Summary
Title: Alternatives to Hitler: German Resistance under the Third Reich
Author: Hans Mommsen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691116938
Pro:
• Explains how and why some people were willing to face death rather than support Nazi Germany
• Discusses both larger and smaller resistance efforts
Con:
• Dense, academic prose
• Assumes basic knowledge of the events and people discussed
Description:
• Analysis of resistance movements in Nazi Germany
• Focuses on the intellectual and ideological beliefs of the resisters
Book Review
There were a couple of plots against Hitler which have become moderately well-known, but the full extent of resistance against the Nazi machine is relatively unfamiliar to most people, even those with some knowledge of World War II. Perhaps the most detailed information on this subject can be found in Hans Mommsen’s Alternatives to Hitler: German Resistance under the Third Reich. Translated from the German in 2003, it illuminates a broad scope of resistance activities pursued by people all across Germany.
Unfortunately, this is not an introduction to resistance efforts in Nazi Germany — Mommsen clearly assumes a certain level of knowledge of not only the Nazi era, but also many different resistance movements and their leading figures. Adding to the difficulty is the sometimes complicated nature of the prose. I won’t fault the translator because I know what it’s like to translate from German to English, but it’s a shame that the English version isn’t clearer because it will limit the audience.
Mommsen also doesn’t discuss every possible resistance movement that existed. He has very little to say about communist activities, for example; he also doesn’t say much about resistance efforts organized by religious communities.
Most of his focus is on Germans who were either members of the Nazi Party or members of the aristocracy, grown disillusioned with the Nazi promises and seeking some way out of the destructive war Germany had been led into. Mommsen also spends much more time on the ideas and philosophy of these resisters than their actual activities.
- “A proper understanding and assessment of the resistance are only possible if the political motives and objectives of the plotters are placed in the dangerously unstable context of Nazism and against an intellectual background of social and historical thinking that reached back to the Weimar era.”
It is undeniable that resistance to the Nazis was difficult. This isn’t merely due to fear or the violent actions of the Gestapo. Many see these as the primary factors, but people fail to realize just how all-encompassing the Nazi ideology had become in Germany. The Nazis had effectively dominated all aspects of society in a way that is difficult to imagine today. This was done deliberately in part because the elimination of alternative sources of loyalty and organization was expected to help preserve loyalty to the Nazi Party itself.
Another factor making resistance difficult, at least on the part of those Mommsen discusses most, is that they were not natural revolutionaries. They were mostly conservatives who originally saw the Nazis as a means to restore traditional structures of authority in Germany as well as Germany’s traditional power in Europe. They didn’t want to “return” to the Weimar Republic or any sort of liberal democracy — they helped the Nazis achieve power in order to get away from all that.
They were all idealists, though, imagining some sort of “third way” between socialism and capitalism which would allow Germany to either lead Europe or become a dominant power in a united Europe. Their idealism gave them the moral courage necessary to participate in what must have seemed like a hopeless cause — and they did, in the end, all fail. Not only didn’t they overthrow Hitler, but their alternatives played no real role in post-war Germany, either. Nevertheless, their example remains important for all those who think that resistance to totalitarian governments, even the Nazi regime, isn’t possible.
