9 - Wartime Resistance Flashcards
What is the context??
Post Jan 43’ - Growing scepticism at German prospects in war led to unrest
Hitler myth weakened
Party membership and meeting
attendance fell
BUT relatively efficient controls by Nazis on opposition
Small number took risks and paid a price:
Hiding Jews
Listening to BBC broadcasts
Reading banned books
What was youth resistance like??
Difficult to fully suppress ‘wild cliques’ - e.g. ages 14-18 - Edelweiss Pirates
Active in Rhineland & Ruhr Valley
Antisocial
Clashes between Pirates and Hitler Youth
1944: Cologne group linked to underground - aided P.O.W’s, Jews escape, deserters
Attacked military depots
How did they deal with the pirates??
Initial Plans from SD and HJ:
Arrests
Shaving captives’ heads
Sent to labour camps
Limited effect + abandoned after severity of resistance (depot attacks) increased
7th Dec. 1942: 28 groups broken up
Hung in 44”
What was middle class resistance like??
Swing Youth - Ministry of Justice Report: motivated by ‘desire to have a good time’
Jazz seen as a ‘negro music’
Not resistance, but seen as amoral and ‘sleazy’
White rose movement
Based in Munich
Target - educated youth in universities
Vocal and written attacks on treatment of Eastern Slavs
Attacking Nazi ideology
1942-43: 6 pamphlets issued with heavy circulation
Caught by Gestapo and executed
2 assassination plots??
General Beck discussed with UK about possible surrender in 1943 if they removed Hitler
March 1943: bomb on Hitlers plane - did not explode
Church resistance??
Catholic - Initial total support for action of Nazis in 1939
Supported 1941 invasion of Soviet Union
Some lower tier discontent
Bishop Galen spoke out at 270,000 killed in Aktion T4 programme
Protestant Church
Only large scale Christian body to speak out against treatment of Jews
3 killed for speaking out
Communist oppostion??
Severely weakened by terror state but still in some areas
1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact undermined soviet resistance
June 1941: Soviet opposition galvanised (Barbarossa)
KPD Cells in Berlin:
1941 - 89 active
1943 - 67 active
Considered major threat BUT no prospect of widespread support
