His upbringing had been happy, but sternly intellectual and moral; his legal training had pointed to a career in local administration and economics...He was a born organiser, an able, voluble speaker and writer, tough and highly individual; in politics, he became a right-wing liberal.

[3] In June 1919, Goerdeler submitted a memorandum to his superior, General Otto von Below, calling for the destruction of Poland as the only way to prevent territorial losses on Germany's eastern borders.

[15] As part of his efforts to influence the Nazi regime, Goerdeler had sent Hitler long memoranda containing his advice on economic policy, and in the second half of 1935, he wrote up a new draft law on the powers and responsibilities of municipal governments.

He wrote to Hitler that continued Polish possession of territories in Gdańsk Pomerania and Greater Poland was a "thorn in country's economic flesh and honour" and that "the German people must fight for security of their existence".

[44] In October 1937, during a visit to the United States, Goerdeler stayed with the British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett at the latter's estate in Virginia and informed him of his desire to restore the monarchy in Germany.

[45] During the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair and the attendant crisis caused by the court-martial of General Werner von Fritsch, Goerdeler became closely associated with several loose groupings of German rightists in the Civil Service and the military who, for various reasons, were unhappy with aspects of the Third Reich.

[56] In the tense atmosphere of September 1938, with the crisis in Central Europe looking likely to explode into war at any moment, Goerdeler was waiting anxiously for the putsch to overthrow the Nazi regime, and his taking over the reins of the German state as the new Chancellor.

A purified Germany with a government of decent people would have been ready to solve the Spanish problem without delay in company with Britain and France, to remove Mussolini and with the United States to create peace in the Far East.

[65] In November 1938, Goerdeler met with Young in Switzerland and asked if the British government could intercede on the behalf of 10,000 Polish Jews the Germans had expelled from Germany, whom the Poles refused to accept.

[71] Goerdeler, together with Dr. Schacht, General Beck, Hassell and the economist Rudolf Brinkmann, were described by Hitler as "the overbred intellectual circles" who were trying to block him from fulfilling his mission by their appeals to caution, and but for the fact that he needed their skills "otherwise, perhaps we could someday exterminate them or do something of this kind to them".

[72] Unknown to Goerdeler, he was transmitting false information provided by the Abwehr chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and General Hans Oster, who was hoping that the reports might lead to a change in British foreign policy.

[78] The "X documents" and how to interpret them played a key role in the debate in the late 1980s between Overy and the Marxist Timothy Mason about whether the German attack on Poland was a "flight into war" forced on Hitler by an economic crisis.

Even with Soviet economic support (especially oil) and the exploitation of Poland and the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, the impact of the British blockade caused a 75% decline in value and tonnage of German imports during the Phoney War.

[82] During the same visit to London in May 1939, Goerdeler claimed that the German Army leadership was willing to overthrow the regime, that he himself favoured launching a putsch immediately, but that "the leaders of the whole movement... still considered it too early".

[84] On August 25, 1939, discovering that the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact had not led as intended to the Anglo-French abandonment of Poland, Hitler ordered the temporary postponement of Fall Weiss, which had been due to begin the next day.

[105] In June 1941, Goerdeler experienced a brief surge of hope that he learned that Hitler had issued a set of orders to the Army for the upcoming Operation Barbarossa that violated international law and made it clear that he wanted the war against the Soviet Union to be waged in the most inhumane, brutal way possible.

[108] The idea of restoring the former Emperor Wilhelm II to his throne was rejected by Goerdeler under the grounds that the personality of the former Kaiser and the way he had behaved during his thirty-year reign made him a completely unsuitable candidate.

He felt that the demands contained in Clause 8, calling for the disarmament of Germany, would make both the task of recruiting the German Army to overthrowing the regime more difficult and were unacceptable since Goerdeler believed in maintaining a strong military".

[117] Goerdeler returned to Berlin feeling assured about the future, and was most disappointed when he received a message from Kluge via General Beck stating he changed his mind about acting against the Nazi regime, and to count him out of any putsch.

[124] On January 22, 1943, at the home of Peter Yorck von Wartenburg Goerdeler met with the Kreisau Circle during which he argued and debated forcefully about the social and economic policies to be pursued by a post-Nazi government.

Only because all offences against law and decency are carried out under the protection of secrecy and under the pressures of terror"[128] Goerdeler argued that if only a situation were created "in which, if only for twenty-four hours, it [were] possible for the truth to be spoken again", then the Nazi regime would collapse like a house of cards.

[129] During the spring of 1943, Goerdeler grew increasingly impatient with the military end of the conspiracy, complaining that those officers involved in the plot were better at finding excuses for inaction than reasons for action, a sentiment he expressed in a 1943 letter to General Friedrich Olbricht[130][131] Goerdeler had great faith in his idea that if only he could meet with Hitler and explain to him that his leadership was grossly inadequate on military and economic grounds, then Hitler could be persuaded to resign in his favor, thereby ending Nazi Germany through non-violent means.

[135] In September 1943, Goerdeler appealed to his friend Jacob Wallenberg to ask that the British suspend bombing attacks against Berlin, Stuttgart and Leipzig until the middle of October because "the oppositional movement has its centres there and the interruption of communications would make the putsch more difficult".

[137] After five years of trying, the only senior officers Goerdeler had recruited were Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, whom Hitler had forced into retirement in early 1942 and General Ludwig Beck who had resigned in 1938.

Stauffenberg solved that problem by devising Operation Valkyrie, a plan that ostensibly was meant to crush a slave labour uprising but really was the cover for a putsch that could be activated by officers of less than senior rank.

[152] By contrast, the Canadian historian Peter Hoffmann in his 2004 essay "The German Resistance and the Holocaust" has contended that Goerdeler was opposed to anti-Semitism in all forms, and that this opposition played a major role in motivating his efforts to overthrow the Nazi regime.

[153] The Israeli historian David Bankier wrote in 2002 that Goerdeler was appalled by the Holocaust and was sincerely against the Nazis, but for him, Jews were not and never could be Germans, and instead were an alien, foreign element who would just have to be relocated from Germany whether they liked it or not.

[157] In the radio address Goerdeler planned to deliver once the putsch had triumphed was included the statement "The persecution of the Jews, which has been carried out in the most inhuman, deeply shaming and quite irreparable ways, is to cease.

Goerdeler managed to escape from Berlin, but he was apprehended on 12 August 1944 after being denounced by a book-keeper named Helene Schwärzel [de][164] in Marienwerder (modern Kwidzyn, Poland) while visiting the grave of his parents.

In his "Thoughts of a Man condemned to Death", written towards the end of 1944 in prison, Goerdeler wrote: We should not attempt to minimize what has been happening, but we should also emphasize the great guilt of the Jews, who had invaded our public life in ways that lacked customary restraint.