80 years ago, a resistance group wanted to blow Hitler up – and failed. The memory of this has always been ideologically colored. A historian warns against new instrumentalization.
Before the 80th anniversary of the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, historian Jens-Christian Wagner warns against the instrumentalization of the memorial day by right-wing extremists. The scene has predominantly a positive relationship with the resistance group around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. And this must be described as “instrumentalization and distortion of history,” said the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation to the German Press Agency in Erfurt.
Collective punishment in Buchenwald
On July 20, 1944, Wehrmacht officers led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg tried in vain to kill Adolf Hitler with a bomb. Stauffenberg and three co-conspirators were shot that evening in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock in Berlin. In the weeks and months that followed, the Nazis executed around 90 other participants and supporters.
According to Wagner, family members of the resistance group were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar in what was known as collective custody. In addition, the failed assassination attempt led to a new wave of arrests: the so-called “Operation Thunderstorm” mainly affected older politicians from the Weimar Republic era, many of whom were also deported to Buchenwald.
Ideologically colored memories
Wagner explained that right-wing extremists today sometimes refer to the resistance fighters and assume that “like Stauffenberg, they are in the resistance against today’s ‘fascist regime’, namely the ‘traffic light dictatorship'”. “That is a very crude, convoluted worldview,” he said. The conservative and nationalist Stauffenberg is particularly relatable to these circles.
Wagner said that the resistance against Hitler was being reinterpreted. The opposition to the current government should be placed on the same level as the life-and-death resistance against National Socialism. “That alone is an impertinence,” Wagner stressed. After all, no one today has to fear being sentenced to death.
Resistance against Nazi regime the exception
Wagner went on to say that remembering the resistance group around Stauffenberg had been difficult in the past and had been ideologically colored in both German states. “The resistance has always been misused for current political purposes.”
In the GDR, the focus was on communist resistance. In contrast, military resistance played hardly any role in the culture of remembrance and historical research. In the FRG, the public perception was the other way round. “It would be completely wrong to narrow the view of the resistance to July 20th.”
At the same time, Wagner stressed that resistance to the National Socialists was the exception. Most Germans agreed with the regime and went along with it.
The Thuringian AfD, which is classified as definitely right-wing extremist by the state’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, will start its official election campaign on July 20. It was initially unclear whether AfD state party leader Björn Höcke would address the commemoration day.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
