Talk:Josef Müller

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This section is moved over from the Ludwig Kaas page, since it deals more with Müller than with Kaas.

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Late in 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, Kaas was with Father Robert Leiber, JS, one of two key vatican figures for the secret Vatican Exchanges. General Ludwig Beck had nominated the lawyer Dr. Josef Müller as representative of the Widerstand within the German army. Müller had longstanding ties to Pope Pius XII, dating from the latters days as Nuncio in Munich (1917-1920), and was very close to Cardinal Faulhaber.

Müller installed himself under an assumed Abwehr guise in Rome and at the request of the, mostly Protestant figures of the military Widerstand General Beck believed that Pius XII with his close ties Germany could convince the Allies of the existence of a valid German opposition to Hitler.

The Pope required as conditio sine qua non that secret and untraceable negotiations be in this period of Friedensgesprache or hiatus before the full fury of the German attack in the west, and that they lead alone towards the installation of an administration in Germany with which negotiation was possible.

Müller would travel to Rome from Berlin with instructions from Hans Oster or Hans von Dohnanyi and see primarily Monsignor Ludwig Kaas or Pater Robert Leiber. Early in the negotiations Kaas intimated that it was the Holy Father's wish that the connection with Müller be through Pater Leiber. There was never a direct contact between Müller and the Pope, and the entire negotiations, which surface in British foreign office records, was composed of a series of oral questions and answers in a tenuous and intricate thread of communication between Berlin, Rome and London. Dohnanyi alone wrote an elaborate summary report known as "X-Report", which in 1944 fell into the hands of the Gestapo. Müller had his records purposefully destroyed in 1943 and thus the substance of the negotiations are shrouded in mystery.

It seems the British were keen, as power was still with Chamberlain and Halifax and the later corrected vacillation concerning German demands was evident.

At any rate the implication is that all involved were prepared to foresee some solution based on sufficient German territorial aggrandisement to placate the German people after the "loss" of their "Adolf Hitler" during wartime.

The British policy was to swiftly change once Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain.

Monsignor Kaas is reported as alerting the British contact, the Minister to the Holy See, Francis D'Arcy Osborne, the views of Hermann Göring in anti-communist sympathy with the opposition.

The German Army widerstand conspirators were to return again to the Pope as intermediary following the Casablanca Conference of 1943 and Pater Robert Leiber again is co-ordinated by Kaas following contact by Josef Muller . The burdensome policy of Unconditional Surrender (to the widerstand) after Casablanca . was over-ridden by leading plotter General Beck's belief that the opposition in Germany were set to strike . This time the Pope gained no response whatever from the Allies, but the widerstand * claim that Pater Leiber was able to re-inforce the opposition because Pius XII had misgivings concerning unconditional surrender, and was prepared, should they strike , to recognise the replacing regime. Even at this stage territorial German hegemony in Europe was envisaged , thus the conclusion remains that the Pope throughout contemplated a cementing of this hegemony .

• The Widerstand can be taken to include the present as much as the past . The analysis undertaken by many historians represents as much of an exegesis of opposition policy, as of a record , hence the widerstand can be considered to be still active, largely in a salvation of the conscience within the German nation .

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