goerdeler became increasingly disgusted with the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi government.

Goerdeler worked within the law to minimize the damage of these measures but the Nazis became concerned enough to start keeping a closer eye on him. In 1934 with inflation still problematic, Hitler turned to Goerdeler and reappointed him Price Commissioner in which post he clashed with Nazi authorities over his opposition to devaluing the Reichmark. He also opposed the Nazi policy of making rearmament a priority over importing food and state control of the economy. He argued in favor of free markets and against government corruption but the Nazi Party were obviously not inclined to listen to him. Still, Goerdeler continued to make his case for closer ties with the western countries, cutting military spending, stopping state interference in the economy and the scrapping the laws that targeted Jews and controlled Churches. Naturally, the Nazi rejected his proposals completely and increasingly came to view him as an enemy of the party (which he was). When his term as mayor of Leipzig ended Goerdeler was to be offered the top spot in the financial department of the massive Krupp corporation but Hitler forced the business to drop the idea.


Goerdeler took a position at a lesser company and began to seriously devote himself to undermining and bringing down the Nazi regime which he hoped to replace with an older style Germany monarchy after the fashion of the government of Bismarck and the early German Empire. He began forming a secret circle of opponents of the Nazi regime but never relented in presenting his ideas to the government in the hope that they might see sense and change their ways. In his business capacity he traveled to many foreign countries and gave early warnings about Nazi foreign policy and tried to convince people that the Nazis were dangerous and would be the ruin of Europe. Nonetheless, as a German nationalist he did favor the return of German-populated territories to Germany but he wanted it done in a more orderly and less bellicose way. Even after the outbreak of World War II he continued to be active and considered himself the leader of “the” opposition to Hitler. Military intelligence chief Wilhelm Canaris aided him and he formed alliances with Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, General Henning von Tresckow, General Ludwig Beck and Count von Moltke among others. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a good friend of Goerdeler’s and although his immediate circle mostly shared his conservative views he worked with social democrats as well who wanted to see the end of Nazism in Germany.

One thing Goerdeler certainly was not though was a revolutionary and even far into the war he seemed convinced that if he could only explain things to Hitler and the Nazi high command they would have to see that he was right and reverse course. He had also spoken to foreign friends before the war and his own civilian and military contacts during the war that he hoped to see the monarchy restored. As it became clear that Hitler could not be reasoned with and would have to be removed from power by force, Goerdeler began to outline his vision for a post-Nazi Germany. He planned to have a constitutional monarchy, in somewhat the same style as Great Britain, with Prince Oskar of Prussia on the throne as the new Kaiser. Some wanted simply a complete restoration of the old German Empire but Goerdeler, though he had once wanted the same, opposed this as impractical and unlikely to be acceptable to the Allied powers. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with Goerdeler and his circle of friends on this point and the famous Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg was of the opinion that it would be unrealistic to attempt any sort of return to the monarchy and that the Soviets might make better allies than the western nations.


Goerdeler at his "trial"
The anti-Nazi movement could in many ways be divided into two camps. Goerdeler was in the more traditional, wanting the monarchy restored, looking to the west and supporting free market capitalism. The other, such as many members of the Kreisau Circle, wanted a republican government, a socialist economy and looked to the east. There was also some disagreement over what to do with Hitler. Many wanted him to be assassinated at once but Goerdeler thought doing so would only make a martyr of him and reflect poorly on the plotters. Goerdeler wanted Hitler to be arrested, put on trial and then executed if found guilty (as he surely would have been). As the 1944 bomb plot was planned out, Goerdeler hoped to have Field Marshal Rommel play a prominent role in the new government but Rommel, though he stated he would accept a position in such a government, wanted nothing to do with any assassination. Instead it was decided that Colonel General Ludwig Beck would serve as President/Regent with Goerdeler as Chancellor.

Goerdeler was certain everything would work out but, just prior to the coup attempt, an order went out for his arrest and he had to go into hiding. He had only a radio to listen to in order to know if everything went as planned when the fateful day came. Of course, as we know, it did not. The bomb planted by Graf von Stauffenberg failed to kill Hitler and the attempted coup was easily suppressed by the Berlin garrison. Goerdeler managed to get out of Berlin but was arrested by the Gestapo in East Prussia. His family were sent to a concentration camp and Goerdeler, after a show trial at the People’s Court, was sentenced to death for treason. He was hanged on February 2, 1945 in Berlin, writing in his last letter, “I ask the world to accept our martyrdom as penance for the German people”."

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