Valkyrie: A model of resistance
Nothing says Christmas more than a movie about a failed attempt in 1944 to explode the leader of National Socialist Germany into hundreds of bloody chunks. That, at least, appears to be the view of Hollywood, as it releases the film Valkyrie on Dec. 25. The irony is inescapable. Like so many of the most active opponents of Hitler, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was a Christian who was motivated by his Roman Catholic faith. As such he may have believed that Christmas Day was better left to matters other than eating popcorn in a theatre. Still, we can all sit back and feel just a little better about the world as Tom Cruise plays the good German trying to kill the bad German. Actually bad Austrian, but that is beside the point.
What is not in dispute is that von Stauffenberg was a heroic character who, while initially applauding the Nazi Party’s German nationalism, was disgusted by its anti-Semitism and was committed to replacing Hitler by 1941. His final words before execution were, “Long live our holy Germany.” His iconic stature in contemporary Germany is well deserved.
Yet what disturbs some of the families of those persecuted and murdered by the Third Reich is the thesis that domestic resistance partly expunges German guilt or –important this –empowers the Germans as fellow victims of fascism.
This was the East German argument. As communists, they claimed, they were victims rather than perpetrators, and Nazism was a bastard child of the West. Total claptrap of course, but systematic mythology shapes nations and cultures.
In fact the denial of the former East Germany made the rise of neo-Nazism in the new eastern Germany far more possible. West Germans, however, were reminded daily of the stains of their past. It worked. They still look at their eastern cousins in disbelief. But they are proud that Germany had its martyrs and believe that this gives the country an historic lifeline to the civilized world.
Count Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Munster, Martin Niemoller, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the White Rose student group in Munich, the Red Orchestra organization, former mayor of Leipzig Carl Goerdeler, Prussian finance minister Johannes Popitz, the Kreisau Circle, Julius Leber, the Social Democrat and Communist underground, Catholic and Protestant secret opposition movements. As early as November, 1939, Georg Elser, acting alone and with the most extraordinary dedication, tried to assassinate Hitler with a homemade bomb. The plan almost worked. There were also two attempted suicide bombings of Hitler as well as numerous plans for conventional armed attacks.
We should be surprised not at how few but at how many and varied were the resisters. Especially after Hitler’s early military successes, when even moderate Germans who had never voted Nazi were euphoric at the reversals of the 1918 humiliation. By the end of 1940, the internal security system was intensely sophisticated, and meaningful opposition, particularly under a war economy, was often effectively impossible. Punishment for even the mildest rebuke of the government was swift and grotesque. We have never properly honoured those who were killed for their stance, in Germany as well as in occupied Europe.
No serious person in Germany denies the past and no country could have done more to acknowledge what was, is and should be. All that informed, studious Germans argue is that we ought not to be confined by war comic mentality. And that while never forgetting that the bridge of understanding was made filthy by
Hitler and his grimy gang, it was kept in one piece by the very people depicted in a big budget American movie. Even one released on
Christmas Day. – Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster. www.michaelcoren.com.
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