Kreisau Circle

The Kreisau Circle (German: Kreisauer Kreis) was the name the Nazi Gestapo gave to a group of conservative German dissidents centered on the estate of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke at Kreisau, Silesia. It is regarded as one of the main centers of German opposition to the Nazi regime. The difficulty for all such dissidents was how to reconcile national-conservative attitudes with opposition to the Nazis, when the Nazis had subverted the state to such an extent that the two were almost inextricable.

The principal members were Helmuth von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Adam von Trott zu Solz. Most members of the group were conservatives from the traditional German aristocracy and gentry, but the circle also included people from a wide variety of backgrounds. They included two Jesuit priests, two Lutheran pastors, conservatives, liberals, monarchists, landowners, former trade-union leaders and diplomats.

The Kreisau Circle maintained contact with other resistance groups. Members of the circle worked to inform the Western Allies, especially the United Kingdom, about political conditions within the Third Reich and the dangers and weaknesses of Nazism. The circle's main focus was to plan and propose a peacetime government for Germany; they did not ever appear to have made any plans to overthrow the Nazi state. As Moltke wrote to his wife just before his execution, "we are to be hanged for thinking together."

The long meetings and discussions at Kreisau developed a plan for society to be based on Christian values. Some of them also wanted to restore the German monarchy to prevent another dictatorship. Most wanted the regeneration of Germany after the end of Nazism to be based on Christian principles, for basic freedoms to be restored, and envisioned a Germany consisting of a federal state with a weak central government based on small self-governing communities, so as to avoid a manipulation of the whole of society like the one Hitler had achieved.

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