page_title: German resistance to Nazism
section_title: After Stalingrad
hierarchical_section_title: German resistance to Nazism / After Stalingrad
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Russland, deutscher Kriegsgefangener ADN-Zentralbild/Archiv II Weltkrieg 1939-45 Die Schlacht um Stalingrad vom 17.7.1942 bis 2.2.1943. Nach der Kapitulation der faschistischen deutschen Truppen am 31.1. und 2.2.1943 gingen 91 000 Überlebende in die Gefangenschaft. Ein junger Soldat und fanatischer Nazi, der dieses Ende noch nicht begriffen hat. [Sowjetunion.- Sowjetischer Soldat mit Maschinenpistole PPSch-41 bei Bewachung eines verletzten, deutschen kriegsgefangenen Soldaten] Information added by Wikimedia users.A wounded German POW taken at the Battle of Stalingrad. English translation of the original image caption: The Battle of Stalingrad from 7 July 1942 through 2 Feb 1943 After the capitulation of the fascist German troops on 31 January and 2 February, 91,000 survivors became prisoners of war. A younger soldier and fanatical Nazi, who has not realized this end, yet.
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: At the end of 1942, Germany suffered a series of military defeats, the first at El Alamein, the second with the successful Allied landings in North Africa (Operation Torch), and the third the disastrous defeat at Stalingrad, which ended any hope of defeating the Soviet Union. Most experienced senior officers now came to the conclusion that Hitler was leading Germany to defeat, and that the result of this would be the Soviet conquest of Germany—the worst fate imaginable. This gave the military resistance new impetus.
  Halder had been dismissed in 1942 and there was now no independent central leadership of the Army. His nominal successors, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Alfred Jodl, were no more than Hitler's messengers. Tresckow and Goerdeler tried again to recruit the senior Army field commanders to support a seizure of power. Kluge was by now won over completely. Gersdorff was sent to see Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, the commander of Army Group South in the Ukraine. Manstein agreed that Hitler was leading Germany to defeat, but told Gersdorff that “Prussian field marshals do not mutiny.” Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, commander in the west, gave a similar answer. The prospect of a united German Army seizing power from Hitler was as far away as ever. Once again, however, neither officer reported that they had been approached in this way.
  Nevertheless, the days when the military and civilian plotters could expect to escape detection were ending. After Stalingrad, Himmler would have had to be naïve not to expect that conspiracies against the regime would be hatched in the Army and elsewhere. He already suspected Canaris and his subordinates at the Abwehr. In March 1943, two of them, Oster and Hans von Dohnányi, were dismissed on suspicion of opposition activity, although there was yet insufficient evidence to have them arrested. On the civilian front, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also arrested at this time, and Goerdeler was under suspicion.
  The Gestapo had been led to Dohnanyi following the arrest of Wilhelm Schmidhuber, who had helped Dohnanyi with information and with smuggling Jews out of Germany. Under interrogation, Schmidhuber gave the Gestapo details of the Oster-Dohnanyi group in the Abwehr and about Goerdeler and Beck's involvement in opposition activities. The Gestapo reported all this to Himmler, with the observation that Canaris must be protecting Oster and Dohnanyi and the recommendation that he be arrested. Himmler passed the file back with the note "Kindly leave Canaris alone." Either Himmler felt Canaris was too powerful to tackle at this stage, or he wanted him and his oppositional network protected for reasons of his own. Nevertheless, Oster's usefulness to the resistance was now greatly reduced. However, the Gestapo did not have information about the full workings of the resistance. Most importantly, they did not know about the resistance networks based on Army Group Centre or the Bendlerblock.
  Meanwhile, the disaster at Stalingrad, which cost Germany 400,000 casualties, was sending waves of horror and grief through German society, but causing remarkably little reduction in the people's faith in Hitler and in Germany's ultimate victory. This was a source of great frustration to the military and civil service plotters, who virtually all came from the elite and had privileged access to information, giving them a much greater appreciation of the hopelessness of Germany's situation than was possessed by the German people.
caption: Red Army soldier marches a German soldier into captivity after the victory at the Battle of Stalingrad
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