Before the People’s Court

In the trials against the leading members of the Kreisau Circle before the People’s Court, Roland Freisler recognized that they were the most radical alternative to the Nazi system he represented. It was logical that he sentenced them to hanging or to prison. What likely provoked him most was that every one of them, including the Social Democrats who sympathized with the religious socialist movement, attested to their Christian motivation to resist the totalitarian system of ideology and action.

In one of his tirades during the trial in early January of 1945, Freisler remarked to von Moltke, Christianity and we are similar in one way: we demand the entire person! (Moltke, Land, 339). In connection with this, Moltke commented in a letter to his wife Freya that only Freisler figured me out and he is also the only one of the whole lot who knows why he has to kill me.