Blueprints of Hope

Blueprints

Letter to Percy Corbett

Adam von Trott zu Solz was a German nobleman and a leading member of the Resistance group known as the Kreisau Circle. In this letter, Von Trott reflects from the point of view of this group on a book titled Post-War Worlds, written by Percy E. Corbett, a Canadian international law scholar (at the time at McGill University). Although Von Trott supports the idea of European federalisation through the stepping stones of smaller federations, he warned that nationalism was not something that would disappear after the war, an aspect that Corbett overlooked too easily in Von Trott’s mind. The fact that Von Trott forwarded this letter to Willem Adolph Visser’ ‘t Hooft, the head of the World Council of Churches (in process of formation) in Geneva, and asked him to reroute the letter to foreign contacts shows the secret nature of the document, as well as the role of clearinghouse that the World Council of Churches provided for resistance groups throughout Europe during the Second World War.

For the blueprint click here.

The blueprint is courtesy of the WCC Archives in Geneva and republished here with permission.

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