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64-696: The building is notable as the headquarters of a resistance band of Wehrmacht officers who staged the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler in 1944. As the leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot in the courtyard, the Bendlerblock also includes the Memorial to the German Resistance . Since 1993, the building complex has served as a secondary seat of the German Federal Ministry of Defence . The complex got its name from

128-599: A blood murderer from Berchtesgaden."). Another Habsburg supporter was 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 organized regular demonstrations and marches and published weekly writings. In

192-714: A confidant of Admiral Canaris. Like many other army officers, Oster welcomed the Nazi regime . However, his opinion changed after the 1934 Night of the Long Knives in which the Schutzstaffel (SS) murdered many of the leaders of the rival Sturmabteilung (SA) and their political opponents, including General Kurt von Schleicher , the second-to-last Chancellor of the Weimar Republic and Generalmajor (Major General) Ferdinand von Bredow , former head of

256-407: A coup against Hitler. However, the army generals argued that they could mobilise support among the officer corps only if Hitler made overt moves towards war. Halder asked Oster to draw up plans for a coup, and it was eventually agreed that Halder would instigate the coup when Hitler committed an overt step towards war. Emissaries of the conspirators travelled to Britain, with the assistance of Oster and

320-599: A grave crisis with the army command and Hammerstein-Equord's resignation in December. He was succeeded by Lieutenant General Werner von Fritsch . From the mid-1930s onwards, large annexes were erected along Bendlerstraße according to plans designed by Wilhelm Kreis . From 1938 the enlarged "Bendlerblock" again was used by the Seekriegsleitung (Maritime Warfare Command) of the Oberkommando der Marine and

384-540: A scheme for a coup attempt upon an assassination on Hitler. Stauffenberg's position gave him direct access to situation briefings in Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia . On 20 July 1944, he set the fuse of a bomb there and immediately returned to Berlin. The bomb went off, but Hitler survived. As the day progressed and the news spread, the conspirators were unable to take control of Germany. Following

448-514: A sharp intensification of the persecution of Jews , homosexuals, trade union leaders, and 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

512-814: The Abwehr . In 1935, Oster was allowed to re-join the army but never on the General Staff . By 1938, the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair and Kristallnacht (the Nazi-led pogrom against Jews in Germany), turned his antipathy into a hatred of Nazism and a willingness to help save Jews. During the Fritsch crisis, Oster met Generaloberst (Colonel General) Ludwig Beck , Chief of the General Staff, for

576-702: The Abwehr group's rescue efforts for Jews were exposed by the Gestapo and Oster was dismissed from his post. Hans von Dohnanyi , who joined the Abwehr shortly before the war and Dietrich Bonhoeffer , the Lutheran theologian and Dohnanyi's brother-in-law, helped 14 Jews to flee to Switzerland disguised as Abwehr agents in Operation ( Unternehmen ) U-7. Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer were arrested on charges of alleged breach of monetary exchange laws, amongst others, with

640-678: The Abwehr , to urge the British to stand firm against Hitler over the Sudeten crisis . On 28 September, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to a meeting in Munich , where he accepted the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Hitler's diplomatic triumph undermined and demoralised the conspirators. Until that time Halder seemed keen to stage a coup. As war again grew more likely in mid-1939,

704-490: The German Christian movement sought to create a new, positive Christianity aligned with Nazi ideology, some Christian churches, Catholic and Protestant, contributed another source 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

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768-534: 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". German resistance

832-578: The Netherlands ' military attaché in Berlin, more than twenty times the date of the postponed invasion of the Netherlands . Sas passed the information to his government but was not believed. Oster calculated that his treason could cost the lives of 40,000 German soldiers and wrestled with his decision. However, he then concluded that it was necessary to prevent millions of deaths that would occur in

896-894: The Prussian aristocracy. Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to concentration camps. As early as 1935 there were alarms, "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.") Hans Oster Hans Paul Oster (9 August 1887 – 9 April 1945)

960-754: The Social Democrats (SPD)—with its paramilitary group the Iron Front and activists such as Julius Leber — Communists (KPD), and the anarcho-syndicalist group 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 group began to assist their Jewish friends as early as 1933. Whereas

1024-544: 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 guidance for various leading figures in

1088-564: The Tom Cruise -starred movie Valkyrie about the 20 July Plot, especially a re-enactment of the execution on the original location. However, permission was eventually granted, and filming took place. (The movie was primarily photographed in and around Berlin, with some African and other scenes filmed in California.) Director Bryan Singer led the film crew in a minute of silence before filming began, in honour of those who were killed on

1152-531: The Treaty of Versailles . He had to resign from the army in 1932, when he got into trouble with a married woman. He soon found a job in a new organisation which Hermann Göring set up under the Prussian police. He transferred to the Abwehr in October 1933. It was in this connection that he met Hans Bernd Gisevius and Arthur Nebe , who were working in the Gestapo and became conspirators. Oster also became

1216-537: The "unorganized resistance" defied the Nazi regime in various ways, most notably those who helped Jews survive 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, particularly in the later years of the regime, informal networks of young Germans who evaded serving in the Hitler Youth and defied

1280-438: The 1920 Kapp Putsch ("Reichswehr do not fire on Reichswehr"). On 3 February 1933, four days after his appointment by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg , Chancellor Adolf Hitler sought the support of Reichswehr commander-in-chief General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord , unveiling his political ideology in an extended declamation. Despite the support by new Reichswehr Minister Werner von Blomberg , Hitler's appearance resulted in

1344-701: The Allies or the anti-Fascist resistance forces, 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. It has been estimated that during

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1408-790: The BRD and the DDR developed different images of the German resistance, 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. 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

1472-590: The Bendlerblock around the courtyard, where Stauffenberg and the other conspirators were executed, now houses the Memorial to the German Resistance . It is also used as one of the ceremonial sites where new members of the Wachbataillon of the Bundeswehr (German military's drill unit) take their oaths. Following German reunification, the Federal Minister of Defence's Berlin office was moved to

1536-582: The Bendlerblock. The Ministry of Defence as proprietor tends to restrict access to the Bendlerblock, due to its historical significance and lingering sensitivities about Germany's role in World War II. Filming permission was first granted in 2003 to a TV studio for the filming of Stauffenberg , starring Sebastian Koch . It was awarded with the Deutscher Fernsehpreis . The Ministry hesitated to grant permission for filming scenes of

1600-446: 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

1664-604: The German Weimar government had to face the regulations of the 1919 Versailles treaty , whereafter the remaining Reichswehr and Reichsmarine forces had to be greatly reduced and from that time on used the complex jointly. It also served as the seat of the first Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske and supreme army commander Walther Reinhardt . In Minister Noske's office, Truppenamt chief Major General Hans von Seeckt openly rejected an intervention of Reichswehr troops against paramilitary Freikorps forces during

1728-418: The German Resistance, Peter Hoffmann wrote that "National Socialism was not simply a party like any other; with its total acceptance of criminality it was an incarnation of evil, so that all those whose minds were attuned to democracy, Christianity, freedom, humanity, or even mere legality found themselves forced into alliance." Banned, underground political parties were one source of opposition. These included

1792-817: 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

1856-521: The Nazi regime was very small. The resistance in Germany included members of the Polish minority who formed resistance groups like Olimp . 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 . During the Cold War,

1920-468: 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 and 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

1984-684: The OKW Amt Abwehr . The main building served the General Army Office of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) under General Friedrich Fromm , succeeded by General Friedrich Olbricht in 1940, and still as seat of the commander-in-chief of the German Army ( Heer ). After the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair in 1938, Colonel-general Walther von Brauchitsch took command and from 1941 Hitler took command himself. Already in 1938,

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2048-510: The Polish campaign in 1939, Halder along with other senior generals, thought it to be hopelessly unrealistic and again entertained the idea of a coup, urged by Oster and Canaris. When Hitler vowed to destroy the spirit of Zossen (the headquarters of the Army High Command), meaning defeatism, Halder feared that the conspiracy was about to be discovered and destroyed all incriminating documents. Oster informed his friend Bert Sas ,

2112-753: The Semperit factory near Auschwitz—a message the Americans in Zurich initially did not believe. 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 four years in prison for possessing a note she wrote found in her wallet with the rhymed text "Wir wollen einen Kaiser von Gottesgnaden und keinen Blutmörder aus Berchtesgaden. ("We want an emperor of divine grace and not

2176-524: The US there were also the "Austrian American League" chapters 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 would have been shot immediately without further proceedings. Habsburg provided thousands of refugees with the rescue visas and, on

2240-435: The arrest of the conspirators in the Bendlerblock by order of General Friedrich Fromm , the resistance fighters Colonel von Stauffenberg, General Olbricht, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim , and Stauffenberg's adjutant Werner von Haeften , were executed by firing squad that same night in the courtyard of the building. A fifth plotter, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck , was allowed to shoot himself. Fromm's opportunism did not pay off: he

2304-470: The centuries-old Habsburg principles of "live and let live" with regard to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures, and languages. Because of Hitler's orders, thousands of these resistance fighters were sent directly to concentration camps without trial. From 800 to 1,000 Habsburg resistance fighters were executed. As a unique attempt in the German Reich to act aggressively against

2368-532: 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. On the other hand, the Marxist-Leninist historians from

2432-526: 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. 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,

2496-658: The cultural policies of the Nazis in various ways. The German Army, the Foreign Office, and Abwehr , the military intelligence organization, became sources for plots against Hitler in 1938 and again in 1939 but could not implement their plans. After the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, they contacted many Army officers who were convinced that Hitler was leading Germany to disaster, although fewer who were willing to engage in overt resistance. Active resisters in this group were frequently drawn from members of

2560-583: 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. Hundreds of thousands of Germans had deserted from the Wehrmacht , many defected to

2624-468: The efforts for a coup were revived. Oster was still in contact with Halder and Witzleben. However, many officers, particularly those from the Prussian Junker background, were strongly anti- Polish and saw a war to regain Danzig and other lost eastern territories as justified. After the outbreak of World War II , resistance in the army became harder to contemplate since it could lead to the defeat of Germany. When Hitler decided to attack France soon after

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2688-411: The failed 1944 July Plot on Hitler's life, during interrogation, he named Admiral Wilhelm Canaris , the head of Abwehr , as the "spiritual founder of the Resistance Movement". The Gestapo arrested Canaris and eventually found his diaries, in which Oster's anti-Nazi activities were revealed. In April 1945, he was hanged with Canaris and Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Flossenbürg concentration camp . Oster

2752-430: The fall of 1943 at least, these transmissions informed the Allies about the site plans of German production plants. The information was important to Operation Crossbow . With the location sketches of the factories, Allied bombers were given instructions on when and where to bomb. In contrast to many other German resistance groups, the Maier Group informed very early about the mass murder of Jews through their contacts with

2816-443: The first time, making the connections for the Oster conspiracy of September 1938. Oster's position in the Abwehr was invaluable to the conspirators; Abwehr could provide false papers and restricted materials, disguise conspiratorial activities as intelligence work, link disparate resistance cells, and supply intelligence to the conspirators. He also played a central role in the first military conspiracy to overthrow Hitler, which

2880-402: The head of the Abwehr intelligence agency under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster evolved plans for a coup d'état in the course of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia . These plans were upset by the Munich Agreement , whereby the major European powers reconciled by permitting the annexation of the " Sudetenland ". In the early 1940s, the OKH Army Office under

2944-512: The invasion of the Soviet Union , his Abwehr group established contact with the resistance group of Henning von Tresckow in Army Group Centre . In 1942, his most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht , head of the General Army Office, at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units all over Germany. The Oster group supplied British-made bombs to Tresckow's group for their attempts to assassinate Hitler in 1943. In 1943,

3008-415: The later mansion district on Tiergartenstraße . The main building on the Landwehr Canal was erected between 1911 and 1914 in a Neoclassical style as the seat of the Imperial Naval Office , until 1916 led by Grand admiral Alfred von Tirpitz . It was also the headquarters of the Imperial Admiralty Staff and the Imperial Navy Cabinet directly subordinate to Emperor Wilhelm II . After World War I ,

3072-400: The leadership of General Olbricht became the focus of military resistance to the Nazi regime. In October 1943, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was transferred to the General Army Office as chief of staff. It was at the Bendlerblock that Stauffenberg and Major General Henning von Tresckow secretly modified the Wehrmacht " Operation Valkyrie " plan for the suppression of a possible revolt into

3136-673: The leading German insurance brokers Jauch & Hübener, Captain Walter Jauch of the Jauch family , a first cousin-in-law of Oster, and Otto Hübener later being hanged. Oster was placed under house arrest. Oster was arrested the day after the failed 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. On 4 April 1945, the diaries of Admiral Canaris were discovered and in a rage upon reading them, Hitler ordered that all current and past conspirators—Oster among them—be executed. On 8 April 1945, Oster, Dietrich Bonhoeffer , Wilhelm Canaris, and other anti-Nazis were convicted and sentenced to death by an SS drumhead court-martial presided over by Otto Thorbeck . At dawn

3200-429: 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. 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

3264-482: The other, made politics for the peoples of Central Europe with the Allies. The decisive factor 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 support of Winston Churchill for a conservative "Danube Federation", in effect a restoration of Austria-Hungary, but Joseph Stalin put an end to these plans. Individual Germans or small groups of people acting as

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3328-404: 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

3392-408: 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, especially because Hitler bristled with hatred of the Habsburg family. Hitler diametrically rejected

3456-456: The protracted war after Germany was denied an early victory. The period between 1940 and 1942 was the nadir of German resistance. Some officers were pleased to be wrong to have feared military disaster. Others still opposed Hitler and the Nazi regime but felt that his enormous popularity with the people made any action impossible. Tireless, Oster rebuilt a resistance network. In 1941, when the systematic extermination of European Jews began after

3520-410: 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" ( German : Volksbewegung ) which would turn the assassination into a starting point of political resistance and break the loyalty of the population to the Nazi system, although the plotters had no concrete planning or personnel consequences. This may be seen as

3584-731: The site in 1944. 52°30′25″N 13°21′41″E  /  52.50694°N 13.36139°E  / 52.50694; 13.36139 German Resistance to Nazism Central Europe Germany Italy Spain ( Spanish Civil War ) Albania Austria Baltic states Belgium Bulgaria Burma Czechia Denmark France Germany Greece Italy Japan Jewish Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Slovakia Spain Soviet Union Yugoslavia Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States The German resistance to Nazism ( German : Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus ) included unarmed and armed opposition and disobedience to

3648-413: The state and were able to continue 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 clergy 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

3712-431: The street it was on. Today, it is on Stauffenbergstraße (Stauffenberg street named in honour of Claus von Stauffenberg ) which was previously known as Bendlerstraße from 1837 until 20 July 1955, after Johann Christoph Bendler (1789–1873) from Hoym in Prussian Halberstadt . Bendler, a chief mason and member of the Berlin city council, had acquired large estates south of the Großer Tiergarten park in order to develop

3776-420: The various resistance movements adapting and coming together. The Foreign Office and the Abwehr (Military Intelligence) also provided support to the movement. Many of those in the military who ultimately chose to seek to overthrow Adolf Hitler had initially supported the regime, if not all of its methods. Hitler's 1938 purge of the military was accompanied by increased militancy in the Nazification of Germany,

3840-482: Was a general in the Wehrmacht and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the Abwehr (German military intelligence), Oster was in a good position to conduct resistance operations under the guise of intelligence work. He was involved in the Oster conspiracy of September 1938 and was arrested in 1943 on suspicion of helping Abwehr officers caught helping Jews to escape Germany. After

3904-418: Was arrested for connivance the next day, condemned to death and executed on 12 March 1945. During the Battle of Berlin in the last days of World War II in late April and early May 1945, General Helmuth Weidling , commander of the Berlin Defence Area, used the Bendlerblock as his headquarters before surrendering to General Vasily Chuikov of the Soviet Red Army at 6:00 a.m. on 2 May. The section of

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3968-401: Was born in Dresden , Saxony in 1887, the son of an Alsatian pastor of the French Protestant Church. He entered the artillery in 1907 and in World War I , he served on the Western Front until 1916, when he was appointed as captain to the German General Staff . After the war, he was thought of well enough to be kept in the reduced Reichswehr , whose officer corps was limited to 4,000 by

4032-452: 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 . The German resistance consisted of small, isolated groups that were unable to mobilize mass political opposition. Individual attacks on Nazi authority, sabotage, and

4096-612: Was rooted in Hitler's intention to invade Czechoslovakia . In August 1938, Beck spoke openly at a meeting of army generals in Berlin about his opposition to a war with the Western powers over Czechoslovakia. When Hitler was informed of that, he demanded and received Beck's resignation. Beck was highly respected in the army and his removal shocked the officer corps. His successor as Chief of Staff, Franz Halder , remained in touch with him and also with Oster. Privately, he said that he considered Hitler "the incarnation of evil". Oster, Gisevius and Hjalmar Schacht urged Halder and Beck to stage

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