I am writing about the German resistance not because I am an expert on the subject - I am not - but because brave men and women deserve to be commemorated and because I feel that once again the German resistance might be under attack. It is easy to minimize the accomplishments of the resistance in Germany. More precisely, it is easy to point out that there was little enough resistance there. Of course, we cannot tax those Germans who went to their deaths for their opposition with the passivity of those who did not suffer. Nonetheless, the German resistance has always had to fight for historical legitimacy. May it not have to struggle again? Ernst Nolte has argued that emphasizing “the guilt of the Germans” makes it impossible to give a fair hearing to those who did not choose to resist. Even so scrupulous and critical a historian as Andreas Hillgruber suggested in early 1986 that the resistance, if successful, might have wrought more harm than good by disorganizing the defense at the eastern front: “Might it not be expected that even the case of a successful coup d'état would result only in wretched confusion among the German leadership, a debacle that would press the Soviets to an even quicker victory?” In more demagogic hands, such a line of inquiry can too easily degenerate into a renewed “stab-in-the-back” thesis. No respectable commentator, naturally, would openly impugn the motives of the resisters, but the consequences of their conspiracy (so it could be suggested) might have hastened the collapse and led to the division of the Reich.