Resistance in Lower Saxony

The Weiße Rose ("White Rose") was a resistance group formed primarily by students. It was founded in Munich in 1942 and its central representatives were the siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friend Alexander Schmorell. They based their resistance against the Nazi regime on humanist and Christian values. The "White Rose" attempted to raise awareness of Nazi crimes and called for resistance through high-profile actions such as dropping leaflets on several university campuses.
In the spring of 1943, the "White Rose" was exposed, its central members arrested and sentenced to death. The sentences were all carried out and the resistance group was thus broken up.

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R0211-316 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a member of the Bekennende Kirche ("Confessing Church"), the part of the Protestant Church in Germany that resisted National Socialism. As a theologian, he taught at university and took on pastoral roles in various parishes in Berlin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognised and warned of the dangers of Nazi ideology very early on and joined the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors' Emergency League) at an early stage. This was founded as a reaction to the Deutschen Christen (“German Christians” - the Protestant supporters of National Socialism) and the anti-Jewish measures to discriminate against and oust German Jews from society and the church and was the forerunner of the Confessing Church.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested for his resistance against the National Socialists and deported to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was murdered on 9 April 1945 following a death sentence handed down by a court in Munich the day before.

On 20 July 1944, a group of military and civilian opposition members organised around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg attempted to kill Adolf Hitler with a bomb attack.

The assassination attempt in the East Prussian "Führer headquarters" failed. Hitler survived with minor injuries and Stauffenberg was executed that same night. Some of those involved in the conspiracy had connections to Lower Saxony:

Adam von Trott zu Solz (*1909 in Potsdam) was a German diplomat and lawyer. He studied law for three semesters at the Georg August University in Göttingen, Lower Saxony before completing his studies in Berlin. In the course of preparing for his exams, he moved back to Göttingen, where he subsequently obtained his doctorate. From 1939 at the latest, he campaigned for the overthrow of the Nazi regime. In his work as a lawyer in the information department of the Foreign Office, he was regarded as a leading foreign policy thinker in the resistance. From 1944, he was a close friend of Stauffenberg and tried to win supporters for the resistance and the planned post-war government.

The German reserve officer Kurt von Plettenberg (*1891 in Bückeburg, Lower Saxony) belonged to the closest circle of the resistance of 20 July 1944 and was arrested after the failed uprising. On his way to interrogation, he knocked out his guards and threw himself to his death from a third-floor window to prevent the still unknown members of the resistance from being betrayed under torture.

© Stefan Kemmerling – CC-BY-SA-3.0

Vincent Eisfeld / nordhausen-wiki.de / CC-BY-SA-3.0

After the failed assassination attempt of 20 July 1944, the National Socialists also took ruthless action against the family members of the resistance fighters. For example, 46 children of those involved were placed in the children's home in Borntal in Bad Sachsa (Harz, Lower Saxony). The children were given new names, siblings were separated from each other and received no information about the fate of their relatives. Some of the children returned to their families in the following months, while 18 of them remained in the children's home until the end of the war.