Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 A Social and Historical Typology of the German Opposition to Hitler
- 2 Working-Class Resistance: Problems and Options
- 3 Choice and Courage
- 4 Resistance and Opposition: The Example of the German Jews
- 5 From Reform to Resistance: Carl Goerdeler's 1938 Memorandum
- 6 The Conservative Resistance
- 7 The Kreisau Circle and the Twentieth of July
- 8 The Second World War, German Society, and Internal Resistance to Hitler
- 9 The Solitary Witness: No Mere Footnote to Resistance Studies
- 10 The German Resistance in Comparative Perspective
- 11 The Political Legacy of the German Resistance: A Historiographical Critique
- 12 Uses of the Past: The Anti-Nazi Resistance Legacy in the Federal Republic of Germany
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 A Social and Historical Typology of the German Opposition to Hitler
- 2 Working-Class Resistance: Problems and Options
- 3 Choice and Courage
- 4 Resistance and Opposition: The Example of the German Jews
- 5 From Reform to Resistance: Carl Goerdeler's 1938 Memorandum
- 6 The Conservative Resistance
- 7 The Kreisau Circle and the Twentieth of July
- 8 The Second World War, German Society, and Internal Resistance to Hitler
- 9 The Solitary Witness: No Mere Footnote to Resistance Studies
- 10 The German Resistance in Comparative Perspective
- 11 The Political Legacy of the German Resistance: A Historiographical Critique
- 12 Uses of the Past: The Anti-Nazi Resistance Legacy in the Federal Republic of Germany
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This collection represents a distillation of recent scholarship and commentary on the German resistance problem - on the historical phenomenon itself, its legacy, and the ways it has been interpreted over the past forty years. For those who like their history neat and tidy, who want a unified view of the past that might be serviceable in the present and future, this volume may be a disappointment. In advancing varying approaches to and assessments of the topic at hand, it reflects the extent to which the resistance question is still an open one, still productive of lively (and often quite passionate) debate. This book's chief purpose is to define - or redefine - the issues that academic historians and laymen alike will need to keep in mind as they grapple with the endlessly complicated question of resistance in the Third Reich. But the issues raised here have meaning beyond the history of National Socialism. As Fritz Stern notes in his introductory comments, the German experience in the Third Reich tells us much about how people behave in times of stress - about their self-delusions and petty evasions, as well as their occasional moments of heroism and self-transcendence. And though Hitler may be long gone, the problem of resistance to tyranny “is alive in many battered countries today; it is a subject that, properly understood, can instruct all of us.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Contending with HitlerVarieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich, pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
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