- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plots planned by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was arrested in March 1943, imprisoned, and eventually hanged just before the end of the World War II in Europe.
- Sophie Scholl
Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 - 22 February 1943), along with her brother Hans Scholl, were members of the White Rose non-violent resistance movement in Nazi Germany. They were both convicted of treason and executed by guillotine. Since the 1970s she has been celebrated as one of those Germans who actively opposed the Third Reich during the Second World War.
- Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Count von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 - 21 July 1944) was a German army officer and one of the leading figures of the failed July 20 Plot of 1944 to kill Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany.
- People'S Court
The People's Court (German: "Volksgerichtshof") was a court established by German dictator Adolf Hitler. The "People's Court" was set up outside the operations of the constitutional frame of law. The court had jurisdiction over a rather broad array of "political offenses", which included crimes like black marketeering, work slowdowns, and defeatism.
- Ludwig Beck
Ludwig August Theodor Beck (June 29, 1880 - July 21, 1944) was a German general and the Chief of the General Staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany before World War II. Born in Biebrich in Hessen-Nassau, he was educated in the conservative Prussian military tradition. After serving on the Western Front in World War I, he was eventually promoted to the General Staff in 1933.
- Joachim Fest
Joachim Clemens Fest (December 8, 1926-September 11, 2006), German historian, journalist, critic and editor, is best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance. He was a leading figure in debate among German historians about the Nazi period.
- Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris (January 1, 1887 - April 9, 1945) was a German admiral and head of the "Abwehr", the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944.
- Hans Scholl
Hans Scholl (22 September 1918-22 February 1943) was a member of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. Hans was born in Ingersheim, a district of Crailsheim. He, along with his sister, Sophie, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and Professor Kurt Huber, wrote and distributed six leaflets denouncing Nazi actions in Europe and calling on the German people to resist what their government was doing.
- Henning von Tresckow
Henning Hermann Robert Karl von Tresckow (January 10 1901 - July 21 1944) was a Major General in the German Wehrmacht who is known for organizing German resistance against Hitler. Tresckow was born in Magdeburg into a Prussian noble family with a long military tradition; his father, a cavalry general, had been present at Versailles in 1871. Tresckow fought as one of the youngest soldiers with the rank of Leutnant during World War I on the Western Front.
- Friedrich Olbricht
Friedrich Olbricht (4 October 1888 - 21 July 1944) was a German general and one of the plotters involved in the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia on 20 July 1944.
- Hans Oster
Hans Oster was deputy head of the Abwehr, under Wilhelm Canaris, and a dedicated opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He was a central resistance figure; as early as 1937 he was plotting a coup against Hitler, whereby Count Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal and other officers would march into the Reich Chancellery and arrest him. The plan was aborted when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain adopted the policy of appeasement. After the outbreak of the Second World War, …
- Christoph Probst
Christoph Probst was a student of medicine and a member of the White Rose ("Weiße Rose") resistance group.
- Franz Halder
Franz Ritter Halder (June 30 1884 - April 2 1972) was a German General and the head of the Army General Staff from 1938 until September 1942, when he was dismissed after frequent disagreements with Adolf Hitler.
- Julius Leber
Julius Leber was a German politician and a member of the German Resistance against the Nazi régime Leber was born in Biesheim, Alsace, out of wedlock, to Katharina Schubetzer and later adopted by her Freemason husband Jean Leber. Leber ended his school days in Breisach in 1908 with a "Mittlere Reife" qualification from a vocational high school, having completed training in salesmanship in a wallpaper factory in Breisach.
- Martin Niemöller
Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller was a prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known as the author of the poem "First they came...". Although he was a national conservative, an antisemite, and initially a sympathizer of Adolf Hitler, he became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. For his opposition to the Nazi's state control of the churches, …
- Adam Von Trott Zu Solz
Adam von Trott zu Solz was a lawyer and diplomat who opposed the Nazi regime. Born in Potsdam, Germany, he was the fifth child of leading Prussian civil servant August von Trott zu Solz. Adam went to the UK in 1931 on a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Balliol College, Oxford where he became close friends with David Astor. Following his studies at Oxford, von Trott went on to spend six months in the United States. He was a great-great-great grandson of John Jay, …
- Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (July 31, 1884 - February 2, 1945) was a conservative German politician and opponent of the Nazi regime.
- Friedrich Fromm
Friedrich Fromm (October 8 1888 - March 12 1945) was a German army officer remembered for his betrayal of conspirators involved in the July 20 Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Fromm was born in Charlottenburg. He served as a lieutenant during the First World War. In World War II Fromm was Commander in Chief of the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer), in charge of training and personnel replacement for the German Army, a position he occupied for most of the Second World War.
- Erwin von Witzleben
Job-Wilhelm Georg "Erwin" von Witzleben (4 December 1881 - 8 August 1944) was a German army officer (by 1940 a "Generalfeldmarschall") and in the Second World War an Army commander and a resistance fighter in the July 20 Plot.
- Hans von Dohnanyi
Hans von Dohnanyi (born 1 January 1902 in Vienna; died 8 or 9 April 1945 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp) was a German jurist and resistance fighter against the Nazi Germany régime.
- Fabian von Schlabrendorff
Fabian von Schlabrendorff trained as a lawyer, later joining the German Army. As a lieutenant in the reserves, he was promoted to adjutant to Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a major leader in the resistance against Adolf Hitler. He joined the resistance and acted as a secret liaison between Tresckow in Russia and Ludwig Beck, Carl Goerdeler, Hans Oster, and Friedrich Olbricht in Berlin, taking part in various coup d'état plans and plots.
- Georg Elser
Johann Georg Elser (4 January 1903 - 9 April 1945) was a German opponent of Nazism. He is best remembered for his unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1939.
- Kurt Huber
Kurt Huber (October 24, 1893-July 13, 1943) was a member of the White Rose group, which carried out resistance against Nazi Germany. Huber was born in Chur, Switzerland, to German parents. He grew up in Stuttgart and, later (after his father's death), in Munich. He showed an aptitude for such subjects as music, philosophy and psychology, and became a professor in 1920.
- Ulrich von Hassell
Ulrich von Hassell (12 November 1881 - 8 September 1944) was a German diplomat during World War II. A member of the German Resistance against German dictator Adolf Hitler, von Hassell was executed in the aftermath of the failed July 20 plot.
- Werner von Haeften
Werner Karl von Haeften (9 October 1908 - 20 July 1944) was an Oberleutnant in the Wehrmacht, who took part in the military-based conspiracy against Adolf Hitler known as the July 20 Plot. Haeften and his brother Hans Bernd von Haeften were born in Berlin to Hans von Haeften, an army officer and President of the "Reichsarchiv". He studied law in his hometown and then worked for a bank in Hamburg until the outbreak of World War II, when he joined the German army.
- Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (11 March 1907 - 23 January 1945) was a German jurist, a member of the opposition against Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, and a founding member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group. He was the great-grandnephew of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the victorious commander in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, and the owner of the Kreisau Estate in Silesia. He was a member of the Prussian House of Lords, Graf Helmuth von Moltke.
- Alexander Schmorell
Alexander Schmorell and then into the Wehrmacht (German Army during the Nazi era). In 1938, he took part in the annexation of Austria and eventually in the Wehrmacht invasion of Czechoslovakia. After his military service, the artistically gifted Alexander Schmorell began studies in medicine in 1939 in Hamburg. In the autumn of 1940, he went back with his student corps to Munich where he got to know Hans Scholl, and later Willi Graf.
- John Wheeler-Bennett
Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett, GCVO, CMG, OBE, FBA, FRSL was a conservative English historian of German and diplomatic history, and the official biographer of King George VI. Perhaps Wheeler-Bennett's most tragic flaws were his satisfaction at the murders of members of the German Resistance by the Gestapo and the SS, as well as his early trust in Adolf Hitler, which led to Wheeler-Bennett's claim that "Hitler, I am convinced, …
- Günther von Kluge
Günther “Hans” von Kluge, was a German military leader. He was born in Posen into a Prussian military family. Von Kluge, being familiar with the "Blitzkrieg" concept, became a field marshal. During World War I he was a staff officer and in 1916 was at the Battle of Verdun. By 1936 he was a lieutenant-general and in 1937 took command of the Sixth Army Group, which became the German Fourth Army that he led in Poland in 1939.
- Hans Bernd Gisevius
Hans Bernd Gisevius was a German diplomat and intelligence officer during World War II. A leading opponent of the Nazi regime, he served as a liaison in Zürich between the American OSS and the German Resistance forces in Germany.
- Alfred Delp
Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. was a German priest who took part in the resistance to the Nazi régime in Germany.
- Arvid Harnack
Arvid Harnack (born 24 May 1901 in Darmstadt; died 22 December 1942 in Berlin, executed) was a German jurist, economist, and resistance fighter in Nazi Germany.
- Johannes Popitz
Johannes Popitz (2 December 1884 - 2 February 1945) was a Prussian finance minister and a member of the German Resistance against Nazi Germany.
- Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim
Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim (25 March 1905 - 21 July 1944) was a German officer and a resistance fighter in Nazi Germany involved in the July 20 Plot against Adolf Hitler. Quirnheim was born in Munich, Bavaria, to Hermann Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, a captain on the Bavarian General Staff. He spent his youth in the Bavarian capital before his father became head of the Imperial Archive (the "Reichsarchiv") and the family moved to Potsdam.
- Peter Yorck von Wartenburg
Peter Count Yorck von Wartenburg was a German jurist and a member of the German Resistance against Nazi Germany. Yorck von Wartenburg was born in Klein-Öls near Ohlau in the Province of Silesia; he came from a family of Silesian landowners. He was descended from Generals Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and Johann David Ludwig Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, who were both his great-great-grandfathers. Also, he was philosopher Paul Yorck von Wartenburg's grandson.
- Elisabeth von Thadden
Elisabeth Adelheid Hildegard von Thadden (born 29 July 1890 in Mohrungen, East Prussia, now Morąg, Poland; died 9 September 1944 in Berlin, executed) was a German educator who founded a private school that now bears her name, and an outspoken critic of the Nazi régime. She was put to death in the wake of the July 20 Plot, although it appears highly unlikely that she was involved in any plot to overthrow the Nazis.
- Erich Fellgiebel
Fritz Erich Fellgiebel was a German officer and resistance fighter in the Third Reich.
- Philipp von Boeselager
Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager is one of the last surviving members of the July 20 Plot, a conspiracy among high-ranking Wehrmacht officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. At the time Boeselager was a 25-year-old field lieutenant, …
- Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel
Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, sometimes Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel was a German general and a member of the July 20 Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Born in Berlin, Stülpnagel joined the German military right after he finished school in 1904, and in the First World War, he was in the "Reichswehr" as a general staff officer.
- Wilhelm Leuschner
Wilhelm Leuschner was a social-democratic politician who opposed the Third Reich until he was murdered. Wilhelm Leuschner, a stove fitter's son, was born in 1890. His father's name was also Wilhelm Leuschner, and his mother's name was Marie. Leuschner grew up in poverty. In 1903, he began an apprenticeship as a wood sculptor. After finishing this in 1907, he joined the trade union and, on the occasion of the Youth Style Exhibition, he moved to Darmstadt, …