the most devastating setbacks in the history of the German resistance, as we shall see.
The crushing of left-wing parties and the trade unions left the working class without an organizational framework. Individuals who resolved to continue the struggle found themselves alone or in league with just a few close friends. Many working-class leaders were imprisoned. Others withdrew into their private lives and a few went underground. But most left Germany to live in exile, continuing to send messages home, encouraging and advising those who remained behind. It soon became clear, however, that very few of the former rank and file were still listening. The sharp decline in unemployment, the improving economy, and the social programs of the new regime had produced a sense of general well-being, even pride, among the working class. Memories of their socialist days, especially given the disappointments toward the end, faded fast. The enormous self-confidence of the Nazis in their handling of labor is suggested by the release from concentration camps in 1937 and 1938 of three once popular labor leaders-Julius Leber, Carlo Mierendorff, and the last acting chairman of the General German Trade Union Federation, Wilhelm Leuschner.
Not only did the Social Democrats, Communists, and German Nationals accept their fate quietly, so did all other political parties, leagues, professional organizations, and civic associations, though they often had long, proud histories. The Protestant Church alone successfully resisted Nazi co-optation, albeit at the price of constant disputes and schisms. It succeeded because the regime made the mistake of openly attacking it too soon, having assumed that it would fall easily into line because so many of its pastors leaned toward the German Nationals. The church rallied its forces and asserted its independence at a synod held in Barmen in May 1934. Barely two years later, however, Protestant unity broke down; the majority formed a purely religious wing and, motivated by the Lutheran tradition of deference to authority, sought an arrangement with the state, while the remainder continued the struggle, emphasizing their rejection of the totalitarian and neo-pagan proclivities of the regime. The central figure in this minority wing was Pastor Martin Niemoller, who had been a submarine captain in the First World War. Niemoller was arrested on July 1, 1937, and sentenced, after a show trial, to seven months’ imprisonment. At Hitler’s express orders, he was then rear-rested and incarcerated as a “personal prisoner of the Fuhrer” in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he remained until April 1945.
Relations between the Nazi regime and the Catholic Church developed in virtually reverse order. At first the church was quite hostile and its bishops energetically denounced the “false doctrines” of the Nazis. Its opposition weakened considerably, however, when, at Papen’s initiative, the Nazis undertook negotiations with the Vatican and successfully concluded a concordat on July 20, 1933. In the following years, the chairman of the Conference of Bishops, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, developed an ineffectual protest system that satisfied the demands of the other bishops without annoying the regime.22 Only gradually did the Catholic Church find its way back to a firmer brand of resistance in the efforts of individual clerics such as (Cardinal Preysing of Berlin, Bishop Galen of Munster, and Bishop Grober of Freiburg, although even their work was attenuated by internal disputes and tactical disagreements. The regime retaliated with occasional arrests, the withdrawal of teaching privileges, and the seizure of church publishing houses and printing facilities.
Resistance within both churches therefore remained largely a matter of individual conscience. In general they attempted merely to assert their own rights and only rarely issued pastoral letters or declarations indicating any fundamental objection to Nazi ideology. More than any other institutions, however, the churches provided a forum in which individuals could distance themselves from the regime. Because the Nazi policy of
The various militant wings of the old parties, the independent youth organizations, and universities fared no better than the official political groups: they, too, were dissolved or co-opted without much sign of resistance. Any remaining assertions of autonomy were soon muted by countless qualms, attempts to appease the new ruling party, and timidity masquerading as respect for the law. The heavy-handed metaphors that the Nazis so loved-the images Goebbels concocted of storms sweeping Germany, of emptying hourglasses, of faces rising to meet the dawn-may not have been aesthetic triumphs but they hit their mark precisely. In just a few feverish weeks a highly heterogeneous society with innumerable centers of power and influence, independent institutions, and autonomous bodies was reduced to “mere, uniform, obedient ashes.”23 The
There was that day no sense of break or rupture; it simply marked the legal end of the Weimar Republic. Feelings of regret were few. People felt, often for very different reasons, that the republic had meant nothing or very little to them. There was even a sense of relief that it was finally all over. The republic, basic civil rights, the multiparty system, and democratic restraints on the exercise of political power were all firmly relegated to the past. Barely five months after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, those days seemed very remote indeed. Robert Musil wrote at the time that he felt that “the things that were abolished did not really matter very much to people anymore.”24 The future did not lie there, whatever direction it might take. Perhaps the future did indeed lie with Hitler’s new order, which as it expanded and gained converts suddenly seemed to have some rational arguments on its side as well.
One must remember that the people who looked with such equanimity on the demise of the Weimar Republic had no conception of what they were getting into or of the horrendous despotism, criminality, and deprivation of rights that awaited them under a totalitarian regime. Most thought that they would soon find themselves, after a draconian transitional period, living under an authoritarian government running a strict, well- organized state. The total failure to grasp what was at stake can be seen in the comments of one leading Social Democrat after Hitler first came to power. Even after having listened daily to terrifying reports about the fates of old political comrades who had been beaten or seized by SA raiding parties, arrested, and dragged off to concentration camps, the worst that he could imagine scarcely surpassed the persecution of socialists under Bismarck. “We took care of Wilhelm and Bismarck and we’ll take care of today’s reactionaries as well!” he confidently informed his audiences in campaign speeches.25 Some believed that Hitler’s star would eventually burn out. At the SPD’s last mass rally in Berlin, Otto Wels assured his listeners that “harsh rulers don’t last long.”26 Others expected Hitler would soon meet his comeuppance in foreign affairs, when the great powers of Europe turned on him.
Although the Weimar Republic was dead, its ambiguous legacies lived on. With the benefit of time and despite the stunning setbacks of 1933, people here and there began to find the courage and determination to resist. Only now did it become apparent, however, how burned out and useless the rubble of Weimar was. Scattered resistance cells sprouted across the land, but they found themselves unwilling or unable to build on alliances from an earlier period. Communist offers to work with the Social Democrats met, for example, with deep suspicion-yet another legacy of the past. The resistance to Hitler therefore had to be built anew, on fundamentally different foundations. The deep enmity between the various political camps toward the end of the republic left the budding resistance fractured into small circles and cells, which often had no contact with one another despite physical proximity. They all agreed that it was essential to resist but most were reluctant to join forces. The old tensions continued to affect relations among them as late as 1944 and even flared up after the war both in scholarly and in more politically driven disputes over the history of the resistance.
The memory of Weimar also shaped the conspirators’ conceptions of the political order they hoped to institute. None of the surviving plans hold up liberal democracy as a desirable model. Some historians have severely criticized this failing, but in so doing they have tended to forget the experiences of the conspirators, who hoped to present the German people with “credible” alternatives to the Nazi regime and felt unable, wherever they stood on the political spectrum, to include the Weimar system among them.27 They argued that among other things Weimar had fostered the rise of Hitler. Carl Goerdeler, a leader of the civilian resistance, spoke of the “curse of parliamentarism,” which almost always placed “party interests above the good of the nation.”28 In endless debates, whose intensity and poignancy are mirrored in the surviving documents, the members of the resistance devoted enormous efforts to developing evermore cumbersome and peculiar political models that wavered between restoration of the past and social utopianism; only occasionally is there evidence of a truly forward-looking idea.
The ease with which Hitler triumphed in Germany, the string of international political victories that the European powers soon permitted him, and the omnipresence of his secret police combined to convince anti-Nazis
