#abwehr

A common criticism of the now well known 20th July plot was that many of the German conspirators were opposed to how Hitler was leading the war but not the Nazi regime as a whole or only opposed the Nazis once the fate of the war had already been decided. This was however certainly not the case for all who resisted Hitler within Germany.

These two men form part of the exception to this criticism and were consistent in their opposition from the early days of the 1930‘s and throughout the Nazi rule in Germany.

For me one of the greatest tragedies was learning of their names through wartime fiction and not through school, TV documentaries or books about WW2.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906 -1945

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor and theologian who was part of a well educated and connected family. In his early years he travelled and had witnessed the poor treatment of black Americans.

He returned to Germany in the early 1930’s and spoke out against the Nazis before they were elected and became a founding member of the Confession Church. This new church opposed the Nazi interference in religious teachings which sought to revise the bible to exclude Jewish influences and also remove pastors of Jewish descent.

When Bonhoeffer drew the attention of the Nazi party he was banned from public speaking and later banned from the city of Berlin but continued to gather support to oppose the Nazi influence on the church in secret.

He was informed of the 1938 plot to arrest Hitler by his brother in law Hans von Dohnányi who use his position in the Abwehr to keep him informed of the Nazi atrocities and to also get Dietrich himself a position in the Abwehr which protected him from conscription and allowed him to continue his work. He became aware that his brother in law had moved to conspiring to kill Hitler not just arrest him which as a pastor Bonhoeffer was originally against but eventually agreed that they needed to stop Hitler at any cost.

His role was to be a courier, assigned to engage in covert talks with foreign church leaders who could communicate with the Allies. He had hoped his position could allow for peace terms for Germany to be discussed however Allied wartime policy would ignore resistance from with Germany. This was party due to the allies needing to remove any ambiguity when it came to placing the blame on the Germans for the war but also because they had been fooled in the past by an SD agent pretending be be with the resistance and passing on false information. It was nethertheless unfortunate that communication from the real German resistance would be then be ignored.

Bonhoeffer was eventually arrested on grounds of sedition and sent to Tegel prison where he used his teachings and faith to comfort other prisoners and he even impressed some of the guards with his courage and strength and a few of these guards were persuaded to assist him by allowing letters to be sent to his family and one even offered to help him escape although he refused as he was worried of the consequences it may have on his family.

When the diaries of Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr (another key member of the resistance) were discovered he was found to be linked to the 20th July plot and was moved to Buchenwald and eventually Flossenburg concentration camp where he was hanged on 9th April 1945.

Hans von Dohnányi 1902 - 1945

Hans von Dohnányi was like his brother in law, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, well educated. He was a lawyer and also someone who opposed the Nazis before they had come to be elected. He began to write down the Nazi parties crimes which he planned to use as evidence if they were overthrown.

He was recruited into the Abwehr, the military intelligence service, by Hans Oster, a Wehrmacht colonel at that time and later a general but more importantly someone who also opposed the Nazis before the war had began and worked under Admiral Canaris.

The Abwehr had recruited a number of opposers to the Nazis who would work legitimately within the intelligence service but who would secretly also work against their own government. Hans would have access to their archives and he soon learned of Hitler’s military plans for Europe as well as atrocities which were being perpetrated against the Jews and on the eastern front. He became part of the active resistance to arrest Hitler in 1938 along with Hans Oster and others and would later be involved in an assassination attempts on Hitler’s life including in 1943 where a bomb was smuggled onto Hitler's plane but unfortunately didn't detonate.

The previous year Hans had taken part in a secret Abwehr operation to smuggle 13 Jews out of Germany and had illegally transfered government funds to support the Jews who were now living in Switzerland. This transfer of money would then led to his arrest in 1943 and eventual transfer to Sachsenhausen. Hans had worked to bring together civilians and military personnel who opposed the government in an effort to establish a more organised resistance. This lead to his conviction for his involvement in planning of the 20th July plot.

He was executed in Sachsenhausen likely on the same day as Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenbürg, 9th April 1945 . He is now recognised as one of the righteous among Nations by Israel.

Wie wollen wir in Zukunft leben?

Evolutionär betrachtet hat sich in der Natur alles bewährt, was funktionierte. Der Stärkere hat überlebt, sich fortgepflanzt und weiter entwickelt. Das betrifft uns Menschen ebenso wie Mikroorganismen.

Nun gibt es da einen neuen Feind, ein Virus, das gefährlicher zu sein scheint als die, die wir bisher kennen.

Das gesunde Immunsystem würde in den aller meisten Fällen mit Anpassung reagieren, den Feind identifizieren, ausmerzen und ein Foto behalten, damit das nicht nochmal passiert. Wir sind immun. Dieser Prozess braucht viel Kraft, deshalb fühlen wir uns krank und liegen im Bett. Nebenbei stecken wir dadurch niemanden an. Wenn wir dann wieder in die Welt hinaus gehen, sorgen wir mit unserer neu erworbenen Immunität dafür, dass weniger vitale Menschen nicht krank werden. Zusätzlich könnten wir diesen Menschen einige Tipps zum Schutz ihrer Gesundheit geben und an Orten, wo viele immunschwache Menschen sind, besondere Schutzmaßnahmen anwenden. Wir könnten alle Menschen darin bestärken, ihre natürliche Abwehr durch frische Luft, gesunde Ernährung, Sport, Nähe, Geborgenheit und guter Laune zu verbessern. Wer zusätzlich etwas tun möchte, kann Vitamin D und C, sowie Zink zu sich nehmen.

Auf diese Art würden wir Menschen die uns von der Natur zur Verfügung gestellten, körpereigenen Ressourcen nutzen, ausbauen und diejenigen, die das nicht haben, schützen. Wir würden uns anpassen, der Evolution folgen und wären weiterhin gewappnet für das Dominieren gegenüber diesem und allen weiteren Mikroorganismen, die noch kommen werden. Und sie werden kommen, das steht fest.

Marius Goring as Colonel Henri in Odette (1950) directed by Herbert Wilcox.

He co-starred with Anna Neagle (Odette Sansom/Code Name: Lise), Trevor Howard (Peter Churchill/Code Name: Raoul) and Peter Ustinov (Alex Rabinovitch/Code Name: Arnauld) as a Deutsche Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) officer who captures Odette & Peter.

This is based on the true story of Odette Sansom, an SOE (Special Operations Executive) agent who worked for the Allies in WW2 France (her native land). She was captured, tortured by the Gestapo and spent the rest of the war in Ravensbrück concentration camp.

In this scene, Colonel Henri is observing a raid by his Abwehr agents on a safe house in Cannes, where SOE agents are meeting. He has been tipped off to their location by an SOE agent that he has arrested in Paris and turned.

Trivia: The shirt Marius is wearing and the scarf draped over the railing are the same ones that he wore in several scenes as Julian Craster from the 1948 film The Red Shoes directed by Powell & Pressburger. They must have been his own.