History
German resistance to Nazism: the inextricable hell of totalitarianism
If the very broad consent of German society to the Nazi regime has been the subject of numerous studies where we seek to determine in particular the roles of terror, propaganda and fascination, resistance both internally and 'outside the country – with the exiles – remains unknown to the general public.
Minority and protean, it is marked by a number of tragic outcomes and perhaps tells better than any other aspect of this period the absolute influence of totalitarianism.
The conspirators' wall of July 20, 1944 at the German Resistance Memorial in Berlin.
© Olivier Favier / RFI
By: Olivier Favier Follow
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When we think of German opposition to Nazism, one name often comes up: that of Pastor Martin Niemöller, the author of the poem
"When They Came for..."
which describes the consequences of passivity and indifference in the face of to totalitarianism.
It is less known that he was initially a supporter of Hitler's regime, before rebelling against its anti-Semitic measures.
Arrested in 1937, after the war he became a fervent campaigner for peace.
We also think of an image, this anonymous person who can be seen with his arms crossed in 1936 in the middle of a crowd performing the Nazi salute.
In 1991, the man was identified by his daughter as August Landmesser, a Hamburg shipyard worker.
He also supported Nazism, he was even a member of the party in 1931, before being excluded in 1935 for having become engaged to a young Jewish woman.
Neither he nor his partner will survive the war.
The great cycling champion Albert Richter is, for his part, viscerally anti-Nazi.
While he resolved at the end of 1939 to leave Germany permanently, he was kidnapped by the authorities just before crossing the border and died in circumstances which have never been precisely established.
Beyond their symbolic force, these singular journeys above all reveal the diversity of motivations and forms taken by German resistance to Nazism, which sometimes began with the simple refusal to comply with the demands of the regime.
August Landmesser in Hamburg, June 13, 1936. © arastiralim.net, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The exiled
Between 1919 and 1932, some 600,000 Germans left the Weimar Republic.
The reasons are therefore essentially economic.
After 1933, a new wave affected 500,000 people, including 150,000 Austrians and 25,000 Czechoslovaks after the annexations of 1938. For the Germans on the borders of 1933, 300,000 were Jews – a third of whom after Kristallnacht on
November
9 1938 which left around a hundred dead – 30,000 were political opponents, mainly left-wing, 5,500 were intellectuals, artists, academics, writers.
Although these figures are significant, they are infinitely lower than those of the mass exoduses and expulsions of the post-war period, when the two blocs were formed.
During the 1930s, many countries limited immigration and certain obvious, because German-speaking, destinations, such as the Saarland under French control until 1935, or
Austria,
annexed in 1938
, quickly ceased to be safe, likewise than France or the Netherlands a little later.
Among the 5,500 Germans committed to the Spanish Republic, 2,000 died during the civil war.
A majority of emigrants end their exile across the Atlantic, in the United States but also in Latin America.
Some will never come back.
Despite everything, almost half of German Jews remained in Germany, the vast majority were murdered there during the Shoah.
At the end of the war, there were only 15,000 Jews left in Germany, apart from the rare survivors of the camps.
The fate of exiles, Jewish or not, sometimes ends in tragedy: the writers Walter Benjamin, Ernst Toller and Stefan Zweig (the latter Austrian) commit suicide, the social democratic activist Johanna Kirchner is handed over by the French police to the Nazis who execute it.
A thousand Germans joined the French resistance, notably in the groups of
Francs-tireurs et partisans – Immigrant workforce
(FTP-Moi).
Three of them led the parade a few days after the liberation of Nîmes on September 4, 1944.
The writer Erich-Maria Remarque arrived on the “Queen Mary” in New York on March 23, 1939. His novels, “The Exiles” (1939) and “Arc de Triomphe” (1946) remain among the most striking accounts of the diaspora German anti-Nazi.
© Felix Ring, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Inner resistance: “Red Orchestra” and “White Rose”
But the resistance is also internal.
Within it, even if a branch operated in France and Belgium, we remember in particular the set of networks known as the
"
Red Orchestra", a nickname given by the Gestapo which by this meant denouncing their subservience to the USSR.
If the intelligence work for Moscow is real, it only takes place late and does not take into account the ideological diversity of its members whose common point is to be driven by anti-Nazi sentiment.
Most of their action revolves around political awareness, notably through leaflets, just like that of the student groups in Stuttgart and
Munich
, known as the “White Rose”.
Although a large part of the “Red Orchestra” was dismantled at the end of 1942, the first arrests of members of the “White Rose” took place in Munich in February 1943: Hans and Sophie Scholl were guillotined.
The story of these two young, very religious Protestants, who represent another side of anti-Nazism, was notably passed on by their sister Inge.
Several films, books and songs have been dedicated to them, including most recently, in 2016,
a ballad by the French group Mickey3D
.
Their distance from communism made them heroes of anti-Nazism in the FRG during the Cold War.
Another group, very heterogeneous, since it brings together Christians, liberals and social democrats, is the so-called "Kreisau circle", the name also given by the Gestapo to the group of intellectuals who met between 1938 and 1944 in the eponymous Silesian castle belonging to the aristocratic Von Moltke family.
Their goal is to reflect on the post-war period, but some participated in the attack against Hitler in August 1944.
Some members of the Munich “White Rose” network at the German Resistance Memorial in Berlin.
© Olivier Favier RFI
Kill Hitler
From 1938-1939, Adolf Hitler was the subject of numerous attack plans, most of them prepared by Germans themselves, from which he sometimes escaped only miraculously.
Two particularly stood out.
The first was committed by Georg Esler, a solitary worker, a former communist activist, convinced after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR that it was necessary to prevent more bloodshed.
He notices that the Munich beer hall where, every November 8, Hitler comes to commemorate the failed putsch of 1923, is not monitored.
After careful preparation, he managed to hide a bomb in a pillar near the podium where Hitler was to speak.
He cuts his speech short because he has to take his plane to Berlin early due to bad weather conditions.
The bomb explodes when he is already gone.
Georg Esler was arrested and deported, then murdered by the SS in April 1945.
Also read: November 8 and 9, 1923, in Germany, the Brewery Putsch: the farce before the tragedy
The plot of July 20, 1944, on the other hand, known as "Operation Valkyrie", brought together numerous elements of the Wehrmacht, civilians mainly from conservative circles, as well as some SS and police officers.
All are convinced of the inevitability of defeat and intend to associate Hitler's death with a coup d'état.
The bomb placed in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg in the “wolf's den”, the Führer's headquarters, only slightly injured the latter.
The conspirators gathered in Berlin at the Bendlerblock – today the headquarters of the
German Resistance Memorial
–, convinced for a few hours that the attack was successful, failed in their putsch attempt.
Several thousand people will be arrested, the Kreisau circle dismantled.
The repression extends well beyond the first circle of conspirators.
Marshal Erwin Rommel, simply convinced of the need to end the war, was forced to commit suicide in October 1944.
Elise and Otto Hampel, a couple of German resistance fighters against Nazism, executed in 1943 for having distributed anti-Nazi postcards.
Their story inspired Hans Fallada to write the novel “Alone in Berlin”, recently retranslated by Laurence Courtois.
© Gestapo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Our selection on the subject
To read :
January 30, 1933: how Adolf Hitler took power in Germany
Ernst Toller: in the turmoil of History, writing from life
Margot Friedländer: tireless fighter for memory
To listen :
Thinking and dreaming under the Third Reich
“Alone in the face of fury” by Jean-Baptiste Nauder, the astonishing journey of Georg Esler
With “Jojo Rabbit”, Taika Waititi makes fun of Hitler
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