2024-07-28 17:08:27
History and present
“Resistance as a duty”? What the Hitler assassination attempt teaches
Updated on 18.07.2024Reading time: 4 min.
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is certain: “The resistance fighters of July 20 are a role model for everyone.” But is that so? And what kind of resistance is legitimate today?
It is 12.35 p.m. when the officer Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg places a bomb under a conference table in the “Führer’s Headquarters” in East Prussia. Adolf Hitler is standing nearby. Stauffenberg leaves the room under a pretext. At 12.42 p.m. the bomb explodes. The assassin starts the coup to depose the National Socialists. But Hitler has survived. A few hours later, on the evening of July 20, 1944, it is all over. Stauffenberg is executed, and around 200 of his comrades are also killed or driven to suicide.
The story of the failed Hitler assassination attempt has been told over and over again for 80 years. The Nazis denounced those involved as “ambitious officers”. Even after the fall of the so-called Third Reich, many considered them traitors. Then they became heroes. “The shame that Hitler forced us Germans into was wiped away by their blood from the tainted German name,” said the then Federal President Theodor Heuss in 1954. And today? There is a lot of talk again about the “duty to resist”, under very different political circumstances. July 20th – a mission?
For Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius, the matter is clear. “The resistance fighters of July 20 are a role model for everyone,” the SPD politician told the German Press Agency. “Whenever the basic values of our coexistence are in danger, we must stand up and speak out against injustice. Whenever our democracy suffers, we need the courage not to look away.” The armed forces are particularly committed to “conscience-based obedience,” partly because of July 20, 1944. The Bundeswehr keeps this memory alive, including with public oaths, says Pistorius.
For political scientist Johannes Tuchel, July 20 is more than just the action of a few military officers. Of the 200 to 300 people who were initiated, at least half were civilians, says the director of the German Resistance Memorial Center. The common goal, he said, was a civilian government and a return to the rule of law. “You shouldn’t reduce it to the military, otherwise you’d be doing an injustice to those involved,” says Tuchel.
The commemoration date of July 20th also stands for other opposition figures in the Nazi state, including Georg Elser, the Scholl siblings, and the Red Orchestra. There were more people involved than was long realized – and yet, compared to the many millions of Germans, there were very few. “Resistance against National Socialism is not something that can give you a good conscience,” says Tuchel. “It was a very, very small minority, a desperately small minority, that carried it out.”
The expert also explains why those involved were met with contempt rather than recognition in the post-war years. “The resistance was actually a challenge for most Germans. Because it showed that action was possible against the dictatorship. But only very few people used these spaces.”
One consequence is Article 20 of the Basic Law, which reminds all citizens: “All Germans have the right to resist anyone who attempts to abolish this order if no other remedy is possible.” Five years ago, the then Chancellor Angela Merkel said on July 20th: “There are moments when disobedience can be a duty – moments when one can only maintain decency and humanity by rebelling and resisting an order, pressure from superiors or even pressure from the masses. There are moments when the individual has a moral duty to contradict and resist.”
The “Never Again” sentiment is deeply rooted in many people in Germany – at the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets peacefully to protest. For Defense Minister Pistorius, these demonstrations against right-wing extremism were an encouraging sign: “Our democracy is strong and able to defend itself,” said the minister. But it is also being attacked more strongly, by autocratic and totalitarian forces, by disinformation, by disruption of social cohesion. “We must therefore be aware every day that freedom cannot be taken for granted. It must be defended.”
On the other hand, there is also something like an inflation of resistance. “When injustice becomes law, then resistance becomes a duty,” is what activists from the climate group Last Generation, among others, invoked during their street blockades and paint attacks. On the other side of the spectrum, right-wing radicals and lateral thinkers use “resistance” against the state and politicians as a battle cry.