German Resistance Memorial Center

German Resistance Memorial Center
The German Resistance Memorial Center is a memorial and museum in Berlin, capital of Germany.
History
It was opened in 1980 in part of the Bendlerblock, a complex of offices in Stauffenbergstrasse (formerly Bendlerstrasse), south of the Großer Tiergarten in Tiergarten. It was here that Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and other members of the failed 20 July plot that attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler were executed.
Although the memorial is primarily intended to commemorate those members of the German Army who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944, it is also a memorial to the German resistance in the broader sense. Historians agree that there was no united, national resistance movement in Nazi Germany at any time during Hitler's years in power (1933–45). Joachim Fest describes it as "the resistance that never was." Nevertheless, the term German Resistance (Deutscher Widerstand) is now used to describe all elements of opposition and resistance to the Nazi Regime, including the underground networks of the Social Democrats and Communists, The White Rose, opposition activities of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations such as the Confessing Church, along with the resistance groups based in the civil service, intelligence organs and armed forces.
Design
The visitor enters the museum from Stauffenbergstrasse through an archway, on the wall of which is inscribed: "Here in the former Supreme Headquarters of the Army, Germans organized the attempt of 20 July 1944 to end the Nazi rule of injustice. For this, they sacrificed their lives. The Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Berlin created this new memorial place in the year 1980." The visitor then enters the central courtyard, in which a statue of a naked man marks the place where the conspirators were executed. A plaque on a wall nearby commemorates this event. In front of the statue, embedded in the ground, is a plaque that reads in German:
This translates as:
The entrance to the museum, which occupies three floors of one of the Bendlerblock buildings, is nearby.
Museum exhibits
The museum consists of a series of displays chronicling the history of Nazi Germany and of all those individuals and groups who opposed the single party state of the era and it's ideology, for whatever reason. All resisters are given equal respect. The museum, while seeking to show the many strands of German culture which engaged in opposition to the State, does not seek to disguise the fact that the majority of Germans believed, at least publicly, in the cult of personality and the Hitler Myth or that there was never an effective or unified national resistance movement.
Particular attention is given to July 20 plot military resistance leaders such as Claus von Stauffenberg, Ludwig Beck, Erwin von Witzleben, Günther von Kluge, Erich Hoepner, Hans Oster and Friedrich Olbricht. This is because their legacy has permanently changed the ideology of the German armed forces. Since it's creation during West German rearmament in the 1950s, the modern Bundeswehr holds that military officers and enlisted men have a moral duty which goes beyond blind obedience to superior orders, and that the officers who plotted to kill Hitler were not traitors, but heroes who died trying to save the German people from continued rule by a genocidal police state. At the museum, however, the same interpretation is given to refugees living in the comparative safety of the German diaspora, who published anti-Nazi Exilliteratur or who otherwise assisted the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany, such as Marlene Dietrich.
The museum also makes a particular point of both demonstrating and criticizing how Hitler manipulated, exploited, and weaponized anti-Semitism to seize absolute power and led Germany to ruin and systematic destruction as its dictator. Graphic examples of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda are displayed. The museum reproduces many official documents, newspapers, posters, anti-Nazi samizdat handbills, private letters and photographs: more than 5,000 individual items in all.
References
External links
Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (English site)
German resistance to Nazism
Museums in Berlin
World War II museums in Germany
Monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism in Berlin