Letters to Freya: 1939-1945

The compelling true story of a man of conscience at the heart of the Third Reich. In the years when most Germans were abetting a policy of conquest and genocide, Helmuth James von Moltke, an aristocratic and devoutly Christian young lawyer drafted into the German Intelligence Service, was working tirelessly against it. Throughout the war, he fought through the labyrinthine insanity of wartime bureaucracy on behalf of Jews and foreign prisoners and organized a clandestine resistance to the Nazi regime. From 1939 to the eve of his execution from treason in 1945, von Moltke wrote letters to his wife, Freya. Gathered here, these letters transcend their format to create at once a horrifying record of the daily workings of the Third Reich and an inspiring testament to the powers of love, courage, and conscience in the most conscienceless of times. “Remarkable . . . A unique historical document, a morality tale, a love story, all set within the very heart of the Third Reich and, in a real sense, in the soul of a man of conscience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “The words of this extraordinary patriot and humanitarian echo with astonishing relevance [and] stand on their own as testament to the impact for good a courageous individual can still exert.”—Chicago Sun-Times “One of the great books of the twentieth century, [telling] a story of human failure, of overwhelming odds, of patience, and of grace.”—Christian Science Monitor