<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Penetrating but also impenetrable
Review: A study not of the activities but the ideas of those who tried to kill Hitler in 1944 will disappoint those not wanting an intellectual history of anti-Hitler individuals and groups. From Mommsen's research it becomes clear that those who finally could bring themselves to oppose Hitler even with violent action were not typical Germans. Typical Germans had pretty much by the early 1940's come to support Hitler's regime. These opponents were aristocrats mostly with a smattering of those from other strata of German society, men fearful of what Hitlerism really meant for Germany and Europe. They were little concerned with the niceties of Western liberal values and were not especially motivated against the extreme anti-Semitism of National Socialism. Mostly long hostile to the Weimar Republic and dedicated to third or fourth ways between Fascism, Communism, and Liberalism the anti-Hitler movement was on the other hand all too German in its thought and expression. As admirable as these men were, most of whom were executed by the Nazis in 1944 and 1955, they were also very, very German in their abstruse reactions to the history of European life and thought. They knew in the end how to die nobly but they had nevertheless significantly contributed to the horrors of the evil regime they finally decided to seek to destroy. Even in turning against Hitler they demonstrated the pathological nature of German life and thought.Germans and Germany remain a mystery. How educated and aristocratic Germans could welcome Hitler remains a mystery. How they thought they could think to replace him with impractical alternatives also remains puzzling.
Rating:
Summary: Penetrating but also impenetrable
Review: A study not of the activities but the ideas of those who tried to kill Hitler in 1944 will disappoint those not wanting an intellectual history of anti-Hitler individuals and groups. From Mommsen's research it becomes clear that those who finally could bring themselves to oppose Hitler even with violent action were not typical Germans. Typical Germans had pretty much by the early 1940's come to support Hitler's regime. These opponents were aristocrats mostly with a smattering of those from other strata of German society, men fearful of what Hitlerism really meant for Germany and Europe. They were little concerned with the niceties of Western liberal values and were not especially motivated against the extreme anti-Semitism of National Socialism. Mostly long hostile to the Weimar Republic and dedicated to third or fourth ways between Fascism, Communism, and Liberalism the anti-Hitler movement was on the other hand all too German in its thought and expression. As admirable as these men were, most of whom were executed by the Nazis in 1944 and 1955, they were also very, very German in their abstruse reactions to the history of European life and thought. They knew in the end how to die nobly but they had nevertheless significantly contributed to the horrors of the evil regime they finally decided to seek to destroy. Even in turning against Hitler they demonstrated the pathological nature of German life and thought. Germans and Germany remain a mystery. How educated and aristocratic Germans could welcome Hitler remains a mystery. How they thought they could think to replace him with impractical alternatives also remains puzzling.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this book
Review: Mommsen surveys the history of the resistance that led up to the abortive plot of July 20, 1944. He presents a concise yet definitive survey of the motives behind the various groups who joined the plot, their political aspirations, and what they hoped to gain from removing Hitler. More importantly, he tackles the vexed question of how the resistance leaders viewed the persecution of the Jews in the calculations and their decisions to remove Hitler. The ringleaders' abject failure to deal with the Holocaust will forever remain a blot on the reputation of the resistance that modern Germany views as the struggle for democracy.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but Very Specialized
Review: This is an extended essay on the ideology of a subset of the German resistance to Hitler. Readers looking for a clear narrative should seek elsewhere. In order to read this book you already have to know the basic story of the resistance and have some knowledge of its principal members. Mommsen investigates the ideas and motivations of the non-Communist resistance. This rather small group of individuals was drawn largely from a section of the German upper classes, primarily higher ranking civil servants and officers, often with aristocratic connections. That this small group represented the major internal opposition to Hitler is a testimony to several factors, among them the great success of the Nazis in dominating almost all aspects of society and essentially abolishing the independence of most major social organizations. The Nazis retained some respect for traditional, particularly elitist, conservatives and dissent in these quarters was not pursued the way it was among, for example, working class socialists. The great military success of the Nazi regime made it difficult to recruit allies in the Armed Services or other important sectors of society. The non-Communist resistance was also characteristically conservative in their almost uniform dislike for the Weimer Republic and their suspicion of pluralistic democracy. Many of them pursued utopian ideas of a 'third' way between socialism and capitalism, ideas which often had strong elements of paternalism and authoritarianism. Many of them were at least conventionally anti-Semitic and motivated less by the horrible crimes perpetrated against the Jews than by the corrupting effects such actions had on non-Jewish Germans. While many of their social plans have a distinctly romantic and unrealistic flavor, Mommsen makes the point that it was the ability of the resisters to imagine social alternatives that provided considerable impetus to their corollary ability to actually make plans to remove Hitler. Mommsen also shows the overlap between these very principled resisters and a sometimes allied group of fellow traveling officers and Nazi officials who drifted in and out of the orbit of the core resisters. It was, ultimately, these (to us) rather odd idealists who actually tried to overthrow the Third Reich, an action they undertook with the knowledge that failure was likely. Many of them displayed great physical as well as moral courage. They failed, however, to overthrow Hitler, and almost nothing of what they desired for Germany was realized in the post-war Federal Republic.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but Very Specialized
Review: This is an extended essay on the ideology of a subset of the German resistance to Hitler. Readers looking for a clear narrative should seek elsewhere. In order to read this book you already have to know the basic story of the resistance and have some knowledge of its principal members. Mommsen investigates the ideas and motivations of the non-Communist resistance. This rather small group of individuals was drawn largely from a section of the German upper classes, primarily higher ranking civil servants and officers, often with aristocratic connections. That this small group represented the major internal opposition to Hitler is a testimony to several factors, among them the great success of the Nazis in dominating almost all aspects of society and essentially abolishing the independence of most major social organizations. The Nazis retained some respect for traditional, particularly elitist, conservatives and dissent in these quarters was not pursued the way it was among, for example, working class socialists. The great military success of the Nazi regime made it difficult to recruit allies in the Armed Services or other important sectors of society. The non-Communist resistance was also characteristically conservative in their almost uniform dislike for the Weimer Republic and their suspicion of pluralistic democracy. Many of them pursued utopian ideas of a 'third' way between socialism and capitalism, ideas which often had strong elements of paternalism and authoritarianism. Many of them were at least conventionally anti-Semitic and motivated less by the horrible crimes perpetrated against the Jews than by the corrupting effects such actions had on non-Jewish Germans. While many of their social plans have a distinctly romantic and unrealistic flavor, Mommsen makes the point that it was the ability of the resisters to imagine social alternatives that provided considerable impetus to their corollary ability to actually make plans to remove Hitler. Mommsen also shows the overlap between these very principled resisters and a sometimes allied group of fellow traveling officers and Nazi officials who drifted in and out of the orbit of the core resisters. It was, ultimately, these (to us) rather odd idealists who actually tried to overthrow the Third Reich, an action they undertook with the knowledge that failure was likely. Many of them displayed great physical as well as moral courage. They failed, however, to overthrow Hitler, and almost nothing of what they desired for Germany was realized in the post-war Federal Republic.
<< 1 >>
| 
