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German Resistance to the Nazi regime consisted of isolated groups and individuals rather than a unified opposition. This meant that there were a vast number of ideological aims amongst a small number of people, rather than a coherent and organised movement with a large support base. This lack of popular support for resistance against the state by the German people undoubtedly contributed to the lack of success of resistance movements. Whether or not this passive acceptance was due to actual support for the regime however, is not as clear. Therefore the role of Nazi police authorities must be considered in regard to this, to determine the extent to which a tightly controlled police state bred a fear of nonconformity amongst its citizens. To address these questions we will evaluate evidence of the different reactions to National Socialism from a broad section of German society, and consider how accurately we can apply the label of ‘resistance’ to the activities of individuals in Germany in the period 1939 – 1945.
How the term ‘resistance’ is defined within the context of Nazi Germany is essential to any discussion of the topic, and has been the source of much debate within historiography. ‘Resistance’ is defined as refusal to comply; hindrance; impeding or stopping the effect exercised upon another. To have a suitably applicable definition of resistance in Nazi Germany however, it is important to place meanings within their particular context. Resistance in a political context is primarily associated with organised conspiracy, assassination, or attempts at a coup d’etat, and as such can be applied to the military conspiracy to kill Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. However in the context of the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany resistance in a social-political sense is also essential to measuring the range of attitudes towards National Socialism amongst society as a whole. Thus ‘resistance’ can also include individual acts of non-compliance and nonconformity towards state policy. This suggests that there were many different levels of resistance to National Socialism in Nazi Germany, reflecting the wide range of ideological factors that concerned different sections of society and motivated civilian individuals and organised groups to resist. These groups were often formed in response to specific state measures that directly threatened their interests, for example the protests of intermarried Germans at Rosenstrasse, or the opposition to Nazi euthanasia policy from the Catholic Church . Such examples reflect a moral abhorrence and sense of duty that is characteristic of most German resistance. Though the above examples were met with a measure of success, the limited scope of these and other movements meant that resistance was unable to be unified as a whole, and hence was unsuccessful in eliminating the Nazi regime and establishing a new political and social order in Germany. Historian Bob Moore identifies resistance as being applicable to both organised and unorganised acts of opposition, “ranging from armed struggle at one extreme to minor acts of disobedience at the other.” The following study will examine the areas of Youth Resistance, Military Resistance, and Resistance to Jewish persecution to determine who was involved in these movements and what motivated their behaviour. Applying Moore’s broad framework as a basis for analysis, we will examine the activities of individuals in these areas, to consider whether such acts constituted resistance, or whether they could more accurately be labelled as conformity.
One of the more uncompromising and overtly political examples of Youth resistance in the Third Reich was that of the group known as the ‘White Rose’.
Founded by students from the University of Munich in June 1942, the group initially consisted of six members, led by Hans Scholl and his sister, Sophie Scholl. From June 1942 to February 1943 the group created and distributed a series of six leaflets aimed at generating widespread opposition and forcing an end to Nazi oppression. The group encouraged passive resistance as the best form of action and called for acts of sabotage to all areas of National Socialist rule. They saw the strength of passive resistance as being an attainable means to which all Germans had the capacity to use, as they state in the third leaflet, “We want to try to show them that everyone is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of the system.” The pamphlets also considered resistance against Nazi tyranny to be the moral responsibility of the German people, and implicated those who passively conformed to state policies and systems of control as being guilty of supporting Nazi crimes, “For through his apathetic behaviour he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do…”
Hitler’s ability to maintain his position of control was certainly dependent on popular consent from the German people. Therefore large numbers of Germans opposing the Nazi regime through passive resistance could have been a weapon of considerable force against him , especially within the context of early1943, when the German war effort had just suffered defeat to the Soviets at the Battle of Stalingrad. Despite spreading the message of the White Rose resistance through contacts in Hamburg, the group ultimately failed to stir up the popular uprising they had hoped. Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christopher Probst, were captured by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943, and executed shortly after on 22 February 1943. The other founding members: Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and their mentor, philosophy professor Kurt Heber, were also executed later that year. The extraordinary haste in which White Rose members were tried and executed consequently made them into frightening examples to the German public of what happened to those who actively opposed the regime. Significantly, the downfall of the White Rose came as a result of custodian Jakob Schmied observing Sophie Scholl distributing pamphlets around the University and subsequently calling the authorities. Such events suggest that the co-operation of citizens played an essential role in minimising resistance movements and indicate a society where assistance to police authorities through surveillance and informing was prevalent. Sophie School believed that, “What we said and wrote is what many people are thinking. Only they don’t dare to say it.” How much truth there is to this statement is uncertain. However, public reaction to the White Rose suggests that if this was the case, the majority of Germans chose to conform to the Nazi state rather than voice feelings of opposition toward it.
The Swing Youth in comparison was a more individual expression of resistance to the Nazi state. The movement did not possess any centralised organisation or have any clear political objectives but rather was a reaction to the rigid discipline imposed on young Germans through compulsory state organisations such as the Hitler Youth. Swing Youth was characterised by a love of Jazz and Swing music and identification with British and American culture and their democratic ideals of freedom. This counter culture consisted of youths from upper-middle class backgrounds who organised dance festivals and jazz gigs to express their individualism and rejection of Nazi ideology. The Swing Youth ‘resistance’ was thus one of non-conformity rather than political opposition. This did not stop Nazi authorities taking Swing Youth seriously though, and a memorandum written in September 1942 by the National Socialist Reich Youth Leadership illustrates the Nazi party’s concern with the perceived threat of these enemies of the state. The disregard for German principles and ideals, as defined by the Nazis, was of particular concern to the party as they noted these youth, “enthusiastically embrace all that is not German, but is instead English.” Despite state efforts to combat Swing Youth activities by arresting ringleaders and sending them to concentration camps for ‘political re-education’, the movement continued to gain in popularity throughout the war years, and the Nazi party increasingly found itself to be out of touch with public sentiment.
In Frances Nicosia’s discussion on resistance she asserts that, “individual acts of non-compliance among ordinary citizens usually reflected the extent to which many of them were realistically capable of resisting certain policies of the Nazi state, for that matter the state in general.” Examples such as the White Rose resistance certainly support this theory, as they did not gain the support they had hoped and hence were only able to produce limited results. One group that did have a high likelihood of success and a very real chance of actually overthrowing the regime however was that of the Military resistance.
The Military resistance consisted of a large number of individuals, from both within conservative political circles and the German military itself. The most central figures to forming the resistance were Former Chief of Staff to the Armed Forces Ludwig Beck, conservative politician Carl Goerdeler, German diplomat Ulrich von Hassell, and Prussian finance minister Johannes Popitz. These individuals would later be joined by a group of intellectual conservatives known as the ‘Kreisau Circle’, and German Army Officer’s, Claus von Stauffenberg and Major General Henning von Tresckow. Because of the influential positions held by these individuals and the close contact that some had with central figures to the Nazi regime, including Hitler himself, they then had the opportunity to take down the regime from the inside, which they attempted to do by means of a coup d’etat.
Though both the Goerdeler group and the Kreisau Circle agreed that, “a fundamentally new social order was necessary” for Germany, there were disagreements about how this new order should be achieved. While the group around Beck and Goerdeler was committed to overthrowing the regime through violent means, most members of the Kreisau Circle were opposed to any use of violence. An examination of the Kreisau Circle’s objectives as outlined in the document entitled “Principles for the New Order in Germany” in August of 1943 reinforces this, but gives little indication as to an alternate means of overthrow advocated by the group. Rather the document details the ideological goals for which the restructuring of German society should be based on, and suggests, “The way to its solution lies in the decisive and active implementation of the Christian substance of life.” The Goerdeler group had also given considerable focus into how a post-Nazi Germany should be restructured and both Goerdeler and Popitz had drawn up constitutional drafts. Though there were parallels between the constitutional propositions of both the Goerdeler group and the Kreisau Circle, namely the importance of Christianity as the basis of society, and the reestablishment of the rule of law and of freedom of belief and conscience , members of the Kreisau Circle on the whole considered the constitutional aims of Goerdeler and Popitz to be overly authoritarian and in sharp contrast to their own Christian and socialist ideals.
Between 1938 and 1944 there were several failed assassination attempts on the Fuhrer. By the time of the attempt of 20 July 1944 opportunities for assassination had become scarce, and as he was the only conspirator who had access to Hitler without being searched, Claus von Stauffenberg was chosen for the task. When the planned bomb plot and coup d’etat also failed, it ultimately put an end to the military resistance, as the Nazi regime rounded up and subsequently executed the majority of those involved. When assessing the Military resistance, perhaps what stands out most is the personal honour and moral convictions that motivated the behaviour of those involved. These remain essential characteristics to defining these individuals, and as a result have become synonymous with the term ‘resistance’ itself. This attitude was stated emphatically by Tresckow in his final testament before committing suicide on 21 July 1944 as he exclaimed, “The moral worth of a human being only begins where he is ready to give his life for his convictions!”
The Nazi regime’s focus on racial issues and the ‘Jewish Question’ was pursued with increased primacy and urgency as the war progressed. Given this, the role of ordinary Germans in relation to the mistreatment of Jews must be considered to determine why more civilians did not resist against these state measures. In historian Robert Gellately’s study on German reaction to Nazi anti-Semitism he places emphasis on the role of the Gestapo and the SS, who effectively created a society of surveillance where ordinary civilians not only conformed to anti-Semitic policies but also actively supported them . To support this claim he draws on statistics from Gestapo case files in Lower Franconia and Wurzburg from 1933 – 1945 which detail the sources of information received by the Gestapo that enforced the social isolation of Jews. In Lower Franconia he cites that 59 percent of all cases began with a denunciation ‘from the population’. He also suggests that we could plausibly add to this cases that began with ‘information from the population’, those where the police do not say who provided the tip . His reason for this is that if the information had come from an official source it would have been mentioned, as “such informers would have wanted to take credit.” Thereby when no source of information was given about the origin of the tip, the informer was likely to be a civilian whose identity could not be established. If we accept this reasoning this would then mean that a total of 70 percent of all cases began with reports from ordinary citizens. Gellately concludes that, “without the active collaboration of the general population it would have been next to impossible for the Gestapo to enforce these kinds of racial policies.”
This society of ‘auto-policing’ through denunciations can be interpreted in different ways. What it immediately suggests is that the regime had been successful in achieving the ‘nazification’ of German society, whereby the majority of people supported Nazi racial policies because they truly identified with them. A more complete interpretation however, needs to consider the extent to which fear of Gestapo infiltration was deeply ingrained within public consciousness. This fear could lead many to believe that by not co-operating with surveillance and policing measures they could then be identified as opponents of the regime themselves. Such a situation carried with it the potential for troubling consequences, of which most Germans understandably sought to avoid.
It is possible, and indeed likely, that many Germans were morally or politically opposed to National Socialism yet adhered to Nazi expectations in order to avoid being identified as enemies of the state. One such example of this is in the personal diaries of eighteen-year old resident of Hamburg, ‘Erika S’. Erika’s family were marked as political opponents of the Nazis due to her father’s involvement in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and following the failed attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944 her father was arrested by the Gestapo. In a letter to SS leader Heinrich Himmler on 24 August 1944 Erika attempted to convince the Nazi leadership of her family’s loyalty and support for the regime as she stated, “our parents have raised me and my 14 year old brother completely according to the goals of National Socialism.” She emphasised this need to conform again in a later entry where she said, “we do everything so as not to attract attention.” While in the privacy of her diary she abhorred Nazi treatment of Jews and celebrated the regime’s collapse with the end of the war in May 1945.
There were those that resisted the Nazi persecution of Jews however, and in some cases these proved to be rare examples of successful resistance. The protests at Rosenstrasse, Berlin in early 1943 of intermarried German women whose Jewish husbands had been taken away to concentration camps, is one of these examples. Though the protests were very much the unorganised and spontaneous reaction of individuals, and solely for personal reasons rather than any larger ideological aims, they nonetheless presented a real problem for the regime. Threats of violence from the Gestapo were met with defiance from the women, and Nazi officials realised that using such methods against German women could be severely detrimental to public support for the war, and would likely only lead to further unrest . Therefore the only viable option was to relent to their demands, and on 6 March 1943 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave orders for the release of seventeen hundred intermarried Jews.
Resistance from within the Catholic Church similarly directed vocal opposition and protest towards Nazi policies of euthanasia. The Catholic bishop of Munster, Clemens von Galen publicly denounced euthanasia through a number of sermons in July and August of 1941, and in the process gathered widespread support for his cause. As Galen was widely respected and supported by Germans the Nazi regime could not simply ‘eliminate’ him, as they had others, without causing considerable unrest. So as they had with the Rosenstrasse protests, they sought to appease the public, and Hitler ordered a stop to euthanasia in late August.
The success of these acts of resistance was in large part due to their limited scope. By only targeting one specific facet of the Nazi dictatorship, party reaction was such that these concessions could be considered relatively minor, and relenting to these individuals was not going to be detrimental to grander Nazi ambitions. Also essential to their success however, was the widespread attention and high levels of public support they received. Historian Nathan Stoltzfus in his book on the Rosenstrasse protests hints at this when he says, “the real strength of the protest was that many persons were so deeply motivated to protest that they risked their lives even though there was no central organisation or creed.” In regards to Catholic resistance, British scholar J.P Stern draws similar conclusions but takes it a step further in his claim that, “it seems beyond any doubt that if the churches had opposed the killing of the persecution of the Jews as they opposed the killing of the congenitally insane and sick, there would have been no final solution.” These quotes suggest that a level of popular support for resistance aims was essential to whether or not they were successful, and indicate what could possibly have been achieved had more Germans resisted the Nazis.
The examples we have discussed demonstrate that there were a complex variety of ways in which individuals resisted National Socialism. There was no unifying cause amongst those who resisted however, because their ideological aims were largely incompatible with each other. Because these groups were small and isolated, the Nazi regime was then able to suppress opposition without facing a revolt from the German people. When questioning what constitutes resistance in Nazi Germany however, success should not be the criteria for this decision, but rather the mindset and motivations behind the actions of individuals. With this in mind we can accurately apply the label of ‘resistance’ to a range of different behaviours that opposed the Nazis in one way or another. From those who failed to conform to Nazi standards of behaviour, to those who actively sought to overthrow the regime.
How the term ‘resistance’ is defined within the context of Nazi Germany is essential to any discussion of the topic, and has been the source of much debate within historiography. ‘Resistance’ is defined as refusal to comply; hindrance; impeding or stopping the effect exercised upon another. To have a suitably applicable definition of resistance in Nazi Germany however, it is important to place meanings within their particular context. Resistance in a political context is primarily associated with organised conspiracy, assassination, or attempts at a coup d’etat, and as such can be applied to the military conspiracy to kill Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. However in the context of the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany resistance in a social-political sense is also essential to measuring the range of attitudes towards National Socialism amongst society as a whole. Thus ‘resistance’ can also include individual acts of non-compliance and nonconformity towards state policy. This suggests that there were many different levels of resistance to National Socialism in Nazi Germany, reflecting the wide range of ideological factors that concerned different sections of society and motivated civilian individuals and organised groups to resist. These groups were often formed in response to specific state measures that directly threatened their interests, for example the protests of intermarried Germans at Rosenstrasse, or the opposition to Nazi euthanasia policy from the Catholic Church . Such examples reflect a moral abhorrence and sense of duty that is characteristic of most German resistance. Though the above examples were met with a measure of success, the limited scope of these and other movements meant that resistance was unable to be unified as a whole, and hence was unsuccessful in eliminating the Nazi regime and establishing a new political and social order in Germany. Historian Bob Moore identifies resistance as being applicable to both organised and unorganised acts of opposition, “ranging from armed struggle at one extreme to minor acts of disobedience at the other.” The following study will examine the areas of Youth Resistance, Military Resistance, and Resistance to Jewish persecution to determine who was involved in these movements and what motivated their behaviour. Applying Moore’s broad framework as a basis for analysis, we will examine the activities of individuals in these areas, to consider whether such acts constituted resistance, or whether they could more accurately be labelled as conformity.
One of the more uncompromising and overtly political examples of Youth resistance in the Third Reich was that of the group known as the ‘White Rose’.
Founded by students from the University of Munich in June 1942, the group initially consisted of six members, led by Hans Scholl and his sister, Sophie Scholl. From June 1942 to February 1943 the group created and distributed a series of six leaflets aimed at generating widespread opposition and forcing an end to Nazi oppression. The group encouraged passive resistance as the best form of action and called for acts of sabotage to all areas of National Socialist rule. They saw the strength of passive resistance as being an attainable means to which all Germans had the capacity to use, as they state in the third leaflet, “We want to try to show them that everyone is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of the system.” The pamphlets also considered resistance against Nazi tyranny to be the moral responsibility of the German people, and implicated those who passively conformed to state policies and systems of control as being guilty of supporting Nazi crimes, “For through his apathetic behaviour he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do…”
Hitler’s ability to maintain his position of control was certainly dependent on popular consent from the German people. Therefore large numbers of Germans opposing the Nazi regime through passive resistance could have been a weapon of considerable force against him , especially within the context of early1943, when the German war effort had just suffered defeat to the Soviets at the Battle of Stalingrad. Despite spreading the message of the White Rose resistance through contacts in Hamburg, the group ultimately failed to stir up the popular uprising they had hoped. Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christopher Probst, were captured by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943, and executed shortly after on 22 February 1943. The other founding members: Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and their mentor, philosophy professor Kurt Heber, were also executed later that year. The extraordinary haste in which White Rose members were tried and executed consequently made them into frightening examples to the German public of what happened to those who actively opposed the regime. Significantly, the downfall of the White Rose came as a result of custodian Jakob Schmied observing Sophie Scholl distributing pamphlets around the University and subsequently calling the authorities. Such events suggest that the co-operation of citizens played an essential role in minimising resistance movements and indicate a society where assistance to police authorities through surveillance and informing was prevalent. Sophie School believed that, “What we said and wrote is what many people are thinking. Only they don’t dare to say it.” How much truth there is to this statement is uncertain. However, public reaction to the White Rose suggests that if this was the case, the majority of Germans chose to conform to the Nazi state rather than voice feelings of opposition toward it.
The Swing Youth in comparison was a more individual expression of resistance to the Nazi state. The movement did not possess any centralised organisation or have any clear political objectives but rather was a reaction to the rigid discipline imposed on young Germans through compulsory state organisations such as the Hitler Youth. Swing Youth was characterised by a love of Jazz and Swing music and identification with British and American culture and their democratic ideals of freedom. This counter culture consisted of youths from upper-middle class backgrounds who organised dance festivals and jazz gigs to express their individualism and rejection of Nazi ideology. The Swing Youth ‘resistance’ was thus one of non-conformity rather than political opposition. This did not stop Nazi authorities taking Swing Youth seriously though, and a memorandum written in September 1942 by the National Socialist Reich Youth Leadership illustrates the Nazi party’s concern with the perceived threat of these enemies of the state. The disregard for German principles and ideals, as defined by the Nazis, was of particular concern to the party as they noted these youth, “enthusiastically embrace all that is not German, but is instead English.” Despite state efforts to combat Swing Youth activities by arresting ringleaders and sending them to concentration camps for ‘political re-education’, the movement continued to gain in popularity throughout the war years, and the Nazi party increasingly found itself to be out of touch with public sentiment.
In Frances Nicosia’s discussion on resistance she asserts that, “individual acts of non-compliance among ordinary citizens usually reflected the extent to which many of them were realistically capable of resisting certain policies of the Nazi state, for that matter the state in general.” Examples such as the White Rose resistance certainly support this theory, as they did not gain the support they had hoped and hence were only able to produce limited results. One group that did have a high likelihood of success and a very real chance of actually overthrowing the regime however was that of the Military resistance.
The Military resistance consisted of a large number of individuals, from both within conservative political circles and the German military itself. The most central figures to forming the resistance were Former Chief of Staff to the Armed Forces Ludwig Beck, conservative politician Carl Goerdeler, German diplomat Ulrich von Hassell, and Prussian finance minister Johannes Popitz. These individuals would later be joined by a group of intellectual conservatives known as the ‘Kreisau Circle’, and German Army Officer’s, Claus von Stauffenberg and Major General Henning von Tresckow. Because of the influential positions held by these individuals and the close contact that some had with central figures to the Nazi regime, including Hitler himself, they then had the opportunity to take down the regime from the inside, which they attempted to do by means of a coup d’etat.
Though both the Goerdeler group and the Kreisau Circle agreed that, “a fundamentally new social order was necessary” for Germany, there were disagreements about how this new order should be achieved. While the group around Beck and Goerdeler was committed to overthrowing the regime through violent means, most members of the Kreisau Circle were opposed to any use of violence. An examination of the Kreisau Circle’s objectives as outlined in the document entitled “Principles for the New Order in Germany” in August of 1943 reinforces this, but gives little indication as to an alternate means of overthrow advocated by the group. Rather the document details the ideological goals for which the restructuring of German society should be based on, and suggests, “The way to its solution lies in the decisive and active implementation of the Christian substance of life.” The Goerdeler group had also given considerable focus into how a post-Nazi Germany should be restructured and both Goerdeler and Popitz had drawn up constitutional drafts. Though there were parallels between the constitutional propositions of both the Goerdeler group and the Kreisau Circle, namely the importance of Christianity as the basis of society, and the reestablishment of the rule of law and of freedom of belief and conscience , members of the Kreisau Circle on the whole considered the constitutional aims of Goerdeler and Popitz to be overly authoritarian and in sharp contrast to their own Christian and socialist ideals.
Between 1938 and 1944 there were several failed assassination attempts on the Fuhrer. By the time of the attempt of 20 July 1944 opportunities for assassination had become scarce, and as he was the only conspirator who had access to Hitler without being searched, Claus von Stauffenberg was chosen for the task. When the planned bomb plot and coup d’etat also failed, it ultimately put an end to the military resistance, as the Nazi regime rounded up and subsequently executed the majority of those involved. When assessing the Military resistance, perhaps what stands out most is the personal honour and moral convictions that motivated the behaviour of those involved. These remain essential characteristics to defining these individuals, and as a result have become synonymous with the term ‘resistance’ itself. This attitude was stated emphatically by Tresckow in his final testament before committing suicide on 21 July 1944 as he exclaimed, “The moral worth of a human being only begins where he is ready to give his life for his convictions!”
The Nazi regime’s focus on racial issues and the ‘Jewish Question’ was pursued with increased primacy and urgency as the war progressed. Given this, the role of ordinary Germans in relation to the mistreatment of Jews must be considered to determine why more civilians did not resist against these state measures. In historian Robert Gellately’s study on German reaction to Nazi anti-Semitism he places emphasis on the role of the Gestapo and the SS, who effectively created a society of surveillance where ordinary civilians not only conformed to anti-Semitic policies but also actively supported them . To support this claim he draws on statistics from Gestapo case files in Lower Franconia and Wurzburg from 1933 – 1945 which detail the sources of information received by the Gestapo that enforced the social isolation of Jews. In Lower Franconia he cites that 59 percent of all cases began with a denunciation ‘from the population’. He also suggests that we could plausibly add to this cases that began with ‘information from the population’, those where the police do not say who provided the tip . His reason for this is that if the information had come from an official source it would have been mentioned, as “such informers would have wanted to take credit.” Thereby when no source of information was given about the origin of the tip, the informer was likely to be a civilian whose identity could not be established. If we accept this reasoning this would then mean that a total of 70 percent of all cases began with reports from ordinary citizens. Gellately concludes that, “without the active collaboration of the general population it would have been next to impossible for the Gestapo to enforce these kinds of racial policies.”
This society of ‘auto-policing’ through denunciations can be interpreted in different ways. What it immediately suggests is that the regime had been successful in achieving the ‘nazification’ of German society, whereby the majority of people supported Nazi racial policies because they truly identified with them. A more complete interpretation however, needs to consider the extent to which fear of Gestapo infiltration was deeply ingrained within public consciousness. This fear could lead many to believe that by not co-operating with surveillance and policing measures they could then be identified as opponents of the regime themselves. Such a situation carried with it the potential for troubling consequences, of which most Germans understandably sought to avoid.
It is possible, and indeed likely, that many Germans were morally or politically opposed to National Socialism yet adhered to Nazi expectations in order to avoid being identified as enemies of the state. One such example of this is in the personal diaries of eighteen-year old resident of Hamburg, ‘Erika S’. Erika’s family were marked as political opponents of the Nazis due to her father’s involvement in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and following the failed attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944 her father was arrested by the Gestapo. In a letter to SS leader Heinrich Himmler on 24 August 1944 Erika attempted to convince the Nazi leadership of her family’s loyalty and support for the regime as she stated, “our parents have raised me and my 14 year old brother completely according to the goals of National Socialism.” She emphasised this need to conform again in a later entry where she said, “we do everything so as not to attract attention.” While in the privacy of her diary she abhorred Nazi treatment of Jews and celebrated the regime’s collapse with the end of the war in May 1945.
There were those that resisted the Nazi persecution of Jews however, and in some cases these proved to be rare examples of successful resistance. The protests at Rosenstrasse, Berlin in early 1943 of intermarried German women whose Jewish husbands had been taken away to concentration camps, is one of these examples. Though the protests were very much the unorganised and spontaneous reaction of individuals, and solely for personal reasons rather than any larger ideological aims, they nonetheless presented a real problem for the regime. Threats of violence from the Gestapo were met with defiance from the women, and Nazi officials realised that using such methods against German women could be severely detrimental to public support for the war, and would likely only lead to further unrest . Therefore the only viable option was to relent to their demands, and on 6 March 1943 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave orders for the release of seventeen hundred intermarried Jews.
Resistance from within the Catholic Church similarly directed vocal opposition and protest towards Nazi policies of euthanasia. The Catholic bishop of Munster, Clemens von Galen publicly denounced euthanasia through a number of sermons in July and August of 1941, and in the process gathered widespread support for his cause. As Galen was widely respected and supported by Germans the Nazi regime could not simply ‘eliminate’ him, as they had others, without causing considerable unrest. So as they had with the Rosenstrasse protests, they sought to appease the public, and Hitler ordered a stop to euthanasia in late August.
The success of these acts of resistance was in large part due to their limited scope. By only targeting one specific facet of the Nazi dictatorship, party reaction was such that these concessions could be considered relatively minor, and relenting to these individuals was not going to be detrimental to grander Nazi ambitions. Also essential to their success however, was the widespread attention and high levels of public support they received. Historian Nathan Stoltzfus in his book on the Rosenstrasse protests hints at this when he says, “the real strength of the protest was that many persons were so deeply motivated to protest that they risked their lives even though there was no central organisation or creed.” In regards to Catholic resistance, British scholar J.P Stern draws similar conclusions but takes it a step further in his claim that, “it seems beyond any doubt that if the churches had opposed the killing of the persecution of the Jews as they opposed the killing of the congenitally insane and sick, there would have been no final solution.” These quotes suggest that a level of popular support for resistance aims was essential to whether or not they were successful, and indicate what could possibly have been achieved had more Germans resisted the Nazis.
The examples we have discussed demonstrate that there were a complex variety of ways in which individuals resisted National Socialism. There was no unifying cause amongst those who resisted however, because their ideological aims were largely incompatible with each other. Because these groups were small and isolated, the Nazi regime was then able to suppress opposition without facing a revolt from the German people. When questioning what constitutes resistance in Nazi Germany however, success should not be the criteria for this decision, but rather the mindset and motivations behind the actions of individuals. With this in mind we can accurately apply the label of ‘resistance’ to a range of different behaviours that opposed the Nazis in one way or another. From those who failed to conform to Nazi standards of behaviour, to those who actively sought to overthrow the regime.
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