Hi Agamemnon-
Not sure what you mean by "resistance." The armed conflicts I was talking about were socialist and communist uprisings in Germany throughout the 20th century prior to Hitler coming to power. There was a major one in the 1880s, and revolutions in Kiel and Bavaria at the end of WWI, a Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919, and so on. The left and the right were fighting in the streets, sort of like 1968.
But I wouldn't call this "resistance" because the German government at the time was the Weimar government, a constitutional democracy, formed in 1919, after the Kaiser fled to the Netherlands. Delegates to the Reichstag were alloted, not by state but by percentage of votes, so the Communists and the Socialists had legal delegates who sat on the Reichstag and voted.
Hitler took power through legal means, at first. His party, the National Socialists, got more votes in the 1932 election but did not achieve a majority. Hitler was appointed Chancellor. President Hindenberg was old, and weak, and easy to manipulate. After the burning of the Reichstag Hindenberg was persuaded to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree which gave Hitler the power to suspend basic civil liberties. One of the things he did was have all the Communist and Socialist members of the Reichstag arrested as enemies of the state, which gave the Nazis - with the assistance of the German National Party, a conservative party - a slim majority in the Reichstag. He then dissolved the Reichstag.
There was no armed resistance to the Nazis after 1933, nor any overt resistance worth mentioning. The Nazis were extremely ruthless even about seemingly insignificant trivia - drunken old fools who told a joke in a bar about Goering's obesity or Hitler's sexuality would get thrown into a concentration camp.
But the ruthlessness of the Nazi party isn't the whole story - Hitler was well loved. From 1930-1932, Mein Kampf was the best selling book in Germany, except for the Bible. Germans did not have a long democratic tradition, and "he made the trains run on time."
As Pastor Neimoeller said,
"In Germany they came first for the Communist,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up."
(Pastor Martin Niemoeller, 1892-1984, German Protestant churchman) |
