The Resistance to Hitler in Germany: A Historiography
This paper will review six books concerning the resistance movement in Germany during the Third Reich. The first part of the paper will briefly discuss the background of the German resistance to the Nazi regime. The second part of the paper will compare three of the narrative works on the subject. The third part of the paper will compare three works which emphasize the moral dimensions of the resistance.
What has traditionally been lacking in the histories of the Nazi period in Germany is any study of the opposition to Hitler after he became Chancellor in 1933. A student of this period virtually comes to the conclusion that there was no serious opposition and that almost all elements of German society were "four-square" behind Hitler and the war he started. The only mention usually given of any such opposition is of the famous attempt of July 20, 1944, when a few army officers unsuccessfully tried to kill Hitler with a bomb. What is rarely discussed is the fact that there had been previous assassination attempts made by other groups of officers; what is almost never discussed is that from the middle part of the 1930s until the end of the war there existed small cells of opposition within the government and the military, united by a deep sense of moral shame regarding the Nazi policies and moral obligation to do something about it.
The largest roles in this opposition were played by Army officers who held high-ranking staff positions; these individuals also had the most access to Hitler, outside of the highest Nazi officials. One of the central figures in the opposition to Hitler throughout the war was General Ludwig Beck, the Chief of the General Staff from 1933 to 1938. Although he has been acknowledged as a German nationalist, he has also been portrayed as a deeply moral individual who deplored the methods of Hitler and the Nazi party. Beck finally had enough ...