Alternatives to Hitler

About this book

"Those Germans, such as Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who fought the Third Reich from within have been mythologised as heroes in the fight against tyranny, but the truth is far more complex. Resistance to Hitler is a central and much debated topic of the history of Nazism. In this seminal study, the renowned contemporary historian Hans Mommsen reveals the diversity of the political aims held by these 'other Germans'. He analyses the ideologies of the assassination plot of July 20th, 1944, as well as those of the Kreisau Circle and the conservative, socialist, church and military oppositions. These resistance groups all endeavoured to find a viable alternative to Hitler and to achieve a moral renewal of politics and society. Yet many of them rejected democracy and had a sometimes ambivalent attitude toward the persecution of the Jews. Rather than idealising the German resistance to Hitler, Hans Mommsen interprets it as a political movement dependent on the conditions of its time."--BOOK JACKET.