The German Generals and Hitler

Their pre-war opposition came to nothing—not so much because they wanted courage as because they lacked political sense and, by hesitating and temporizing, allowed precious opportunities to slip through their hands.

Twenty-five years ago the Nazis seized power in Germany without encountering any resistance. Not even the Socialists and Communists attempted to oppose Hitler by force. Although both parties made some preparations for armed resistance, they allowed their organizations to be dissolved and their leaders to be arrested in absolute passivity.

Within a few months the Nazis succeeded in establishing complete control over the whole country, abolished all parties other than their own, reduced their Nationalist coalition partners in the government to a state of subjection and transformed the Republic into a dictatorship exercised by one man. It was in vain that the parties of the Left tried to continue their activities in an underground form, whether in small cells, study groups, or social clubs: the Gestapo and the concentration camps soon put an end to most of these activities.