Translated from MSZ 1-1983
In a school textbook, the instructions for the "lesson unit: The German Resistance" read:
"Just as the extermination of Jews and the concentration camps are the ultimate markers of the crime committed in the name of Germany, so too is the German resistance, even in its failure and its downfall, a triumph of morality over inhumanity. It must be made clear that this 'other Germany' existed, a Germany that, in the terror of the National Socialist dictatorship, was often weak, cowardly, and timid, but which, through its resistance, proved and still proves today: The representative of Germany in those darkest days of its history was not only the overwhelmingly large number of Hitler's followers and collaborators, but also the small number of those who said NO... The resistance proves that National Socialism was not the inevitable consequence of German history, as a prejudice suggests." (Günther von Norden, The Third Reich in the Classroom)
Fascism was not, in fact, an inevitable consequence of German history, because history compels nothing, not even German history. But the bourgeois state offered (and still offers) ample reasons to establish a powerful and totalitarian state in every respect, for the sake of the nation's success, which was indeed implemented. Therefore, the Third Reich was neither a historical aberration nor an unavoidable consequence of German history. However, the desire to find the good "other Germany" in the Third Reich is, without realizing it, correct in one respect. Not only Hitler, his party, and the many followers represented the political spirit of Germany at that time, but also the few members of the resistance, the anti-fascists, are representative—of fascism. Although they acted as opponents of National Socialism and were therefore murdered by it, their criticism was not directed against the fundamental principles of fascism.
The German nation and its reputation
This was the first thing that pretty much all opponents of the Nazi regime put on their banners. Even the Social Democrats, who at that time still seriously claimed to be the party of the working class, did not hesitate to oppose fascism with the socialism of saving the German nation.
"Our goal is to overthrow the Nazi despotism!..."
This revolutionary obligation and the national obligation are not contradictory! Recognizing that fascism must lead to Germany's downfall, that it plunges the people and the country into catastrophe, the overthrow of the regime is the highest duty, for the sake of saving the people and the country...
We therefore call upon the people, all classes of the people: Fight for your rights and freedoms! Free yourselves from the oppression of despotism! Make Germany a free country again, so that the German people may once more stand with their heads held high among the free peoples of the earth! (Pamphlet of the exiled executive committee of the SPD from 1933)
The idea of the national community, this ideal of the unity of people and state, is shared, but Hitler has dragged it through the mud. Hitler, no longer the law, rules over this community, which is therefore the antithesis of solidarity and national cohesion.
"Every morally responsible person would join us in raising their voice against the looming domination of mere (!) power over law, of mere arbitrariness over the will of the morally good. The demand for free self-determination, even for the smallest segment of the population, has been violated throughout Europe, as has the demand for the preservation of racial and ethnic distinctiveness. The fundamental demand for a true national community has been destroyed by the systematic undermining of trust between people. There is no more terrible judgment on a national community than the admission that we must all be vigilant, that no one feels safe from their neighbor, no father from his sons." (Prof. Huber, Wise Rose, 1943)
These are the ideals of a better nationalism, of a good Germany, which are being championed against its practical denigration by the Nazis. Germany should be large and strong—that much is certain—but as a state governed by the rule of law, as a nation not forced into service to the fatherland through lies, criminal wars, and calls for denunciation. Germany's legitimate interest in powerful influence should not be represented as shamefully as by the Nazis, not by criminals who are so brazen as to define the defense of the fatherland as a war of conquest.
"We must now put an end to allowing fools to impose their illusions and lies on the German people, to turning a war of conquest born of lust for power into a war of necessary defense. We have absolutely no reason to fear Bolshevism or the Anglo-Saxons. They, too, are just like everyone else, and we have much to offer. They, too, depend on our strength and our abilities. But it must once again be decent Germans who represent German interests with strength and reason." (Goerdeler, draft letter to Field Marshal von Kluge, 1943)
Naturally, such resistance to the Nazis' war policy increased as defeat became increasingly apparent.
The honorable German soldier
It therefore occupies its rightful place among the anti-fascists of the time, lending weight to their criticism of the Nazis' unmilitary conduct. Before the war began, the very isolated, general staff-like objection that a war first needed better preparation –
"If one keeps one's eyes and ears open, if one does not deceive oneself with false figures, if one does not live in the intoxication of an ideology, then one can only come to the conclusion that we are currently not prepared for war in terms of military policy (leadership, training and equipment), economic policy and public sentiment." (Colonel General Beck, 1938)
The defeat at Stalingrad, in particular, combined with Nazi practices in the conquered country, gave rise to the song of the good German soldier, whose honor and glory were shamefully misused:
"What have they done to the proud army of the Wars of Liberation and Kaiser Wilhelm I!" (Goerdeler, ibid.)
Since the German soldiers not only waged war, but also, on orders, murdered Jews, communists, gypsies, and civilians in a horrific manner, and since they also suffered major defeats, the war was no longer a real war, but "meaningless" - note the contrast!
"Fellow male students! Fellow female students!"
Our people stand shaken before the downfall of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred thousand German men were senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death and destruction by the brilliant strategy of the World War I corporal. Führer, we thank you! Discontent is brewing among the German people: Do we want to continue entrusting the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of German youth to the base (?) power instincts of a party clique? (White Rose, 1943)
Colonel General Beck would have been better, because then the dying would have been organized more meaningfully. The Nazis' opponents made the incredibly harsh criticism that the ideal of a just war had been ruined by crimes committed "behind the backs of the fighting troops and abusing their protection."
"The honor of the fallen is thus defiled." (Prepared government statement for July 20, 1944)
They honor genuine, militant nationalism by discrediting the deaths of soldiers due to ignoble motives and the dilettantism of military leaders. They criticize war waged with fewer victims.
"We do not desire the enslavement of other peoples. The freedom (!) that our fathers won for Germany in the last century as the most precious asset of national life, and which we must guard with equal fervor, must also be granted to all other peoples. For only on this basis can the chasm be bridged that has been revealed by unrestrained, power-crazed politics. Another thing threatens to rob you of the success of your victories (!), which you have won under the leadership of trained and experienced men: Hitler's 'military genius,' which he, in his delusional folly, arrogated to himself and which was most disgustingly idolized by sycophants. Anyone who wants to resole a boot must have learned how. Anyone who leads an army of millions must have learned and proven the ability to do so on the various levels of rigorous military service. Since Hitler granted himself supreme command in the winter of 1941/42, his stubbornness, incompetence, and..." Excessive behavior led the Wehrmacht into situations that experts had warned about and that cost avoidable, heavy losses. The destruction of the 6th Army at Stalingrad… (Prepared appeal to the Wehrmacht for July 20, 1944)
The sacrifices in war should continue after July 20, 1944, following the successful assassination of the tyrant, but "only those necessary for the defense of the fatherland and the well-being of the people" and competently ordered by soldiers. Thus ended the appeal of the upright anti-fascists to the Wehrmacht with the comforting confidence:
"I trust that the front and the home front, all united in their gathered strength, will continue to do their duty to the utmost in humility before God, for honor and freedom, for people and fatherland!"
No elite here - godless!
The students of the White Rose, who used their intellect—"We are concerned with true science and genuine intellectual freedom!"—to criticize the war precisely for its senselessness, saw Germany as disgraced because it lacked a true intellectual elite, select leaders of quality, at its helm—not those like themselves, the true "workers of the mind." They left the fascist worldview unchallenged, considering the Nazis' introduction of it unspiritual. German spirit and German customs were to be saved from the uneducated and immoral scoundrels surrounding Hitler. An appeal for a better fascism:
"We grew up in a state that ruthlessly suppressed all free expression. The Hitler Youth, SA, and SS tried to indoctrinate, revolutionize, and numb us during the most fruitful formative years of our lives. 'Ideological training' was the contemptible method used to stifle burgeoning self-interpretation in a fog of empty phrases. A selection of leaders (!), as diabolical and narrow-minded as could be imagined, grooms its future party bigwigs in training castles to become godless, shameless, and unscrupulous exploiters and murderers, blind (!), stupid (!) followers of the Führer. We 'workers of the mind' would be just the thing to give this new ruling class a good thrashing..."
Twenty lines further on in the same leaflet follows the free expression of opinion, the self-interpretation, as envisioned by the White Rose:
"Freedom and honor! For ten years, Hitler and his comrades have squeezed, thrashed, and twisted these two glorious German words to the point of disgust, as only dilettantes can, throwing the highest values of a nation to swine. They have amply demonstrated what freedom and honor mean to them in ten years of destroying all material and intellectual freedom, all moral substance, in the German people." (Last leaflet of the White Rose, 1943)
The accusation of the "spiritless German character," as practiced by the Nazis, is not far removed from the accusation of godlessness. Fascism tolerated no god other than the nation and the Führer, and set about eliminating the churches, which it deemed to serve a separate master. Their independent role within the state was denied, along with the function of Christian faith and morality. These are the reasons for resistance among Christians. While the churches had still hoped, with the conclusion of the Concordat, to reach an understanding with the new state, and in a Catholic pastoral letter of 1933 promised that "willing integration into the nation and obedient submission to the legitimate leadership of the people will guarantee the resurgence of the nation's strength and greatness," the Nazis' actions led even some official church bodies to condemn the unchristian behavior of the fascists. It is not fascism itself that is criticized, but rather the suppression of church practice, its violation of Christian principles such as the protection of life, from which, of course, war dead are exempt. The Protestants make no secret of their dutiful submission to the fascist order, within which they nevertheless wish to remain devout Christians.
"But we pray for the freedom of our people to be allowed to go their way into the future under the sign of the cross of Christ, so that the grandchildren will not one day curse their fathers because they built and left them a state on earth, but closed the Kingdom of God to them." (Memorandum of the provisional church leadership of the EKD, 1936).
"Where race, people, state, form of government, the holder of state power, or other fundamental values of human community organization—which, within the earthly order, maintain an essential and venerable place—are removed from this earthly scale of values, made the highest norm of all values, including religious ones, and deified with idolatry, this perverts and falsifies the divinely created and divinely ordained order of things." (Pius XI, 1937)
Apparently, God has no objection to fascism, as long as he's allowed to play his part. Christianity wants to be recognized as a useful state ideology, as the preliminary government declaration of July 20th so clearly and positively states:
"The actions of the state will be imbued with Christian spirit in word and deed; for to Christianity" (if one includes the blessed force, then yes) "we owe the rise of the white peoples, we owe the ability (?) to combat the evil impulses within us." (The Führer certainly wasn't against that!) "No ethnic or state community can do without this struggle. But (!) true Christianity also demands (!) tolerance towards those of other faiths or freethinkers. The state will again give the churches the opportunity to be actively involved in the spirit of true Christianity, especially in the areas of welfare and education."
It is as absurd as it is characteristic of the Christian resistance that, when it wanted to fight "evil" in the fascist state, it suffered pangs of conscience; when it wanted to lay a hand on the criminal destroyer of the divine order, it even accused itself of sin. Therefore, the Christian God cannot be so far removed from the earthly one.
"Who would deny that the German, in obedience, on assignment, in his profession, has repeatedly demonstrated the utmost courage and commitment to his life? The German preserved his freedom—and where in the world has freedom been spoken of more passionately than in Germany, from Luther to the philosophy of Idealism—by seeking to liberate himself from self-will in service to the greater good. Profession and freedom were, for him, two sides of the same coin. But in this, he misunderstood the world; he had not anticipated that his readiness for subordination, for the sacrifice of his life for a mission, could be misused for evil. ... On the one hand, irresponsible ruthlessness, on the other, self-tormenting scrupulousness that never led to action. ... Only now are Germans beginning to discover what free responsibility means. It rests on a God who demands the free risk of faith in responsible action and who grants forgiveness and comfort to those who thereby become sinners..." (Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison)
The Christian resistance was filled with such a spirit of subservience – obeying the good earthly order and serving God.
Two things remain to be added: 1. that some intellectual artists and other poets also joined the German resistance—either through external or internal emigration—because they suffered the inhuman misfortune of being denied free artistic expression and the free search for meaning by the Nazis, against which they then fought openly or secretly. 2. the dilemma in which the German resistance found itself. A good assessment of it:
"The situation in which the majority of politically clear-thinking, reasonably informed people find themselves in the midst of a major war in Germany—people who love their fatherland and think both nationally and socially—is truly tragic. They cannot desire a victory, and even less a crushing defeat..." (Ulrich von Hassel, Diary)
The Communists
Including them in the German resistance, in the "other Germany," proves—unsurprisingly—quite problematic for the prevailing glorification of German anti-Nazism. Their resistance is mentioned, their numerous deaths are reported. But since anti-communism was seamlessly transferred to the successor state of the Third Reich, it is not surprising that the communist resistance does not receive the same recognition as the other resistance. After all, they remained communists to the very end, clinging to the necessity of the working class seizing power—and that is not how one likes to imagine the German resistance against the Nazis.
"The future belongs to the proletariat as the rising ruling class! Build your power step by step and never relinquish it... We communists are without any disguise, open and honest in the national anti-fascist united front. If, for the sake of unity, we consciously postpone some demands, everyone knows that we will not abandon our ultimate goal! Only the rule of the working class will solve all contradictions, all social and national problems. ... In the new Germany, the working class will and must fight for the united front and thus come a step closer to socialism." (Political testament of Anton Saefkow, KPD, member of the illegal Reich leadership of the German National Committee 'Free Germany' 1944, shortly before his execution)
Advocating for a free Germany as a communist, who supposedly had no fatherland, was indeed one of their mistakes, but the claim they associated with it is sufficient for the official reckoning with the past, which distrusts the communist resistance and considers it close to treason. They didn't have the problem of Ulrich von Hassel—a dilemma still recognized today as the difficulty of the German resistance—of not committing treason in the fight against the Nazis, of not desiring a crushing defeat in the war. The acts of sabotage by communist resistance groups, the "Red Orchestra" (today, not without reason, primarily considered a World War II espionage organization), which, through its activities, did more for the defeat of the Nazis than all the Christians and generals of the resistance combined—were aimed at hastening Germany's defeat in the war and promoting the victory of the Soviet Union. Of course, a good German resistance movement wouldn't do such a thing, one that carefully differentiates between the nation and the fascist regime waging war on its behalf. Communism and German resistance don't quite fit together for the democrat ("they actually wanted something else!"); but anti-communism and anti-fascism (the identification of both "regimes" as "totalitarian" is supposed to say most of the bad things about them) do.
Thus, every year, democracy lays wreaths for those highly decorated officers from the Eastern Front who, on July 20th, wanted to kill their supreme commander for his proven incompetence since Stalingrad, while Anton Saefkow is unknown and the murder of Ernst Thälmann in Buchenwald concentration camp is considered an "occupational hazard" of the chairman of the Weimar KPD and isn't even deemed worthy of mention in all standard history textbooks. This is a fine interpretation, echoed in the Federal Court of Justice's (BGH) rulings that definitively rejected applications from communist concentration camp prisoners, adding that such resistance was "high treason" and that the state's actions against it at the time were not only legal but could also stand up to scrutiny today. The honorary prize for resistance from the now democratically governed fatherland is awarded to German nationalists like von Hassel and Goerdeler, who make no secret of their i
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