ABSTRACT
In 1945, when the full horrors of the concentration camps and the ‘FinalSolution’ became known, it was understandable for Allied observers tobelittle the German opposition, especially since its members appeared, as Taylor caustically expressed it, to ‘resolve to put their fine principles into action only when the Anglo-American armies had established themselves in Normandy and the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw’ (Taylor, 1961a: 262). However, over the ensuing decades it has become clearer that there was an extensive, though uncoordinated, opposition to Hitler and that it functioned in conditions of exceptional difficulty and danger. In 1939, according to Gestapo statistics, there were 27,367 German political prisoners, and between 1933 and 1939 a total of 112,432 German citizens had been sentenced for political offences (Prittie, 1964).
