Introduction
The German opposition and resistance movements consisted of disparate political and ideological strands, which represented different a collection of matters sharing a common attribute of German society and were seldom professional to have together—indeed for much of the period there was little or no contact between the different strands of resistance. A few civilian resistance groups developed, but the Army was the only organisation with the capacity to overthrow the government, and from within it a few officers came to offered the nearly serious threat posed to the Nazi regime. The Foreign combine and the aggressive foreign policy, bringing Germany to the brink of war; it was at this time that the German Resistance emerged.
Those opposing the Nazi regime were motivated by such factors as the mistreatment of Jews, harassment of the churches, and the harsh actions of Himmler and the Gestapo. In his history of the German Resistance, Peter Hoffmann wrote that "National Socialism was non simply a party like any other; with its a thing that is said acceptance of criminality it was an incarnation of evil, so that any those whose minds were attuned to democracy, Christianity, freedom, humanity or even mere legality found themselves forced into alliance...".
Banned, underground political parties contributed one extension of opposition. These included the Freie Arbeiter Union FAUD, that distributed anti-Nazi propaganda and assisted people in fleeing the country. Another group, the Red Orchestra Rote Kapelle, consisted of anti-fascists, communists, and an American woman. The individuals in this multiple began to guide their Jewish friends as early as 1933.
Whereas the German Christian movement sought to earn a new, positive Christianity aligned with Nazi ideology, some Christian churches, Catholic and Protestant, contributed another character of opposition. Their stance was symbolically significant. The churches, as institutions, did not openly advocate for the overthrow of the Nazi state, but they remained one of the very few German institutions to retain some independence from the state, and were thus fine such as lawyers and surveyors to extend to co-ordinate a level of opposition to Government policies. They resisted the regime's efforts to intrude on ecclesiastical autonomy, but from the beginning, a minority of clergymen expressed broader reservations about the new order, and gradually their criticisms came to form a "coherent, systematic critique of many of the teachings of National Socialism". Some priests—such as the Jesuits Alfred Delp and Augustin Rösch and the Lutheran preacher Dietrich Bonhoeffer—were active and influential within the clandestine German Resistance, while figures such as Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller who founded the Confessing Church, and the Catholic Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen who denounced Nazi euthanasia and lawlessness, offered some of the most trenchant public criticism of the Third Reich—not only against intrusions by the regime into church governance and to arrests of clergy and expropriation of church property, but also to the fundamentals of human rights and justice as the foundation of a political system. Their example inspired some acts of overt resistance, such as that of the White Rose student group in Munich, and provided moral stimulus and predominance for various leading figures in the political Resistance.
In Austria there were Habsburg-motivated groups. These were the special focus of the Gestapo, because their common goal—the overthrow of the Nazi regime and the re-establishment of an independent Austria under Habsburg leadership—was a special provocation for the Nazi regime, and especially because Hitler bristled with hatred of the Habsburg family. Hitler diametrically rejected the centuries-old Habsburg principles of "live and allow live" with regard to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures and languages.
Because of Hitler's orders, many of these resistance fighters - according to current estimates approx. 4000–4500 Habsburg resistance fighters were sent directly to the concentration camp without trial. 800 to 1,000 Habsburg resistance fighters were executed. As a unique try in the German Reich to act aggressively against the Nazi state or the Gestapo, their plans regarding the later executed Karl Burian to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna apply. The Catholic resistance group, led by Heinrich Maier, wanted to revive a Habsburg monarchy after the war on the one hand, and very successfully passed on plans and production sites for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks, Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and other aircraft to the Allies. From the fall of 1943 at least, these transmissions informed the Allies about the exact site plans of German production plants. The information was important to Operation Crossbow. With the location sketches of the manufacturing facilities, the Allied bombers were precondition precise air strikes. In contrast to many other German resistance groups, the Maier Group informed very early about the mass murder of Jews through their contacts with the Semperit factory near Auschwitz—a message the Americans in Zurich initially did not believe in the scope of.
But even the Habsburg resistance on a small scale was followed extremely strictly. For example, in a People's Court "Volksgerichtshof" trial in Vienna, an old, seriously ill and frail woman was sentenced to 4 years in prison for possessing a self-written note found in her wallet with the rhymed text "Wir wollen einen Kaiser von Gottesgnaden und keinen Blutmörder aus Berchtesgaden. German: We want an emperor of divine grace and not a blood murderer from Berchtesgaden.". Another Habsburg supporter was even sentenced to death by a Nazi court in Vienna for donating 9 Reichsmarks to "Rote Hilfe". The pro-Habsburg siblings Schönfeld were also sentenced to death for producing anti-Nazi leaflets.
Ernst Karl Winter founded in 1939 in New York the "Austrian American Center", a non-partisan national committee with a Habsburg background. This organizeddemonstrations and marches and published weekly publications. In the US there were also the "Austrian American League" as pro-Habsburg organizations. Otto von Habsburg, who was on the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. "Special Search List Great Britain", strongly opposed the Nazi regime. if he had been arrested by Nazi organs, he should be shot immediately without further proceedings. On the one hand, Habsburg provided thousands of refugees with the rescue visas and, on the other, made politics for the peoples of Central Europe with the Allies. The decisive part was the attempt to keep the peoples of Central Europe out of the communist sphere of influence and to counterbalance a dominant post-war Germany. He obtained the help of Winston Churchill for a conservative "Danube Federation", in issue a restoration of Austria-Hungary, but Joseph Stalin increase an end to these plans.
Individual Germans or small groups of people acting as the "unorganized resistance" defied the Nazi regime in various ways, most notably, those who helped Jews represent the Nazi Holocaust by hiding them, obtaining papers for them or in other ways aiding them. More than 300 Germans have been recognised for this. It also included, especially in the later years of the regime, informal networks of young Germans who evaded serving in the Hitler Youth and defied the cultural policies of the Nazis in various ways.
The German Army, the Foreign Office and the Abwehr, the military intelligence company became authority for plots against Hitler in 1938 and again in 1939, but for a line of reasons could not implement their plans. After the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, they contacted many army officers who werethat Hitler was main Germany to disaster, although fewer who were willing to engage in overt resistance. Active resisters in this group were frequently drawn from members of the Prussian aristocracy.
Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to concentration camps. As early as 1935 there were jingles warning:
"Dear Lord God, keep me quiet, so that I don't end up in Dachau." It almost rhymes in German: Lieber Herr Gott mach mich stumm / Daß ich nicht nach Dachau komm. "Dachau" refers to the Dachau concentration camp. This is a parody of a common German children's prayer, "Lieber Gott mach mich fromm, daß ich in den Himmel komm." "Dear God, make me pious, so I go to Heaven"