Commemoration of resistance: 80 years of Hitler assassination attempt – appeals to protect democracy

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) have called for a stand up for democracy on the 80th anniversary of the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. “The attempted coup on July 20, 1944 failed. The common goals of the resistance did not,” said Scholz at a ceremony in Berlin. Democracy depends on citizens getting involved and also opposing misanthropy and extremism.

Steinmeier warned: “Let us protect our democracy.” This is the best way to remember all those who resisted National Socialism.

Steinmeier, Scholz and the leaders of the Bundesrat and Bundestag laid wreaths in the inner courtyard of the Bendlerblock, where the Ministry of Defense is now located. It was there that the Wehrmacht officer Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and three other participants of the July 20, 1944 attack were shot that same evening.

The group had tried in vain to kill the dictator Hitler with a bomb, to overthrow the National Socialist regime and to end the Second World War. In total, around 200 participants were executed or driven to suicide.

Counter-proposal to the Nazi dictatorship

Scholz said that 80 years later, one can testify that the women and men of the resistance were not mistaken. There is an alternative to the Nazi dictatorship – today’s Germany of the Basic Law. The Chancellor made it clear that the only thing left from the resistance is not to resign oneself to history. “It’s up to me – it is this conviction that must unite us today.”

Ordinary citizens do not need to perform heroic deeds that risk their lives. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: “Our democracy depends on our tireless efforts, on the efforts of each and every individual.”

After visiting the memorial’s exhibition, Steinmeier said: “The resistance against National Socialism was necessary because the Weimar democracy did not have the support it needed.” Today, in a liberal democracy, commitment to this is still the order of the day. “Not hatred and incitement and certainly not violence. Violence destroys democracy.”

The President paid tribute to the entire German resistance against the Nazi dictatorship. It was not about “flawless heroes”, but people “who did the right thing at the right time and did so at the greatest risk to themselves and their families”.

Descendants against “abuse” of the resistance

The chairman of the July 20, 1944 Foundation, Robert von Steinau-Steinrück, emphasized that the anniversary could be celebrated once again with many relatives as contemporary witnesses. He recalled that many in the early Federal Republic were taken into collective custody and initially viewed as “children of traitors.”

There is also a fight against narratives that were still shaped by the National Socialists – such as the myth that only a “very small clique” was involved in the attempted coup.

The foundation opposed the “abuse of the resistance by right-wing and left-wing extremists and populists”. The National Socialists had the resistance fighters murdered, said Steinau-Steinrück, stressing with reference to statements by the Thuringian AfD chairman Björn Höcke: “Anyone who speaks their language or lets them speak it can never invoke the resistance or even honor it.”

Berlin’s Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) praised the men and women of July 20, 1944 as role models. Even in the here and now, it is about courage and decency and about “defending democracy against threats from outside and from within, against war and extremism.”