Children…

swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler and Nazi Germany.
This refusal to submit was remarkable, as merely signing
a document would have spared them: few however
chose this option. They were taken by the thousands to
the camps, where some 25 per cent were killed.
Some German youth also protested. One group was
the Edelweiss Pirates, who formed “wild gangs”, or the
“Swing Kids” (who danced to forbidden American jazz
music). Despite frequent clashes between groups of
Hitler Youth and the “Pirates”, the regime was initially
unsure about how to handle such protests. Not until
autumn 1944 did the authorities strike, and several
“Pirate” leaders were hanged.
Between June 1942 and February 1943, the “White
Rose” movement was active in Munich and other cities.
This small protest group was led by Alexander Schmorell,
the Scholl siblings (Sophie and Hans) and their
professor Kurt Huber of the University of Munich.They
distributed leaflets condemning the Nazis and protesting
against the mass murder of Jews and others. Caught
by the Gestapo, they were tried and executed.
During the regime’s early years, social democratic,
communist and trade union groups organised resistance,
but these networks were quickly destroyed. Though
some individual members managed to resist until war’s
end, most were either murdered, put in prisons or camps,
or forced into exile. Right-wing national conservative and
military elements failed to resist until after the war began.
Some were motivated to resist because they wanted to
save Germany from the threat of defeat, while others
sought to distance themselves from mass murder.Among
the latter was Helmuth von Moltke, a lawyer who was
executed in January 1945. In a clandestine letter to a
friend in England he described resistance in Germany
as suffering from a “lack of unity, lack of men, lack of
communications”. In other countries ruled by the Nazis
even the ordinary criminal had a chance of being regarded
as a martyr. In Germany, Moltke complained, the situation
was reversed and even the martyr was “certain to be
classed as an ordinary criminal”.
The Rosenstrasse protest
One remarkable protest against the Nazi regime
occurred openly in Berlin in March 1943. Throughout
the war, the regime hesitated to deport Jews married
to non-Jews, fearing protests from the latter. When
Jewish spouses were arrested in February, protests followed.
Believing that their detained spouses were to be
deported, thousands of women defied the Gestapo and
the SS by gathering in front of the building where their
husbands were detained.
Charlotte Israel, a demonstrator whose husband
was inside, later recalled what happened: “We bellowed,
‘you murderers,’ and everything else that one
can holler. (…) We didn’t scream just once but again
and again, until we lost our breath.” Eventually, most
of those detained were released. The actual reason for
their release is debated by historians, as is the regime’s
initial motivation for the arrests. However, all agree that
the women demonstrated great courage by their public
protest. Those few Jews who survived in Germany did
so almost exclusively in mixed marriages.
“There is an unsolved riddle in the history of the
creation of the Third Reich. I think it is more
interesting than the question of who set fire to
the Reichstag. It is the question: ‘What became
of the Germans?’ Even on the 5th of March
1933 a majority of them voted against Hitler.
What happened to that majority? Did they die?
Did they disappear from the face of the earth?
Did they become Nazis even at this late stage?
How was it possible that there was not the
slightest visible reaction from them?”
SEBASTIAN HAFFNER (PEN NAME FOR RAIMUND PRETZEL),
GERMAN AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST, AROUND 1939
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