Hans-Adolf Helmuth Ludwig Erdmann Waldemar von Moltke (29 November 188422 March 1943) was a German landowner in Silesia who became a diplomat. He served as ambassador in Poland during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. After the German invasion of Poland, he became Adolf Hitler's ambassador in Spain during the Second World War.
Early life and career Moltke was born in Oppeln (now Opole), in Upper Silesia, into one of Germany's most famous aristocratic families. Moltke's father, Fredrich von Moltke, served as the Prussian minister of the interior. Moltke was a devout Lutheran and held the standard nationalist and conservative views that were typical of the German aristocracy in the late 19th century. Coming from a family long noted for its service to the Prussia and then Germany, Moltke ascribed to the viewpoint that it was the greatest honour to serve the state and held that view throughout his life.
Moltke studied law from 1903 to 1907 at Heidelberg University and joined the Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg in 1904, an elite student fraternity that accepted only royalty and nobility.
After university, he joined the Prussian Army and served it for one year. He then joined Foreign Service in 1913.
Moltke was also a land owner and had the estates of Wernersdorf and of Klein-Bresa in Silesia.
In joining the Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Office), Moltke joined one of the most exclusive and prestigious branches of the German state. In the Imperial era, joining the Auswärtiges Amt required a candidate to have a university degree, preferably in jurisprudence; to be fluent in French and one other foreign language; and to have an income of 15,000 marks per year, which ensured that only men from very wealthy families could work as diplomats. The average cost of obtaining a university degree in Imperial Germany over the course of four years of study ranged from about 9,000 marks to 25,000 marks, depending on the university, which ensured that only people from very well-off families attended university.
The Auswärtiges Amt was very much dominated by the aristocracy, who were much favored over commoners. Aristocrats made up 1% of the German population but 69% of the German diplomatic corps during the Imperial era. Even after the November Revolution of 1918 until 1945, the Auswärtiges Amt remained dominated by an aristocratic "old boy's club" network, which ensured that aristocrats continued to be disproportionately overrepresented in the German diplomatic corps.
The income requirement prevented Moltke from joining the Auswärtiges Amt earlier, and he could join only in January 1913, after his father agreed to subsidised him to provide the required 15,000 marks per year.
He began his diplomatic career at the German legation in Athens and the next year was transferred over to the German embassy in Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, Moltke was transferred to Brussels, where he served as an official in the German occupation government of Belgium.
He later served as the Prussian envoy in Stuttgart, the capital of the Kingdom of Württemberg. When Eliza von Moltke, the widow of his cousin (Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Younger) and Rudolf Steiner tried publishing his memoirs posthumously, Moltke the diplomat played a key role in blocking the publication. Moltke contacted Steiner to tell him that "Berlin did not desire" the publication of his cousin's memoirs and said that it revealed too much about the origins of the First World War. At the same time, Moltke told Eliza von Moltke that she could not publish her late husband's memoirs until they had been reviewed by his father, who was now the leader of the Moltke clan and reserved the right to censor any passages that he disliked. The memoir was finally published in 1922 after extensive censorship imposed by the Moltke clan. Much of the writing was bowdlerised of any content that might implicate Germany and Field Marshal von Moltke as responsible for the war.
In common with the other conservative civil servants of the Imperial era, Moltke saw Germany's defeat in the war and the November Revolution of 1918 as twin disasters, which threatened to ruin the Reich. Moltke chose to continue his diplomatic career after 1918 out of loyalty towards Germany, not the Weimar Republic, which he saw as a transitional regime, which would be replaced sooner or later. Moltke represented the German Foreign Office at the Allied Commission of the Upper Silesia plebiscite in Oppeln from 1920 to 1922 and the Joint Commission for Upper Silesia from 1922 to 1924. Moltke arrived in Upper Silesia in early 1920.
During the Upper Silesia referendum, Moltke fought against the Allied Special Court of Justice for Upper Silesia and argued to French General Henri Le Rond, who chaired the commission, that it violated the Treaty of Versailles, which stated the Allied Commission for Upper Silesia did not have the power to pass legislation. Moltke reported to Berlin on 27 February 1920 that Le Rond simply refused to consider his arguments.
On 10 March, Moltke handed Le Rond a note saying that no German judges would co-operate with the Allied Special Court of Justice, which led Le Rond to threaten to expel from Upper Silesia any judge who refused to work with the special court. The German judges refused to work with Inter-Allied Commission, which found it impossible to expel all of the judges from Upper Silesia.
In June 1920, the Inter-Allied Commission agreed to accept Moltke's demands of providing German judges freedom from the authority of the Inter-Allied Commission.
During the Upper Silesia conflicts, Moltke served as a meditator between the Selbstschutz militia, which was founded to fight against the Poles, and the Inter-Allied Commission, which was appointed to oversee the referendum to divide Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland.
The referendum of 1921 and its aftermath saw much fighting, as German and Polish irregulars battled to seize as much of Upper Silesia as possible for their own nations. Through Moltke preferred to keep Upper Silesia in Germany, he was known for his Realpolitik, which led him to accept that at least part of Upper Silesia would go to Poland. In terms of personality, Moltke was characterized as always displaying "tact, politeness and a cultivated demeanor".
Moltke fought to retain as of Upper Silesia as possible for Germany but displayed much "diplomatic dexterity" during the crisis caused by referendum, as he sought to balance the demands of the Allies and of his nationalism. Moltke warned Berlin against seeking a military solution to retain Upper Silesia. He stated any victories won by the Freikorps would be likely to trigger French intervention on the side of Poland.
Moltke also served as Counselor at the German Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, from 1924 to 1928. Upon his return to Berlin, he headed the Eastern Department of the Auswärtiges Amt, and replaced Herbert von Dirksen, to be in charge of relations with all of the East European states.
Moltke was a member of a group called the Dienstags-Kreis, which promoted the idea of Mitteleuropa, a federation of Central European states that would be dominated by Germany.
Ambassador in Poland From 1931 to the 1939 German invasion of Poland, Moltke was the ambassador in Warsaw. He arrived there in February 1931 as the minister in charge of the German legation. He supported a revanchist policy against Poland but believed that could be carried out peacefully. Moltke's beliefs about Poland were based on the concept of the Kulturträgertum ("cultural carrier"), which held that Poland was economically and culturally backward and would eventually fall into the German sphere of influence. Poland had been allied to France since 1921, but Moltke believed that French culture was inferior to German culture and hence everything French was inferior to everything German. He further maintained that Poland would inevitably realize that and then allow German influence to supplement French influence in Poland. Moltke thus found no contradiction between his efforts to improve German-Polish relations and his support for a policy of taking back the lands that Germany had lost to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles.
Wiaderny wrote that Moltke's Kulturträgertum concept "cannot be taken seriously". However, there was at least an element of truth to Moltke's thinking in that Germany had the largest economy in Europe and the second-largest economy in the world, after only the American economy. From the Polish perspective, Germany had more to offer Poland in economic terms than France. Moltke was unwilling to accept the borders imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, but by the standards of the Auswärtiges Amt, he was moderate towards Poland.
Moltke believed that Germany could and should regain the lands lost under Versailles via peaceful means, and he was willing to accept the continued existence of Poland, albeit only within the German sphere of influence. The Auswärtiges Amt was a bastion of anti-Polish feelings, and almost all of the German diplomatic corps in the interwar period tended to accept that it would be necessary for Germany sooner or later to put an end to Poland.
In November 1932, Colonel Józef Beck was appointed Polish Foreign Minister. A cold ruthless man with a strong opportunistic streak, Beck inspired little affection from those who knew him, and his actions as the deputy foreign minister during the 1932 Danzig crisis suggested to Moltke that he would be most forceful in upholding Polish rights in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). However, Beck had been declared persona non grata by the French government during his time as a diplomat in Paris after he had been caught spying on his hosts. That had made him very anti-French, and Moltke felt that Beck's appointment as foreign minister would ensure a weakening of French influence in Poland. Moltke had difficult relations with Beck, who was generally hated by almost all ambassadors in Warsaw, but Moltke saw Beck as pro-German and anti-French.
In 1933, Moltke welcomed the new Nazi regime. In common with the other diplomats of the Auswärtiges Amt, Moltke believed that Adolf Hitler would bring about a revival of Germany as a great power and would curtail what he considered to be "Jewish influence" in German life. Moltke's biographer, the German historian Bernard Wiaderny, wrote: "While anti-Semitic resentments were part and parcel of Moltke's worldview, it was not an eliminatory anti-Semitism. As far as possible, he was also prepared to continue collaborating with Jewish diplomats, journalists, etc."
In March 1933, the National Socialists in Danzig were in the process of taking over the Free City. Developments there tended to be very closely influenced by developments in the Reich, and as the Nazis imposed their control over Germany in March 1933, the Danzig Nazis did the same. A series of incidents between Danzig Nazis and the Polish authorities in early March 1933 pushed tensions in the Free City to the brink of war. Fearing that presaged an effort to have the Free City rejoin Germany, the Polish government started to talk about war with Germany and moved to reinforce its garrison in Danzig. On 6 March 1933, the Polish garrison on the Westerplatte Peninsula, in Danzig Harbour, was increased from 60 to 200 men.
On 1 April 1933, the national anti-Jewish boycott in Germany was responded to by a number of Polish Jewish groups, which organised a boycott of German businesses and goods in Poland. Moltke, in a dispatch to Berlin, charged that the "anti-German" Polish Jews had engaged in "terror tactics" during the boycott, and he complained that people who shopped at German-owned businesses in Poland had been accosted on the streets by activists.