Overview and Intent

A continuous and active German resistance to the twelve-year rule of the National Socialist Party existed from before the date of Hitler's seizure of power to the last days of the Reich in 1945. The movement was centred in various locations and within different organizations through the 1933 - 1945 period. Individuals of differing backgrounds and motivations took more or less active roles in resisting Hitler. While the resistance, or Widerstand as it is referred to in German, was very small in order to preserve security, it nevertheless represented a cross section of the nation including influential members drawn from the armed forces; the churches; academia; and government. Officers and officials of political stripes were involved, including monarchists; socialists; communists; conservatives and ex-Nazis.

Those who laid everything on the line to take part in the resistance have only recently started to receive their due from the media and from society in general. Recent films like "The Last Days of Sophie Scholl" in Germany and the U.S. "Valkyrie" have raised the public's general consciousness of the resistance within Germany.

Sir John Wheeler-Bennett

Immediately after World War II, the western allies had no real interest in recognizing the moral worth of the Widerstand or its participants. There was no suppressing the fact that on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg had launched his bomb plot, but it was represented in many official publications and communications as the act of traitors leaving a sinking ship when all was clearly lost. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, an English historian seconded to the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department, penned an infamous internal memorandum that reads today as a cold blooded condemnation of the purpose and character of the July 20 conspirators. It seems to welcome the bloody purge that followed the event: "The Gestapo and the SS have done us an appreciable service in removing a selection of those who would undoubtedly have posed as 'good' Germans after the war . . . The killing of Germans by Germans will save us from future embarrassments of many kinds."1. It is unclear whether Wheeler-Bennett was specifically referring to the risk that certain members of the Widerstand, particularly those representing the German Foreign Office, could attest to the fact that they had tried to warn the British government about Hitler's plans on multiple occasions and at great personal risk in the pre-war period but had been resolutely ignored. After the war, Wheeler-Bennett penned one of the first histories of the resistance in English, a generally unfavourable history called "The Nemesis of Power."

This suspicion paralleled the view of many Germans in the immediate post-war period, who generally saw the resisters as traitors to the country rather than as conspirators against Hitler personally. Its hard to recognize the courage of neighbours who put their own lives, and those of their family and friends, at risk when you did not take that same action yourself.Only in the 1950's and 1960's did a new generation in Germany start to see merit and honour in the actions of the small group who defied the Nazis. But the division of Germany into a democratic west and a communist east preserved some negative stereotyping of certain individuals and of bands of those who actively or passively stood up to Hitler. It was only with the unification of Germany and the passing of the generation that took an active part in the war that the trend toward seeing the various resistance groups in a positive light started to become dominant.

This blog will serve to summarize my research, opinions and general thoughts on the Widerstand. It will not be organized in any particular way and it will consist of primarily of individual biographies and profiles, summaries of specific plots and resistance actions against Hitler, and descriptions of major resister groups. Hopefully, over time, it will all start to hang together.

I am not a professional historian. But I have studied these men and women for more than ten years so I suppose I know more than the average person in this one specific area of interest. Finally, I do not speak or write German, yet many of the most important documentary sources (original, in print and on the internet) are in that language. I will do my best to translate them properly using dictionaries and internet translators when I do use them. Apologies in advance to the many German speakers for any inaccuracies that will creep in.