The German Resistance | Standing Alone
“The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours' time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if only ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope for our sake God will not destroy Germany.”
- General Henning von Tresckow, after the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 -
The factory worker's back ached as he sat with his wife and daughter eating a meager breakfast. No enemy raids last night, so the family had actually slept well. His son entered the kitchen with the morning's mail in his small hands. His father took the stack from his boy, passed a letter to his wife from her mother—God protect her, he thought—and then opened the first envelope. His eyes widened as he read the words and then flickered to the door; he half expected Gestapo agents to burst through it. "Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be ‘governed’ by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government." The man folded the paper and put it back in the envelope, then tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. But that night, in a candlelit cellar, he read every word. It spoke of German history, of morality and ethics, and cursed the Führer's regime to the hell from which it had emerged. His eyes were wet with tears as he read its final words, lines of poetry from the great German writer Goethe: "Now I find my good men | Are gathered in the night, | To wait in silence, not to sleep. | And the glorious word of liberty, they whisper and murmur, | Till in unaccustomed strangeness, | On the steps of our temple | Once again they cry in delight | Freedom! Freedom!"
In the popular mind, both then and now, the economic and political crises of Weimar Germany swept Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists to power in 1933 on a tide of universal hope. But almost from the beginning, the Nazi dictatorship faced opposition in the country and crushed it mercilessly wherever they found it. The Gestapo maintained a vast network of spies and informants that monitored suspicious activity, both inside Germany and, when war came, in the newly-conquered Greater German Reich. Many fearless men and women gave their lives in the struggle against Nazism, and countless more risked their lives to shelter those whom the Reich had labeled "undesirables," sabotage the German war machine, or help the Allies liberate their homeland. But inside Germany, where watchful eyes were ever-present, the regime's opponents worked mostly in the shadows. There were some open attempts at subversion, and a few came close to success. In this season on heroes, we want to share some of their stories and honor those who stood tall when commanded to bow down.
Political Resistance
After the Reichstag Fire in February 1933, Hitler received emergency powers and either silenced or imprisoned most leaders of opposition political parties. The German communists were nearly wiped out and the survivors sent to the Dachau concentration camp, and the other parties either disbanded quietly or made deals with the Führer. Sixteen months later, many who had thought themselves safe were murdered in the "Night of the Long Knives" that cleansed the government of any who might be disloyal. Dissidents who survived both purges were either very good at keeping silent or else gradually lost their National Socialist zeal and came to see Adolf Hitler for the monster he was.
Two men who fell into the latter category were Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, the mayor of Leipzig, and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, a judge and scion of one of Germany's most respected families. Goerdeler had a background in finance and worked with the Reich government to fund its rearmament program. He soon realized that the Nazi ideologues in Berlin had no interest in long-term economic growth—they were arming for war. The mayor spent time abroad negotiating trade contracts, and he also shared his fears and any information he had with British and American representatives. Goerdeler also balked at the many anti-Jewish decrees coming from the Führer's lackeys. He complied with some that stripped away Jews' economic rights but soon came to loathe his leader's antisemitism. Interestingly, his breaking point was an order to remove a statue of the fully-German composer Felix Mendelssohn from a Leipzig concert house because—and forgive my quoting of a hateful stereotype—a local Nazi activist objected to the size of the statue's nose.
Moltke's opposition to the Third Reich was more ideological and less personal. His privileged place in Germany's aristocracy protected him from much of his countrymen's suffering. But as a jurist, he bitterly opposed the travesties of justice taking place in German courts and the concentration camps. Like Goerdeler, he passed information about the regime's policies and weaknesses to anti-Nazi Germans living abroad. He also met regularly with likeminded individuals at his home in the Silesian town of Kreisau. This "Kreisau Circle" became a talking shop that, its members hoped, would one day replace the Nazi government. They spoke of a future without the Führer, of a Germany free from tyranny, and of a Europe at peace.
Resistance in the Army
In 1870, the mighty "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck had unified Germany by spilling French blood and wielding the sharp iron of the Prussian Army. In the decades since that glorious day at Versailles, and despite the calamity of the Great War, the aristocratic Prussian officer corps had survived. So had its traditions of service and an arrogant surety that only one of their own could lead Germany. So when a "Bohemian corporal" replaced the Prussian Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as president, these men recoiled in horror at having to follow his orders. Most did, either to save their own necks or after receiving cash or large estates as bribes. But resentment festered in some hearts and turned to resistance in a few.
After Germany's blitzkrieg smashed the hated French enemy in 1940, all but the most fervent anti-Nazis in the officer corps bowed to the Führer's genius. Of those who did not, four deserve special attention. General Ludwig Beck, chief of staff of the German General Staff until his dismissal in 1938, was far-sighted enough to see that Hitler would eventually overreach himself—which he did in 1941 by invading the Soviet Union and declaring war on America. Beck joined up with Goerdeler, Moltke, and the Kreisau Circle to plot the tyrant's downfall. So did soldiers still in the Army. Hans Oster, deputy chief of military intelligence, passed information to his former boss General Beck and other resisters until his arrest in 1943. He also gave field commanders inaccurate information that led to several disasters on the battlefield, including the disastrous losses at Kursk against the Red Army shortly before his arrest. General Henning von Tresckow, an early supporter of Nazism, disrupted communication between field armies on the Eastern Front while maintaining the facade of a loyal German officer. He was no saint—nor were any of these men—and he signed an order only months before the resistance moved against Hitler to send thousands of kidnapped children into slave labor in Krupp factories. (It would be interesting to know how Tresckow accounted himself to God for that act of inhumanity.)
Certainly, the best-known German officer to modern audiences was Claus von Stauffenberg, the one-eyed, one-handed organizer of the failed July 20th plot. While recovering from injuries sustained in North Africa and reading news about the coming Allied invasion of "Fortress Europe," Stauffenberg had grown certain that Hitler had to be removed in order to save Germany from total annihilation. He entered resistance circles through his cousin, a member of Moltke's Kreisau Circle, and put steel in their spines with his love of the Fatherland and willingness to sacrifice even his own life to save it from the demonic Führer. His first attempt on Hitler's life failed at the tyrant's home above Berchtesgaden, and the second nearly succeeded. While Beck, Goerdeler, and others readied themselves in Berlin, Stauffenberg smuggled a bomb into the "Wolf's Lair," Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. The detonation killed several people at a military conference, but fate protected the Führer. He suffered only minor injuries and moved quickly against the plotters in Berlin, who had taken their time in locking down the government quarter. Stauffenberg died with the words "Long live sacred Germany" on his lips only hours after returning to the capital. Hitler's retribution was swift and merciless, and the others mentioned in this podcast along with five thousand other suspected resisters either took their own lives (Beck and Tresckow) or were hanged (Moltke and Oster).
Christian Resistance
Early in the Nazi takeover, the government banned priests and pastors from commenting on politics, and Hitler soon created a "Reich Church" to replace Christianity with what can only be described as "Führer-worship." (Time does not permit me to say more here, though I'm confident Joe is making a note to ask about this cult next week.) Despite these blasphemies, many Christian leaders spoke and acted against the regime. From the Vatican, Pope Pius XI condemned Nazi sacrileges in his encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, "With deep anxiety," which all of you should read after you finish this podcast. Protestant pastors like Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer paid a terrible price for their criticism of the Reich Church and the government that propped it up. Sadly, many professing Christians supported Hitler even when confronted with his many crimes. I can offer no reason why except, possibly, fear or blindness to the Truth. But those who stood against the satanic darkness spreading from the Führer's every speech should give courage to anyone facing tyranny anywhere in the world.
In my opinion, the most inspiring and heroic people in the resistance movement were not politicians, soldiers, or clergymen. I do not mean to take away from their bravery, but they had a support system of friends and colleagues in large organizations. The same cannot be said of the White Rose, a small group of students at a Munich university. These fearless young men and women were in the "belly of the beast," the most pro-Nazi school in the literal birthplace of Nazism itself. Supported only by one professor, Kurt Huber, and with whatever money their parents sent them each month, five near-children—Hans Scholl, Sophia Scholl, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, and Christoph Probst—wrote and distributed six anonymous leaflets calling on the German people to remember their collective Christian heritage and reclaim their country from the Nazis. The four men had all seen atrocities on and off the battlefield. More tragic was Sophia's first exposure to Nazi cruelty. Her older sister Inge who survived the war recounted a moment when she and Sophia saw a large van being filled with mentally- and physically-handicapped people from a local hospital near their school. The girls asked one of the attendants where they were going. Perhaps to spare the children nightmares, the woman replied, "They are going to heaven." (These poor souls were part of Hitler's Aktion-T4 euthanasia program.)
In February 1943, weeks after Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad, a Gestapo informant caught Hans and Sophia distributing their last leaflet on campus. They and the others were taken into custody and interrogated by the secret police. Robert Mohr, who questioned Sophia, kept meticulous notes that survived the war, and he noted the strength of her convictions and belief in God that drove her to act. Days after their arrest, the Scholls and Probst were hauled before the dreaded People Court, where they were forbidden to speak in their own defense as the vile Nazi judge Roland Freisler hurled abuse at them. Each one remained calm under examination, and only when the Scholls’ parents burst into the courtroom demanding to see their children did Hans and Sophia’s composure break for a moment. Their sentences were never in doubt, and after a half-day’s proceedings, Freisler gleefully declared them guilty. After a few moments together for the last time, the three students were led, one by one, into the basement of Stadlheim Prison, where they died by guillotine. Graf and Schmorell, along with Professor Huber, were tried months later and also sentenced to death. But their words lived on when Allied planes dropped thousands of their final leaflet, entitled “The Manifesto of the Students of Munich” all across Germany.
I confess it's difficult finding a way to end this podcast, so I will simply close with two quotes. In her play "The White Rose," Lillian Groag included a monologue by Sophia Scholl that gave me chills when I first read it: "The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn." To me, that is what it means to be a hero. And in her own words, Sophia captured the essence of heroism very simply: "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone."
