German Resistance to the Reich…

80 years ago, on July 20^th, 1944 a group of Hitler’s military leader attempted to assassinate him at the “Wolf’s Lair.” The driving force behind this bold act of resistance to the Reich was led by Claus von Stauffenberg who, in fact, had originally planned to kill the Fuehrer at the Berghof above Berchtesgaden, his home and second seat of power.

More about Hitler’s home in the Alps, as well as resistance efforts within Germany during the Third Reich can be found in my new book EXPOSING THE REICH. Here are some excerpts:

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, Center Party and a host of others. In fact, in the last German federal elections, held on November 6, 1932, Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party received a mere 33,09% of the votes. When Hitler seized power a couple of months later, in early 1933, two-thirds of the population had not voted for him. It is no wonder that a strong resistance to Hitler and the National Socialist Party rapidly took shape in Germany. As the ideas and changes that the regime brought with it were gradually implemented, either new adherents joined the opposition, or inversely, others, who initially experienced reservations about the Party, were seduced to join the rest of the population that either adapted to, went along with, or actively supported National Socialism.

 In the regime’s early years, resistance groups were comprised of disparate political and ideological strands that represented different classes of German society that were seldom able to work together.

 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 systematically shut down, imprisoned and often murdered by the Gestapo. Not only were German and Austrian resistance efforts targeted by the Reich’s terror apparatus but they ran the constant risk of being betrayed by those who had been successfully indoctrinated by Hitler’s persona, deeds and promises.

 Indeed Hitler’s regime was largely accepted by and, to a greater extent, popular with the German people during the pre-war period. 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.

As institutions, neither the Catholic nor 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.

 The outbreak of WWII was not met with general enthusiasm of the German population: the horrendous death toll and ensuing economic disaster of the First World War still loomed over Germany like an apocalyptic shadow. Though the old ‘elite’, the conservative military figures still present from WWI or the Weimar Republic days, plotted to remove Hitler, there was very little they managed to achieve. Allegedly, however, no less than 42 assignation attempts were planned or carried out against Hitler, before and during the war.

David Harper, Berchtesgaden, July 2024

 

 

 

In Hitler’s campaign to control and mislead the German people, the Nazi leadership banned the traditional Christian calendar to replace it with newly selected days of celebration and by creating a Hitler cult.