Deviant behaviour and resistance

Despite all propaganda and violent measures, the National Socialists did not succeed in eradicating all deviating behaviour undesired by the regime. Opposition could be expressed in various behavioural attitudes and to varying degrees of intensity: from one individual activity – be it a critical comment or the telling of a political joke – to the non-compliance with orders or the public rejection of measures to systematic, active resistance.

Active resistance could range from defending individual or special group interests, to implementing human rights for all of society; it could also refer to the partial change of the system or to any ambition to overthrow the National Socialist government.

Opposition and resistance could hardly be deemed a common occurrence in Cologne. Persons and groups putting up resistance were only rarely met with support from the general population. Their activities did therefore not pose a serious threat of the NS rule in Cologne.

The actual resistance work of the individual organisations was very similar: In order to keep the danger of exposure to a minimum, the groups remained small and counted only a few people who took great risk to meet for the planning and implementation of activities. Using simple copying devices, they produced flyers, news - papers and camouflaged brochures, illegal material was brought into the country and anonymous leaflets were distributed in the city and anti- Nazi slogans were written on house walls.

No general cooperation of the individual resistance movements and resistance groups occurred in Cologne either. Different interests and targets, group identities and traditional delineations made it impossible to communicate and implement joint activities.

Examples of courageous acts by civil society

Despite pressure and surveillance, once and again there were people who clearly showed their refusal of the regime and helped persecuted people in need and showed moral courage. Many of them acted with remarkable bravery. They did not shy away from personal consequences, even if – strictly speaking – their behaviour did not represent resistance. The fact that the consequences of such actions were completely unpredictable only reflected once more the spirit of injustice of the NS regime: Also non-conformist and deviant behaviour could result in detention at the Gestapo prison or in concentration camps, albeit without dramatic consequences in many cases.

KPD

The National Socialist terror hit the KPD first and hardest. Already in February and March 1933, their leaders were arrested and a part of the organisational structures was destroyed with utmost brutality. Given that the KPD had already made preparations for illegality, they were ready to go underground with their work. However, no amount of preparation or number of attempts to rebuild the structures was enough to resist the intensity of the prosecution mounted by the Gestapo. Time and again they managed to find and destroy the organisations re-established by the communist resistance. Mass arrests of communists were common and a high number of propagandist trials were staged. Hundreds of Cologne communists fled the country; hundreds were taken to court and convicted. 113 of the 142 proceedings concerning Cologne resistance fighters known until today that took place between 1934 and 1938 involved members of the KPD. Compared to all other resistance groups, most victims were from the KPD.

Social democracy

In 1933, the SPD was caught off guard, and thus was ill prepared to mitigate the consequences of a party ban and take the party underground. In Cologne too, facing the unexpected terror of the NS regime towards the SPD, the social democratic organisation disbanded quickly, with negligible resistance. Whilst a number of high profile SPD members went into exile, the majority withdrew from political life, with some trying to maintain a community of like-minded spirits via informal or secret contacts in the neighbourhood or within associations. Smaller groups of members of the SPD and labour unions put up active resistance, however these efforts were already brought to and end in June 1935.

This social democratic resistance in Cologne played a key role due to the city’s location near the border – it represented a link between the border secretariat of the exile party organisation (Sopade) in Belgium and the social democrats in the Reich who were active resistance fighters. A group around Franz Bott, Hein Hamacher and Willi Schirrmacher took charge of this task. It smuggled camouflaged leaflets and brochures published abroad to Germany, distributed and passed them on in Cologne. In return, they provided political status reports to the border secretariat in Belgium.

Left-wing socialist groups

During the Weimar Republic, a number of left-wing socialist and communist groups came into being apart from the large left-wing parties, there were, e.g. the socialist workers’ party (SAP), a spin-off of the SPD and the communist opposition (KPD-O) that had broken away from the KPD. Contrary to the SPD and KPD party leaders, these groups had a more realistic understanding of the aims and ruthless strife for power of the National Socialists so that they had already, albeit in vain, urged to form an ‘antifascist united front’ by the end of the Weimar Republic. Also after the seizure of power by the National Socialists, they tried to overcome the fragmentation of the resistance movement and achieve a cooperation of the individual resistance groups.

These relatively small opposition groups that often only counted a few people amongst its members were important in Cologne as they demonstrated resistance against the regime, contributed to the spreading of contrary opinions and established links between individuals and groups. Their networks were often destroyed by the Gestapo after a brief period of time; their members were arrested, deported and murdered.

Catholic Opposition

The Catholic ministerial church attempted to maintain room to manoeuvre within the NS system after the Concordat made in mid-1933. Its willingness to adapt only faded after 1934 when attacks on the Catholic Church started to increase. After finally a number of police regulations limited the scope of action of the church to merely church-related and religious issues, many reacted with defiance or protest. They did this by attending mass events organised by the church such as masses in the Cathedral, processions and pilgrimages; Catholics underlined that they were not going to fully subordinate themselves to a National Socialist policy of forcible coordination. Only few Catholics, however, put up active resistance.

Most of the few activists in Cologne were individual priests as well as lay officials of the Catholic workers’ movement and the Kolping family.

In the mid-1930’s, secret meetings took place at Kettelerhaus and later on also at Kolpinghaus on Breite Straße. The participants of these meetings were in close contact with the resistance group that prepared the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944. Within the scope of what was dubbed the ‘Gewitter’ (storm) coup, most members of that group were arrested by the Gestapo in August 1944 and initially interned on the trade fair premises in Deutz or the EL-DE House. Some of them such as Nikolaus Groß and Bernhard Letterhaus were executed after having been sentenced to death by the People’s Court, others were deported to concentration camps, where they were murdered.

Black Front

Internal opponents of Hitler within the NSDAP were organised in the ‘Black Front’ under the leadership of Otto Strasser in August 1931. They represented an extremely national conservative approach on the one hand and an expli - citly anti-capitalist policy on the other. The Cologne group counted 25 members and was run by Wilhelm Kayser. His sister Ursula Kayser, who lived in Wesel, smuggled resistance publications into the Reich and provided Otto Strasser with status reports while he was living in Prague and Vienna, respectively. In 1936, Wilhelm and Ursula Kayser were sentenced to prison for, among other things, plotting high treason.

The Bündische Jugend

Opposition against the NS regime by youths was driven by different motivations. Some of the youths such as the ‘Swing Kids’ wished for a more liberal leisure culture, others leaned towards the traditions of the Bündische Jugend (part of the free youth movement), which was made illegal in 1933, others rejected the state on religious grounds. A number of youths joined the opposition because they were seeking adventure. They all shared the common aim to avoid complete subordination to the Hitler Youth and establish their own youth identity.

During the Weimar Republic many adolescents came together in the Bündische Jugend, supporting a free youth culture that was independent from the traditional institutions involved in youth work such as churches, the labour unions and political parties. Despite the ban, groups of youths met in different Cologne neighbourhoods; there were, for instance, the ‘Navajos’ who tried to keep the bündische life - style and its traditions alive, in order to create their own lifestyle to - gether, singing songs and organising trips – away from the Hitler Youth drill. During the war, the composition of these groups changed frequently due to work and military service. Some groups became political and shifted towards political activism. The number of non-conforming youths from the Bündische Jugend and confessional groups in Cologne was very large. A file compiled by the Gestapo is said to have contained more than 3,000 names already by the end of the 1930’s. In terms of numbers, this means that these youths represented a much larger resistance potential than any other opposition group made up by adults. The regime persecuted these groups of youths with a vengeance and increasing intensity and violence. The Gestapo organised repeated raids during which they arrested numerous youths. It is true that most of them got away with warnings, but some were put on trial and punished quite severely in some cases, too. During the war, the persecution of non-conformist youths by the Gestapo continued – referred to with a generic term as ‘Edelweiss Pirates’

Resistance at the end of the war National Committee for a Free Germany

When it became clear in 1943 that the German troops were going to be defeated, the opposition movement in the Reich gained significance and the groups started to collaborate. As living conditions became more and more chaotic in 1944, opportunities arose more often to go underground, so that a large number of members of the opposition, deserters, escaped forced labourers and prisoners of war led clandestine double lives underground. This development also meant that the regime stepped up its terror and persecution towards the opposition. Following the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944, an especially ruthless wave of terror and oppression swept the country.

In Cologne, the largest and best-organised resistance group at the end of the war was probably the local branch of the National Committee for a Free Germany, an organisation that was founded by communists in the Soviet Union in July 1943. It was dominated by communists but in the Cologne group, social democrats, Christians and members of the middle class all worked together. In November 1944, the entire leadership of the Cologne National Committee was arrested in Klettenberg by the Gestapo.