page_title: German resistance to Nazism
section_title: Disorganized resistance
hierarchical_section_title: German resistance to Nazism / Disorganized resistance
caption_attribution_description: Photo by en:User:Adam Carr, May 2006
context_page_description: German resistance to Nazism was the opposition by individuals and groups in Germany to the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Some of these engaged in active resistance, including attempts to remove Adolf Hitler from power by assassination and overthrow his regime.
  German resistance didn't take the form of a united resistance movement at any time during the Nazi period, unlike the much more coordinated Italian Resistance, Soviet partisans, Polish Underground State, Greek Resistance, Yugoslav Partisans, French Resistance, Dutch resistance, and Norwegian resistance movement. The German resistance consisted of small and usually isolated groups. They were unable to mobilize large-scale political opposition. With the exception of individual attacks on Nazis, acts of sabotage or the successful disclosure of information about Nazi armaments factories to the Allies, as by the Austrian resistance group led by Heinrich Maier. One strategy was to persuade leaders of the Wehrmacht to stage a coup against the regime; the 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler was intended to trigger such a coup.
context_section_description: While it cannot be disputed that many Germans supported the regime until the end of the war, beneath the surface of German society there were also currents of resistance, if not always consciously political. The German historian Detlev Peukert, who pioneered the study of German society during the Nazi era, called this phenomenon "everyday resistance." His research was based partly on the regular reports by the Gestapo and the SD on morale and public opinion, and on the "Reports on Germany" which were produced by the exiled SPD based on information from its underground network in Germany and which were acknowledged to be very well informed.
  Peukert and other writers have shown that the most persistent sources of dissatisfaction in Nazi Germany were the state of the economy and anger at the corruption of Nazi Party officials—although these rarely affected the personal popularity of Hitler himself. The Nazi regime is frequently credited with "curing unemployment," but this was done mainly by conscription and rearmament—the civilian economy remained weak throughout the Nazi period. Although prices were fixed by law, wages remained low and there were acute shortages, particularly once the war started. To this after 1942 was added the acute misery caused by Allied air attacks on German cities. The high living and venality of Nazi officials such as Hermann Göring aroused increasing anger. The result was "deep dissatisfaction among the population of all parts of the country, caused by failings in the economy, government intrusions into private life, disruption of accepted tradition and custom, and police-state controls."
  Otto and Elise Hampel protested the regime by leaving postcards urging resistance (both passive and forceful) against the regime around Berlin. It took two years before they were caught, convicted and then put to death.
  Opposition based on this widespread dissatisfaction usually took "passive" forms—absenteeism, malingering, spreading rumours, trading on the black market, hoarding, avoiding various forms of state service such as donations to Nazi causes. But sometimes it took more active forms, such as warning people about to be arrested, hiding them or helping them to escape, or turning a blind eye to oppositionist activities. Among the industrial working class, where the underground SPD and KPD networks were always active, there were frequent if short-lived strikes. These were generally tolerated, at least before the outbreak of war, provided the demands of the strikers were purely economic and not political.
  Another form of resistance was assisting the persecuted German Jews. By mid-1942 the deportation of German and Austrian Jews to the extermination camps in occupied Poland was well under way. It is argued by some writers that the great majority of Germans were indifferent to the fate of the Jews, and a substantial proportion actively supported the Nazi programme of extermination. But a minority persisted in trying to help Jews, even in the face of serious risk to themselves and their families. This was most pronounced in Berlin, where the Gestapo and SS were headquartered, but also where thousands of non-Jewish Berliners, some with powerful connections, risked hiding their Jewish neighbors.
  Aristocrats such as Maria von Maltzan and Maria Therese von Hammerstein obtained papers for Jews and helped many to escape from Germany. In Wieblingen in Baden, Elisabeth von Thadden, a private girls' school principal, disregarded official edicts and continued to enroll Jewish girls at her school until May 1941 when the school was nationalised and she was dismissed (she was executed in 1944, following the Frau Solf Tea Party). A Berlin Protestant Minister, Heinrich Grüber, organised the smuggling of Jews to the Netherlands. At the Foreign Office, Canaris conspired to send a number of Jews to Switzerland under various pretexts. It is estimated that 2,000 Jews were hidden in Berlin until the end of the war. Martin Gilbert has documented numerous cases of Germans and Austrians, including officials and Army officers, who sa
caption: Berlin's Rosenstrasse, where the only public protest against the deportation of German Jews took place in 1943
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