Munich Resistance

Not everyone in Nazi Germany were bystanders or supporters of the Nazis. There were some daring resistors who saw what Hitler was doing and decided to act. Even though Munich was the birthplace of Nazism, these people worked to undermine the Nazis and some ended up losing their lives because of it.

Today, Munich is exceptionally proud of these individuals because their actions support the idea that not everyone in Munich fell in love with Hitler’s ideas and actions. Here are three examples of resistors in Munich:

White Rose- Near the University of Munich stands a memorial with stones (which are permanent and do not wither like a flower- a typical Jewish custom). The memorial is there to commemorate six students at the university who created leaflets that explained the crimes the Nazis were engaged in and how the Nazi regime operated. They had to type out each copy; they had no printing press. The group managed to make six editions and delivered them despite heavy Gestapo presence in the area. Ultimately they were caught dumping leaflets out in the university by a janitor, who informed the dean, who in turn informed the Gestapo. For their actions, they were tortured and guillotined (with their heads forced to look up at the blade). Once their heads were removed, they were displayed to discourage individuals from writing against Hitler.



Their actions had major effects though. Because of their writing, many German towns gave up when they saw the Allies instead of fighting. The British found a set of the leaflets, made copies of them, and distributed them throughout Germany. As a result, their writing reached hundreds of thousands of people.

Johann Georg Elser-Johann Georg Elser tried to kill Hitler in 1939 and died in Dachau. He was a carpenter who heard Hitler’s message and decided that he needed to be stopped. He thought of a plan to kill Hitler that nearly worked. He knew that Hitler returned to Munich every year to reenact the speech that he gave during the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler would come back and give the speech during the same day and at the same time. He decided that he would use a timed bomb to kill Hitler. In order to work on his plan, he managed to get locked in the Burgerbrau Beer Cellar several nights after closing to work on hollowing out a pillar to plant a bomb. His plan would have worked had Hitler’s timing been slightly off. Hitler disliked flying in fog. One of his aides informed him that fog was rolling in, and it would be best if he finished slightly earlier to fly back to Berlin as soon as possible. Thirteen minutes after Hitler finished speaking, the building exploded. Had Hitler stuck to the scripted time, he would have been dead and history might be different.

Elser was caught trying to leave the country through Switzerland. He would have gotten away, but he was entering the country illegally and when they searched him they found pictures and blueprints from the building. This gave him away. He was sent to Dachau and tortured. Nazis thought that he was part of a larger plot to kill Hitler and that a simple man without an education couldn’t have acted alone. He fed into this idea by suggesting at times that there were more people involved only to rescind what he said later. He was killed just before the end of the war.



Dodgers’ Alley-The gold marking on the street is a path that many people in Munich used to take to avoid having to solute to a plaque that stood on the side of the building (see the picture of the darkened stone where the plaque once stood). Individuals who were caught walking through the alley without a justifiable reason three times were sent to Dachau for insubordination. If you walked by the plaque without saluting, the guards standing next to the plaque would beat you to the point of death.



Today, if you get caught doing the salute anywhere in Germany, you are subject to prison time and a heavy fine. Foreigners are subject to a heavy fine and being permanently banned from entering Germany again.