‘Another’ Germany: The Secret Foreign Contacts of Ulrich von Hassell during the Second World War

Abstract

foreign contacts of the German opposition to Adolf Hitler, particularly after the summer of 1938, offer some of the most interesting prospects for research into the Resistance. In the first volume of the Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, published in 1953, Hans Rothfels, a pioneer in this field, introduced an article by J. Lonsdale Bryans in which Bryans describes the intermediary role he played in talks between a leading representative of the conservative opposition to Hitler, Ulrich von Hassell,1 and the British foreign office at the beginning of 1940. Criticism of the manner of these negotiations, and interest in them, have not yet subsided.2 Without doubt, Hassell's efforts rank with the Vatican negotiations of October 1939 to May 1940 (led by Josef Miiller, one of the group around Hans Oster and Franz Haider), and with Carl Goerdeler's venture of May 1941,3 as among the most important foreign contacts of the German opposition in the first phase of the Second World War. They also stand at the centre of this essay, which focuses mainly on the period between the German invasion of Poland in September 1939