Abstract
In this chapter, our analysis of serious internal resistance to Hitler’s regime begins with an examination of the overall structure and composition of that resistance from the inception of Nazi rule in January 1933 through to the collapse of the German legal system in early 1945. The chapter seeks to answer two fundamental questions in particular, one temporal and one geographic: namely, how did the levels of serious resistance change across time and what regions were most active in this resistance? Along the way, a number of secondary issues are also considered: inter alia, can a distinct periodisation of resistance be identified, how did the different phases of the war impact resistance activities, did the intensity of such activities in any location merely reflect its population size, and is it more appropriate to talk of the commonality or distinctiveness of regional resistance experiences? The answers to such questions gleaned from quantitative analyses of the available data on treason, and high treason shed new light on, and challenge aspects of, our understanding of the path of serious resistance within Nazi Germany. The chapter offers a new periodisation of serious resistance in Nazi Germany.
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Notes
- 1.
One such book is Joachim Fest’s Staatsstreich: Der lange Weg zum 20. Juli (1997), in which he challenges the notion of everyday resistance and focuses on the men and women who had the ability to challenge the regime effectively. For a critical assessment of the emphasis on key events and national conservatives involved in the 20 July plot, see Kershaw (2015).
- 2.
Thus, as Benz (2014, p.11), for example, has argued: “the early resistance of the working class was already pulverised by the time the bourgeois elites came into opposition against the regime. Again, it took time until the military elite, civil servants and diplomats resolved to overthrow the dictatorship and plan a new order”.
- 3.
Interestingly, the annual number of people interrogated at the Gestapo’s House Prison on Prince Albrecht Street in Berlin also reveals this pickup in activity, especially between 1938 and 1940, a year in which the Gestapo were interrogating more people than ever before. Interrogations, of course, often do not lead to charges, so they are not necessarily a good match for actual resistance levels. But the timing of the increase in interrogations is consistent with the uplift in cases seen in Fig. 3.1. Unfortunately, due to missing records and interrogations being shifted to other locations with the onset of Allied bombing, the trend in interrogations found in the House Prison data cannot be followed beyond 1940; see Topography of Terror Foundation (2014, pp. 214–35).
- 4.
The average time taken to proceed from arrest to trial and sentencing has been calculated from the dates provided in the case records of each defendant. Patterns in the ‘processing’ time of defendants are discussed further in Chap. 6.
- 5.
In principle, of course, the best indicator for the correct periodisation of resistance activities is, in fact, the date on which the acts occurred. In practice, however, there are a number of issues in pursuing such an approach. First, the beginning date of a defendant’s activities is often not known. Second, in the majority of cases, resistance was not a single discrete act but rather one that may have occurred over extended or indeed intermittent periods. Third, the gravity of resisters’ activities may have changed over time, too. It was not uncommon for a resister to have come to the attention of the Gestapo at a fairly early date, just simply as a result of their being a possible associate of a known resister. He or she may not actually have engaged in any illegal activity themselves at that point of time. Indeed, as was often the case, they may have been drawn into the world of serious resistance in a rather piecemeal manner, starting out on relatively minor acts of disobedience, only crossing the line into high treason or treason from the regime’s perspective a number of years after surveillance had begun. The key point is that, given the information available in the records, determining precisely when serious resistance began in a consistent manner is deeply fraught with difficulties. Date of arrest on charges of treason or high treason appears the event closest to the act of resistance that can be consistently captured.
- 6.
Evans (2008, p. 625) hints at such a pickup in activity in 1942: “it was only in 1942, after the defeat of the German army before Moscow, that clandestine Communist resistance groups began to emerge again, in strongholds of the industrial working class like Saxony, Thuringia, Berlin and the Ruhr.” However, he does not detect the scale of the increase taking place and continues to believe that 1944 was the year of peak activity.
- 7.
Another researcher, McDonough (2015, p. 9), emphasises ‘the high level of autonomy the Gestapo was given to deal with cases, and the often exhaustive amount of time it devoted to them’. One of the potential limitations of using arrest data is that the timing of arrest may in some instances have been chosen by the Gestapo for strategic purposes. As Evans (2008, p. 625) has noted, ‘as a precaution, too, the Gestapo arrested and incarcerated a number of former Communist functionaries on the invasion of the Soviet Union in case they should start a campaign of subversion’. What impact did such precautionary actions have on arrests for treason and high treason? Let’s consider the instance mentioned by Evans. In the first 3 months of the invasion of Russia, June to August 1941, 54 arrests were, on average, made per month. The average monthly rate for 1941 as a whole—and for each half of that year—was 35. These figures, therefore, indicate that there was a pickup in arrests at this time, some of which may have been due to the factor raised by Evans. However, it is important to note that the numbers being arrested on average in that 3 month period were not that unusual. More than 50 arrests a month had previously occurred in July 1940 and January 1941, as well as on other occasions in the pre-war era. Moreover, the scale of the effect could not have been that large. At most, ‘strategic arrests’ could have added an extra 23 arrests to the average monthly arrest total at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. In reality, it was almost certainly a lot less than that, as there is very good reason to believe that communist activity (and arrests) would have picked up after the invasion irrespective of what the Gestapo had done. It is also worth noting that from September to December 1941, the monthly rate fell back to 22, a finding which suggests that the mid-1941 increase in arrests was short lived. In short, the data available to us indicate that the Gestapo’s strategic considerations were not the driving forces behind the arrest series at this time.
- 8.
It is also worth pointing out that there is no significant statistical correlation between the volume of Gestapo interrogations in Berlin and the number of arrests for treason or high treason. This finding suggests that interrogation numbers are not good predictors of arrests and indictments for serious resistance.
- 9.
- 10.
For a short overview of resistance in exile, see Benz (2014, pp. 92–102).
- 11.
We acknowledge that the periodisation we offer here differs significantly from those proposed by others. Marxen (1994, p. 34), for example, suggested a three-part periodisation: (i) pre-war, (ii) main phase of the war (September 1939 to February 1944) and (iii) end phase of the war (March 1944 to April 1945). Schlüter (1995, p. 142), by contrast, puts forward four distinct phases in his analysis of oppositional cases before the People’s Court: (i) pre-war, (ii) September 1939 to October 1941, (iii) November 1941 to February 1944 and (iv) March 1944 to December 1944. In accounting for the differences between these periodisations, it is worth noting that both of these legal historians chose their phases fairly arbitrarily and as part of an analysis of the sentencing patterns of the People’s Court, not resistance per se. Their phases, thus, are not based on a reading of the data with respect to arrests, nor for that matter does the definition of ‘oppositional’ cases used by Schlüter align with that employed in this book or used by the broader resistance literature. It is also noteworthy that both Marxen and Schlüter’s periodisations separate the resistance of the last year of the war from the preceding three war years. No clear explanation for doing so is provided. It may be speculated that one reason may be the untested assumption of the authors that the highly visible conspiracies of the final year were somehow distinctive from what had transpired before.
- 12.
The voting population is preferred here to the actual population as it is a closer match to the pool of potential resisters. The total population of a region, after all, includes significant numbers of infants and the elderly who were not likely to be engaged in serious resistance.
- 13.
The chi-squared test of independence is a nonparametric method of determining the goodness of fit between a set of observed values and those expected theoretically; see Greenwood and Nikulin (1996). Further details of all of the tests undertaken in this chapter are available from the authors upon request.
- 14.
Rank correlation analysis provides statistical means of measuring ordinal associations. The rank correlation coefficient it engenders, thus, gauges the extent of similarity between two rankings. It is often used to determine the significance of the relation between variables; see Kendall (1970).
- 15.
The regional distribution of incidence in Austria given in Table 3.1 is broadly consistent with those provided by Neugebauer (2013, p. 237) for the location of acts of high treason by Austrians heard by the People’s Court. Both sets of figures identify and rank in the same order the same four most active provinces. In each case, these four provinces together accounted for over 80% of all incidence in Austria. Moreover, statistical analysis of the independence of two series (chi-squared tests) indicates that they are not significantly different from each other. The differences that do exist between the two series are thus in all probability due to differences in the sampling.
- 16.
See Ueberschär (2011). Section V deals with Germans living in exile.
- 17.
It should be noted that Table 3.3 reflects only the serious resistance activities of those outside the Reich who could be apprehended by German authorities. It does not capture resistance activities by Germans and Austrians in places like the United Kingdom, which were beyond the Gestapo’s reach.
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Geerling, W., Magee, G. (2017). Times and Places. In: Quantifying Resistance. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6008-3_3
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