While resistance efforts in many other nations during the Second World War
fell under the umbrellas of large, unified resistance movements, this wasn't so much the case
in Germany. Before the war, and during its early stages, the German people were largely for Hitler,
who they believed—in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles—would make Germany great again. As
such, few wanted to resist him, while fear of arrest or execution dissuaded those who did.
But that's not to say that no one in Germany stood against him—far from it.
In this video, we explore some of the major German groups and individuals who
resisted Hitler and Nazism before and during the Second World War.
While they weren't exactly taking up arms and marching on Hitler, Christian churches
retained a degree of independence from the Nazi state and opposed many of Hitler's policies.
After Hitler seized power in 1933, he banned Catholic political parties and signed a treaty
known as the Reichskonkordat with Pope Pius XI,
which guaranteed the Catholic Church religious rights in Germany but also restricted its
political power. Author Anton Gill summarised it well in his book An Honourable Defeat:
"[Hitler] intended to imprison the Catholics, as it were,
in their own churches. They could celebrate mass and retain their rituals as much as they liked,
but they could have nothing at all to do with German society otherwise. Catholic schools
and newspapers were closed, and a propaganda campaign against the Catholics was launched."
Many members of the church would not be silenced,
however, and they were especially disgusted with Hitler's policies on euthanasia and sterilisation.
Among the Catholics who refused to be silent was the Bishop of Münster Clemens August Graf
von Galen, who, in 1933, used the terms of the Reichskonkordat against the Nazis to ensure
the continuation of religious instruction in Catholic schools. In 1934, he began denouncing
Nazi racial ideology during his sermons. Some of these were then printed and distributed,
illegally. In response, the SS paid Galen a visit, threatening to seize church property
and begin an anti-Catholic propaganda campaign. This didn't phase Galen,
whose impassioned sermons earned him the nickname the "Lion of Münster." Referencing
one of Galen's 1941 sermons, author Robert Jay Lifton wrote the following:
"[This] powerful, populist sermon was immediately reproduced and distributed
throughout Germany — indeed, it was dropped among German troops by British Royal Air Force flyers.
Galen's sermon probably had a greater impact than any other
one statement in consolidating anti-'euthanasia' sentiment."
While he wasn’t a bishop, the Catholic politician Erich Klausener
also stood boldly against the Nazis. Klausener was one of the men who contributed to the writing of
German Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen's June 1934 Marburg speech, largely considered the last major
public speech made against Nazism in Germany before the war. Later that month, Klausener—as
head of the Catholic Action Group Berlin—gave his own impassioned, anti-Nazi speech in Hoppegarten.
This action saw him murdered just six days later in the Night of the Long Knives.
Protestant movements rose up against religious persecution as well. One of these movements was
the Confessing Church, a group that opposed Hitler's plan of merging all of Germany's
Protestant churches (i.e. non-Catholic churches) into one pro-Nazi state church.
A Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the Confessing Churches founding
members and a vocal adversary of Nazi eugenics. Bonhoeffer held underground sermons in Germany
in the 1930s and became a member of the German military intelligence organisation the Abwehr,
using this position as a cover so he could aid the German resistance.
Along with other anti-Nazi conspirators working under the guise of the Abwehr,
Bonhoeffer was later implicated in the failed 20 July Plot and executed.
If churches were one pillar of German resistance, the military was another. One German general who
played a major role in the resistance was Hans Oster. Head of the Military Intelligence Office,
Oster made it his mission to create a network of Nazi-hating personnel in the Wehrmacht
and its intelligence arms. Among other prominent German military figures,
this man was in league with the Chief of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,
as well as the Chief of Staff of the German Army, General Ludwig Beck.
These men worked, in secret, to establish networks through which they could feed intelligence
to other elements of the German resistance. They also fought Hitler more directly. Notably,
Oster believed that the only way to truly defeat Hitler would be via a coup or to assassinate him.
Before the war, in 1938, Oster tried to win the support of Britain and France before going ahead
with his plan to overthrow Hitler, but they doubted Oster could actually do it, and lent
him no aid. In the lead-up to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Beck told Hitler it was a bad
idea—so Hitler sacked him. One Franz Halder, who was also in contact with Oster, took Beck's place.
Now that words had failed, Oster prepared to storm the Reich Chancellery to arrest
or slay the Führer. But this plan—the Oster Conspiracy—ultimately fell through
because Germany moved on Sudetenland instead (leaving Poland to invade Czechoslovakia)
and because Halder, while initially eager, refused to follow through with it.
During the war, Oster and his fellow conspirators continued to plot against
Hitler, with the Abwehr Chief Canaris protecting them as well as he could.
Halder, however, very much feared Hitler, failing time and time again to take decisive action
against him, much to the other conspirators' disappointment. To add to the difficulty
of removing Hitler from power, he was very much winning the war in its early years, and
many of his officers were pretty happy about that. A coup was the last thing on many of their minds.
In 1944, by which time Hitler very much wasn't winning the war, Oster, Beck, and Canaris—along
with a number of other high-ranking German conspirators—participated in Operation Valkyrie,
or the 20 July Plot, a failed assassination attempt and coup d'état against Hitler.
While the bomb that the conspirators planted wounded the Führer, it did not kill him. In
retaliation, the Gestapo went out and arrested more than 7,000 suspects and executed almost 5,000
of them. Along with the aforementioned Lutheran pastor Bonhoeffer, Oster and Canaris swung from
ropes, while Beck ate lead. Halder was also arrested, but later on—and he survived the war.
German political groups also resisted Hitler, among them the groups which he banned when he
came to power. These included but weren't limited to the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the
Communist Party of Germany, or KPD. These groups largely maintained underground networks and
distributed anti-Nazi propaganda; however, after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941,
the KDP became more active, undertaking espionage and sabotage operations.
While not a part of the KDP, the left-leaning
Luftwaffe intelligence officer Harro Schulze-Boysen, the economist Arvid Harnack,
and the journalist Adam Kuckhoff led their own resistance movement against Hitler and fascism
in league with other resistance groups the Gestapo loosely defined as the Red Orchestra.
While there were likely more people affiliated with the Red Orchestra,
some 400 are known by name. The Schulze-Boysen group resisted by gathering evidence of Nazi war
crimes, passing this information on to foreign nations, spreading anti-Nazi propaganda via
leaflets and pamphlets, and assisting those persecuted by Hitler's sadistic regime.
After the German Communist and Red Orchestra member Johann Wenzel informed on Schulze-Boysen
and Harnack during a good old torture session, the Gestapo arrested those two men. They were executed
on the 22nd of December 1941, while the journalist Kuckhoff was put to death in August 1943.
Germans didn't need to be directly involved with the church, the military,
or political groups to resist Nazism, however.
The White Rose was a non-violent resistance group led by students from the University of Munich,
including but not limited to Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans. The White Rose resisted Hitler
by means of anti-Nazi leaflets and pamphlets, and graffiti. One of their leaflets read as follows:
"Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most
bestial way. The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage the fascist criminals.
Each wants to be exonerated of guilt, each one continues on his way with the most placid,
calm conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!"
While distributing leaflets at the university in February 1943, Sophie and Hans were ratted out
by the uni’s maintenance man, Jakob Schmid. The Gestapo came for them, and just a few days later,
the two siblings and one other White Rose member were executed by fricking
guillotine at Stadelheim Prison. Before the blade fell, Hans cried out, "Long live freedom!"
Of course, the German resistance, while not operating under a single banner, was far more
extensive than what we’ve covered in this video. There were many other groups that resisted Hitler,
as were there many instances of “everyday resistance,” such as Germans hiding and otherwise
assisting the Jews, and young Germans evading the Hitler Youth and engaging in counter-culture.
Of those groups and individuals that we did cover, which had you heard of before? Do you know
anything about them that we didn't mention? What about those groups and individuals we didn't cover
at all—can you think of any? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.