page_title: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
section_title: Capture and execution
hierarchical_section_title: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler / Capture and execution
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Volksgerichtshof, Dr.Carl Goerdeler Prozess 20. Juli 1944 Carl Goerdeler, Dr. Abgebildete Personen: Goerdeler, Carl Friedrich Dr.: Oberbürgermeister von Leipzig, Prozeß 20. Juli 1944, Deutschland
context_page_description: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler was a monarchist conservative German politician, executive, economist, civil servant and opponent of the Nazi regime. He opposed some of the anti-Jewish policies while he held office and was opposed to the Holocaust.
  Had the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler of 1944 succeeded, Goerdeler would have served as the Chancellor of the new government. After his arrest, he gave names of numerous co-conspirators to the Gestapo, causing the arrests and executions of hundreds or even thousands of others. He was executed by hanging on 2 February 1945.
context_section_description: Goerdeler managed to escape from Berlin, but he was apprehended on 12 August 1944 after being denounced by an innkeeper named Lisbeth Schwaerzel in Marienwerder (modern Kwidzyn, Poland) while visiting the grave of his parents. After his arrest, eight members of Goerdeler's family were sent to the concentration camps under the Sippenhaft law. His brother Fritz was also sentenced to death and executed on 1 March 1945. Under Gestapo interrogation, Goerdeler claimed that the Holocaust was the major reason for his seeking to overthrow the Nazi regime. On 9 September 1944, after a trial at the People's Court, he was sentenced to death. Goerdeler was not physically tortured by the Gestapo, and freely co-operated with the Gestapo in naming names, which made him the object of a considerable hatred from the other prisoners, who saw him as a "spineless rat."
  
  Goerdeler's friend, the historian Gerhard Ritter, who shared the same prison with him, reported that Goerdeler was never tortured but was instead subjected to "the overheating of cells, painfully tight shackling especially at night, bright light shining on one's face while one tried to sleep, completely insufficient food". One prisoner recalled that Goerdeler was often "groaning aloud from hunger". Goerdeler's hope in confessing all was to overload the Gestapo with information, and thereby buy time to save his life and the others imprisoned; in the process, he caused hundreds involved in the plot to be arrested. During his time in prison, Goerdeler was asked by the SS to assist with writing the constitution of a future SS-ruled Germany. Goerdeler agreed, and often met with Otto Ohlendorf and Dr. Mäding of the SD to provide his advice. Whether Goerdeler was sincere in wishing to help the SS or just trying to buy time to save his life remains unclear. When confronted with the loneliness of his imprisonment and the utter defeat of his cause, Goerdeler, who had always been a highly devout Lutheran, became increasingly preoccupied with spiritual matters. Goerdeler was overwhelmed with despair over what he considered to be the triumph of evil and the destruction of all that he loved. Ritter saw Goerdeler in prison in January 1945 and reported: 
  I was...astonished at his undiminished intellectual power, but at the same time I was shocked by his outward appearance. It was a man grown old who stood before me, shackled hand and foot, in the same light summer clothes as had on when captured, shabby and collarless, face thin and drawn, strangely different. But it was his eyes that shocked me the most. They were once bright grey eyes and had flashed beneath the heavy eyebrows; that had always been the most impressive thing about him. Now there was no light in them; they were like the eyes of a blind man, yet like nothing I had seen before. His intellectual power was as it had always been; his spiritual strength was not. His natural cheerfulness had gone; his look seemed turned inward. What I beheld was a man with the weariness of death in his soul.
  
  While Goerdeler was on death row, he wrote a letter that called the Holocaust the very worst of Nazi crimes. At the same time, Goerdeler remained anti-Semitic. 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.
   He was finally executed by hanging on 2 February 1945 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin with two other men: Johannes Popitz and Alfred Delp. While awaiting his death sentence, Goerdeler wrote a farewell letter, which ended with "I ask the world to accept our martyrdom as penance for the German people."
caption: On trial at the People's Court, Roland Freisler presiding at left.
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