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 serve under the standard of Christ the Eternal King. Similarly, Delp’s prison experience was a decisive stage in his spiritual formation. The notion of inner freedom in Delp’s farewell letter to von Tattenbach alluded to the Ignatian charism of realizing the disposition to choose and do God’s will. Indeed, in recognition of this time as a period of being gifted with God’s presence, Delp entered into the realm of grace in which the path and the will of God was step by step disclosed. This patient willingness to learn and receive from God corresponded to the Ignatian concept of indifference, according to which one is freed from inordinate attachments and passions to love God first and foremost.172
All creaturely indifference possesses a mysterious magis that points to God. In a letter dated January 11, 1945, and addressed to his mother, Delp said,
Stay brave and upright. It is the Lord God who decides our destiny. We want to give ourselves to him without being bitter. I understand that this is difficult for you, dear Mother, but it must be borne. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for every single thing that you have given to me and have been for me . . . . Stay strong, dear Mother. Pray for me. When I am with God, I will always pray and plead on your behalf and make up for all the love I have failed to give. We will see each other again. After a little while, we will be together again. Then it will be forever in God’s joy.173
In another letter, written on the same day and addressed to Marianne Hapig and Marianne Pünder, Delp wrote,
Now I am going down the other path. Whatever God wills, let it be done and surrendered into his freedom and goodness. That was no court of law, but an orgy of hatred. . . .
Due to the manner of the trial, my life has received a purpose for which one can live and die . . . . If I have to die, at least I know why. Who else today [among the many who are dying] knows that much? We are going to be killed as witnesses for these four truths,174 and if I am allowed to live, I know what my sole goal is in the future.175
In these two letters, Delp acknowledged that the ever-greater God expresses himself in the concrete lives of men and
