The German resistance to Nazism (‹See Tfd›German: Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus) included unarmed and armed opposition and disobedience to the Nazi regime by various movements, groups and individuals by various means, from attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler or to overthrow his regime, defection to the enemies of the Third Reich and sabotage against the German Army and the apparatus of repression and attempts to organize armed struggle, to open protests, rescue of persecuted persons, dissidence and "everyday resistance".[1][2]
German resistance was not recognized as a united resistance movement during the height of Nazi Germany, unlike the more organised efforts in other countries, such as Italy, Denmark, the Soviet Union, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Norway.[3] The German resistance consisted of small, isolated groups that were unable to mobilize mass political opposition.[4] Individual attacks on Nazi authority, sabotage, and the disclosure of information regarding Nazi armaments factories to the Allies, as by the Austrian resistance group led by Heinrich Maier, occurred. One strategy was to persuade leaders of the Wehrmacht to stage a coup d'état against the regime; the 20 July plot of 1944 against Hitler was intended to trigger such a coup.[3] Hundreds of thousands Germans had deserted from the Wehrmacht, many defected to the Allies or the anti-Fascist resistance forces,[1] and after 1943, the Soviet Union made attempts to launch a guerrilla warfare in Germany with such defectors and allowed the members of the National Committee for a Free Germany which consisted mostly of the German prisoners of war to be engaged in the military operations of the Red Army and form small military units.[5][6]
It has been estimated that during the course of World War II 800,000 Germans were arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activities. It has also been estimated that between 15,000 and 77,000 of the Germans were executed by the Nazis.[1] Resistance members were usually tried, mostly in show trials, by Sondergerichte (Special Courts), courts-martial, People's Courts, and the civil justice system. Many of the Germans had served in government, the military, or in civil positions, which enabled them to engage in subversion and conspiracy. The Canadian historian Peter Hoffmann counts unspecified "tens of thousands" in Nazi concentration camps who were either suspected of or engaged in opposition.[7] The German historian Hans Mommsen wrote that resistance in Germany was "resistance without the people" and that the number of those Germans engaged in resistance to the Nazi regime was very small.[8] The resistance in Germany included members of the Polish minority who formed resistance groups like Olimp.[9]
Historiographical debates on the subject on Widerstand (resistance) have often featured intense arguments about the nature, extent, and effectiveness of resistance in the Third Reich. There has been debate about what to define as Widerstand.[10] During the Cold War, the BRD and the DDR developed different images of the German resistatnce, as in the BRD the conservative groups, namely the White Rose and the 20 July plotters, were canonized, while the other groups and individuals were barely appreciated or denied; in the DDR, the Communist resistance was idolized to create a mythos in the foundation the self-image of the DDR.[1]
The German opposition and resistance movements consisted of disparate political and ideological strands, which represented different classes of German society who seldom were able to work together— for much of the period there was little or no contact between the different strands of resistance. Although some civilian resistance groups developed, it is said that they were unable to launch a full-scale movement as the opposition was atomized, since there was no adequate public support, and since there was no alternate pole of loyalty (such as an exile government) that could legitimize violent resistance, and the conservative historians of the German resistance contended that the Army was the only organisation with the capacity to overthrow the government and that the only valid strategy of the resistance was an elitist one that suggested "eliminating Hitler in a single stroke"; a few officers came to present the most serious threat posed to the Nazi regime.[11][6] On the other hand, the Marxist-Leninist historians from the DDR argued that lack of democratic support was one of the reasons why the attempts of the army to assassinate Hitler had failed. However, the relationship between the army and the civil resistance were more complex and gradually evolved: while the representatives of the workers' movement sought contacts with the army, at first, the plotters did not even question whether the public support is needed, but eventually they came, partly due to the reaction on the activities of the National Committee for a Free Germany, to a conclusion of a necessity of a democratic "people's movement" (