Lessons From The Holocaust Webquest - German Resistance in Nazi Germany
German resistance to Nazism was the opposition by individuals and groups in Germany to the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945. Some of these engaged in active plans to remove Adolf Hitler from power and overthrow his regime.
The term German resistance should not be understood as meaning that there was a united resistance movement in Germany at any time during the Nazi period,[1] analogous to the more coordinated Polish Underground State, Greek Resistance, Yugoslav Partisans, French Resistance, Dutch Resistance, Norwegian resistance movement and Italian Resistance. The German resistance consisted of small and usually isolated groups. They were unable to mobilize political opposition. Save for individual attacks on Nazis (including Hitler) or sabotage acts, the only real strategy was to persuade leaders of the Wehrmacht to stage a coup against the regime: the the July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler was intended to trigger such a coup d'etat (take over).
An In-Depth Look at Resistance to Nazi Rule
The White Rose
The only visible manifestation of opposition to the regime following Stalingrad was the spontaneous action of few university students who denounced the war and the persecution and mass murder of Jews in the east. They were organized in the White Rose group, which was centered in Munich but had connections in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Vienna.
In January 1943 they launched an anti-Nazi campaign of handbills and graffiti in and around Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. They were detected and some arrested. Three members, Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst were to stand trial before the Nazi "People's Court", where on 22 February 1943 the President of the court, Roland Freisler, sentenced them to death. They were guillotined that same day at Stadelheim Prison. Kurt Huber, a professor of philosophy and musicology, Alexander Schmorell, and Willi Graf had to stand trial later and sentenced to death as well, whereas many others were sentenced to prison terms. The last member to be executed was Hans Conrad Leipelt on 29 January 1945.
This outbreak was surprising and worrying to the Nazi regime, because the universities had been strongholds of Nazi sentiment even before Hitler had come to power. Similarly, it gave heart to the scattered and demoralized resistance groups. But White Rose was not a sign of widespread civilian disaffection from the regime, and had no imitators elsewhere, although their sixth leaflet, re-titled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich", was dropped by Allied planes in July 1943, and became widely known in World War II Germany. The underground SPD and KPD were able to maintain their networks, and reported increasing discontent at the course of the war and at the resultant economic hardship, particularly among the industrial workers and among farmers (who suffered from the acute shortage of labor with so many young men away at the front). But there was nothing approaching active hostility to the regime. Most Germans continued to revere Hitler and blamed Himmler or other subordinates for their troubles. And from late 1943 fear of the advancing Soviets and prospects of a military offensive from the Western Powers eclipsed resentment at the regime and if anything hardened the will to resist the advancing allies.
Edelweiss Pirates
Nazism had a powerful appeal to German youth, particularly middle-class youth, and German universities were strongholds of Nazism even before Hitler came to power. The Hitler Youth sought to mobilize all young Germans behind the regime, and apart from stubborn resistance in some rural Catholic areas, was generally successful in the first period of Nazi rule. After about 1938, however, persistent alienation among some sections of German youth began to appear. This rarely took the form of overt political opposition — the White Rose group was a striking exception, but was striking mainly for its uniqueness. Much more common was what would now be called "dropping out" — a passive refusal to take part in official youth culture and a search for alternatives. Although none of the unofficial youth groups amounted to a serious threat to the Nazi regime, and although they provided no aid or comfort to those groups within the German elite who were actively plotting against Hitler, they do serve to show that there were currents of opposition at other levels of German society.
Examples were the so-called Edelweisspiraten ("Edelweiss Pirates"), a loose network of working-class youth groups in a number of cities, who held unauthorized meetings and engaged in street fights with the Hitler Youth; the Meuten group in Leipzig, a more politicized group with links to the KPD underground, which had more than a thousand members in the late 1930s; and, most notably, the Swingjugend, middle-class youth who met in secret clubs in Berlin and most other large cities to listen to swing, jazz and other music deemed "degenerate" by the Nazi authorities. This movement, which involved distinctive forms of dress and gradually become more consciously political, became so popular that it provoked a crackdown: in 1941 Himmler ordered the arrest of Swing activists and had some sent to concentration camps.
In October 1944, as the American and British armies approached the western borders of Germany, there was a serious outbreak of disorder in the bomb-ravaged city of Cologne, which had been largely evacuated. The Edelweisspiraten linked up with gangs of deserters, escaped prisoners and foreign workers, and the underground KPD network, to engage in looting and sabotage, and the assassination of Gestapo and Nazi Party officials. Explosives were stolen with the objective of blowing up the Gestapo headquarters. Himmler, fearing the resistance would spread to other cities as the Allied armies advanced into Germany, ordered a savage crackdown, and for days gun battles raged in the ruined streets of Cologne. More than 200 people were arrested and dozens were hanged in public, among them six teenaged Edelweisspiraten, including Bartholomäus Schink.
Swing Kids
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July 20th Hitler Assassination Plot
On 1 July Stauffenberg was appointed chief-of-staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse in central Berlin. This position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler’s military conferences, either in East Prussia or at Berchtesgaden, and would thus give him a golden opportunity, perhaps the last that would present itself, to kill Hitler with a bomb or a pistol. Conspirators who had long resisted on moral grounds the idea of killing Hitler now changed their minds – partly because they were hearing reports of the mass murder at Auschwitz of up to 400,000 Hungarian Jews, the culmination of the Nazi Holocaust.[citation needed] Meanwhile, new key allies had been gained. These included General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the German military commander in France, who would take control in Paris when Hitler was killed and, it was hoped, negotiate an immediate armistice with the invading Allied armies. The demands of the plotters regarding armistice with Allies included Germany retaining its 1914 eastern borders, including the Polish territories of Wielkopolska and Poznań.[118] Other demands included keeping such territorial gains as Austria and the Sudetenland within the Reich, giving autonomy to Alsace-Lorraine, and even expansion of the current wartime borders of Germany in the south by annexing Tyrol as far as Bolzano and Merano. Non-territorial demands included such points as refusal of any occupation of Germany by the Allies, as well as refusal to hand over war criminals by demanding the right of "nations to deal with their own criminals". These proposals were only directed to the Western Allies – Stauffenberg wanted Germany only to retreat from western, southern and northern positions, while demanding the right to continue military occupation of German territorial gains in the east.[119]
The plot was now as ready as it would ever be. Twice in early July Stauffenberg attended Hitler's conferences carrying a bomb in his briefcase. But because the conspirators had decided that Himmler, too, must be assassinated if the planned mobilization of Operation Valkyrie was to have any chance of success, he had held back at the last minute because Himmler was not present – in fact it was unusual for Himmler to attend military conferences. By 15 July, when Stauffenberg again flew to East Prussia, this condition had been dropped. The plan was for Stauffenberg to plant the briefcase with the bomb in Hitler's conference room with a timer running, excuse himself from the meeting, wait for the explosion, then fly back to Berlin and join the other plotters at the Bendlerblock. Operation Valkyrie would be mobilized, the Reserve Army would take control of Germany and the other Nazi leaders would be arrested. Beck would be appointed head of state, Gordeler Chancellor and Witzleben commander-in-chief. The plan was ambitious and depended on a run of very good luck, but it was not totally fanciful.
