not have been so severe on what he calls Professor Frederick Schumann's"fantastic theory
of the 'Pre-Munich Plot.'" (14)
The last piece of evidence which we might mention to support the theory—not of a
plot, perhaps, but that the Munich surrender was unnecessary and took place because
Chamberlain and his associates wanted to dismember Czechoslovakia—is even more
incriminating. As a result of the inadequate rearmament of Germany, a group of
conservatives within the regime formed a plot to liquidate Hitler and his close supporters
if it appeared that his policy in Czechoslovakia would result in war. This group, chiefly
army officers, included men on the highest level of government. In the group were
Colonel General Ludwig Beck (Chief of the General Staff), Field Marshal von Witzleben,
General Georg Thomas, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (Mayor of Leipzig in 1930-1936),
Ulrich von Hassell (ex-Ambassador to Italy), Johannes Popitz (Prussian Minister of
Finance), and Paul Schmidt (Hitler's private interpreter). This group formed a plot to kill
Hitler and remove the Nazis from power. The date was set eventually for 28 September
1938. Lord Halifax, on 5 September 1938, was informed of the plot by Theodore Kordt,
the German charge d'affaires in London, whose brother, Erich Kordt, chief of
Ribbentrop's office in the Foreign Ministry, was one of the conspirators. The message
which Kordt gave to Halifax begged the British government to stand fast with
Czechoslovakia in the Sudeten crisis and to make perfectly clear that Britain would go to
war if Germany violated Czechoslovakian territory. The plot was canceled at noon on 28
September, when the news reached Berlin that Chamberlain was going to Munich. It was
this plot which eventually, after many false starts, reached fruition in the attempt to
assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944.
There can be little doubt that the Milner Group knew of these anti-Nazi plots
within Germany. Several of the plotters were former Rhodes Scholars and were in
touch with members of the inner circle of the Milner Group in the period up to
1943, if not later. One of the leaders of the anti-Hitler plotters in Germany, Helmuth
von Moltke, was probably a member of the Milner Group as well as intellectual
leader of the conspirators in Germany. Count von Moltke was the son of the German
commander of 1914 and grandnephew of the German commander of 1870. His mother,
Dorothy Rose-Innes, was the daughter of Sir James Rose-Innes, whom Milner made
Chief Justice of the Transvaal in 1902. Sir James was a supporter of Rhodes and had been
Attorney General in Rhodes's ministry in 1890. He was Chief Justice of South Africa in
1914-1927 and was always close to the Milner Group. The von Moltkes were Christian
Scientists, and Dorothy, as Countess von Moltke after 1905, was one of the persons who
translated Mary Baker Eddy's
son of Dorothy, and Count von Moltke after his father's death in 1938, was openly anti-
Nazi and came to England in 1934 to join the English bar. He visited Lionel Curtis, at his
mother's suggestion, and "was made a member of the family, rooms in Duke of York
Street being put at his disposal, and Kidlington and All Souls thrown open to him at
week-ends; the opportunities of contact which these brought with them were exploited to
the full.... He was often in England until the summer of 1939, and in 1937 visited South
Africa and the grandparents there to whom he was deeply attached." This quotation, from
lines that Moltke became a member of the Milner Group. It might be added that Curtis
also visited the Rose-Innes family in South Africa while Helmuth was there in 1937.
Von Moltke kept in close contact with both Curtis and Lothian even after the war
began in 1939. He was made adviser on international law to the Supreme Command of
the German Armed Forces (OKW) in 1939 and retained this position until his arrest in
1944. The intellectual leader of the German Underground, he was the inspiration and
addressee of Dorothy Thompson's book
plotters called the"Kreisau Circle," named after his estate in Silesia. After his execution
by the Nazis in January 1945, his connection with the Milner Group was revealed, to
those able to interpret the evidence, in the June 1946 issue of
article extolled Moltke and reprinted a number of his letters. The same article, with an