At the time of the National Socialist takeover, a majority of German electors had cast their votes for other political parties such as the Social Democratic, Communist, or Center Party.1 This leads us to understand that a strong sentiment of disapproval of Hitler and the National Socialist Party rapidly manifested in Germany. As the ideas and changes that the regime brought with it were gradually implemented, either new adherents joined the opposition or those who had initially expressed reservations about the party were seduced to join the rest of Hitler’s followers. The bulk of Germans either adapted to, went along with, or actively supported National Socialism.
During its short existence of fourteen years (1919–1933) the Weimar Republic had experienced constant change and turmoil, and its political administration had been stigmatized by the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty and the economic abyss of the Great Depression. In light of the number of changes in the nature and leadership of Germany’s government up until Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933, those who had not given their approval of the new man in office were not concerned about his nomination: they thought it unlikely he would remain in power for long and resolved to shift their plans for rebellion to the back burner. Within months of Hitler’s establishment at the helm of the Reich, opposition to the new order became limited due to the danger involved in opposition and the repression of dissenting voices, as well as the growing support for Hitler and the National Socialist Party.
Between 1933 and 1939, about half a million Germans fled the country for fear of political or racial persecution, while some went underground.2 In the regime’s early years, opposition and resistance groups were composed of disparate political and ideological strands representing various classes of German society that were seldom able to work together.3 With the support of German emigrant operatives in neighboring countries, some of these groups carried out anti–National Socialist propaganda campaigns through the distribution of literature and other acts of protest and opposition.4 Political opponents of Hitler’s regime, to avoid detection, dissimulated their messages in banal looking pamphlets such as Die Kunst des Selbstrasierens (The Art of Shaving).5
Distinct groups such as the leftist political parties, the Bavarian monarchists, student movements, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Habsburg supporters, church-led opposition, and other organizations attempted to motivate their fellow countrymen to stand up to the regime but were, however, systematically shut down, imprisoned, and often murdered by the Gestapo. Some of the individual Germans who opposed the regime, including intellectuals, artists, and ordinary citizens, spoke out or participated in occasional acts of resistance. Not only were German and Austrian resistance efforts targeted by the Reich’s terror apparatus, but activists ran the constant risk of betrayal by those who had been successfully indoctrinated by Hitler’s persona, premises, and promises.
Indeed, Hitler’s regime became widely accepted by and to a great extent popular with the German people, not only throughout the prewar period but even during the first two years of World War II. The disappointments and political weaknesses of the Weimar Republic had discredited democracy in the eyes of most Germans. Hitler’s seeming success in reestablishing full employment after the devastations of the Great Depression and his bloodless foreign policy triumphs such as the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 and the Anschluss of Austria in 1938 were applauded both nationally and internationally.6
As institutions, neither the Catholic nor the Protestant churches were in a position to directly oppose the regime, yet it was thanks to the clergy that the first measures of German opposition to the policies of the Third Reich emerged. A great number of clergymen attempted to resist the regime’s efforts to infringe on ecclesiastical autonomy, and a few expressed broader misgivings about the new order.7 Several priests, such as the Jesuits Alfred Delp and Augustin Rösch, as well as the Lutheran preacher Dietrich Bonhoeffer, worked successfully within the clandestine German resistance. The Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller (founder of the Confessing Church) and the Catholic Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen (who denounced the National Socialists’ practice of euthanasia) upheld the principles of human rights and justice as the indispensable pillars of a political system.8
Historian Ian Kershaw sums it up by stating that the churches “engaged in a bitter war of attrition with the regime, receiving the demonstrative backing of millions of churchgoers. Applause for Church leaders whenever they appeared in public, swollen attendances at events such as Corpus Christi Day processions, and packed church services were outward signs of the struggle . . . especially of the Catholic Church against Nazi oppression.” Though the church ultimately was unable to shield its youth organizations and schools, it was somewhat successful in mobilizing public opinion to alter government policies.9
Between 1936 and 1938, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany staged a series of significant acts of resistance. When Hitler came to power, this religious community, with about twenty-five thousand members, was labeled as a “Jewish-Internationalist” group and banned due to its refusal to serve in the military and bear arms. Despite the ban, the organization was able to continue operating illegally. In late 1936, Jehovah’s Witnesses distributed a resolution protesting their community’s persecution, leading to a nationwide rally with no prior notice. This was a propaganda victory for the group and was followed by another successful demonstration the following summer, a feat unmatched by any other banned organization.10
In the mid-1930s, a group of friends including Arvid Harnack (a senior executive at the Reich Ministry of Economics) and his wife, Mildred, as well as Harro Schulze-Boysen (an employee at the Reich Ministry of Aviation) and his wife, Libertas, formed friendship and study circles in Berlin. Over time, their personal contacts led to the formation of seven resistance circles in 1940–1941 made up of over 150 individuals from diverse backgrounds and ideologies, including students, artists, journalists, and civil servants, many of whom were women.
They fought against National Socialism through various means, including discussions on political and artistic issues, assistance to persecuted people, and documentation of National Socialist crimes. They also spread their message to the public by distributing leaflets and posting notes and reached out to like-minded individuals in other parts of Germany.
Harnack and Schulze-Boysen also relayed intelligence to the Soviet Union, and the group increased its political education efforts by distributing leaflets and letters. In 1942, the Gestapo discovered their resistance organization and labeled it a Soviet espionage group, “Red Orchestra,” leading to investigations and trials for treason. By late 1942, death sentences were passed, and over fifty members of the Red Orchestra were executed.11
Starting in 1940, a group of individuals with diverse social backgrounds and ideological beliefs, united in opposition to the regime, held regular meetings in Berlin, Munich, and the Kreisau Estate in Silesia. The Kreisau Circle, as it came to be called, was led by friends Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and consisted of Christians of different denominations, Social Democrats, conservatives, and liberals who came together to establish common ground through respectful discourse.
Their goal was to develop a comprehensive plan for a new political, social, and intellectual framework that could be implemented after the fall of the Third Reich. Through conferences, discussions, and memos, they aimed to create a new foundation for human relations and state governance, exploring issues such as governmental structure, limitations on state power, the economy, education, and the role of the church. A crucial objective for them was to secure Germany’s position in a new postwar European order. The Kreisau Circle had a significant impact on the ideas of those opposed to the National Socialist state and who sought to take action. Some members of the circle even participated in plans to assassinate Hitler. Many members were sentenced to death by the People’s Court due to their connections to the failed July 20, 1944, coup. A few members of the Kreisau Circle survived and went on to shape postwar Germany.12
The initial triumphs of the German military in 1939 and 1940 were met with widespread jubilation. However, as the war progressed and German cities were devastated by Allied air raids, the regime’s reputation was damaged, resulting in an increase in dissent toward the war. Open acts of defiance or resistance were rare, and collective opposition was nearly impossible to organize. The political opposition, especially the Social Democratic and Communist Parties, had already been crushed by the Gestapo years prior, leaving most of their leaders dead, imprisoned, or in exile.
As a measure of precaution, the Gestapo arrested and detained many former Communist functionaries prior to the Russian invasion in order to avoid the possible formation of resistance bands. Despite these safeguards, several Communist resistance groups surfaced in cities with a large labor presence, such as in the east or in the Ruhr region. With the support of exiled party members abroad, these rebellious units managed to distribute leaflets urging opposition to the regime and encouraging acts of sabotage. A result was the success of a small group of young Jewish Communists in blowing up part of an anti-Soviet exhibition organized by Goebbels. The outcome of their brave revolt was the arrest of thirty of their members and the subsequent execution of fifteen.
The student resistance movement called the Weisse Rose (White Rose) was created in Munich by the siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl, along with a few fellow students and a professor. The White Rose group was motivated by ethical, moral, and religious considerations, and its members supported and took in individuals of the most varied backgrounds. Starting in June 1942, the group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the National Socialist regime.
When the defeat at Stalingrad was officially announced, the White Rose distributed their sixth—and last—leaflet. The tone of this writing, authored by Hans Scholl and two others, was decidedly patriotic. Headed “Fellow students!,” it announced that the “day of reckoning” had come for “the most contemptible tyrant our people has ever endured. . . . The dead of Stalingrad adjure us!”13 The text of this sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany to the United Kingdom by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, a German lawyer and member of the Kreisau Circle. In July 1943, copies were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled “The Manifesto of the Students of Munich.”
By this means, the efforts and message of the White Rose became widely known in Germany during the last couple of years of the war, but as with other attempts at resistance, they did not result in any large-scale opposition to Hitler’s regime. The White Rose’s core group was arrested by the Gestapo in February 1943, and following a show trial, Sophie and Hans Scholl were guillotined.14 As the blade was about to drop, Hans Scholl purportedly cried out, “Es lebe die Freiheit” (long live freedom).15
In the period from February 27 to March 6, 1943, a group of roughly two hundred Germans who were not of Jewish descent, mainly women, congregated outside a Jewish community building situated on Rosenstrasse in Berlin. Inside the building, approximately two thousand Jews, mainly men who were married to non-Jewish partners and their sons, had been taken into custody by the police. The non-Jewish relatives of those who were detained were worried that their loved ones would be sent to the east, as had happened to seven thousand Jews in the recent past.
The police repeatedly ordered the crowd to disperse, but the demonstrators immediately returned and eventually maintained a continuous presence, taking turns throughout the day and night to demonstrate their resolve to get answers and to draw attention to the outrage. Such a demonstration was unheard of in Hitler’s Germany, where only official parades and public events were allowed, and despite media censorship, news of the revolt spread by word of mouth throughout the country and eventually leaked out to the international media.16
According to accounts, the Reich’s Security Office had issued a decree that exempted Jewish partners of mixed marriages from being deported. The reason for the Gestapo’s detention of the men and boys in the Rosenstrasse community center was purportedly to process their papers and verify their identities and statuses. After this “registration,” the plan was to release them back to their homes but to have them replace deported Jews in factories and facilities in and around Berlin that had lost much of their forced labor. As a result, the Gestapo’s operation in late February 1943 came to be known as the “Factory Action” after the war.
Other sources claim that the Rosenstrasse detainees were indeed going to be deported to Auschwitz but that on March 6, 1943, Goebbels, in his capacity as the Gauleiter of Berlin, ordered all of the men imprisoned at Rosenstrasse to be released, stating, “I will commission the security police not to continue the Jewish evacuations in a systematic manner during such a critical time [a reference to the defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad]. We want to rather spare that for ourselves until after a few weeks; then we can carry it out that much more thoroughly.”17
By March 11, all the Rosenstrasse Jewish detainees were free with the exception of twenty-five who had already been shipped off to Auschwitz in the early part of the roundup but were promptly repatriated so as to avoid public dissent.
The brave women who risked their freedom and their lives by demanding the liberation of their Jewish husbands serve as an example of peaceful German resistance to the National Socialist regime of terror. The German historian Konrad Kwiet intimates that “the successful outcome of this late protest suggests that if similar actions at an earlier stage had been carried out throughout Germany, they might have halted the increasingly destructive course of the German anti-Jewish policy.”
Though the outbreak of World War II was viewed with enthusiasm by a large portion of the German population, approval for a new conflict was not unanimous: the horrendous death toll and ensuing economic disaster of the First World War still loomed over Germany like an apocalyptic shadow. While the old “elite,” the conservative military figures still present from World War I or the Weimar Republic days, plotted to remove Hitler, there was very little they managed to achieve. Allegedly, however, no less than forty-two unsuccessful assassination attempts were planned or carried out against Hitler before and during the war.
Just two months into the war, in November 1939, Georg Elser, a carpenter from Württemberg, laid a plan to assassinate Hitler. He read in the newspapers that Hitler would be speaking at a party meeting on November 8 at Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller, the beer hall where Hitler had staged the Beer Hall Putsch on the same date in 1923. Elser stole explosives from his workplace with which to build a powerful time bomb and, for more than a month, managed to remain inside the beer hall after hours each night, hollowing out a pillar behind the speaker’s rostrum in order to place the bomb inside.
On the night of November 7, Elser set the timer and fled toward the Swiss border. Unexpectedly, Hitler delivered a much shorter speech than usual and left the Bürgerbräukeller thirteen minutes before the bomb exploded, killing seven people and injuring dozens. Had Hitler still been speaking, the bomb would have most likely killed him. Elser was arrested at the border and sent to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. In 1945 he was transferred to the Dachau Concentration Camp, where he was executed two weeks before the camp’s liberation.
A second assassination attempt was carried out by high-ranking members of the military while Hitler was returning from his easternmost headquarters, FHQ Wehrwolf, near Vinnitsa in Ukraine, to the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) in East Prussia. On March 13, 1943, a bomb was smuggled onto Hitler’s plane. The bomb was disguised as a box for two bottles of Cointreau. The fuse was set so that Hitler’s plane was expected to explode about thirty minutes later, near Minsk, close enough to the front to be attributed to Soviet fighters. Probably due to the cold, the detonator’s percussion cap did not go off, and Hitler again escaped certain death.
Some days later, on March 21, 1943, when Hitler was visiting an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin, Colonel Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff was scheduled to explain some exhibits. He had secretly volunteered to carry out a suicide bombing using the same bomb that had failed to go off on the plane, concealed on his person. Unfortunately, the only new chemical fuse he could acquire was a ten-minute fuse. Again Hitler departed ahead of schedule after hurrying through the exhibition much faster than the scheduled thirty minutes. Gersdorff managed to dash to a bathroom to defuse the bomb and save his own life.
On November 9, 1943, a member of the elite Infantry Regiment 9, Axel von dem Bussche, volunteered to kill Hitler with hand grenades. This was to take place during a presentation of new winter uniforms, but the train carrying the goods was destroyed by an Allied air raid in Berlin, and the event had to be postponed. A second presentation planned for December at the Wolf’s Lair had to be canceled on short notice because, at the last minute, Hitler decided to travel to Berchtesgaden instead.
On February 11, 1943, another young officer, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, attempted to assassinate Hitler in the same manner that von dem Bussche had intended. Again, Hitler canceled the event that would have allowed Kleist to approach him.
On March 11, 1944, Cavalry Officer Eberhard von Breitenbuch volunteered for an assassination attempt at the Berghof in Berchtesgaden. Armed with a Browning pistol concealed in his pocket, he was, however, unable to carry out the plan because guards would not allow him into the conference room with the Führer.
One of the leading instigators of the preceding assassination attempts was Henning von Tresckow, second general staff officer of Army Group A under Gerd von Rundstedt. In 1943 Tresckow met Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg for the first time. Severely wounded in North Africa, Stauffenberg was a devout Catholic, a political conservative, and a zealous German nationalist with a taste for philosophy. At first, he had favored the new regime but soon became disillusioned. By 1942 he shared the widespread opinion among Wehrmacht officers that Germany was headed for disaster and that Hitler must be toppled. Initially, his religious scruples had prevented him from coming to the conclusion that assassination was the correct way to achieve this. Following Stalingrad, however, he concluded that not assassinating Hitler would represent an even greater moral evil.
Starting in late 1943, it became increasing challenging to approach Hitler, who spent most of his time either at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia or at his home, the Berghof, in Berchtesgaden. On July 1, 1944, Stauffenberg was appointed chief-of-staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters in Berlin, a post that would enable him to attend Hitler’s military conferences, both in East Prussia and in Berchtesgaden, and provide him with the opportunity to assassinate the Führer.
After two aborted attempts to shoot Hitler at his Berghof residence and carrying a bomb around in a briefcase to several official meetings, Stauffenberg flew back to the Wolf’s Lair on July 20, 1944, for another one of Hitler’s military briefings, again with a bomb in his briefcase.
Stauffenberg, having previously activated the timer on the bomb, set his briefcase down, under the table around which Hitler and over twenty officers were seated or standing. Ten minutes later, Stauffenberg made an excuse to leave the room, shortly after which the bomb exploded, demolishing the conference room. Several officers were killed but not Hitler, who apparently was protected from the detonation by the heavy table leg. The reprisal was fierce, with the arrest of some five thousand people suspected of having played a part in the conspiracy against Hitler. Of these, some two hundred—including Stauffenberg—were executed.
It can be established that opposition or resistance to the National Socialist regime in Germany during Hitler’s dictatorship was limited due to the dangers it posed to those who spoke out against the government. Despite the repression, many German individuals and groups risked their lives to speak out or to fight for their ideals and for the freedom of their fellow citizens, regardless of origin, race, or creed.
1. Das Deutsche Reich, “Reichstagswahl November 1932,” https://gonschior.de/weimar/Deutschland/index.htm.
2. Hartmut Mehringer et al., “Widerstand und Emigration,” in Dahm, Die Tödliche Utopie, 467.
3. Anton Gill, An Honourable Defeat: A History of the German Resistance to Hitler (New York: H. Holt, 1994), 2.
4. Mehringer et al., “Widerstand und Emigration,” 491.
5. Ibid., 494.
6. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
7. Theodore S. Hamerow, On the Road to the Wolf’s Lair: German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997), 133.
8. Ibid., 288–89.
9. Kershaw, Hitler, 210–11.
10. Mehringer et al., “Widerstand und Emigration,” 473.
11. “Red Orchestra,” Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/topics/14-the-red-orchestra/.
12. Ibid.
13. Jacob G. Hornberger, “Holocaust Resistance: The White Rose—a Lesson in Dissent,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-white-rose-a-lesson-in-dissent.
14. Richard Hanser, A Noble Treason (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012).
15. Inge Scholl, The White Rose: Munich, 1942–1943 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011).
16. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Rosenstrasse Demonstration, 1943,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-rosenstrasse-demonstration-1943.
17. Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 245.