German Security Policy and the Moral Dilemmas of Resistance

Abstract

The aim of German security policy was to create a sense of insecurity among the local population through the ruthless application of the classic terrorist precept, ‘Kill one, frighten ten thousand.’ Throughout occupied Europe opposition was to be crushed unmercifully by a policy of Schrecklicheit: calculated terror and political intimidation, aimed at depriving the civilian population of the will to resist, and reducing it to a state of quiescence. With his usual clarity Hitler formulated the Third Reich’s answer to the problem of resistance:

We must be ruthless…

terror is the most effective political instrument.⁴

Force … is not enough to ensure total domination; admittedly it is still the decisive factor but no less important a factor is that intangible psychological faculty which a lion tamer must have if he is to dominate his animals.⁵

The practice of executing scores of innocent hostages in reprisal for isolated attacks on Germany in countries temporarily under the Nazi heel revolts a world already inured to suffering and brutality. Civilized peoples long ago adopted the basic principle that no man should be punished for the deed of another. Unable to apprehend the persons involved in these attacks the Nazis characteristically slaughter fifty or a hundred innocent persons.¹

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The leading principle in all actions … is the unconditional security of the German soldier. The necessary rapid pacification of the country can be attained only if every threat on the part of the hostile civil population is ruthlessly taken care of. All pity and softness are evidence of weakness and constitute a danger.²

High Command of the Wehrmacht, Order 16 July 1941

It is better to be feared than loved.³

Machiavelli