Part 1 of 2
INTRODUCTIONby Thomas Meyer
People on earth must learn from events that thoughts are facts.
-- Helmuth von Moltke, May 24, 1918
1. Twelve questions or why this book was publishedThis book provides an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of some key questions with which humanity was and still is confronted in the 20th century. These questions can be summarized as follows: 1. What were the origins of the First World War? 2. What was the share or "guilt" of Germany in its unfolding, and what was the share of other European nations? 3. What is the true task of the German nation in the world and why did Germany – during the darkest hour of its history – degenerate into Hitlerism? 4. Is there also a spiritual evolution of individual man as well as of nations and humanity as a whole? 5. What is the destiny of the individual human soul after death? 6. Is there reincarnation and if so in what way does it bear on historical events? 7. What is the function of evil in evolution? 8. What is – after the demolition of all old social patterns and the structure of the classical nation state – the future shape Europe has to give itself? 9. How can a better understanding between the peoples of the world be attained for the third millennium? 10. Or is there an inevitably increasing "clash of civilisations" awaiting humanity in the future? 11. Can man become able to really "learn" from history? 12. Is there a science of the spirit and if so what can it contribute to solve the above questions?
All these questions are intimately linked up with the life and in a very literal sense also with the death of Helmuth von Moltke who in the last two years of his life became a friend and pupil of Rudolf Steiner (1861 – 1925), the Austrian born philosopher and founder of spiritual science later called "Anthroposophy". But let us first turn to some biographical facts from the life of the former, as he is often confounded with certain other personalities of the same name.
2. Which Moltke?The name of Helmuth von Moltke is usually identified with the Prussian field marshal who won the battle against the Austrians in 1866 and against the French in 1870/71 and who died in 1893. In other words, it is linked with the foundation and rise of the German Reich. Or else one thinks of Helmut James of Moltke who was a leading figure in organising the opposition against Hitler and who was executed in January 1945.
This book primarily contains documents from and about that third Moltke, who was the nephew of the field marshal and who led the German army into World War I. As much as his two namesakes are generally known and appreciated today as little known or rightly understood is this third important son of the Moltke family. Since 1995 a history of the Moltke family focusing on these three bearers of the name is available in English: Otto Friedrichs book Blood & Iron – from Bismarck to Hitler – the von Moltke Family's impact on German History.1 The headings of the main parts of the book are "The Field Marshal", "The Martyr" and "The Nervous Nephew", and they clearly reflect the factual recognition of the first, the high appreciation of the second and the prejudice against the third Moltke still prevailing nowadays. In her widely read book The Guns of August Barbara Tuchman 2 provides a similarly biased picture of this Moltke, and within most German language publications on the history of the First World War the general is by no means treated in a more balanced manner 3. Another source on Moltke for the English speaking public is The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft 4. This book however which enjoys a certain popularity among some people with uncritical occult interests is full of inadequacies and wild fantasies 5. In one word: Moltke is either unknown or depicted in a very distorted way.
One of the Chief aims of the present publication therefore has to be to set the record on him straight. And one of the key issues of this record is his real association with Rudolf Steiner (1861 – 1925) the founder of spiritual science later called "Anthroposophy". This is not an easy task as both Moltke and Steiner as well as their close association have been the object of wild speculations and heavy slandering.
3. Who was Helmuth von Moltke?Helmuth von Moltke was born on May 23rd 1848 on the estate of Gerstorff in Mecklenburg (Northern Germany). The Moltke family had been deprived of much of its wealth in the era of the Napoleonic wars. The atmosphere was one of old and noble protestant families, landowners and officers of a more conservative kind with no inclinations whatsoever to join in the choir of revolutionary voices that sounded throughout Europa in that year.
Helmuth (Johannes Ludwig) was the second son of Augusta (born von Krohn) and Adolph von Moltke, the brother of the later fieldmarshal Helmuth von Moltke. He spent his early childhood on the idyllic river island of Rantzau in the North of Hamburg. Four years before his death Moltke is making a pleasure trip in a Zeppelin airship, overflying this very spot where he spent the happiest years of his childhood. And this little scene is like a foreshadowing of what was going to happen after his death, but this is for later ...
The young Moltke was highly interested in literature, history and music. He learned to play the cello with great skill and was to cultivate the arts during his whole life. After visiting the high school of Hamburg Altona Moltke decided for a military career, though he would almost have chosen to become a merchant or a seaman, while in his youth he had wished to become a forester. Apart from this being a very usual choice for a member of the impoverished nobility, it was in his case also motivated by the high esteem he had always felt for his uncle.
Thus at the age of 22 he participated in the German-French war. Here he had the first severe encounter with the reality and mystery of death: while he himself hardly escaped it, his lieutenant told him just before the first battle that he was going to die and presented him a photograph on which he put a little cross instead of his signature. The whole company was killed in this battle – except Moltke.
When the German Reich was proclaimed in Versailles in January 1871 this was a decisive happening in Moltke's life. For this Reich, he felt, he was going to live and work with all his strength – for as the vessel of the impulses of Goethe and Bach and Beethoven and innumerable other spirits it seemed very worthy of consolidation and protection. That this vessel was more and more filling itself with quite another sort of impulses of empty power striving and nationalistic elements was one of the most painful disappointments Moltke had to realize and overcome during his lifetime.
In 1876 he entered the "Prussian Garde" and soon afterwards the Chief of the General Staff and the military academy of Berlin. Moltke's appreciation of his uncle whose personal adjutant he had become was by no means confined to the strategic abilities of the field marshal. For it was especially in the house of the older Moltke that the younger enjoyed many excellent music performances and met highly reputed singers and musicians. Joseph Joachim the violinist and composer performed regularly. And Joachim was a close friend of Herman Grimm the Goethe scholar and writer of the excellent biography on Michelangelo. Grimm himself was the discoverer and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson whom he introduced in Germany. Joachim' son Herman later became a colleague of the younger Moltke in the General Staff; he had deep interests in spiritual questions, become a devoted freemason and a pupil of Rudolf Steiner. He died about a year after Moltke in 1917. Thus there was a sort of cosmopolitan cultural and artistic atmosphere in the house of the older Moltke frequently visited by the younger. Almost all the letters in Part One of this book reflect something of this artistic side of Moltke: They are written in a prose which shows some kind of natural excellency. The same atmosphere prevailed in Kreisau (Silesia) the field marshal's retreat with which the Kaiser had rewarded him for his victory of 1866. And it was only in the logic of things, that Kreisau which thus harboured the highest appreciation of true Germanic cultural achievements later became with Helmuth James von Moltke the symbol for the unrelenting opposition against Hitler.
Helmuth von Moltke was in his late twenties when he met the first of the three personalities which were – beside his uncle – to become the three pillars of his mature life: Eliza Countess of Molkte-Huitfeldt from a Danish side branch of the family. After her only Wilhelm II and Rudolf Steiner played a similarly decisive part in Moltke's life, of course, in quite different respects. Eliza was born in 1859 in Quesarum (Sweden), had herself deep artistic and spiritual interests and was – after a materialistic phase – confronted at an early age with some spiritistic phenomena which convinced her of the reality of a living spiritual world. On the other hand she was a woman with both feet on the ground and with a keen sense for appreciating other people in a very realistic way. The letters in Part One are almost exclusively addressed to her and show the deep bond of mutual understanding between the two lovers who married in 1878. Four children were born: Wilhelm (called Bill, 1881), Astrid (later countess Bethusy-Huc, 1882), Else (later Koennecke, 1885) and Adam (1887). Astrid shared most interests of her parents, she had many far reaching spiritual experiences herself and it was her who treasured the documents published in Part Two for many decades.
In 1888 Wilhelm II. became the German emperor. And with this the second "pillar" in Moltke's life was pompously erected before his eyes.
In the nineties Moltke had to travel quite frequently and quite extensively, sometimes as emissary of Wilhelm II. And it is evident from his letters that he had a special love for Russia. But despite this love something mysterious and almost uncanny can be felt in the way he describes his first encounter with Tsar Nicholas II. in October 1895. When leaving the room of the Tsar one of his gloves fell to the ground as if pointing to a future disharmony between Germany and Russia ...
Moltke was always determined not to become one-sided in his world view and therefore pursued the historical, philosophical and theological literature of his day. He studied Chamberlain, Bebel, Eduard von Hartmann and the early works of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner had met Eliza von Moltke in 1903 in Berlin, and it was Eliza who told her husband about the spiritual science which Steiner was erecting on the foundations of what Goethe had inaugurated. Thus Moltke studied Steiner's books on Nietzsche and Haeckel as well as his Theosophy and on March 8th 1904 he writes to his wife: "No other philosophizing author has so far been more comprehensible to me than he." But he is no rash "believer". He submits everything he reads to the severe test of the common sense and to the process of a kind of slow and thorough mental digestion. And, contrary to what has been told and retold many times, it was never him who invited Steiner to his Berlin home, but Eliza. And it was never matters belonging to Moltke's professional sphere which were discussed at those occasions, but spiritual or cultural questions. There was one exception to this rule, and this was shortly before Moltke died. It is important to keep this in mind, for the theory has been invented that Moltke lost the Battle of the Marne under Steiner's influence! 3
One year after having encountered Rudolf Steiner, Moltke was offered by Wilhelm II. the post of the Chief of the General Staff, as Count Schlieffen, his predecessor, was getting too old. It was Schlieffen who – vis à vis the complicated European system of federations – had begun to prepare Germany for the eventuality of a war on two fronts, and the younger Moltke was to take over and refine this strategy. But first he rejected the Kaiser's offer. He hoped "that this cup would pass me by". And in a conversation with the Kaiser he asked him whether he hoped to win twice in the same lottery – the younger Moltke's modesty did not dare to reckon with the victories and successes of his great uncle. As the Kaiser insisted on him, Moltke insisted on having a totally frank conversation with him. In this conversation which took place in January 1905 Moltke explained the condition under which he might be ready to accept the post: Wilhelm had to keep out of any military action. For in the manoeuvers the Kaiser used to take an active part with the consequence that his army regularly had to win. This had loosened the bonds of confidence in the army considerably. The Kaiser accepted Moltke's condition and definitely appointed him in January 1906. It is in the letter of January 29th 1905 included in Part One of this book that Moltke tells us this important story which shows his admirable lack of personal ambition, his sense of moral responsibility and his unusual straightforwardness in matters of truth.
Despite the new burden on Moltke's shoulders the letters written to his wife between 1906 and the outbreak of the war still reflect his interest in religious and cultural affairs or in visiting old sites like the famous Odilie's Mount in the Vosges (in June 1911). But as his life was now so closely linked to the destiny of Germany it became more and more a mirror of this destiny of his own folk.
Though Moltke was certainly not personally interested in leading Germany into a war, he was realistic enough to see that events in Europe were increasingly tending towards it. On the one hand there was the beginning rivalry between Germany and England on the level of trade and commerce. As early as 1905 (3rd of August) Moltke writes to his wife: "There is no need at present to fear the worst but there is enough inflammable matter around (...) The worst part for us is England's jealousy about our expanding commerce and industrial development."
On the other hand Moltke was very aware of the shortcomings of the Slavic people within the allied Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy which led to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and thereby triggered off the Serbian-Austrian conflict. We consciously say Serbian-Austrian conflict, for there was no immediate necessity for Russia to ever involve itself in the conflict by mobilizing all its armies.
4. Illusions and Expectations on August 1st 1914For Moltke the outbreak of war coincided with the sudden and totally unexpected break of confidence between the Kaiser and himself. This was by no means a purely personal or private affair but it had in impact on the whole future development of events.
What has brought about this tragic event which stood at the very beginning of the War in Germany? Let us briefly look at what happened in Berlin and London on August 1st.
At 5 pm the Kaiser proclaimed the general mobilization. Russia had effected its general mobilization already the day before which was a threat not only to the Austrians but to Germany as well. France had like Germany ordered the general mobilization on August 1st.
Shortly after 5 pm a telegram from Karl Max von Lichnowsky the German ambassador in London, arrived in Berlin. Lord Edward Grey, the head of the British Foreign Office, allegedly declared to Lichnowsky that "England would pledge herself to prevent France from joining a war against Germany if Germany in turn were to pledge herself not to commit any hostile action against France". On the basis of this telegram the Kaiser believed that England would adopt a neutral stance and would itself influence France towards neutrality if Germany refrained from marching through Belgium as provided for in the Schlieffen plan. The Kaiser sent for Moltke, explained the "new" situation and joyfully declared: "Now we simply post our entire army to the East!" With this action he broke his own pledge given to Moltke as the condition for his acceptance of the post of the Chief of the Staff. Thus the Kaiser who was an absolute dilletante in matters of war strategy destroyed the confidence between him and Moltke and was about to destroy years of the minutest planning. Moltke refused to obey the new "order" of His Majesty. What followed were without any doubt the most painful hours in the life of Helmuth von Moltke who was sitting in his room, "in sombre mood".
In the late evening a second telegram arrived, this time from George V. It destroyed the illusion of a serious intention on the part of the British and the French to maintain neutrality. The Kaiser, already in his bedroom, again sent for Moltke and said: "Now you may do as you wish!" Barbara Tuchman's comment on this scene is: "Moltke, who clung to the prearranged plan, lacked the necessary courage" for such a change.6 It was however not a question of courage at all, but of a realistic assessment of the European situation. And the second telegram would have required even more of this strange sort of "courage" – to change the whole strategy once more! To Moltke's keen eye for political realities the first telegram had seemed illusory from the outset.
5. Some Deeper Causes for the Outbreak of the WarThe movement of German troops into Belgium on the 3rd of August caused Britain, as is well known, to declare War. If, as has always been emphasised, the key political powers in Great Britain had indeed wished for nothing more than to keep out of war, it is difficult to reconcile the actual conduct of the British Government between the 1st and the 3rd of August 1914 with this desire. This is a point to which historians have given too little or no attention so far.
Nevertheless, it has been documented long ago, though this is by no means widely enough known, that in certain circles in England to which Edward VII also belonged there had already in the 80's been talk of the necessity of the next great European War. C.G. Harrison very openly spoke about such views in his lectures The Transcendental Universe held in 1893 in a London club 7. Such views were linked with definite plans for a radical restructuring of all future social conditions in Europe and in the Slavic East. In place of the old monarchies there were to be republics all over – indeed in Germany there was to be more than one! And Russia had been selected as Terra Nova for "experiments in socialism" unsuited for the Western population. An apparently harmless echo of such far sighted international planning in the West – of which there has hitherto been no evidence in Central Europe – may be found in the Christmas edition of the satirical magazine Truth which illustrates such intentions in a remarkable way on a map of Europe. The map is entitled "The Kaiser's Dream" and shows Wilhelm II. revealing his worst fears for the future under the influence of hypnosis. What does he see? He sees a completely post-monarchic Europe!
Everywhere republics, and over Russia the enigmatic words "Russian desert" which means territory for experimenting with new forms of social conditions.
Was not the Kaiser, with his sabre rattling superficiality and pomposity indeed an idle dreamer, compared to the skilled statesmen of the West, such as Disraeli, Lord Salisbury, Lord Rosebery or Gladstone – as may be seen by his behaviour on the 1st of August 1914? And were not Lord Rosebery or Cecil Rhodes and others much more realistic in their "dreams" than Wilhelm had ever been in his ordinary waking life? And did they not "dream" of the universal power that should be given to the English speaking nations in the modern industrialized era? And did some of these statesmen like Rhodes not think in terms of long range spiritual laws governing the rise and decline of nations and people?
Was it not so that German export figures had risen to alarming heights in the years preceding the war? Did they not represent unwanted competition for Great Britain? And how could one become the teacher and thus the ruler of the young slavic peoples in the "Russian desert", if an economically and and politically strong Central Europe remained independent between the East and the West?
Certainly the British people did not want War, as it is rarely ever the people which wants any wars. Neither did many leading Members of the Parliament. The deciding influence on Britain's diplomatic moves in the first days of August must therefore have issued from quite other circles in Great Britain. The time may not be too far off when such questions may be taken more seriously in connection with the outbreak of the First World War and possibly also in relation to the near future of Europe.
6. A Document that could have changed World HistoryIt cannot be denied that there would still have been a possibility to confine the war to the East, if an official British declaration of neutrality would have been given. And it was tried on the part of Germany to get such an English guarantee. On the same 1st of August Lichnowsky had put the question to the British Foreign Minister Grey, "whether Britain would agree to remain neutral if the Germans respected Belgium's neutrality. Sir Edward Grey would not give this assurance, wishing to keep his options open." 8 Thus it would only have needed a firm commitment on the part of Sir Edward Grey for the war in the West to have been avoided. These are the two facts which historians up to this day have not dealt with in due objectivity: 1. There was no need for Russia to order general mobilization at this stage of events. 2. England had the choice of giving an assurance of neutrality in the West. 3. In the night of the 30th to the 31st of July Helmuth von Moltke decided to wait for a third confirmation of the mobilization in Russia (which was also directed against Germany), before he was going to advise General mobilization to the Kaiser. 9 It was and is therefore utterly unjustified to accuse a nation with such a carefully considering military leadership as represented by Moltke and such a chaotic leadership as provided by Wilhelm II. to have willingly and consciously led Europe into the abyss of the War. This however was stated in the Versailles treaty of 1919 where Germany was the object of the sole "war-guilt", and this was restated again and again, also by German historians, up to this day. (To this whole question see also notes 55 – 57 of Part One and note 66 of Part Two) And if in anything at all – Hitler was right in not recognizing the guilt paragraph of this treaty. But it would have been far better for the destiny of Europe and the world in the 20th century if others before him would not have recognized it.
It is precisely in this direction that Rudolf Steiner took action after Moltke's death in 1916 and before the final proclamation of the so called peace treaty of Versailles. Steiner's endeavours in this direction were based on the "Reflections and Memories" of Moltke which he wrote down in November 1914, immediately after his dismissal by the Kaiser from the post of Chief of the General Staff (see next heading). Moltke wrote these memories for his wife, without any intention of ever publishing them. In 1919 Eliza von Moltke consented to a publication by Steiner. Steiner wrote a foreword and published the memories under the title "Who was to blame for the War? Thoughts and Recollections of the Chief of Staff H. v. Moltke on the events of July 1914 to November 1914."
Steiner first of all wished the Germans to have clear ideas about the outbreak of the War. He begins his foreword with the words: "The German people must confront the truth about the outbreak of the war." And he considered the memories of Moltke as "the most important document to be found in Germany on the beginnings of war".
Moltke's memories show that in the years leading up to the war, and quite particularly on the 1st of August 1914, Germany's political leadership had reached an absolute "nadir", as Steiner puts it. Had this little publication appeared in time it would undoubtedly have had a very significant influence on the progress of the peace negotiations in Versailles. It would, above all, have been of cardinal importance in the forming of a judgement on the question of who was to blame for the outbreak of war. One has only to think of the extent to which the fatal paragraph 231 of the Versailles treaty which attributed sole blame to Germany, provoked and contributed to the rise of right wing forces in post war Germany to give due importance to the impact the prevention of its publication had on the history of the twentieth century.
As soon as the brochure was printed, an impatient anthroposophist handed it on prematurely (see document Nr. 66 on page 250f and note to it). Thus it was immediately in the hands of Germany's military leadership. Its publication was then prevented primarily by General Wilhelm von Dommes who intervened at the end of May 1919 on behalf of the Supreme Command and the German Foreign Office with the widow of Moltke and then with Rudolf Steiner as the publisher of Moltke's notes. In the course of an interview with Steiner in Stuttgart which lasted several hours von Dommes made the point that there were three factual errors in Moltke's notes, and that they could therefore not be published. Dommes declared that he was prepared testify to the erroneousness of the the three points on oath. If Steiner would have gone on and published the brochure anyway and sent it to Versailles he would have made himself publicly ridiculous – by trying to defend Germany without the backing of its own military and political leadership. Thus he had to give in.
In reality those around the Kaiser were anxious to avoid exposing to the whole world the pathetic house of cards which German politics had become – in contrast to its British counterpart which rested on incomparably firmer foundations! Thus a false national pride stood in the way of the prevention of a genuine disaster, and one which was to prove so ominous for the development of Central Europe: the fatal paragraph 231.
Only recently von Dommes' diaries have come to light in which he sets out in detail the conversation which he had with Steiner in the spring of 1919. The relevant passages are published on page • of this book.
7. Moltke, Steiner and the True German Folk SpiritThere is perhaps no clearer example of Steiner's attitude to the essential quality of the German spirit than the position he took on the question of war guilt. Yet even this has frequently been the object to dire misrepresentation. Steiner had energetically opposed the politics of attributing sole blame to Germany but in doing so he had, of course, never wished to present Germany as being "completely innocent" as has been maintained even among those who are sympathetic to Steiner. 10 For him Moltke's notes are "a terrible indictment of [German] politics"; they prove that there was no German policy capable of preventing decisions being made on the basis of purely military considerations. Only by means of clearly defined policies could the events of the year 1914 have taken a different course to the one they did. The true nature of Germany's guilt lies in its failure to develop such policies. Thus Steiner's struggle to oppose the acceptance of the policy of the Entente attributing sole blame to the Germans is at the same time the strongest possible rejection of Germany's political stance. How, in his eyes, should such a political stance have been conceived? In his own words: "The German Reich had been placed into the context of world politics without having substantial aims to justify its existence. These aims should not have been such that they could be furthered only by military might, should indeed not in any sense have been directed towards the exercise of power. They should, on the contrary, have been directed towards the inner development of its culture. Such aims would never have made it necessary for Germany to consolidate itself with things which must of necessity place it in competition with, and then in open conflict with other powers to which it must inevitably succumb in the exercise of military power.
Far from developing power politics, a German Reich should have developed true culture politics. There should never have arisen, in Germany of all places, the thought that anyone who saw these culture politics as the only possible ones would be an "unpractical idealist."
Inner development of culture, of faculties of the soul and the spirit, of a cosmopolitan attitude – this was what Steiner (and Moltke) saw as the principal mission of the German people. And Moltke who used to have Goethe's Faust in the pocket during the maneouvres had wished to place himself at the service of a Germany with aims of such a kind. Such an impulse towards inner development lay behind the words that Steiner wrote to Moltke in November 1915: "This destiny of the German people is bound up with the deepest and most noble aims of human development." Among these aims one can count the full emergence of the human being as a truly free spirit. But just because of this inner spiritual freedom "inner development" also bears within it the risk of illusion and untruth. Both sides are reflected in the history of the German people: the ascent to the peaks of spiritual achievement but also the fall into the abysmal illusion of false, external power play and fictitious notions of racial supremacy. The latter tendency, of course, is identical with a break with the true German folk spirit. Steiner hat already warned in 1888 that the increasing superficiality of German politics could lead to such a break – to the detriment of Germany and the whole world. And during the time of the holocaust brought about by Germany this break has been complete. 11 And National-socialism, therefore, has nothing whatsoever to do with the true German spirit, but is on the contrary only the expression of this break in its most radical form.
Moltke at any rate was well aware of the dangers threatening a further real ascent of the German people, when he wrote to his wife in 1904: "The German people as a whole is a pathetic society. Full of politicians in ivory towers, lacking any trace of magnanimity, petty, mean, full of envy and resentment, hateful and myopic – one can only feel sorry for it. Everywhere things are torn down, soiled, there is slander and lies, and all in the guise of virtuous moral outrage. Hypocrisy wherever you look, mean minded egotism and crass materialism. Ideals no longer have any validity, everything is outer semblance. Whatever still stands is torn down, everyone seeks to raise only himself, and when the great heap of ruins is complete, the judgement will fall upon us."
And Steiner once said: "If the German individual manages to truly grasps the Spirit, he is a blessing for the world: if he does not, he is the world's scourge." 12
If anybody, Moltke was the man to deeply feel the truth of such words.
Where will the German people turn in the future – after all that has happened since the First World War, including the external union of the German Republics which featured as early as 1890 on the political map referred to above? Will the individual members of this people now turn with renewed strength to the spiritual roots of its deeper mission? This would mean the fulfilment of the deepest hopes of both Moltke and Steiner.
8. Retreat at the Marne, Martyrdom, and Fantasies about the after death MessagesIt was Moltke's destiny to become himself the target of the kind of "slanders and lies" that he found at work among his own compatriots. And this in the most hideous manner and the highest degree. For it will be difficult to find another personality within the German culture of this century who had been similarly misrepresented in the general public opinion – except Rudolf Steiner. These slanders and lies which are endlessly repeated up to our own days usually focus on the part Moltke played during the first weeks of the war.
Let us therefore briefly turn back to our general while he had the task to lead the German armies into war. Though the first weeks of fighting in the West were successful for the Germans, after six weeks the German armies suddenly retreated – undefeated. It was a turning point in the whole war. The French spoke of the "Miracle at the Marne."
As Jürgen von Grone points out in his contribution on page • there were several factors decisive for the final loss of the Battle of the Marne for the Germans despite the fact that they were in a far better position than the enemy. Among the Chief factors are the following: After the break of confidence between Moltke and the Kaiser, Moltke's instructions were ignored particularly by the Headquarters of the 1st Army on the right wing which advanced much too quickly. Moltke dispatched a Lieutenant-Colonel to the front who spread false informations with the consequence that on September 12th he had to undertake what he calls "the hardest decision of my life which cost me my lifeblood" – he had to take the army back. The Kaiser did not like the news of this decision and broke the already broken promise a second time by requesting Moltke's leave! General Falkenhayn was to replace him. But Moltke in order to ameliorate the bad impression created by this rash change of army leadership with the soldiers agreed to cover Falkenhayns decisions for the time being with his own name! And Falkenhayns decisions led to nothing else then the prolongation of the (mobile) war (by turning it into a positional trench war) and to innumerable victims on both sides. "I was left like a bystander without any influence whatsoever", Moltke writes in his memories. "I took this martyrdom upon myself and covered all further operations with my name, for the sake of the country and to spare the Kaiser from any speculation that he had sent away his Chief of the General Staff at the very first setback." "Sparing" the Kaiser – this was more than martyrdom; it was actual heroism rising far above any considerations of personal sorrow and disappointment.
After his formal dismissal in November 1914 Moltke wrote down the memoirs, assisted the occupation of Antwerp and later started to organize the chaotic production and circulation of nutrition within the country. Still serving Germany! It was after these painful events in the autumn of 1914 that Helmuth von Moltke was getting into closer contact with Rudolf Steiner than ever before. Steiner wanted to help Moltke by trying to widen his soul horizon beyond the boundaries of the physical world and of the world beyond birth and death.
And here a few words about Rudolf Steiner as a scientist of the spirit should be said. 13 Steiner's spiritual science is holding fast to the ideals of observation and exact thinking that have to reign in natural science. But its observations are not made in the physical world, but in spheres only perceivable after a certain "inner development" has taken place based on a special cultivation of the faculty of human thinking combined with certain moral exercises. "For every one step forward that you take in seeking knowledge of occult truths, take three steps forward in the improvement of your own character." 14 This was his "Golden Rule" for any inner development leading to the faculty of spiritual observation. The assertion that spiritual science is just a new form of dogmatic belief, would in itself be an expression of – a (negative) dogmatic belief. This is, of course, not to deny that a movement which in itself is in no way sectarian or dogmatic may have sectarian followers.) Thus in its methods spiritual science is just as exact and objective as any science which really deserves this name. Any open minded study of the philosophical and scientific basis of Steiner's Spiritual Science can easily persuade any thinking person of the essentially scientific character of this supersensible field of research. But among those who have a dogmatic prejudice about the "dogmatic" character of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy thinking is notably absent where it would be most needed, namely in the formation of such a prejudice which is nowadays so widespread that it is even often considered to be scientific! It was necessary to make the above remarks since it may be seen from Tuchman's and Friedrich's and others' comments on Moltke and his achievements that the false or distorted conception of them is intimately bound up with a false conception of the true character of the Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. Thus the former can only be corrected in the measure that the latter is.
In his personal letters to Moltke Steiner pointed to the entity of the true German folk spirit then being deserted by most German individuals. Then, in the summer of 1915, he revealed Moltke something of his past life as pope Nicholas I ( d. in 867) in the ninth century. In August 1915 Moltke made excerpts from what Gregoroius had written about this decisive pope.
Nicholas was paving the way for the separation of the East and the West from Central Europa in order to enable Europe to develop the capacity of material observation and free thought life. Out of a still highly spiritual consciousness and advised by his counsellor Anastasius Bibliothecarius he took the hard decision to inaugurate this West-East separation that was to become the vital destiny of Europa for a whole millennium. When in 1054 the orthodox and the roman catholic churches were formally separated from one another, this was just the outward fulfilment of the deeds of Nicholas.
In such a way Moltke through Steiner's help got the opportunity to feel and understand the world historic background of his being placed in the very centre of a conflict between East and West which he himself had initiated a millennium before. At that time Europe needed to be closed off for a while against Western and Eastern influences in order to develop its own special mission. When Moltke died in June 1916 unexpectedly of a broken heart, as his wife put it, his soul and spirit had been nourished of such far reaching insights into the connection of his own destiny with the destiny of Europe.
Steiner who was so deeply interested in the individuality and the destiny of this man followed his path even after he had passed through the portal of death. This Steiner did in innumerable other cases. But in no other case he left such an extensive bulk of written notes on the spiritual destiny of a human individuality.
Eliza von Moltke who herself was not clairvoyant and who received all these messages supported Steiner's research by keeping a meditative link to the deceased and by reading to him the letters he had once sent her.
The reader of Otto Friedrichs book gets quite another picture of these subtle processes of spiritual understanding in the last two years of Moltke's life. This is mainly due to the fact that Friedrich instead of going to the primary source of this extraordinary material quotes Ravenscroft's book The Spear of Destiny und by this helps to spread some crucial nonsense even more widely over the English speaking world. Here are some examples:
"There are also some very strange stories" says Friedrich, "that he lost the battle of the Marne because he fell into trances and had visions". According to Ravenscroft Moltke had already during the Marne battle and before his dismissal a kind of a visionary state of mind in which he saw himself as pope Nicholas, Schlieffen as pope Benedict II. and his uncle as Pope Leo IV. Moltke allegedly had stood in front of the holy spear at the Hofburg in Vienna together with his Austrian colleague General Conradvon Hötzendorf – the same spear in front of which Hitler later had been standing, according to Ravenscroft. Friedrich reports that it was Eliza von Moltke who in spiritistic séances became by "inspiration" the tongue for the messages of her late husband! He calls this "a peculiar technique of conjugal glossolalia". 15
Furthermore, according to him the deceased supposedly spoke in his after death messages even of a certain Adolf Hitler: "A little stranger was the late general's naming of the obscure Adolf Hitler as the Führer of a Third Reich, but that of course, may have been the basic reason why these séances were held in the first place." No such statement can be found anywhere in the real after death messages! Friedrich's "explanation" for it is especially frivolous, for it associates Moltke with Hitler, as if somehow they were moving on the same line. At this point I request the reader to well remember the distinction made between the true German folk spirit to which Steiner and Moltke were deeply linked and its demonic caricature to which Hitler delivered himself. There are hardly any greater spiritual opposites than these two spirits.
The only thing that has some truth in it so far is that Moltke from 1915 onwards (!) slowly (!) came to consider a karmic relationship between himself and pope Nicholas. All the other statements of Friedrich's are objectively untrue and pure invention, as the reader can easily check in part two of this book.
Friedrich himself finds: "This all sounds bizarre even if one recalls that Moltke and many of his contemporaries believed in the doctrines of anthroposophy." But instead of seriously checking what sounds "bizarre" he actually concludes his long chapter on the general by the following statements: "The Moltke Mitteilungen" [communications] are very extensive", Ravenscroft writes, "and amount to several hundred pages of typescript, photostats of which are still circulating secretly among hidden Grail groups in Germany today." Freya von Moltke who probably knows more than anyone else about the Molkte family history, says she knows nothing about these transcripts or about the séances that led to their existence."
Thus Friedrich in the end leaves it open whether all the things he quotes from Ravenscroft are fictitious or true, despite the fact that in his bibliography the two volume German edition of the "Mitteilungen" is correctly listed. Thus works some "scientific" modern scholarship! True or not, the quoted stories seem to fit and nourish the prejudices against both Steiner and Moltke. For what sounds "bizarre" is directly associated with "the doctrines of anthroposophy". How could such an "anthroposophy" therefore be anything serious or even scientific? Such insinuations and prejudices are generally nothing else but the dogmatic expression of a totally unscientific antipathy against the reality of the spirit with which both Moltke and Steiner, though in very different ways, established a very earnest, serious link.
In other words: At the basis of the distorted picture of Helmuth von Moltke there seems to lie a certain antipathy or fear of the spirit in its reality. And a sort of a very hideous trick to "disguise" this fear is to try to associate directly or indirectly both Moltke and Steiner's Spiritual Science with Hitler ...
After these remarks on Friedrich's most "bizarre" treatment of the after death messages the reader may well wish to embark on his own journey of discovery of this new "ocean" of knowledge and wisdom. And he may do so in full public and without having to be a member of any hidden Grail group.