The German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938-1945

by Michael C. Thomsett

Between 1933 and 1945, more than 500,000 non-Jewish German civilians were imprisoned for so-called political crimes. Most of the resistance was, therefore, underground--within the religious, political, civilian, and even military communities.

This history of the various segments of the German resistance movement covers groups and methods from underground newspapers-- Rote Kapella, Internal Front, The Opponent, The Front Line --to conspiracy movements within unions. While emphasizing the active plots to either arrest or assassinate Hitler, the work embraces also the passive resistance seen in the Protestant and Catholic churches, the Kreisau Circle, trade unions, the foreign ministry and the civil service. The opposition's planned coup d'etat of 1938 is fully detailed, as well as the deep involvement of the Abwehr (military intelligence) in the plots against Hitler.

278 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1997

About the author

Michael C. Thomsett is an expert in technical analysis and stock markets. He has published dozens of books on the topic as well as peer-reviewed papers, magazine articles, and blog entries. He has been writing professionally since 1978 and his best-selling, Getting Started in Options (John Wiley & Sons) is currently in its 10th edition (published by DeGruyter with a new title, “Options”) and has sold over 350,000 copies. The author lives near Nashville, Tennessee and he writes full time.

Reviews

[Peter Ellis · Rating 2 out of 5]

As my two star rating says "it was ok". This is a useful and (at times) interesting, detailed account of, well, the detail of various forms of resistance to the Nazi regime within Germany. It lacks a unifying or theoretical framework and hence becomes mostly a collection of detailed events and personalities. I don't recommend it unless you need all this detail, have a broad picture of what was going on from elsewhere (my recommendation for that - Richard J Evans' Third Reich trilogy, which is definitely five star), and can form your own framework to make sense of it all.