Against the Titans. Peter Nguyen
Freisler shouted. He screamed that such talk amounted to treason and launched into a tirade against Delp:
You miserable creep, you clerical nobody—who dares to want the life of our beloved Fuhrer taken . . . a rat—that should be stamped on and crushed. Now tell us, what brought you as a priest to abandon the pulpit and get mixed up in German politics with a subversive like Count Moltke and a troublemaker like the Protestant Gerstenmaier? Come on, answer.161
Delp calmly and firmly responded with the following:
I can preach forever, and with whatever skill I have I can work with people and keep setting them straight. But as long as people have to live in a way that is inhuman and lacking in dignity, that is as long as the average person will succumb to circumstances and will neither pray nor think. A fundamental change in the conditions of life is needed.162
In the case of his trial, Delp understood that fidelity to his God-given mission required him to suffer the evil of being imprisoned and mocked. The Nazis’ reign of sin and oppression was absorbed by Delp’s courageous fidelity to his Christian faith.
The following day, it was Moltke’s turn to face Freisler’s interrogation and the continued assault on the Christian faith and the Jesuits. Again, the initial questions were calm. Then, in expected fashion, Freisler began to raise his voice when broaching the issues related to Moltke’s anticipation of a German defeat and his plan for a new German society. Freisler exploded:
All Adolf Hitler’s officials set about their work on the assumption of victory, and that applies just as much to the High Command as anywhere else. I simply won’t listen to that kind of thing—and even were it not the case, it is clearly the duty of every single man for his part to promote confidence in victory.163
Freisler’s final tirade targeted Moltke’s collaboration with Delp and the Society of Jesus:
And who was present [at these meetings]? A Jesuit father! Of all people, a Jesuit father! And a Protestant minister, and three others who were later condemned to death for complicity in the 20 July plot! And not a single National Socialist! No, not one! And the provincial head of the Jesuits, you know him, too! He even came to Kreisau once! A provincial of the Jesuits, one of the highest officials of Germany would not touch a Jesuit with a barge-pole! People who have been excluded from military service because of their attitude! If I know there’s a Provincial of the Jesuits in a town, it is almost enough to keep me out of town altogether! And the other reverend gentleman! What was he after there? Such people should confine their attention to the hereafter, and leave us here in peace! And you went visiting bishops! Looking for something you lost, I suppose! Where did you get your orders from? You get your orders from the Führer and the National Socialist Party. That goes for you as much as any other German!164
In further reflection upon the interrogation, Moltke’s final letter to his wife Freya highlighted two critical points. The first was that the members of the Kreisau Circle were not being condemned for something they were accused of (participating in the assassination attempt against Hitler) but rather for having considered an alternative to Nazi Germany. Moltke wrote:
The beauty of the judgment on these lines is the following: it established that we did not want to use any force; it established that we did not take a single step towards organization, did not talk to a single man about the question of whether he was willing to take any post.165
The second point Moltke’s letter highlighted concerned the Christian faith of the Kreisau Circle. Throughout the trial, Freisler insisted that the members of the Kreisau Circle owed Adolf Hitler their loyalty, whereas the accused argued that they had a higher duty of fidelity to God. It was significant, for Moltke, that the members of the Kreisau Circle were being condemned for their Christian convictions.
The decisive moment in the trial, according to Moltke’s letter to Freya, was the following utterance of Freisler: “Herr Graf, we National Socialists and Christianity have one thing in common and one only: we demand the whole man.”166 Moltke reflected on this statement in his letter:
I don’t know if the others sitting there took it all in, for it was sort of a dialogue—a spiritual one between [Freisler] and myself, for I could not utter many words—in which we two got to know each other through and through. Of the whole gang, Freisler was the only one who recognized me, and of the whole gang he is the only one who knows why he has to kill me. There was nothing about a “complicated man” or “complicated thoughts” or “ideology,” but the “fig leaf is off.” But only for Herr Freisler. We talked as it were in a vacuum. He made not a single joke at my expense, as he had done with Delp and Eugen. No, this was in grim earnest: “From whom do you take your orders? From the Beyond or from Adolf Hitler? Who commands your loyalty and your faith?” All rhetorical questions, of course. Anyhow, Freisler is the first National Socialist, who has grasped who I am, and the good Müller [Gestapo chief] is a simpleton by comparison.167
Overall, Moltke’s last letter to his wife about the trial showed relief, gratitude, and joy. In this trial, he recognized that Freisler had confessed the incompatibility between Nazism and Christianity. It was an incompatibility that the regime had always been at pains to conceal or deny, but now the hostility was out in the open:
Was it clear what he said there? Just think how wonderfully God prepared this His unworthy vessel . . . . [H]e endowed me with this socialistic leaning, which freed me as a great landowner from any suspicion of looking after my own interests. Then he humbled me as a great landowner as I have never been humbled before, so that I had to lose all pride, so that at last I understand my sinfulness after 38 years, so that I had to learn to beg for forgiveness and to trust in his mercy . . . . Then he endowed me with faith, hope, and love, with a wealth of these that is truly overwhelming. Then he let me talk with Eugen and Delp and clarify things. And, then he gave to Eugen and Delp, through the hope, the human hope they have, the weakness which makes their case secondary, and thereby removed the denominational factor; and then your husband was chosen, as a Protestant, to be above all attacked and condemned for his friendship with Catholics, and therefore he stood before Freisler not as a Protestant, not as a big landowner, not as a nobleman, not as a Prussian, not as a German—all that was explicitly excluded in the trial . . . but as a Christian and nothing else.168
In this remarkable letter, Moltke points out that he received the gift of friendship from the imprisoned men of the Kreisau Circle, including Delp. These men when they entered into friendship with one another became gifts to one another, summoning each other to walk the pathway to the fullness of life.
After the two-day trial, Delp was sure of his fate. The prosecution had asked for the death sentence. He began to write his farewell messages to family, friends, and brother Jesuits. In a letter, dated January 10, 1945, and addressed to von Tattenbach, Delp wrote,
Now I really have to write you a farewell letter. I see no other possibility anymore. The Lord wants a sacrifice. All these hard weeks have had as their purpose a schooling in inner freedom. Up to now, he has kept me from breaking down and going into shock. He’ll also safeguard me get through the final hours. He often carries me as if I’m a child caught in a dream . . . . The trial was a big farce . . . . It was a gross insult to the Church and the Society. A Jesuit is and remains a degenerate. It was a retaliation for Rösch’s disappearance and my refusal to renounce my vows . . . . What I experienced at the hands of the Gestapo I noticed here again: this intense onslaught of hatred against the Church and the Society. So now at least my cause has received an authentic purpose.169
The German word for “schooling” used in Delp’s letter was Erziehung.170 Delp’s experience in a Nazi prison was analogous to St. Ignatius of Loyola’s experience of Manresa in Catalonia in 1522. In the Jesuit tradition, this experience has been perceived as a decisive stage in Ignatius’ spiritual formation. Ignatius tells the readers of his autobiography that at Manresa “God treated him at this time just as a schoolmaster treats a child whom he is teaching.”171 Under God’s teaching, Ignatius’ mind was enlightened and his understanding was deepened. He was transformed from a soldier in the service of the Duke of Nájera into a spiritual soldier of Christ and his mission was to