order on 28 June 1944 carrying out a plan originally conceived by Himmler, to abduct supposedly unaccompanied Polish and Ukrainian children in the so-called Heuaktion (Hay Action). Between 40,000 and 50,000 Polish and Ukrainian children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped for Nazi Germany's forced labour programme. The order read in part "In operations against gangs, any boys and girls taken between ages 10 and 13 who are physically healthy, and whose parents either cannot be located or who, as persons unable to work, are to be sent to the area earmarked for remaining families (the dregs are to be sent to the Reich)." The kidnapped children were used as forced workers in the Todt organisation, Junkers factories and in German handicrafts as part of an operation to "lower biological strength" of the enemies of Nazi Germany. Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany has been classified by the Nuremberg Tribunal as part of a systematic programme of genocide. Alfred Rosenberg, who also signed the documents for Heu Aktion, was found guilty by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and his signing of the document was mentioned in the final verdict. Opposition to Adolf Hitler Although initially supportive of Hitler because of his own opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, Tresckow was quickly disillusioned by 1934 by the events of the Night of the Long Knives (30 June to 2 July 1934) and its violence against the Jewish population. In 1938, the Blomberg–Fritsch affair further strengthened his antipathy to the Nazis. He regarded the Kristallnacht, a state-sanctioned, nationwide pogrom of Jews, as personal humiliation and degradation of civilization. He therefore sought out civilians and officers who opposed Hitler, such as Erwin von Witzleben, who dissuaded Tresckow from resigning from the Army, arguing that they would be needed when the day of reckoning came. By the summer of 1939, he told Fabian von Schlabrendorff that "both duty and honor demand from us that we should do our best to bring about the downfall of Hitler and National Socialism to save Germany and Europe from barbarism." In the campaign against the Soviet Union, Tresckow resumed his resistance activities with renewed urgency. He was appalled by the Commissar Order, of which he said: Remember this moment. If we don't convince the field marshal (Fedor von Bock) to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders (Commissar Order) canceled, the German people will be burdened with a