During Hitler’s rise to power within Germany, the defy the Nazis and the dictator was a
very dangerous thing to do.
Those who were discovered to have gone against the Third Reich were often executed in horrific
fashion in a variety of different ways.
There was significant resistance to Hitler within Germany, but ultimately this was quashed
by the police state established by organisations such as the Gestapo.
These were tasked with searching for those who opposed the regime and dealing with them
in brutal ways.
Resisters once arrested were often interrogated and tortured for information, before being
executed by the guillotine or by firing squads.
The most high profile act of resistance came in 1944 with the July 20th Plot, when Hitler’s
Wolf’s Lair was bombed injuring the Dictator.
Today we look at a young woman who opposed the regime, and was involved in communist
groups within Germany.
Liselotte Hermann, commonly known as Lilo Hermann was only 28 when she was killed, and
her execution attracted a significant degree of international protest and criticism.
However she was guillotined regardless of the pressure exerted upon the Nazi state.
So join us today as we look at the BRUTAL execution of Lilo Hermann, the Forgotten Resistor
to the Nazis.
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Within Nazi Germany as soon as Hitler seized control there was resistance to his regime.
During the course of the Second World War for example, it’s been estimated that the
Gestapo arrested and interrogated 800,000 Germans who it was believed were linked to
resistance groups.
Around 15,000 of these were executed for their opposition.
Resistance came in many forms, for example with members of the government or officials
defying the wishes of Hitler, but on a more grass-roots level, it was linked to students
such as the White Rose.
These were a group of students and academics who tried to oppose Hitler and distributed
anti-Nazi propaganda, encouraging the everyday German population to not follow and to not
conform to what was happening at the time.
Ultimately the white rose was brutally destroyed, with the executions of Hans and Sophie Scholl
two prominent members, and other resistance elements were also prominent.
These could be found in the Catholic and Protestant Churches for example, even inside the army
there were elements of resistance.
When Hitler seized power, he used the SA to stamp out resistance in particular from communists,
the direct enemies of the Nazis.
Hitler hated communists, and he made specific steps to ensure that they were persecuted
and repressed, especially in the wake of the Reichstag fire which was pinned on a young
dutch communist.
Hitler quickly suppressed all other political parties, including those which were communist.
The KPD was forced to maintain an underground network, but the Gestapo frequently infiltrated
these networks and arrested and executed significant amounts of KPD activists.
Many were also sent to concentration camps that were opening up during the Third Reich,
but despite the Nazis taking control of the German state, they had not destroyed communism
and bolshevism as ideologies within the German population.
Liselotte Hermann was born on the 23rd June 1909, and was known as Lilo to her friends
and family.
She was born inside Berlin, and her father was an engineer.
He provided her a rather middle class upbringing that was fairly liberal, and allowed Lilo
to make her own mind up on the world around her.
It’s assumed that she had a relatively normal schooling within the Weimar Republic following
the First World War.
Her family were largely unaffected by the social and economic issues that plagued Germany
during and after the war.
In the 1920s, the Hermann family moved a number of times before returning to Berlin, and Lilo
was educated at prestigious schools.
In 1929, she was awarded her Abitur, which was the school leaving certificate needed
for her to enrol in a German university.
She had already developed strong views on her country, and the issues that were plaguing
the country and the economy.
Despite being quiet she was passionate about politics, and it was said that, ‘Lilo is
honest and upright, and tells the truth to all, no matter who it might be.’
She loved nature and was artistic, but within Germany many people were becoming attracted
to more radical political views, and especially the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler.
Lilo’s parents moved to Stuttgart in the summer of 1929, but she stayed within Berlin
studying Chemistry and working as a lab assistant.
The political and social climate at the time disturbed Lilo as she believed that the move
many people were having towards right wing politics was very dangerous.
She became attracted to Maxism and communism, and whilst a student delved into her interests
on these.
She became aware of the cultural advances inside the Soviet Union, and believed that
Communism and Marxism was the better way for Germany to go.
With this she joined the Berlin Branch of the League of German Socialist Students.
She went further joining the Red Student Group and the Stuttgart Institute of Technology,
and also joined a local communist youth organisation.
She met the author Friedrich Wolf through her various communist groups, and he later
wrote how she was strong and devoted.
Each day she was involved in political activities, and she joined the KPD, the Communist Party
of Germany by the end of 1931.
She was an enthusiastic member, and was hostile to the Nazi movement.
She was disturbed by Berlin Nazi Students and their violence against Jewish members
of staff and students.
She was threatened a number of times, but she even helped to shelter those in danger.
As Hitler seized control of Germany, the persecution of the Jews and communists ramped up significantly.
At the University of Berlin which was considered the intellectual heart of the capital, the
Nazis expelled 111 students including Lilo Hermann.
It was justified they said as she had signed a petition attacking the ideas of fascism
and war, and the Nazis saw this as enough to throw her out of university.
She viewed the Nazi ideology as dangerous and evil, and she had a great disdain for
the Nazi policies.
Following her expulsion, she remained in Berlin working in the underground communist networks
under a false name.
She remained an active member of the Communist youth groups, and earned a wage by caring
for young children.
She gave birth to a son of her own on the 15th May 1934 named Walter.
She never married the child’s father due to her links to the communist underground,
and never confessed his name for fear of him being arrested alongside her and implicated.
It’s believed the father could have been another member of the resistance movement
called Walter Ehlen who was later sentenced to 15 years hard labour at Mauthausen Concentration
Camp, where he died days before the camp was liberated in 1945.
The Gestapo at the time were infiltrating communist underground groups, and Lilo feared
her situation in Berlin.
She moved to stuttgart and worked as a secretary in her father’s business, and she continued
her illegal political activities and was engrained in the small communist movements in Stuttgart.
In the KPD organisation, she gathered information on the morale of workers in industry, and
informed the leaders of these.
She also was tasked with finding out about the plans for German militarisation and rearmament.
She made discoveries along with other communists that the cities industries were involved in
creating materials for the army which violated the treaty of Versailles.
Her organisation uncovered plans for secret German Army munitions facilities being built,
however she was later betrayed.
An agent had uncovered Hermann’s network and had been working inside of it, and she
was arrested at her parents home in the early hours of December 7th 1935.
The Gestapo searched her house and found incriminating evidence and documents including even the
plan for the munitions plant and banned marxist books.
Lilo Hermann was then taken under arrest, and was held for 19 months inside Stuttgart’s
police jail.
She was subject to horrific physical, psychological and emotional torture, and was so badly beaten
that she attended a court hearing on crutches.
On one occasion, the gestapo agents put her small son in the cell next door and got him
to ask when his mother was coming home which must have been heartbreaking.
She was also warned that her son would be germanised and placed in the home of a Nazi
family and raised in this if she did not confess information about her comrades.
She was taken to the Stuttgart Gestapo Headquarters for interrogations, but despite the horrific
torture she never gave over any information.
She said, ‘I simply do not wish to make any further statements,’ and with this Lilo
Hermann’s file was marked Unverbesserliche, or no change can be expected.
This meant either she would be sent to a concentration camp, or more likely put to death.
Lilo was placed on trial along with the other members of the communist underground network
of Stuttgart, and all 5 of them at the People’s Court were accused of having ‘engaged in
preparations for high treason.’
The People’s Court as an establishment always sided with the Nazis and was incredibly bias
and notorious for sentencing resisters of the Nazi Regime to their death.
The trial began on the 8th June 1937, and in the first few hours the courtroom heard
the evidence, and then in the afternoon all the deliberations of the court were held in
private.
14 witnesses appeared at the trial, and on the morning on June 12th, all five of the
defendants including Lilo were found guilty.
One defendant Alfred Grozinger was sentenced to 12 years hard labour, but Lilo and the
other 3 were sentenced to death.
They were taken to Berlin, and Hermann was imprisoned at the Berlin Women’s Prison
found on Barnimstrasse.
In Spring 1938, she was moved to Berlin’s Plotzensee Prison for the final weeks of her
life.
She wrote letters to her parents in prison, and stated ‘It is very difficult to leave
and also say goodbye to a child, knowing that Germany will be destroyed by war.’
Many European countries at the time found out about her case though, and they began
to protest against her death sentence.
The fact she was a mother was pointed out in protests in the UK, France, Czechoslovakia,
Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Belgium.
The Nazi regime ignored them, and it was said though that the protest letters were so overwhelming
in their numbers they turned into mountains.
However Hitler had the final say, and he authorised her death sentence despite the global outrage.
She was due to be executed using the guillotine at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin on the 20th
June 1938.
The guillotine was used by the Nazis for the beheading of those regarded as traitors, and
it was seen as a swift and sharp way of killing.
At the time Ernst Reindel was responsible for the execution sites in Berlin, so it’s
possible that he was the one who carried out the execution, or that Lilo’s death was
performed by Johann Reichhart, a prolific executioner who worked also at Berlin’s
Plotzensee prison.
Reichhart was noted for his efficiency, with often the condemned being executed within
seconds of arriving in the execution chamber.
Lilo Hermann would have been taken from her cell in the prison, and then taken into the
execution chamber in the prison.
Once she arrived in the chamber then her identity would have been confirmed, and then she was
quickly handed over the executioner and his assistant.
She would have been then secured on a tipping board or a fixed bench.
Once secured, she was placed under the guillotine blade, and within seconds she was then beheaded
when the lever was pressed that released the blade.
Typically executions using the guillotine took between 3-8 seconds once someone had
been passed over to the executioner, that’s how quick the process was.
Following Lilo Hermann’s execution, articles emerged in German newspapers disgusted with
the death sentence.
One woman wrote, ‘Was it necessary to kill a German mother because of her opinion?
With 99% of the people on Hitler’s side, why did someone choose to make her baby motherless.’
In the UK several aristocratic woman wrote to Hitler with copies of British newspapers,
saying that the execution of Lilo Hermann had caused negativity between the two nations,
and that it was unlikely of the two ever having a political alliance, and in just over a year
the two countries would be at war.
After her execution, there were many streets named after her in post war Germany, and child
care centres were named after her.
However these were later erased after Reunification in 1990 to erase all references to Communism.
She’s seen as a controversial figure in Germany today, with some seeing her as a valiant
opposer to the NAzis, who died for her beliefs, but others consider her to have been a communist
who’s own ideology was equally as dangerous.
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Once again thanks for watching.