The Adam von Trott Letters

Item No. 5.

Adam von Trott zu Solz

J-P Mayer

Adam von Trott zu Solz (1909-1944) was a German diplomat from the Hessian nobility who played a prominent role in the German resistance against the Nazi regime. After studying at Balliol College, Oxford in the early 1930s, he returned to Berlin where he became re-acquainted with the group responsible for publishing Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus, and it was here, in 1933, that he met JP Mayer, who had been a regular contributor to the magazine. Jacob-Peter Mayer (1903-1992), best known today for his work on Tocqueville, had become known among socialist circles in Berlin for his discovery of some unpublished writings of the young Marx. Through Trott, Mayer was introduced to leading English socialists whom Trott had befriended during his time in England, including Richard Crossman and Stafford Cripps. These contacts were to prove useful when Mayer fled the Nazis in 1936 to settle in England. Trott and Mayer’s friendship ended in acrimonious disagreement during a meeting at the home of RH Tawney in 1939. Trott was convinced that members of the SS would soon rise up against Hitler, but Mayer dismissed the idea as absurd. Trott went on to became a leader of the foiled July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944. He was hanged in Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison on 26 August that year.

Among the papers of JP Mayer, which the Institute acquired in 2018, were these two letters from Trott to Mayer, both dated 1936. In the first, Trott provides some comments on a paper Mayer had written about Hobbes. The second letter, in which Trott speaks of “your resentment against my general behaviour in recent years”, already suggests signs of a fraying friendship.