Periods:

• before 1933
• 1934-1942
• Fall 1942-1945

By 1933 almost half a million opponents of the Nazis were imprisoned.

Who resisted the Nazis?

• Churches
• Political parties
• Communists
• Social Democrats
• Workers
• Middle Class youth
• Students
• Military

Which groups did resist the Nazis?

• Groups associated with the church
• Martin Niemöller - Bekennende Kirche (Confessional Church)
• Clemens August von Galen - Bishop of Münster
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Confessional Church
• Rote Kapelle
• used radio contacts with the Soviet Union
• provided Moscow with military information
• members were from all groups
• Weisse Rose
• Student group in Munich
• Sophie and Hans Scholl
• Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and
• Professor Kurt Huber
• Soldiers and military
• Grosse Organisation, a cell led by Hans Oster and Hans von Dohnanyi
• Claus von Stauffenberg, Chief of the general staff of the reserve army, helped orchestrate the plot of
• July 20, 1944:
• A bomb was placed under an oak table in a barrack in the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) in East Prussia where Hitler was meeting with other officers.
• The bomb goes off, but Hitler survives the blast.
• 5000 conspirators (among them 2000 officers) were killed as a result of the failed assassination attempt.
• Von Stauffenberg, Ludwig Beck, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, Julius Leber, Hans Oster and others were executed the same day or a couple days later in Berlin.
• Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was forced to take poison.

How did they resist?

• distribution of leaflets
• dissemination of hostile jokes
• refusal to say "Heil Hitler!"
• sloppy workmanship
• slow downs and strikes
• sabotage
• radio transmissions
• planning of assassinations
• guerilla warfare

Why were all these groups unsuccessful?

• tradition of subordination and obedience; it erected a powerful barrier between the Nazi leaders and the people
• Allied policies didn't help; they actually hindered the attempts of resistance because of
• appeasement policy before 1939
• The Allies didn't help in providing contacts or arms to the underground.
• Inside Germany:
• It was hard fighting the best trained terror machine
• The pyramid structure of authority and obedience
• System of police, Gestapo, SS, SD and special squads, "all of them dominated by brutal diehards who could rely on countless sympathizers to denounce all manifestation of antifascist activity" (Hoffmeister, 54)
• they all had sworn the "Fahneneid" (oath of loyalty) to the "Führer"

Leo Beck wrote:

"There are limits to your obedience when your knowledge, your conscience, and your sense of responsibility prevent you from carrying out an order."

Major general von Tresckow wrote:

"The moral worth of a man begins at the point where he is ready to sacrifice his life for his convictions."

Many Germans shared these views and paid for it with their own lives.