occasions. One was Pastor Niemoller objection to the establishment of the Confessing Church: from July 1933 the
twenty-eight provincial Protestant churches or Landeskirchen were centralised into a single Reich Church, which was
brought into the central administration and placed under Hans Kerrl as Minister of Church Affairs in 1935. The second
instance was the Catholic protest against the government order to replace crucifixes by portraits of Hitler in Catholic
schools. A third, and the most significant, stance was taken in opposition to the regime's euthanasia programme from
1939 onwards. These complaints varied in the degree of their success. The Protestant opposition was less likely to
succeed than the Catholic, owing to the fragmentation of Protestantism into a number of different sects and the
fundamental issue on which that opposition was being expressed: the regime could hardly be expected to reverse a
major constitutional change. The Catholic Church, by contrast, was a centralised structure, with considerable capacity
for exerting pressure at certain specific points. It succeeded over the two issues it contested: the programmes to nazify
Catholic schools and to conduct the clandestine euthanasia programmes were both temporarily suspended. On the other
hand, the more general complaints made by the Pope in his 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety)
that the regime had broken the provisions of the Concordat across the board were less likely to succeed. There is little
doubt that Christianity proved most effective not as a general impetus for opposition but as a residue for the nation's
conscience. Despite efforts at the end of the 1930s to eradicate it through the paganism of the Nazi Faith Movement, the
majority of Germans remained either Catholic or Protestant, and the incidence of church attendance actually increased
after 1939.
The expression of more general opposition through political activism was confined largely to the Communists and
Social Democrats, as might be expected from the two parties which had previously had the support of the larger part of
the working class. The Communists continued to try to oppose the regime actively, but failed badly. This was due in
part to the success of the Gestapo in identifying and eradicating Communist cells. As a result, something like 10 per
cent of the whole Communist membership were killed, and Thalmann, the leader of the KPD, was arrested as early as
1933. The continuing conflict between Communists and Social Democrats meant fewer converts on the shop floor and
made it easier for the Gestapo to acquire information. The Communists were also impeded by external constraints such
as the foreign policy of Stalin which culminated in the highly pragmatic Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August
1939. It was not until 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, that the Communists began to make a comeback,
largely under the tutelage of Stalin, who switched his entire emphasis to the direct support of the KPD. The SPD,
meanwhile, had been less directly involved in political activism. From its position in exile, SOPADE was organised by
Ernst Schumacher, initially from Prague, then from Paris. They were generally more restrained and cautious than the
KPD in their actions. They had the advantage of more accurate information on the state of support shown for the regime
in the SOPADE reports. By and large neither they nor the Communists succeeded in making any major inroads into the
working classes. As we have already seen, there was plenty of grumbling but little chance of persuading workers to risk
their livelihood, families and lives in the expression of political opposition.
There were, however, small groups who were prepared to make such a sacrifice. The strongest form of opposition took
the form of resistance, an attempt to remove the regime altogether. Realistically this could be done only by a coup since
all the constitutional channels had been blocked by Hitler's so-called 'legal revolution' between 1933 and 1934. The key
to any chance of success was the army. This had, however, been won over by the process of gradual nazification during
the 1930s. Hence the only possibility was the defection of disillusioned elements and their linking up with individuals
and groups prepared to risk everything on a political substitution. The army elements were always there. Ironically, they
were nearly always members of the Prussian aristocracy, deeply conservative in their outlook and, in some instances,
former enemies of the Weimar Republic. But this should not be taken to the usual extreme view that the conservative
forces within the army were generally anti-Nazi. Many, as we have already seen, welcomed Nazism without
reservation. This was one of the basic reasons for the failure of armed resistance: there was simply no depth in numbers
to offset the failure of individual attempts like the Stauffenberg bomb plot. A few courageous individuals did become
involved. General Beck tried to persuade the General Staff to remove Hitler in 1938, and also urged the British
government to resist Hitler's demands over the Sudetenland. Rommel participated in the plot against Hitler's life, for
which he was forced to commit suicide. Other leading members of the resistance movements were strongly
conservative, comprising members of the traditional right, many of whom had served Hitler at one time or another.
These included von Hassell, former German ambassador to Italy, as well as Goerdeler, von MoItke and von
Wartenburg. Also closely involved were Christian groups such as the Kreisau Circle, which produced a programme
entitled 'Principles for the New Order of Germany', and prominent churchmen like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ultimately,
however, all such resistance failed in its objective - which was to replace Hitler's regime with a more democratic one
and to negotiate an armistice with the Allies. There would be no repetition of the situation in October and November
1918, since Hitler himself was head of state and was not open to any attempts to do a deal. In any case, the Allies
insisted on unconditional surrender, thereby removing an important component from the programme of the German
resistance movement. Hence Nazism could be removed only by conquering armies, not by internal revolution.
One category of opposition greatly puzzled the authorities. Social deviance was most apparent among younger
Germans, especially from the working class, and pointed to the deficiencies of the Hitler Youth as a channel of
indoctrination. As the whole structure became more bureaucratised and less imaginative, some of the earlier attractions
began to wear off. The Hitler Youth came to be seen increasingly as part of the establishment rather than as a rival to it.
Hence there developed alternative, even oppositional, cultures and groups among youth. Deviant behaviour among
adolescents during the Third Reich was much wider than was once thought. In 1942 the Reich Youth Leadership stated:
'The formation of cliques, i.e. groupings of young people outside the Hitler Youth, has been on the increase before and,
particularly, during the war to such a degree that one must speak of a serious risk of the political, moral and criminal
subversion of youth.'
Examples included the Navajos, centred largely on Cologne, the Kittelbach Pirates of Oberhausen and Dusseldorf, and
the Roving Dudes of Essen. These were all sub-groups within the broader Edelweiss Pirates. They were antagonistic to
authority and in particular to the Hitler Youth, patrols from which they would ambush and beat up: indeed one of their
slogans was 'Eternal War on the Hitler Youth'. They also defied restrictions on movement during the war by
undertaking extensive hikes, and they maintained a much more liberal attitude to sexuality than the authorities liked.
Some also supported the Allies during the war or offered help to German army deserters. Less militant and more
cultural in its emphasis was the Swing Movement. This was aimed more against the cultural indoctrination of the Reich
and it adopted influences from British and especially American jazz. This was particularly provocative to the
authorities, who regarded jazz as 'negro music' and therefore as 'degenerate'. In all cases the authorities were seriously
concerned - but frequently did not know what to do - apart from the occasional salutary public hanging of Edelweiss
Pirates. At the same time, the activities of the Edelweiss Pirates and Swing Movements lacked the organisational edge
to be anything more than an embarrassment to the regime. Social deviance was, therefore, never likely to amount to
serious political opposition.
The overall deduction which can be drawn from these different strands is a complex one. In theory, the Nazi State was
totalitarian in that it eradicated institutions allowing for the formal expression of dissent and opposition and then
proceeded to use the SS and Gestapo to pick off individual manifestations of anti-Nazi behaviour. By and large this
combined process was successful: there was, after all, never any real threat to the regime except for the occasional act
of violence. And yet the fact that opposition did develop in such a variety of forms indicates that totalitarianism was
only partly successful: perhaps this can be quantified as considerably more so than in Mussolini's Italy but somewhat
less so than in Stalin's Russia. The regime frequently had to make concessions on specific is sues; it faced a general
increase in deviant behaviour; and, during the war, it provoked the coalescence of normally incompatible groups. It is
possible to go further. Peukert argues that the Volksgemeinschaft had not been achieved by 1939 and that the internal
harmony of the system needed increasingly to be maintained by diverting public opinion against minority groups
whether inside or outside Germany. 'Terror accordingly bit ever deeper ... from the margins of society into its heart.
