Five College Lecture Hall; Lecture by Klemens von Klemperer on "The Mandate for Resistance: The Case of the German Opposition to Hitler"

At this time w o f c r in Amherst and the Eastern educational radio network present five college lecture hall a weekly program of outstanding talks by faculty members and guests at Amherst Hampshire Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. Today a talk by Clemens fun Klemperer professor of history at Smith College on the topic mandate for resistance. The case of the German opposition to Hitler. Professor Cohen Klemperer is introduced by Thomas Mendenhall president of Smith College. Our lectures came to this country in 1939 with a refugee scholarship and earned his advanced degrees at Harvard. He was with the United States Army serving in Europe between 1943 in 1946 went back to Harvard as a few for a few years as a teaching fellow and tutor in Elliott House came to Smith

College in 1949 where he was taught. Intellectual History modern European history and history of Germany and Central Europe. His field of research is in the history of modern Germany and Central Europe. His publications include a book on Germany's new conservatism and many articles. It's a pleasure and honor to introduce the 11th Annual Catherine Asher angle lecture who will lecture on the mandate for resistance. The case for the German opposition to Hitler. Professor Kleiman from Klemperer of the history department. Except except. Or to reply.

Thank you Mr Mentor. Faculty students and friends of the college. The title is a mandate for resistance the case of the German opposition to Hitler. One of the most fixing problems of this decade for the new generation as well as mine is the problem of resistance to constituted authority. Anyone approaching this subject thoughtfully when I think realize that a cautious balance has developed in the practice and theory of politics in the West a cautious balance between the prerogatives of Sophocles crayon and the prerogatives of and between manmade ordinances and the unchangeable law of heaven. Man made ordinances while providing a positive handover mandate for what is done in the name may not always be just or if just subject to

abuse. In either case they are Saudi administrating the ordinance risks losing its legitimacy and provoking justified resistance on the other hand the law of heaven while higher remains an object of skepticism and acts committed in its name against mere human ordinance. They seem to like demonstrable justification. Yet these acts in other words acts of resistance also must have a mandate if they are to some degree of legitimacy if they are not to set a precedence for pure lawlessness to be Portman's of me. The mandate for resistance is as I suggested hard to establish. It hardly rests on positive love and certainly does not rest on instructions from a constituency. It is generally derives from more

general directives such as the law of nature the common weal national interest such guidelines are elevated but it should be pointed out not without pitfalls and ambiguity. Could they not be invoked in all their abstractness by any form of resistance justified or not aggressive or not. Could they not see the photos as well as the defenders of liberty. It is a matter of record that I don't invoke a higher law to justify a threat to national right and duty to resist just as those who conspired against him in 1944. To Appear to the German people in the name of divine human love. Nevertheless the elusiveness of the higher law does not preclude its existence or indeed serve as evidence. It would have to serve as the

ultimate Court of Appeal whenever a government violates justice and law and in so doing becomes too radical. The mandate it provides must of course be defined by specific cautions and limiting conditions and grave if not in the town itself lost in the hearts and consciousness of people who cherish freedom. It becomes as free surely for said justice is denied to the oppressed when the burden becomes unsupportable. It is at this point and at this point only that defiance of the law is freed from the stigma of illegality that it becomes supra legality sanctioned sports and even is defined by my religious premises. During the second word war the various resistance movements had a mandate that was clear and un questionable.

The resistance movements in France Holland Norway were directed against occupation and oppression by the phone home. They could rely on broad popular support and their struggle for liberation was an assertion not only of basic human rights but also of distinct national interests on the other hand the German resistance to him which is what I proposed to consider in this lecture had no such clear mandate no popular movement backed it. It proceeded from plot to plot out the first and headlong towards the end and culminated in Colonel Klaus from stuff in their wing but unsuccessful attempt at Hitler's life on July 20th 1944. It is true I think that few acts of resistance in history

has been directed against such an egregious combination of power with evil as the one manifest in national socialism. Nevertheless there is a deep and troubling irony in the fact that this particular resistance movement who is white just this should be questionable has taken its place in history with the most dubious of mandates. And this irony is the subject of my talk tonight. Immediately after the attempt on his life Hitler went on the air and spoke as follows to the German people. A very small clique of ambitious it was sponsible and at the same time criminally stupid offices his phone a plot and so on. With these words he not only justified his miraculous survival but also launched that violent fixation of the conspiracy which was slated to reverberate

loudly even among the Nazi critics of the German resistance. The proudest lack of popular support was compounded by the ignominy of failure. Still worse of course was the fact that the plot was out of step with the immediate national effort the waging of the war. That it was subversive of what appeared conventionally at least to be the national interest for the success of the plot might have meant the defeat of the Fatherland. The plotters were engaged in a situation in which Hugh isn't bordered on treason in which resistance bordered on defeatism. Their letter was an agonizing one for them and it is marked it is coolly mocked their standing among their countrymen it is true that since the late 40s and elaborate authoritatively to do its been vindicating the

motives of the German resistance it is also true that the famous Braunschweig trial of 1950 to sense the sentence auto against Raymond a former Nazi general and later on neo nazi for having caused the German conspirators a traitor to their country and that in its verdict it tried to establish one for the illegality of the Third Reich. Nevertheless it can be hardly said even know that such names as Dick go to let him would James Bond Market Clowes stuff and they have found a place in the hearts or even in the minds of most Germans. Many Germans have yet to grasp the gentle wisdom of the first post-war president Theodore voice who defined the plot his predicament as a kind of mode frontier Oh no man's land between the claims of

national loyalty and those of human justice always maintained that because they had chosen was I timidly. But it is perhaps the understandable that the German should continue to question the mandate of the German resistance. More puzzling and therefore more upsetting has been the attacks leveled against it by critics in other Western countries especially the United States. These attacks began immediately after the war the occupation or Saudis discouraged any public discussion of the resistance because they were afraid to talk about in German offices against Hitler would lead to a vindication of German militarism. A British intelligence report of December 1945 grudgingly acknowledged that the event of the July 20 1944 was one I may quote. We are bound to go on hearing about it unquote. But the

report hasten to add not without subtlety. That quote why one cannot but admire the plotters decide to get rid of Hitler. The motives for it and the programme which they hope to put into practice after it boast of value far from home are not seen with our ideas of a genuine movement of resistance. I shall return later on to the question of whether a little resistance in Germany was even within the realm of possibilities to begin with however. I want to call attention to the basic assumption introduced in this intelligence report the assumption that the men of the German resistance no withstanding all the hero isn't acted without a valid mandate. The assumption that they fought tyranny but not in the name of freedom and that they fought evil but not in the name of universal values. This damning

with faint praise. This indictment of the German resistance was initially prompted by considerations that were primarily political. Later on it appeared with varying degrees of emphasis in the way of historians the British historian John Wheeler and it maintained that the German plotters were inspired by no higher aims and the destruction of the later regime that had ceased to give them advantages. This opinion was echoed by hand I one who stated flatly that stuff and back and these things were motivated exclusively by their conviction of the coming defeat and of Germany. So much for the alleged treason of the German conspirators and for their alleged opportunism they have also been accused of is the right form of elitism. One critic has it that they stood not

for the true leader of organizing traditions but rather for the narrow interest of their class and status. The July 20 conspirators consisted predominantly of aristocrats and offices and these people represented the layer of society that spoke loftily of loyalty and was in fact loyal only to itself with that quote readily betrayed the nation and the state whenever its privileges were in danger unquote. Does the resistance movement being the voice of Germany was more than was no more than an officers B vote of the Spanish variety. In short a crisis by a front. He conspirators have at the same time been accused however of some quite an aristocratic compromising. Well there was a clash of class interests between the predominantly hours to quoting from hunters and the

Nazi home in Novi between the tradition oriented members of an old upper class and the movement that after social revolution all along of the two groups were closely intertwined. Initially at least the difference between the two groups had to do with his rather than with political conviction. And as far as the conspirators positions of leadership in the state they did serve and collaborate with the Nazis. Therefore the conspiracy took shape right under the eyes of the Nazis. Not only was it closely observed it was also tolerated. In fact before causing judgment on the German resistance movement one must face the fact that one could within it maintain a close connection with the lead core of National Socialism was the US as

its leader. I knew him and the plotters who established these connections on the one hand and Himmler on the other hand try to make use of each other in scheming the eventual removal of Hitler the studying of the German resistance then is faced with a challenging proposition while the German resistance is open to the charge of treason. It can at the same time be accused of having collaborated with that center of national power which was also the center of evil. Another reason for censoring the resistance or at least for having reservations about it has to do with its political stance. I've already remarked on the grounds to quote acknowledges of many of its participants not surprisingly that ideology like the social origins was conservative was anything but leper and hardly

democratic. If their resistance was noble it was a vivid instance of a curious tendency in German history. One pointed out by the sociologist Dr. Di windows the tendency of morality to part company with liberalism. In fact the plot is so the argument goes where the kind of people who during the final years had taken an active part along with the Nazis in battering the Republic because it had been created by and in spirit. These tanks have provided grounds for the thesis that there was a basic ideological identity between the plotters and the Nazis and they fled to the hard question. How can one rebel against something with which one is identified. This question is being brutally and I might add absurdity answered by an American critic. The Reverence had no ideas but died

because they couldn't bear the stench of their own deeds. Finally the German conspirators had been taken to task for having an excessively romantic and theoretical. That is to say a political approach to an undertaking that should have been a political one. They were powerless to begin with by the objections by their objections to mass democracy so-called. And the second place by the fact that the German masses were not safe and the resulting dilemma the so called politics of uncertainty made for the elites is despair about the possibility of political action in a modern society. Well you can see that the indictment of the German assistants is quite an intrusive one. Or perhaps I should say a value created one. It has come from different sides even from opposite sides and has sometimes been

self-contradicting in substance. We've seen that the charges include those treason and collaboration or Again both not political romanticism and then only to political cunning. But the charges that I have tried to summarize for you don't merely cancel each other out. They cannot be dismissed by the historian who sets out to discover and assess the mandate for the German resistance. The ambiguities of history may be very dry to man's patience to their intelligence and their self esteem. Simplistic views of the past. May be as attractive as simplistic views of the present. Nevertheless when it comes to the heroes of the past two men like the conspirators of the 20th of July uncritical celebration were not to know where the various small easy fault finding work of the banking

no facile moralizing would do justice to the problems of resistance against a regime like this one. It was a regime in which Germans were all prisoners in a vast jail. As one Socialist member of the resistance said on the eve of the war. In this jail untold individuals each in the privacy of his conscious were confronted by an extreme and unprecedented situation and faced decisions of life and death. As I go on with my argument I must bear in mind the charges against the German resistance that I have mentioned. They are inevitably interwoven and the whole fabric of our part of the mandate for resistance now to deal with this. I shall proceed to comment briefly on the chronology and

sociology of the resistance the movement can be traced back I think to the member of a memorable moment of March 1933 when the leader of the German Social Democrats out of there stood up before the assembled by start the diet and valiantly defied his plan to establish his dictatorship by a pseudo constitutional passage of the Enabling Act where it said no enabling act entitles you to destroy ideas which are eternal and intimate. I must add however that the socialist party had already even before Hitler seized power showed that it lacked militancy that it was unfair and unwilling to resist the spread of rightwing dictatorship and the seizure of power of the social democratic organisation was really to suspect to expose to conduct organized

resistance within Germany. The only practical alternative left to the party leadership was immigration. Those leaders who stayed on men like Bill him and he was labor so that underground activity on their part would be doomed to failure for this reason they concluded that the Nazi regime could be overthrown only in cooperation with the army. Meanwhile what about the communists before 1933 the Communists had ruined every chance for a common holiday in front by rejecting the Social Democrats on the grounds that there were social fascists the Communist Party doctrinaire to communist party doctrine as the Social Democrats seemed to be an evil even worse than the Nazi systems. As a matter of fact it is quite well known that the Communists cooperated with the Nazis in wrecking the Weimar Republic.

Later after January 1933 the party was strangely unprepared for underground work and the few instances where it was really organized the Nazi tower came down hard on it. The proletarian resistance organizations then effectively neutralized by Nazi control and terror. Meanwhile the masses that is the lower middle and middle middle classes where under these circumstances resistance if any would have to come from within the traditional German establishment because the Nazis were because the masses were Nazi fight. Remember that this was a striking sociological fact during the years right after Hitler seized power. Because the Night The masses were 95 individual expressions of defiance because no acts of quiet here were isn't

simply could not feed into a broader cone of popular resistance. For this reason the establishment if I may use once again this is important. So no it is somewhat. I thought you were the abstemious woman and in particular the Army was the most promising potential nucleus of a. The army was after all the people in arms. It was once removed from the Nazi party control and could serve as an instrument in the hands of the Nazi commanders. Circumstances were such that the only resistance really possible in Germany was a resistance without the people as hands months and discarded and sold on the just where but few. As to the charge against the establishment of opportunism in the face of imminent defeat it is blatantly ill founded.

When seen in the light of what happened in 1938 it was in that year that the military center for resistance was formed in opposition to Hitler's war plans a much more appropriate charge would be that of political immaturity and inexperience and even irresponsibility during the years of the Weimar Republic during the 20s. The politics of the ME had played a decisive part in undermining democracy in Germany. When the Nazis came to power the army and the whole world come to the event. This one that heralded new scope for itself and glory for the country. The same general who later in 1940 would go as far as to risk treason. Had no commitment to the band cross party state as he called it of. Initially he hailed the

Nazi revolution as a national rising and so far I support his convincing and so far no one has convincingly disproven the story that the young second lieutenant close friends died from the very man who would throw the bomb in 1944. That young stuff in Baghdad on January 30 1933 the day when Hitler became chancellor placed himself at the head of a torchlight procession through Bamberg. As regards permanent churchman we should recall that the archbishop of Munich cardinal thought harbored who was to maintain close ties with the resistance spared no effort to discredit the Republic and even passed a Martin whiskey early 1930 earliest 1933 became the leader of the partisan resistance to national socialism. Even Nima once boasted that he had

always been an enemy of any kind of republic and that he had since 1924 always voted for the National Socialists. Meanwhile in the university Hans and Sophie Scholl a brother and sister who would with their professor Court who were pay with their lives for their brave stand against tyranny. And since a free show down in 1933 by the marching columns and flying flags of Hitler's use and indeed volunteered to join it. When sees here no doubt a passive impatience with the unexciting and prodding you dishes in is democracy as it was tried in Germany between 1918 and 1933. Behind this impatience lay a good deal of political immaturity of misguided romanticism and of grandiose

expectations derives from the millennial promises of National Socialism. At the same time there will be widespread softness towards National Socialism as we might term it today. We're seeing ugly fruit of a deliberate policy on the part of a deceptive policy of legality and respectability which she had pursued since the unsuccessful Munich Putsch of November 1923. I think it is fair to say that in general fascism in contrast to communism has always lacked a distinct identity and has therefore been much harder to identify. Communism has from the very start been the clear and present danger to the establishment. On the other hand fascism in part because of this communist danger has tended to be regarded as the ally

of upright and well-meaning citizens. Writing in one of Hitler's jails pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer remarked that the great masquerade of evil has confused ethical standards and in fact fascism by masquerading as light kindness historical necessity and social justice has deceived many a conventionally decent person. This power to the seed was not lost on Bonhoeffer one of the most clear sighted and we source for figures of the resistance for the Christian. He added It is the very proof of the profound evilness of evil. The parting of the ways between the oen to stop Richmond and Hitler came late much too late. Between 1933 and 1938 there were several crucial occasions when the army might have taken

action but it did not choose to do so. The outbreak of the war in September 1939 further complicated the conspirators at times of getting a hearing from the allies both the British and the Americans maintained a stiff negative attitude towards overtures from any Germans by this time the Western powers had naturally lost all they lose since about I don't first course but they proceeded to equate Germans or even any of Germans and Nazis indiscriminately. This policy was clearly implied in January 1943 Casablanca and the unconditional surrender formula. It had the effect of further driving the German masses into the arms of Hitler and of wholly isolating the forces of resistance. Thus it sickened that strange cloud of silence that tends in twenty centuries in the twentieth century

totalitarian landscape to envelop the dissenters and the oppressed. The potential remind us of rationality and humanity. The fact that the sect of the German resistance increasingly was that of its isolation the so-called clique of conspirators was a group of people with the cohesion and independence necessary to acting in isolation and in defiance of what counted him what fun might be called that swarm of outward success well-being and prosperity. The conspirators diagnosed the Nazi success at home and abroad as the Triumph as a triumph of evil and persisted in seeing themselves as patriots even while they risked the defeat of their own country. The ethos of the clique then was one of noblesse oblige of

duty and courage. The resistance movement that culminated on the day to July 20th 1944 has rightly been called the last minute presentation of a political elite in Germany with the failure of the attempt on Hitler's life and with the ensuing years if you are stuck see and it's passed away. It should be underlined that the mandate for the German resistance was moe than a no class mandate. No merely momentary emotion made kind of more testified that he stood before the Nazi People's Court not as a partisan and as he said not as a landowner not missin nowhere man not the suppression not as a German but as a Christian and nothing less than men and women of the German resistance boat with many traditional bows and

penetrated to considerations of a higher order. During our long history we Germany spun over and headless. We Germans have come to face up to the necessity and power of obedience. He added however that the Germans had been wanting in what they call civil courage in a situation where to a baby would not have brought on a bond. We affirmed the Lutheran freedom of the Christian men calling for the deed at once free and responsible. Further more unbelievable unbelievable though it may seem from a mid century standpoint. Unconditionally binding force of the soldiers oath of allegiance has kept its hold on the German army even after president invokes death in 1934. Allegiance was thrown then allegiance was wont want to the person of the through it

rather than to the nation and this invalidation of constitutionality. For many German officers this oath and this oath alone stood in the way of joining the plotters but the man of the resistance by contrast freed themselves from a slavish understanding of this oath. BECK scolded a fellow general who had declared that his title. How dare you talk of those headless broken his oath to the Constitution and his vows to the people a hundred times over. How dare you refer to your oath of loyalty to such a perjurer. There will after all higher authorities had this blatant abuse of power his who Briss and crime finally stared at the German resistance into action in November 1939 general mood Steve wrote to his wife summarizing his impressions during a trip to Concord.

I am ashamed of being a German thus breaking out of the narrow confines of kindness and nation. The conspirators embarked on a course that was literally uncharted in German history. But if the higher law of nature as an alternative to any by constituted authority has never found much acceptance in German books or the German table of law their resistance suggests in a way that it can be inscribed in the hearts and consciousness of self respecting people. Even though the German resistance was not play by the latent division between communist the noncommunist that troubled most other European resistance movements its members were by no means all of one mind. The outlook of general Beck and of cowgirl or the chancellor designate of the hoped for post

plane government was an essentially restaurateurs one. In fact at first their circle which included man who maintained those close ties with the SS parasitically these ties may have been morally questionable but they were surely neither a political nor impractical by comparison. The members of the choir circled the group named for the salutation est of its mentor count most were in search of a new beginning. The very composition of the cries are circled gives a good idea of the generously exploitative and humanitarian spirit that animated it. It included noble man and communist partisans and Catholics among them three Jesuits conservatives and socialist labor leaders uncommitted to party creeds and rejecting one sided doctrinaire position. These men sought to learn from each other and to

prepare the ground for a new synthesis that would heal all the divisions both religious and political that had played Germany in the past. They firmly dismissed as we know girlish views on domestic affairs and as nationalistic as you cell phone affairs they go for a blending of conservative and socialist ideas at home and abroad for a European federalism that would put an end to power politics and an end to nationalism. On most of these fundamental smoke and to circle agreed was stuff from back but they did differ about to run inside Mocha refused to condone it white stuff and after the end of 1940 to pursue it relentlessly. The conspiracy then most would know under the direction of stuff from back in disco both younger offices and thus moved toward the ill fated attempt of July 20.

But whatever group we choose to focus on in the German resistance we cannot help overlooking its distinctly theoretical indeed a political bent. It is tempting to say that the resistance even while it overcame the traditional German. Unquestioning obedience did succumb to the German penchant for abstract theorising but the fact is that the German resistance had to be considered with ultimate values. It could not justify itself as not German resistance movements could simply by invoking quite obvious brought up national pride and incense world opinion. It was in difficult isolation that the German resistance had to find its mandate and state its objectives. This accounts for such elaborate memoranda as those

called the aim of the way and for statements of principle in politics and policy ranging from visitations on political theory to directives concerning all aspects of public life. Also we really cannot help concluding that the movement was neither liberal nor democratic. The British intelligence report that I cited a few minutes before was quite correct. Even socialist leaders like Bill English and journalist labor not only disassociated themselves from the on party structure as they called it of the Weimar Republic but also rejected the egalitarian mass democracy when stuffing back into SSB either drafted the oath which was to be sworn in after the coup d'etat. They put it in a reference to the lie as they call it that all men equal in fact the

conspirators looked on national socialism as an extreme instance of the got it to vote like botulism. They were trying to devise a German way that would lie between liberalism and egalitarianism between capitalism and collectivism. The way that it would have brought about a renewed emphasis on Christian values and more than that a reintegration of man into his natural environment and neighborhood. About this particular issue. Critics like down dog. Quite right actually. Although the resistance did on the whole reject restoration and also I tell you it did not escape the pitfalls of social romanticism. It was unwilling and unable to face for a variety and the reality and the conflict between political and social interests. Its attitude

towards modernity was profoundly distrustful if not actually despairing For these reasons one can argue that all its discussions with that they were bound in the end to lead nowhere. One can argue then that the failure of the German resistance to come to terms with would duty as a whole was at least as significant as significant as the theory of stuff and that has been killed out of Hitler. I should like at this point to quote a passage from a recent paper. Last year's paper by a student which struck me as eminently perceptive. It is relevant to my subject much political involvement at that time in the 30s and 40s. I meant either propaganda or silence. Hitler's propaganda which labeled the resistance a small clique held sway as long as he lived and grown

in the timid suffering and even the brave their lot was silence. The extent to which Western diplomacy and history over to comply in this nasty business of policing the landscape of silence makes a said chapter and the appalling notes of total power. The pall of silence over the German resistance created as much by liberal disbelievers as by Nazi apologists has now been lifted but not the doubts about the mandate which remains in question and a source of argument without an my task here can hardly be to solve this problem neatly. It is rather to shed light on it from various perspectives. Not that what I said so far this evening. Can we not dismiss the charge of treason. Can you not agree

at least about the extraordinary Theel isness and fortitude which made these people even in the face of this masquerade of evil keep their heads up and their minds clear and conspired together to act. However the hardiness with which the resistance got underway. What a German Jesuit has called the weakness of the beginning is known to leave some doubts about the conspirators proper title. Couldn't one compare them with. Because this is a wish of Darkness at Noon. Couldn't one say that their initial complicity with evil didn't compromise them. That it's their title to speak in the name of eternal Germany might not untold suffering and destruction have been prevented if has passed and once we most fully asked their brotherly love had cared more faithfully and

they had more bravely. Certainly our present student generation with its readiness to prescribe resisters preventive resistance is unlikely to seek its heroes from him only Hardy and the guilty but may I say here and I don't think that this is rather irrelevant to my subject that the prescription of preventive resisters which is in fact have Petru or resistance has during its short history in the 1960s itself created a new form of tyranny and neglect of majority opinion as well as defiance of the law. And this makes one look with no indulgence and understanding. And those forwards this is in itself was distasteful and whose courage was born out of necessity.

At this point I must turn again to the British intelligence reports reservations about the July 20 conspiracy to its suggestion that the plotters said no we have mandates because their ideas did not conform with a genuine movement of liberal resistance the fact is that the resistance movement that took shape after the organized workers movement had broken had broken down was predominantly ouster Karthik and conservative. Yet at the eleventh hour German aristocrats rallied as they had never done before in German history to represent the German nation. Its conservatism admittedly on account is in the 20 century political landscape. So this is a Libertarian though not liberal. Alternative to national socialism. The hardest of the facts that critics of the resistance tend to ignore. It's after

the thought that there was no liberal resistance from the very time of its existence. German liberalism despaired of itself because Thomas Mann once said in the face of National Socialism it fizzled out. Beginning with the year 1930 the elections if nothing has been about this thesis might not therefore the divorce between morality and liberalism in Germany which I mentioned earlier have been the fault of liberalism. The middle classes which were the social base of liberalism in Germany responded to the economic crisis of the 1920s in her early 30s by streaming into the ranks of Hitler's party. Lacking real convictions of their own they about it themselves to its passionate intensity. One that was not essentially theirs. By contrast the men of the 20th of July did have distinct convictions

having been headstrong and outright destructive towards the Weimar regime. They devised more or less from magic constructs for the future which were in effect we construct of an utopian paradise in the extreme east. However they take more of a stuff and could hold onto an almost feudal sense of pride and decency. The books on their shelves we may not like. But the swords on their worlds the sort of their world was one which after all they were ready to take up and were stuck see does have the virtues of independence and fearlessness and those virtues guided the German resisters. It is not surprising after all that the German aristocrats blows up rather than the beggars just as in England. It is not surprising that the challenge of the Nazi menace was taken up not by never a chamberlain of

Birmingham but by Churchill off planet. Here it is fitting to recall consciously Of course the contrast between the stand taken by the futile and romantic poets in 1939 and the somewhat earlier acquiescence of the Czechs. It was if you like the contrast between Don't mix or so that your plans are. I must add that in Czechoslovakia a century we've arrived in the form of the good old Shrake was not a simple coward but but a special sort of soldier one of those who is is not by fighting but by surviving. The resistance I should emphasize ultimately found its strength not only in its futile Iesus but in religion. Almost all the conspirators were religious men for Pastor Bonhoeffer

the certainty of God's head and guidance made it through years of imprisonment preceding the execution. They create death instead of a crushing experience. Most good stuff from both acted each in his own way on a basically religious impulse it is not really sentimental to suggest that in the big prison as in the concentration camp any resistance had to be sustained by some ideal by what the former inmate has called a mighty impulse in a situation where proletarian resistance had been neutralized. We're not a political middle class prisoners to use Bruno Bettelheim term both in concentration camps and in the big prison Nazi Germany had fallen by the wayside. The task of resisting fell upon a group of proud and fearless man of whom can be said

what he had said of the Irish rebels of 1916. All changed changed utterly A terrible beauty is gone. The man of the 20s of July 1944 and the Irish rebels had been fractious and foolish. They too were changed changed utterly transcending castes and party. Indeed nation and church the conspirators followed the dictates of God and their own conscience. It was in this change in this transcendence that their mandate for resistance was founded and this mandate I must add. Was not invalidated or even weakened by the near certainty of resistance tends to transcend politics and its realistic calculations about success and failure in extreme

circumstances when the burden becomes unsupportable. It may assume the value in its own right. The whole thing start of the German resistance than was not merely a show of weakness that called for called for atonement. It's overdue we vote against the constituted as a Saudi that had long since hardened into tyranny. Mace is a double monument as a macabre one to law abiding is but also as a heroic one to outraged resistance. The mandate from the German resistance was finally realized in the symbolism of a sacrificial act. Neither failure then nor the complexity and ambiguity of its mandate detracts from the legitimacy of the German resistance. Both together in fact the thermally essentially so far played tragic vision of history. My considerations have centered on the problem of legitimacy of

resistance. I've noted to a shrink who was crafty wily deceptive but altogether a passive soldier of the resistance and under any circumstances passive resistance is every individual's right. The man who practices it does not contribute to society but he does not substract from it either. He discharges a minimum of civic duties he's a citizen with a reserve but it's your mentality with human and with coming. What a stink strakes countryman the poet and the movie are overcoming is everything and wanted to overcome legitimate also is resistance active resistance way clear mandate exists. This was the case of the resistance during the second war outside Germany in terms of the law of nature and of the national interest. The mandate of this resistance has been under contest.

As usual the problems of guys in the borderline cases the resistance which I've called preventive resistance raises at least as many problems as it saw of preventive resistance is being proposed by some of the most vociferous and radical members of our present day young. They may have in mind what happened in Germany after 1933. Why in 1933 and after. Why wait until it is too late. Why no facts in time. However the very prevention which takes place in the context of a society which is still intact though perhaps upset raises into the specter of arbitrariness of citizens taking the law into their own hands and of lawlessness which in turn is a threat to the liberties of the citizenry. Only in a society which is horny to

radical where all peaceful and constitutional means have been exhausted. Whose dissent is muzzled. Does active resistance become legitimate. And this was the case in Hitler's Germany. The basic problem of the German resistance was the complexity in most of the ambiguity. As I've suggested of its mandate and the sort of constitution out the pseudo legality pseudo respectability of Hitler's regime had a way of discouraging resistance and reinforcing the law abiding tendencies of the Germans. If the German resistance with strained from acting preventively it actually was less out of deference to constitutionalism than out of a mistaken deference to national socialism. This so-called weakness of the beginning was fatal for allowing for all the complexity and ambiguity of the mandate which delayed and inhibited swift and concerted

action. It should have become clear by 1934. That is by the time if it invokes this that the time for resistance has come in moral and political terms. The head of the German resistance would have been infinitely stronger in 1934 than in 1938 and again and 38 and in 1944. Nevertheless the predicament of the German conspirators is a universal one in this much as without a clear mandate their action was a last resort. All of those who today in the standardly deferred to constitutionality may tomorrow once peaceful and constitutional means have been exhausted. See themselves in a position of having to act. But such the action through its very lateness might be condemned to say or in that case any resistance would

like the Germans one have to accept the penalty of its deed. What will remain from the legacy of the labor market stuff and back is if not the political wisdom of their deeds the courage of the act of resistance and the dignity of the acceptance of death. You have heard Clemmens from Klemperer professor of history at Smith College speaking on the topic mandate for resistance. In the case of the German opposition to Hitler this lecture was recorded in October at Smith College. This has been five college lecture hall a weekly program about standing talks by faculty members and guests at Amherst Hampshire Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts.