“HANDWRITTEN TESTIMONY” OF MAJOR KUHN AS A SOURCE ON THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN ANTI-HITLER RESISTANCE

Abstract

In the article, based on the analysis of a new source on the history of the German anti-Hitler Resistance — “handwritten testimony” of the Wehrmacht General Staff Major Joachim Kuhn, given by him on September 2, 1944 in Soviet captivity, the history of the German military conspiracies against Hitler is recreated. Major Kuhn's documents are a unique source of both German and Russian recent history. Joachim Kuhn since September 1943 belonged to the anti-Hitler opposition. His name became known in Germany after the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944. Kuhn was in close contact with the actual leader of the conspiracy, Colonel of the General Staff, Count Stauffenberg, and his active participant, Major General H. von Treskov. Kun was convicted both in the Third Reich as a conspirator and defector and in the USSR as a war criminal. At the request of Günther Wagenlener , chairman of the Association of Former Repatriates, Prisoners of War and Family Members of Missing Persons (FRG), the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation on December 23, 1998 rehabilitated the former German officer Kun Joachim, convicted in 1951 by the Military Court of the Moscow Military District, “due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions.” In historiography, it was believed that Kuhn's traces were lost in Stalin's dungeons. But after the rehabilitation, documents from Kuhn's dossier became available to researchers. Based on Russian archival sources, the author of this article was able to trace Kuhn's life in Soviet captivity and after his return to Germany