Opposition to the Nazi regime manifested in different ways from different groups throughout occupied Europe – from sabotage, to collecting evidence, to the decimating secret writings.
This section will explore examples of how different people and groups opposed the Nazis.
This pamphlet, entitled ‘Stiegel der Holzhauer: Erzählung’, is an example of Tarnschriften published by August Winnig in Leipzig in 1943. Inside it provides the reader with a guide on how to fake illnesses to reduce productivity.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library.
A report dated 29 July 1941 sent from the Wehrmacht Commander southeast mentioning the murder of 100 Jews in Belgrade, Serbia, following Jewish attempts at sabotage.
This document is a translation used in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library.
Many people and groups opposed Nazi rule by sabotaging the machinery, buildings or equipment being used for the war effort.
Partisans
Various groups of partisans across occupied Europe undertook efforts to oppose the Nazis through extensive sabotage. These efforts ranged from destroying railway lines, to cutting signalling cables, to setting factories on fire and stealing equipment. The efforts of these groups caused severe damage to infrastructure and considerable delays in production.
Low productivity
Some workers attempted to sabotage the Nazis’ aims by being purposefully unproductive.
Across the Third Reich, many non-Jewish workers were forced to work long hours for little extra pay as Germany sought to expand its territory and, eventually, war production. These conditions, and the repressive nature of the Nazi state, generated resentment from workers. Many purposefully maintained low productivity to undermine the Nazis’ efforts. This type of action had little risk attached to it (as retribution for actions such as riots was severe), but successfully expressed workers’ discontent with the regime and the war.
Forced and slave labourers across Europe were also unproductive due to their anti-Nazi beliefs and awful working conditions. In the camps, many workers tampered with equipment and maintained as low productivity as possible (even though this often resulted in punishment).
Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-1944) was the founder of the Oneg Shabes underground archive in the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1943, Ringelblum went into hiding with his wife and son. In 1944, they were denounced, captured, and shot inside the Warsaw Pawiak prison.
Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain].
A translation of a letter sent by Emanual Ringelblum briefly describing the underground cultural activities of the Warsaw Ghetto on 1 March 1944 to the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO). Just days after sending this letter, Ringelblum’s hiding place was denounced and uncovered by the Nazis.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library.
In this extract, Ringelblum describes the formation and activities of the Oneg Shabes archive.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library.
Here, Ringelblum describes other resistance activities in the Warsaw Ghetto, such as the orchestra.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library.
Within the Warsaw Ghetto, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum , in collaboration with others such as Rachel Auerbach, opposed Nazi rule by creating an archive of evidence of Nazi crimes.
Ringelblum initially started the project by himself in October 1939, but it soon grew into a group endeavour known as Oyneg Shabes, a Yiddish term which refers to traditional community meetings on Sabbath.
The archivists collected testimonies, reports about daily life in the ghetto, data on forced labour, details of the Judenrat policy, drawings, rations cards, theatre posters, poems, posters announcing Jewish deportations and more.
Facing the threat of deportation to Treblinka extermination camp , Oyneg Shabes buried their extensive collection in milk cans and metal boxes to prevent the archive from falling into the hands of the Nazis. After the war, some of this record was recovered by the handful of survivors of the group.
This tea sample of Lyons Tea is an example of Tarnschriften. The tea packet conceals the anti-war and anti-fascist propaganda inside.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
To escape detection, Tarnschriften had to be cleverly hidden – often in household items that were not suspicious. Published in 1935, this pamphlet advertising Nivea cream actually contains communist writings advocating anti-fascism and the success of the anti-fascist front in France.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Published in 1933, this piece of Tarnschriften is disguised as a publication entitled ‘The Gallic Wars’ by Julius Caesar. However, inside, the pamphlet is a declaration of resistance by the Social Democratic Party who had been recently banned by the Nazis.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
A pamphlet published in 1938 advertising Olympia Radios (‘excellent in performance and sound!’), which in fact conceals communist, pro-Soviet material by Alfred Schröder entitled ‘Problems of the Shortage of Young Talent in Mining. Heroes of the Miners’ Class!’, dated 15 November 1938.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
An excerpt of Schröder’s article ‘Problems of the Shortage of Young Talent in Mining. Heroes of the Miners’ Class!’, dated 15 November 1938.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
A pamphlet entitled ‘Sending and receiving of short and ultra-short waves. 1, reception technology’ published by Rolf Wigand in 1938, which conceals anti-Nazi instructions on how to build and operate a secret wireless station to receive and listen to anti-fascist broadcasts.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
This 1939 pamphlet appears to be the 1914 publication ‘Chess: A Practical Guide to the Game of Chess’. However, once the reader reaches page six of the pamphlet, its true content is revealed – a copy of the Comintern publication The Communist International (No. 1, 1939).
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
This publication, concealed as a cookbook entitled ‘Twenty Recipes for Delicious Baked Goods’ and aimed at German women and housewives, in fact contains material by Kurt Heinrich and the Social Democratic Party, entitled ‘New Programs of the German Social Democracy (Explained for Social Democratic Workers)’. C.1934.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
This pamphlet is disguised as an information manual entitled ‘Eyes Open! The little book on accident prevention for young and old’. The first five pages offer medical guidance on how to treat or prevent minor accidents, such as burns and cuts, but page six of the pamphlet reveals its true content: the Number 8, 1937 issue of The Communist International: Journal of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Tarnschriften is a German word meaning hidden writings.
In Nazi Germany, Tarnschriften referred to anti-Nazi, illegal leaflets and pamphlets camouflaged as everyday publications. Groups such as the German Communist Party, Social Democratic Party, and the German Popular Front created Tarnschriften to spread their message and inspire dissent against Nazi rule. Some Tarnschriften were also produced anonymously and have no named author.
To avoid repercussions, any anti-Nazi material circulated in the Third Reich had to be easy to conceal. As such, the front and back pages of Tarnschriften were usually disguised with non-political content, such as advertisements for shampoo or disinfectant. Many of the disguises used for the Tarnschriften were designed with a specific audience in mind and, as such, concealed as a product that would be easily associated with this audience. An instruction manual for fixing cars, for example, might hide material aimed at mechanics.
Another method of hiding illegal writings from the Nazis was to conceal pamphlets or leaflets inside genuine products or publications, such as packets of tea or vegetable seeds, or inside pro-Nazi newspapers. Both of these methods cleverly concealed the anti-Nazi messages hidden inside.
In total, more than a thousand Tarnschriften were published on a variety of topics, with many thousands of copies per title. Most were published before the war, between 1933 and 1939, although some were published later. With 488 pamphlets, The Wiener Holocaust Library in London holds the largest collection of Tarnschriften outside of the Bundesarchiv in Berlin.
In a totalitarian state, where the Nazis aimed to control every aspect of everyday life, many Jews opposed Nazi rule by continuing to take part in religious activities within the camps and ghettos, despite these often being explicitly banned.
Examples of these activities include praying, attending secret ceremonies, studying religious texts, celebrating Jewish holidays, and carrying out birth rituals. This type of Jewish opposition was relatively common: in the Warsaw Ghetto alone, over 600 prayer groups existed and gathered in secret to practice Judaism.
The punishments for continuing this form of opposition were harsh.
Elie Wiesel (30 September 1928 – 2 July 2016) was a Romanian Holocaust survivor, academic, political activist and author. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Wiesel was also instrumental in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In his account of his time in Auschwitz entitled ‘Night’, Wiesel discusses how, as some people continued to pray and partake in religious activities to oppose the Nazis, his imprisonment made him question his Jewish faith and the existence of god.
On evening activities in the camp Wiesel wrote: ‘Some talked of God, of his mysterious ways, of the sins of the Jewish people, and of their future deliverance. But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathised with Job! I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice’ [Elie Wiesel, Night, translated by Stella Rodway (London: Penguin, 1981), p.53].
Whilst many continued to oppose the Nazis through on-going religious practice, some, like Wiesel, questioned their faith. Each person reacted differently to their circumstances of persecution.
After the war, Wiesel referred to himself as an agnostic .
Elie Wiesel, aged fifteen.
[Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.]
Clements August Count von Galen (1878-1946) was a Catholic Bishop in Munster. Whilst he expressed strong nationalist views, he was a critic of the Nazi regime from 1934. He is most well-known for his sermons condemning the T-4 programme in 1941. He died in 1946.
Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Some people publically opposed the Nazis or specific Nazi policies. Due to the Nazis’ extreme punishment methods, this type of opposition was rare. One prominent example was the Bishop of Munster’s public opposition to the T-4 euthanasia programme .
T-4 was the code name for the Nazis’ euthanasia programme which murdered disabled people. Starting in 1939, the Nazis killed disabled adults and children living in state-run nursing homes or hospitals, in line with their views on racial superiority. Whilst the programme was carried out in secret, the scale of the operation meant it soon became hard to conceal. On 13 August 1941, the Bishop of Münster, Clements August Count von Galen, gave a sermon condemning the programme.
Hitler and the Nazis were, especially at this stage of the war, very conscious of public opinion – especially from an institution as historic and large as the Catholic Church. As a result, Hitler publicly stopped the programme on 24 August 1941.
However, although von Galen’s public opposition to the Nazis programme resulted in its official closure, T-4 carried on in a decentralised form.
By 1945, a total of approximately 70,000 disabled people were murdered through the programme.
On 9 November 1923, Hitler and the Nazi Party tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic. This became known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
On 8 November 1937, an exhibition called ‘The Eternal Jew’ was opened in Munich. The exhibition promoted antisemitic stereotypes.
On 9 November 1938, Kristallnacht took place. Throughout Germany, synagogues were burned and Jewish businesses were looted by the Nazis.
On 8 November 1939, labourer Georg Elser attempted to assassinate Hitler. Elser was later murdered in Dachau concentration camp.
On 24 November 1941, Theresienstadt, a concentration camp and ghetto, was established.
On 20 November 1945, the Nuremberg trials began. Twenty one top level Nazis were tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
