Adam von Trott
Sir: You have published an article 'Adam von Trott, Oxford, America and the anti-Nazis' (October 7) which is a misrepresentation of a man who gave his life in a prolonged struggle to overthrow Hitler.
I will not attempt to refute the mass of mistaken, if no doubt sincere, statements made by your contributor, Mr Lionel Gelber. I have offered my own knowledge of Trott elsewhere (Encunter, June 1969). But I feel it is only fair to your readers to say that, although Trott's many English and American friends held different views of the purpose of his journeys in the years preceding his death as a member of the plot to kill Hitler, never have I read one so filled with hatred, confusion and — I am sorry to say it — sheer nonsense as this account by Mr Gelber.
I have no wish to embark on a sterile controversy, but as a close friend of Trott's, I feel I should make two points. First, Trott's attempts in 1939-40 (which were well known to Stafford Cripps. Reinhold Niebuhr, Wilfrid Israel and a few others, including me) were to find a way of overthrowing Hitler without a world war. His method was a conspiracy between London and Washington with the German opposition, particularly that within the German Army, which alone had the means to strike. This effort was, to my mind, wholly desirable and in the interests of everybody, except the Nazis. That it inay have been an impossible aim is evident. That it laid him open to misunderstanding is obvious.
Secondly, in my opinion, nobody who lived as ad'adult through the vast massacres and unbelievable cruelties of Hitler's war can feel quite sure that he did all that he could to prevent or shorten that terrible event. OnlY; the dead can have given all In *Lc ause.,3hose Germans, like TrOttrtioN9x1c9.d against the Naiis tuitleT noses, endured, a delitiiera,t64,0.w death of peciugar, ,011'0,r, suspended from meat hooka. Anybpdy who made a lesser ..Personal sacrifice should, surely, be slow to write off and, indeed, traduce 'their efforts fr'om th0 safety of today.
Dav,id Astor Editor, The Observer, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4
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