The German Resistance to Hitler

Batsford Ltd, 1970

The small minority of German men and women who opposed Hitler have provoked emotional reactions. At one extreme are those who, in their anxiety to find a haven of sanity and decency in the mass hysteria and wickedness of Nazi Germany, depict the Resistance as completely disassociated from the politicies and philosophy of Nazism. Critics on the other hand, maintain that Opposition thinking was, on many important issues, similar to Hitler's own; it too favoured an extension of German frontiers, repression of the Jews, an authoritatian regime; the July 20 plot, far from representing a revulsion against Hitler's politicies, was a desperate nationalist attempt to salvage something from the wreckage. It is the merit of the four essays in this volume, all written by historians expert in their fields, that they are concerned neither to praise nor condemn, but to establish the reality. The essays are: Resistance Thinking on Foreign Policy by Graml; Social Views and Constitutional Plans of the Resistance by Mommsen; Resistance in the Labour Movement by Reichhardt; and Political and Moral Motives Behind the Resistance by Wolf...