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Hoffmann examines the growing recognition by some Germans in the 1930s of the malign nature of the Nazi regime, the ways in which these people became involved in the resistance, and the views of those who staked their lives in the struggle against tyranny and murder.
This book includes four essays, each written by a German specialist, that discuss important problems of the German resistance with judgment and candor, offering the kind of interpretive judgment often lacking in other histories. Hermann Graml shows that as far as foreign policy, the resistance conservatives were never quite able to reconcile their hopes for a supranational solution in central Europe with their desire to fulfill traditional national aims from a position of German strength. Addressing the social policy of resisting groups, Hans Mommsen concludes that a central purpose was the "de-massing of the masses," while rejecting both communism and Western democracy. Hans-Joachim Reichhardt assesses the labor movement, wherein Communist leaders come out badly. Utterly failing to understand the threat of Hitler, they refused to join in efforts to thwart his coming to power. On the efforts of the religious, Ernst Wolf concludes, as have so many others, that the heroic resistance of individual Christians contrasts lamentably with the role played by organized Christianity. These thoughtful essays reinforce the impression gained in larger and more detailed studies: the resistance to Hitler's barbarism by decent German citizens was widespread, genuine--and tragically ineffective.
Between 1933 and 1945, more than 500,000 German citizens resisted the Nazi government. Many were imprisoned for political crimes which included both active attempts to remove Hitler from office and passive attempts to oppose the Nazi regime. Resistance was found among university students, churches and even in the German military. This fascinating and compelling history of the German resistance covers groups and methods from underground newspapers such as "Rote Kapella" and "Internal Front" to conspiracy movements within the army, that culminated with Operation Valkyrie, a coup d'état and assassination attempt which went terribly wrong.
Between 1933 and 1945, more than 500,000 non-Jewish German civilians were imprisoned for so-called political crimes. Most of the resistance was, therefore, underground-within the religious, political, civilian, and even military communities. This history of the various segments of the German resistance movement covers groups and methods from underground newspapers-Rote Kapella, Internal Front, The Opponent, The Front Line-to conspiracy movements within unions. While emphasizing the active plots to either arrest or assassinate Hitler, the work embraces also the passive resistance seen in the Protestant and Catholic churches, the Kreisau Circle, trade unions, the foreign ministry and the civil service. The opposition's planned coup d'état of 1938 is fully detailed, as well as the deep involvement of the Abwehr (military intelligence) in the plots against Hitler.
A McGill University history professor provides a comprehensive account of the German opposition's struggle against Hitler, covering all the serious attempts to overthrow or assassinate him leading up the failed attempt of 20 July 1944. First published in West Germany in 1969 by R. Piper and Co. as Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, this volume first appeared in English, published by Macdonald and Jane's and MIT Press, in 1977. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In the beginning, they rallied behind Hitler in the national interest of Germany; in the end, they sacrificed their lives to assassinate him. A history of German resistance to Hitler in high places, this book offers a glimpse into one of the most intractable mysteries. Why did high-ranking army officers, civil servants, and religious leaders support Hitler? Why did they ultimately turn against him? What transformed these unlikely men, most of them elitist, militaristic, and fiercely nationalistic, into martyrs to a universal ideal? The resisters in On the Road to the Wolf's Lair are not the singular souls doomed to failure by the massive Nazi machinery, but those who emerged from the Third Reich itself--those people whose cultural, administrative, and military positions allowed them, ultimately, to form a systematic, organized opposition to the Nazi regime. These were people with a vested interest in the Third Reich, and their slow and painful awakening to its evils makes a dramatic story, marked as much by temporizing and compromise, vacillation and reluctance--a resistance to conscience--as by the intrigue and heroics of political resistance that finally emerged. Hamerow follows these men as, one by one, they find themselves overwhelmed by guilt and contrition over their support of a murderous regime. He shows how their awakened moral reckonings and higher interests overrode lifetime habits and disciplines on the road to "the wolf's lair." The result is an unsparing history of the German resistance to Hitler--one where the players emerge for the first time as real people with complex motives and evolving characters. Almost a history of the possibility of an emerging collective moral conscience within a destructive environment, the book adds to our understanding of the fall of the Third Reich and of the task of history itself.
