title: Dependency theory

text: Political dependency occurs when donors have too much influence in the governance of the receiving country. Many donors maintain a strong say in the government due to the country’s reliance on their money, causing a decrease in the effectiveness and democratic-quality of the government. This results in the receiving country’s government making policy that the donor agrees with and supports rather than what the people of the country desire. Government corruptibility increases as a result and inhibits reform of the government and political process in the country. These donors can include other countries or organizations with underlying intentions that may not be in favor of the people. Political dependency is an even stronger negative effect of aid dependency in countries where many of the problems stem from already corrupt politics and a lack of civil rights. For example, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo both have extremely high aid dependency ratios and have experienced political turmoil. The politics of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have involved civil war and changing of regimes in the 21st century and have one of the highest aid dependency ratios in Africa.


title: Dependency theory

text: As aid dependence can shift accountability away from the public and to being between state and donors, “presidentialism” can arise. Presidentialism is when the president and the cabinet within a political system have the power in political decision-making. In a democracy, budgets and public investment plans are to be approved by parliament. It is common for donors to fund projects outside of this budget and therefore go without parliament review. This further reinforces presidentialism and establishes practices that undermine democracy. Disputes over taxation and use of revenues are important in a democracy and can lead to better lives for citizens, but this cannot happen if citizens and parliaments don’t know the complete proposed budget and spending priorities.


title: Dependency theory

text: Aid dependency also compromises ownership which is marked by the ability of a government to implement its own ideas and policies. In aid dependent countries, the interests and ideas of aid agencies start to become priority and therefore erode ownership.


title: Dependency theory

text: Aid dependent countries rank worse in terms of level of corruption than in countries that are not dependent. Foreign aid is a potential source of rents, and rent-seeking can manifest as increased public sector employment. As public firms displace private investment, there is less pressure on the government to remain accountable and transparent as a result of the weakened private sector. Aid assists corruption which then fosters more corruption and creates a cycle. Foreign aid provides corrupt governments with free cash flow which further facilitates the corruption. Corruption works against economic growth and development, holding these poor countries down.


title: Dependency theory

text: Since 2000, aid dependency has decreased by about ⅓. This can be seen in countries like Ghana, whose aid dependency decreased from 47% to 27%, as well as in Mozambique, where the aid dependency decreased from 74% to 58%. Target areas to decrease aid dependence include job creation, regional integration, and commercial engagement and trade. Long-term investment in agriculture and infrastructure are key requirements to end aid dependency as it will allow the country to slowly decrease the amount of food aid received and begin to develop its own agricultural economy and solve the food insecurity


title: Dependency theory

text: Political corruption has been a strong force associated with maintaining dependency and being unable to see economic growth. During the Obama administration, congress claimed that the anti-corruption criteria The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) used was not strict enough and was one of the obstacles to decreasing aid dependence. Often, in countries with a high corruption perception index the aid money is taken from government officials in the public sector or taken from other corrupt individuals in the private sector. Efforts to disapprove aid to countries where corruption is very prevalent have been a common tool used by organizations and governments to ensure funding is used properly but also to encourage other countries to fix the corruption.


title: Dependency theory

text: It has been proven that foreign aid can prove useful in the long-run when directed towards the appropriate sector and managed accordingly. Specific pairing between organizations and donors with similar goals has produced more success in decreasing dependency than the tradition form of international aid which involves government to government communication. Botswana is a successful example of this. Botswana first began receiving aid in 1966. In this case, Botswana decided which areas needed aid and found donors accordingly rather than simply accepting aid from other countries whose governments had a say in where the money would be distributed towards. Recipient-led cases such as Botswana are more effective partially because it negates the donor’s desirability to report numbers on the efficiency of their programs (that often include short-term figures such as food distributed) and instead focuses more on long-term growth and development that may be directed more towards infrastructure, education, and job development.


title: Doris Duke

text: Doris Duke (November 22, 1912 – October 28, 1993) was an American billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist, art collector, horticulturalist, and socialite. She was often called "the richest girl in the world". Her great wealth, luxurious lifestyle, and love life attracted significant press coverage, both during her life and after her death.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke's passions varied wildly. Briefly a news correspondent in the 1940s, she also played jazz piano and learned to surf competitively. At her father's estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey, she created one of America's largest indoor botanical displays. She was also active in preserving more than 80 historic buildings in Newport, Rhode Island. Duke was close friends with former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and in 1968, when Duke created the Newport Restoration Foundation, Kennedy Onassis was appointed the vice president and championed the foundation.


title: Doris Duke

text: Her philanthropic work in AIDS research, medicine, and child welfare continued into her old age. She also donated funds to support and educate black students in the South who were disadvantaged because of racism. Her estimated $1.3 billion fortune was largely left to charity. Duke's legacy is now administered by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, dedicated to medical research, prevention of cruelty to children and animals, the performing arts, wildlife and ecology.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke was born in New York City, the only child of tobacco and hydroelectric power tycoon James Buchanan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman, widow of William Patterson Inman. At his death in 1925, the elder Duke's will bequeathed the majority of his estate to his wife and daughter, along with $17 million in two separate clauses of the will, to The Duke Endowment he had created in 1924. The total value of the estate was estimated variously from $60 - $100 million (equivalent to $ million to $ billion in ), the majority derived from J.B. Duke's holdings in the American Tobacco Company and the precursor of the Duke Power Company.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke spent her early childhood at Duke Farms, her father's estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. Due to ambiguity in James Duke's will, a lawsuit was filed in 1927 to prevent auctions and outright sales of real estate he had owned; in effect, Doris Duke successfully sued her mother and other executors to prevent the sales. One of the pieces of real estate in question was a Manhattan mansion at 1 East 78th Street which later became the home of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.


title: Doris Duke

text: When she turned 18, in 1930, the tall Duke was presented to society as a debutante, at a ball at Rough Point, the family residence in Newport, Rhode Island. She received large bequests from her father's will when she turned 21, 25, and 30; she was sometimes referred to as the "world's richest girl". Her mother died in 1962, leaving her jewelry, a coat, and an additional $250 million (see below).


title: Doris Duke

text: When Duke came of age, she used her wealth to pursue a variety of interests, including extensive world travel and the arts. She studied singing with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills, in New York City. During World War II, she worked in a canteen for sailors in Egypt, taking a salary of one dollar a year. She spoke French fluently. In 1945, Duke began a short-lived career as a foreign correspondent for the International News Service, reporting from different cities across the war-ravaged Europe. After the war, she moved to Paris and wrote for the magazine "Harper's Bazaar".


title: Doris Duke

text: While living in Hawaii, Duke became the first non-Hawaiian woman to take up competitive surfing under the tutelage of surfing champion and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and his brothers. A lover of animals, in particular her dogs and pet camels, in her later years Duke became a wildlife refuge supporter.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke's interest in horticulture led to a friendship with Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scientific farmer Louis Bromfield, who operated Malabar Farm, his country home in Lucas, Ohio in Richland County. Today, his farm is part of Malabar Farm State Park, made possible by a donation from Duke that helped purchase the property after Bromfield's death. A section of woods there is dedicated to her and bears her name.


title: Doris Duke

text: At age 46, Duke started to create Duke Gardens, an exotic public-display garden, to honor her father James Buchanan Duke. She extended new greenhouses from the Horace Trumbauer conservatory at her home in Duke Farms, New Jersey. Each of the eleven interconnected gardens was a full-scale re-creation of a garden theme, country or period, inspired by DuPont's Longwood Gardens. She designed the architectural, artistic and botanical elements of the displays based on observations from her extensive international travels. She also labored on their installation, sometimes working 16-hour days. Display construction began in 1958.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke had learned to play the piano at an early age and developed a lifelong appreciation of jazz and befriended jazz musicians. She also liked gospel music and sang in a gospel choir.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke cultivated an extensive art collection, principally of Islamic and Southeast Asian art. In 2014, sixty objects from her collection (including ceramics, textiles, paintings, tile panels, and full-scale architectural elements) were displayed temporarily at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in the exhibition "Doris Duke's Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art", organized by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. The collection is on public display at her former home in Honolulu, Hawaii, now the Museum of Islamic Art, Culture, & Design.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke acquired a number of homes. Her principal residence and official domicile was Duke Farms, her father's 2,700 acre (11 km) estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. Here she created Duke Gardens, a public indoor botanical display that was among the largest in America.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke's other residences were private during her lifetime: she spent summer weekends working on her Newport Restoration Foundation projects while staying at Rough Point, the 49-room English manor-style mansion that she inherited in Newport, Rhode Island.


title: Doris Duke

text: Winters were spent at an estate she built in the 1930s and named "Shangri La" in Honolulu, Hawaii; and at "Falcon Lair" in Beverly Hills, California, once the home of Rudolph Valentino. She also maintained two apartments in Manhattan: a nine-room penthouse with a veranda at 475 Park Avenue that was later owned by journalist Cindy Adams; and another apartment near Times Square that she used exclusively as an office for the management of her financial affairs.


title: Doris Duke

text: She purchased her own Boeing 737 jet and redecorated the interior to travel between homes and on her trips to collect art and plants. The plane included a bedroom decorated to resemble a bedroom in a real house. Doris Duke had difficulty remaining in one place, and whenever she arrived somewhere, she had the desire to go somewhere else.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke was a hands-on homeowner, climbing a ladder to a three-story scaffolding to clean tile murals in the courtyard of Shangri La, and working side by side with her gardeners at Duke Farms.


title: Doris Duke

text: Three of Duke's residences are currently managed by subsidiaries of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and allow limited public access. Duke Farms in New Jersey is managed by the Duke Farms Foundation; a video tour of the former Duke Gardens is available. Rough Point was deeded to the Newport Restoration Foundation in 1999 and opened to the public in 2000. Tours are limited to 12 people. Shangri-La is operated by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art; small personal tours and an online virtual tour are available.


title: Doris Duke

text: In 1966, Eduardo Tirella, curator of Duke's art holdings for the previous decade, decided to leave for a career in Hollywood as a production designer. He flew to Newport, where Duke was staying at Rough Point, on October 6, to collect his belongings and let Duke know that he was leaving her employ. His friends who also knew her had warned him she would not take it well, and the following afternoon the estate's staff overheard the two having a loud and lengthy argument before they got into a rented Dodge Polara to leave.


title: Doris Duke

text: In Duke's account of events she said Tirella, who had been driving, got out at the gate to open it, leaving the engine running but with the parking brake engaged and the transmission in park. Duke moved from the passenger seat to the driver's seat in order, she said later, to drive the car forward and pick up Tirella once the gate was open. In order to do so she released the parking brake and shifted into drive, but instead of putting her foot on the brake pedal she hit the gas. The vehicle, she told police later, pinned Tirella against the still-opening gates, knocked them over and then struck a tree across. Re-examination of the evidence at the scene is not consistent with this account. Tirella was found trapped under the car on Bellevue Avenue and was pronounced dead of serious injuries soon after.


title: Doris Duke

text: After a brief investigation, the Newport police ruled the death was accidental. Tirella's family sued Duke for wrongful death and won $75,000. They were initially awarded a larger sum that was subsequently reduced with the aid of Duke's lawyers. $ in today's dollars was divided among Tirella's eight siblings when Duke was found negligent after a trial five years later. Later biographies and her obituaries repeated the official finding.


title: Doris Duke

text: In 2020, Peter Lance, a Newport native who had begun his journalism career at "Newport Daily News" shortly after the incident, reinvestigated the case in a "Vanity Fair" article. He found initially that the police file on the case and the transcripts of the wrongful death suit brought by Tirella's family were missing from archives where they would normally be kept, but was able to find some of those documents later. They showed that the investigation into Duke had been cursory and compromised by conflicts of interest (shortly before the medical examiner arrived at the hospital, for instance, Duke had hired him as her personal physician, meaning anything she told him was protected by doctor-patient privilege).


title: Doris Duke

text: What Lance was able to find showed that Duke's account of the incident had changed and was inconsistent with the evidence. The parking brake could not have been released the way she said she had, and all of Tirella's injuries were above his waist, which suggests he was not trapped between the car and the gates when it broke through. The deep grooves left by the Polara's rear tires in the gravel suggested considerably more acceleration than what might have resulted from an accidental depression of the gas pedal. Lance, and several other experts who reviewed the evidence, concluded that it was far more likely that Duke had deliberately run Tirella over out of rage at his decision to leave her for Hollywood. This evidence would be more consistent with Duke running Eduardo Tirella down just outside the gates. Having been flung over the hood of her car he came to rest in the road. At that point she proceeded to run the stricken man over resulting in his death.


title: Doris Duke

text: Shortly after the case was closed, Duke began making considerable philanthropic contributions to the city, including the repair of Cliff Walk around her estate, previously a source of friction between her and the city when her dogs had attacked tourists, and $10,000 to the hospital she had been taken to the night of the accident. Within months she established the Newport Restoration Foundation, which has since renovated 84 of the city's colonial era buildings. The police chief retired to Florida within a year and bought two condominiums for himself; he was succeeded as chief by the detective who had investigated the incident, instead of his boss who was seen as next in line. Belief persists today in Newport that there was a coverup facilitated by Duke "blood money".


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke married twice, the first time in 1935 to James H. R. Cromwell, the son of Eva Stotesbury and stepson of wealthy financier Edward T. Stotesbury. Cromwell was a New Deal advocate like his wife; Duke used her fortune to finance his political career. In 1940 he served several months as U.S. Ambassador to Canada and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. The couple had a daughter, Arden, who was born prematurely on July 11, 1940, in Honolulu and died on the following day. They divorced in 1943. In 1988 Duke adopted 32-year-old Chandi Heffner in Hawaii.


title: Doris Duke

text: On September 1, 1947, while in Paris, Duke became the third wife of Porfirio Rubirosa, a diplomat from the Dominican Republic. She reportedly paid his second wife, actress Danielle Darrieux, $1 million to agree to an uncontested divorce. Because of her great wealth, Duke's marriage to Rubirosa attracted the attention of the U.S. State Department, which cautioned her against using her money to promote a political agenda. Further, there was concern that in the event of her death, a foreign government could gain too much leverage. Therefore, Rubirosa had to sign a pre-nuptial agreement. During the marriage though, she gave Rubirosa several million dollars in gifts, including a stable of polo ponies, sports cars, a converted B-25 bomber, and, in the divorce settlement, a 17th-century house in Paris.


title: Doris Duke

text: She reportedly had numerous affairs, with, among others, Duke Kahanamoku, Errol Flynn, Alec Cunningham-Reid, General George S. Patton, Joe Castro and Louis Bromfield.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke posted a bail of $5,000,000 for her friend, former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos after the latter was arrested for racketeering.


title: Doris Duke

text: In 1992, at the age of 79, Duke had a facelift. She began trying to walk while she was still heavily medicated and fell, breaking her hip. In January 1993, she underwent surgery for a knee replacement. She was hospitalized from February 2 to April 15. She underwent a second knee surgery in July of that year.


title: Doris Duke

text: A day after returning home from this second surgery, she suffered a severe stroke. Doris Duke died at her Falcon's Lair home on October 28, 1993, at the age of 80. The cause was progressive pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest, according to a spokesman.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke was cremated 24 hours after her death and her executor, Bernard Lafferty, scattered her ashes into the Pacific Ocean as her last will specified. Rumors and accusations swirled after Duke's death, ranging from suicide to murder, and controversy was exacerbated by Duke's habit of regularly changing her last will and testament, but no court case was ever filed in the case.


title: Doris Duke

text: When Doris' father died, he left a fortune valued at $100 million, with the largest share going to Duke and her mother. Nanaline was a shrewd businesswoman, often compared to Hetty Green, and when she died in 1962, she left her daughter an estate then estimated to be worth $250 million.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke also owned numerous shares in big-name companies, such as General Motors, and had a large financial team of bankers and accountants to manage her holdings. In addition, Duke had a collection of artwork, which was said to include works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Monet, as well as her valuable collection of Islamic and Southeast Asia art and furniture. Also in Duke's collection were over 2,000 bottles of rare wine (worth over $5 million) and the extraordinary Duke collection of fine jewels. Her total net worth, including all property, was valued at $5.3 billion.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke's first major philanthropic act was to establish Independent Aid, Inc., in 1934, when she was 21 years old, in order to manage the many requests for financial assistance addressed to her. In 1958, she established the Duke Gardens Foundation to endow the public display gardens she started to create at Duke Farms. Her Foundation intended that Duke Gardens "reveal the interests and philanthropic aspirations of the Duke family, as well as an appreciation for other cultures and a yearning for global understanding". Duke Gardens were the center of a controversy over the decision by the trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to close them on May 25, 2008.


title: Doris Duke

text: In 1963, Duke funded the construction of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram on land leased from the state forestry department of Uttar Pradesh in India. As the Maharishi's International Academy of Meditation, the ashram became the focus of global attention five years later when the Beatles studied there.<ref name="Bag/LiveMint"></ref>


title: Doris Duke

text: In 1968, Duke created the Newport Restoration Foundation with the goal of preserving more than eighty colonial buildings in the town. Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, with whom Duke was friends, was the vice president and publicly supported the foundation. Duke was also friends with artist Andy Warhol. Historic properties include Rough Point, Samuel Whitehorne House, Prescott Farm, the Buloid-Perry House, the King's Arms Tavern, the Baptist Meetinghouse, and the Cotton House. Seventy-one buildings are rented to tenants. Only five function as museums.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke's extensive travels led to an interest in a variety of cultures, and during her lifetime she amassed a considerable collection of Islamic and Southeast Asian art. After her death, numerous pieces were donated to The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke did much additional philanthropic work and was a major benefactor of medical research and child welfare programs. In the late 1980s, Duke donated $2 million to Duke University to be used for AIDS research. Her foundation, Independent Aid, became the Doris Duke Foundation, which still exists as a private grant-making entity. After her death, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was established in 1996, supporting four national grant making programs and Doris Duke's three estates, Shangri La, Rough Point, and Duke Farms.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke was the life beneficiary of two trusts created by her father, James Buchanan Duke, in 1917 and 1924. The income from the trusts was payable to any children after her death. In 1988, at the age of 75, Duke legally adopted a woman named Chandi Heffner, then a 35-year-old Hare Krishna devotee and sister of the third wife of billionaire Nelson Peltz. Duke initially maintained that Heffner was the reincarnation of her only biological child Arden, who died soon after birth in 1940.


title: Doris Duke

text: The two women had a falling out, and the final version of Duke's will specified that she did not wish Heffner to benefit from her father's trusts; she also negated the adoption. Despite the negation, after Duke's death, the estate's trustees settled a lawsuit brought by Heffner for $65 million.


title: Doris Duke

text: In her final will, Duke left virtually all of her fortune to several existing and new charitable foundations. She appointed her butler, Bernard Lafferty, as executor of her estate. Lafferty appointed the U.S. Trust company as corporate co-executor. Lafferty and Duke's friend Marion Oates Charles were named as her trustees.


title: Doris Duke

text: However a number of lawsuits were filed against the will. At death, Duke's fortune was estimated at upwards of $1.2 billion. The best-known lawsuit was initiated by Harry Demopoulos. In an earlier will, Demopoulos had been named executor and challenged Lafferty's appointment. Demopolous argued that Lafferty and his lawyers had cajoled a sick, sedated old woman into giving him control of her estate.


title: Doris Duke

text: Even more sensational accusations were made by a nurse, Tammy Payette, who contended that Lafferty and a prominent Beverly Hills physician, Dr. Charles Kivowitz, had conspired to hasten Duke's death with morphine and Demerol. In 1996, the year Lafferty died, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office ruled there was no firm evidence of foul play.


title: Doris Duke

text: Duke University also filed suit, claiming entitlement to a larger share of the Duke assets than the $10 million provided in the will, although Duke's will also stated that any beneficiary who disputed its provisions should receive nothing.


title: Doris Duke

text: Litigation involving 40 lawyers at 10 law firms tied up the Duke estate for nearly three years. New York courts ultimately removed Lafferty for using estate funds for his own support and U.S. Trust for failing "to do anything to stop him". The Surrogate Court of Manhattan overrode Duke's will and appointed new trustees from among those who had challenged it: Harry Demopoulos; J. Carter Brown (later also involved in overturning the will of Albert C. Barnes); Marion Oates Charles, the sole trustee from Duke's last will; James Gill, a lawyer; Nannerl O. Keohane, president of Duke University; and John J. Mack, president of Morgan Stanley. The fees for their lawsuits exceeded $10 million, and were paid by the Duke estate. These trustees now control all assets of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which Doris Duke directed should support medical research, anti-vivisectionism, prevention of cruelty to children and animals, performance arts, wildlife, and ecology.


title: Doris Duke

text: The DDCF also controls funding for the three separate foundations created to operate Duke's former homes: the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Duke Farms and Newport Restoration Foundation. The trustees have progressively reduced funding for these foundations, stating that Doris Duke's own works are "perpetuating the Duke family history of personal passions and conspicuous consumption." Subsequently, the foundations have sold some assets and have closed Duke Gardens. Auction house Christie's published a heavily-illustrated catalog of more than 600 pages for its auction of "The Doris Duke Collection, sold to benefit the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation", held in New York City over three days in 2004.


title: Doris Duke

text: The last living heirs to Duke's fortune are twins Georgia Inman and Walker "Patterson" Inman III, the children of Walker Inman Jr., Duke's nephew through a half-brother on her mother's side. Their childhood included documented neglect, abuse, parental violence and addiction.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Georg Carl Tänzler (also known as Count Carl von Cosel (February 8, 1877 – July 3, 1952), was a German-born radiology technologist at the Marine-Hospital Service in Key West, Florida. He developed an obsession for a young Cuban-American tuberculosis patient, Elena "Helen" Milagro de Hoyos (July 31, 1909 – October 25, 1931), that carried on well after her death. In 1933, almost two years after her death, Tanzler removed Hoyos' body from its tomb, and lived with the corpse at his home for seven years until its discovery by Hoyos' relatives and authorities in 1940.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Tanzler went by many names; he was listed as Georg Karl Tänzler on his German marriage certificate. He was listed as Carl Tanzler von Cosel on his United States citizenship papers, and he was listed as Carl Tanzler on his Florida death certificate. Some of his hospital records were signed Count Carl Tanzler von Cosel.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Tanzler grew up in Imperial Germany, but, at some point, wound up in Australia just prior to the outbreak of World War I. The following "Editorial Note" accompanying the autobiographical account "The Trial Bay Organ: A Product of Wit and Ingenuity" by "Carl von Cosel" in the "Rosicrucian Digest" of March and April 1939, gives details about his stay in Australia before his internment during the Great War, as well as his subsequent return to Germany after the War:


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Tanzler's account of Trial Bay Gaol, his secret building of a sailboat, etc., is confirmed by Nyanatiloka Mahathera, who mentions that he planned to escape from the Gaol with "Count Carl von Cosel" in a sailboat, and provides other information about the internment of Germans in Australia during World War I.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Around 1920, following his return to Germany, Tanzler married Doris Schäfer (1889–1977). Together they had two children: Ayesha Tanzler (1922–1998), and Clarista Tanzler (1924–1934), who died of diphtheria.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Tanzler emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1926, sailing from Rotterdam on February 6, 1926 to Havana, Cuba. From Cuba he settled in Zephyrhills, Florida, where his sister had already emigrated, and was later joined by his wife and two daughters. Leaving his family behind in Zephyrhills in 1927, he took a job as a radiology technician at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida under the name Carl von Cosel.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: During his childhood in Germany, and later while traveling briefly in Genoa, Italy, Tanzler claimed to have been visited by visions of a dead, purported ancestor, Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel, who revealed the face of his true love, an exotic dark-haired woman, to him.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: On April 22, 1930, while working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, Tanzler met Maria Elena "Helen" Milagro de Hoyos (1909–1931), a local Cuban-American woman who had been brought to the hospital by her mother for an examination. Tanzler immediately recognized her as the beautiful dark-haired woman that had been revealed to him in his earlier "visions." By all accounts, Hoyos was viewed as a local beauty in Key West.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Elena was the daughter of local cigar maker Francisco "Pancho" Hoyos (1883–1934) and Aurora Milagro (1881–1940). She had two sisters, Florinda "Nana" Milagro Hoyos (1906–1944), who married Mario Medina (–1944) and also succumbed to tuberculosis; and Celia Milagro Hoyos (1913–1934). Medina, Nana's husband, was electrocuted trying to rescue a coworker who hit a powerline with his crane at a construction site.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: On February 18, 1926, Elena married Luis Mesa (1908–1974), the son of Caridad and Isaac Mesa. Mesa left Elena shortly after she suffered a miscarriage of the couple's child, and moved to Miami. Elena was legally married to Mesa at the time of her death.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Elena was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis, a typically fatal disease at the time, that eventually claimed the lives of almost all of her immediate family. Tanzler, with his self-professed medical knowledge, attempted to treat and cure Elena with a variety of medicines, as well as X-ray and electrical equipment, that were brought to the Hoyos' home. Tanzler showered Elena with gifts of jewelry and clothing, and allegedly professed his love to her, but no evidence has surfaced to show that any of his affection was reciprocated by Elena.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Despite Tanzler's best efforts, Elena died of tuberculosis at her parents' home in Key West on October 25, 1931. Tanzler paid for her funeral, and with the permission of her family, he then commissioned the construction of an above ground mausoleum in the Key West Cemetery, which he visited almost every night.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: One evening in April 1933, Tanzler crept through the cemetery where Elena was buried and removed her body from the mausoleum, carting it through the cemetery after dark on a toy wagon, and transported it to his home. He reportedly said that Elena’s spirit would come to him when he would sit by her grave and serenade her corpse with a favorite Spanish song. He also said that she would often tell him to take her from the grave.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Tanzler attached the corpse's bones together with piano wire and fitted the face with glass eyes. As the skin of the corpse decomposed, Tanzler replaced it with silk cloth soaked in wax and plaster of paris. As the hair fell out of Elena's decomposing scalp, Tanzler fashioned a wig from her hair, which he had previously obtained from her mother. Tanzler filled the corpse's abdominal and chest cavity with rags to keep the original form, dressed Elena's remains in stockings, jewelry, and gloves, and kept the body in his bed. Tanzler also used copious amounts of perfume, disinfectants, and preserving agents to mask the odor and forestall the effects of the corpse's decomposition.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: In October 1940, Elena's sister Florinda heard rumors of Tanzler sleeping with the disinterred body of her sister and confronted Tanzler at his home, where Elena's body was eventually discovered (he was also caught dancing with her corpse in front of an open window). Florinda notified the authorities, and Tanzler was arrested and detained. Tanzler was psychiatrically examined and found mentally competent to stand trial on the charge of "wantonly and maliciously destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization." After a preliminary hearing on October 9, 1940 at the Monroe County Courthouse in Key West, Tanzler was held to answer on the charge, but the case was eventually dropped, and he was released, as the statute of limitations for the crime had expired.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Shortly after the corpse's discovery by authorities, Elena's body was examined by physicians and pathologists, and put on public display at the Dean-Lopez Funeral Home, where it was viewed by as many as 6,800 people. Elena's body was eventually returned to the Key West Cemetery where the remains were buried in an unmarked grave, in a secret location, to prevent further tampering.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: The facts underlying the case and the preliminary hearing drew much interest from the media at the time (most notably, from the "Key West Citizen" and "Miami Herald"), and created a sensation among the public, both regionally and nationwide. The public mood was generally sympathetic to Tanzler, whom many viewed as an eccentric "romantic".


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Though not reported contemporaneously, research (most notably by authors Harrison and Swicegood) has revealed evidence of Tanzler's necrophilia with Elena's corpse. Two physicians (Dr. DePoo and Dr. Foraker) who attended the 1940 autopsy of Elena's remains recalled in 1972 that a vaginal tube had been inserted in the vaginal area of the corpse that allowed for intercourse. Others contend that since no evidence of necrophilia was presented at the 1940 preliminary hearing, and because the physicians' "proof" surfaced in 1972, over 30 years after the case had been dismissed, the necrophilia allegation is questionable. While no existing contemporary photographs of the autopsy or photographs taken at the public display show a tube, the necrophilia claim was repeated by the HBO "Autopsy" program in 1999.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: In 1944, Tanzler moved to Pasco County, Florida, close to Zephyrhills, where he wrote an autobiography that appeared in the pulp publication, "Fantastic Adventures", in 1947. His home was near his wife Doris, who apparently helped to support Tanzler in his later years. Tanzler received United States citizenship in 1950 in Tampa.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: Separated from his obsession, Tanzler used a death mask to create a life-sized effigy of Elena, and lived with it until his death at age 75 on July 3, 1952. His body was discovered on the floor of his home three weeks after his death. He died under the name "Carl Tanzler".


title: Carl Tanzler

text: It has been recounted that Tanzler was found in the arms of Elena's effigy upon discovery of his corpse, but his obituary reported that he died on the floor behind one of his organs. The obituary recounted: "a metal cylinder on a shelf above a table in it wrapped in silken cloth and a robe was a waxen image".


title: Carl Tanzler

text: It has been written (most notably by Swicegood) that Tanzler had the bodies switched (or that Elena's remains were secretly returned to him), and that he died with the real body of Elena.


title: Carl Tanzler

text: The story of Tanzler and Elena would be reproduced in pulp magazines in the years following his death, with various parties adding new details to the case. An article written by Michelfelder in 1982 tells of how renovation workers found a note allegedly written by Tanzler, confessing to have killed Elena by poisoning her:She died because I gave this to her mercifully. I mixed the root of wolfsbane (monkshood) with aconite diluted. It was palatable and my loved one departed this miserable world on October 25, 1931. Suffer no more sweet Elena. I have sent you to the angels with my golden elixir... Perez also claimed Tanzler had once told him that he 'would kill Elena if necessary to fulfil [his] destiny' The poison confession letter article was also cited by historian David L. Sloan on episode 44 of the "NightMerica" podcast.


title: Premarital sex

text: Premarital sex is sexual activity which is practiced by people before they are married. Premarital sex is considered a sin by a number of religions and also considered a moral issue which is taboo in many cultures. Since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, it has become accepted by certain liberal movements, especially in Western countries. A 2014 Pew study on global morality found that premarital sex was considered particularly unacceptable in "Muslim Majority Countries", such as Malaysia, Jordan, Pakistan, and Egypt, each having over 90% disapproval, while people in Western European countries were the most accepting, with Spain, Germany, and France expressing less than 10% disapproval.


title: Premarital sex

text: Until the 1950s, "premarital sex" referred to sexual relations between two people prior to marrying each other. During that period, it was the norm in Western societies for men and women to marry above the age of 21, and there were no considerations that one who had sex would not marry. The term was used instead of fornication, which had negative connotations, and was closely related to the concept and approval of virginity, which is sexual abstinence until marriage.


title: Premarital sex

text: The meaning has since shifted to refer to any sexual relations a person has prior to marriage and removing the emphasis on the relationship of the people involved. The definition has a degree of ambiguity. It is not clear whether sex between individuals legally forbidden from marrying or the sexual relations of one uninterested in marrying would be considered premarital.


title: Premarital sex

text: Alternative terms for premarital sex have been suggested, including "non-marital sex" (which overlaps with adultery), "youthful sex", "adolescent sex", and "young-adult sex". These terms also suffer from a degree of ambiguity, as the definition of "having sex" differs from person to person.


title: Premarital sex

text: In modern Western cultures, social value of sexual abstinence before marriage has declined. Historically, a significant portion of people had engaged in premarital sex, although the number willing to admit to this was not always high. In a study conducted in the United States, 61 percent of men and 12 percent of women born prior to 1910 admitted to having premarital sex; this gender disparity may have been caused by cultural double standards regarding the admission of sexual activity, or by men frequenting prostitutes.


title: Premarital sex

text: Starting in the 1920s, and especially after World War II, premarital sex became more common, particularly among women. By the end of the 20th century, between 75 and 80 percent of Americans had experienced vaginal intercourse before the age of 22. This has been attributed to numerous causes, including the increasing median age at marriage and the widespread availability of efficient contraceptives.


title: Premarital sex

text: According to a 2001 UNICEF survey, in 10 out of 12 developed nations with available data, more than two-thirds of young people have had sexual intercourse while still in their teens. In Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States, the proportion is over 80%. In Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, approximately 25% of 15-year-olds and 50% of 17-year-olds have sex. In a 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation study of US teenagers, 29% of teens reported feeling pressure to have sex, 33% of sexually active teens reported "being in a relationship where they felt things were moving too fast sexually", and 24% had "done something sexual they didn’t really want to do". Several polls have indicated peer pressure as a factor in encouraging both girls and boys to have sex.


title: Premarital sex

text: A majority of Americans have had premarital sex, according to a 2007 article in Public Health Reports. This is true for current young adults and also young adults in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Data from the National Survey of Family Growth indicate that in 2002, 77% of Americans had sex by age 20, and of that percent, 75% had premarital sex. In comparison, of women who turned 15 between 1964 and 1993, approximately 91% had premarital sex by age 30. Of women who turned 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% of them had had premarital sex by age 30. Additionally, when comparing the General Social Survey of 1988–1996 to the one of 2004–2012, researchers found that participants of 2004–2012 did not report more sexual partners since the age of 18, nor more frequent sex or sex partners during the past year than those respondents of the 1988-1996 survey. Furthermore, there appears to be no substantial change in sexual behavior contrasting the earlier era to the current one. However, current-era respondents were more likely to report having sex with a casual date or friend than reporting having sex with a spouse or regular partner. From 1943 to 1999, attitudes toward premarital sex changed such that young women's approval increased from 12% to 73% and from 40% to 79% among young men. People's feelings of sexual guilt also decreased during this period. As of 2005, less than 25% of people believe premarital sex is “always or almost always” wrong.


title: Premarital sex

text: Within the United States, a cohort study of young adults in university found that men self-report more permissive attitudes about casual sex than women. Another study found university students can be grouped by their ideal relationships—those who express a desire for sex exclusively in a committed partnership have fewer hookups and "friends with benefits" partners than those categorised as desiring "flexible" relationships and recreational sex.


title: Premarital sex

text: A 2006 study that analysed the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study found that more boys report having non-dating sexual partners than girls. Of this sample, a third of boys only have had sex with their romantic partner, another third of boys who have had sex with a partner they are not dating within the past year are believed to wish for the girl to be their girlfriend.<ref name="pmiddoi: 10.1177/0743558406291692"></ref> Many young adults are more likely to engage in sex with romantic partners than with casual acquaintances or "friends with benefits."


title: Premarital sex

text: A 2011 study that surveyed young adults about their emotional reactions after sexual encounters found that men reported more positive and fewer negative emotional reactions, and both men and women reported that the experience was largely more positive than negative. Women reported that condom use was associated with fewer positive and more negative emotional reactions, and for men condom use was associated with fewer negative emotional reactions. A 23-year study in a Human Sexuality class investigated gender differences in men and women's reactions to their first sexual experience. In the earlier years of the study, men reported more pleasure and greater anxiety than women, while women reported more feelings of guilt than men. Cohort studies carried out over 23 years found that in later years, women expressed greater pleasure and less guilt. The differences between emotional reactions among men and women decreased slightly during the 23 years. Such decreases in differences to first sexual intercourse may be a result of the increasing normality of premarital sex in America. An international online sex survey compared responses of residents of 37 countries against World Economic Forum figures for gender equality in those countries, finding that countries with high gender equality had respondents report more casual sex, a greater number of sex partners, younger ages for first sex, and greater tolerance of premarital sex.


title: Premarital sex

text: In some countries, gender differences with premarital sex can be linked to virginity. In India, a woman may undergo a "virginity test" on her wedding night where she can be banished by her husband or subject to an honor killing if found she is no longer a virgin. Men are not subjected to this same test and could get away with having premarital sex. In Iran, if a husband finds out his wife had premarital sex, it can be used as grounds for divorce. Therefore, hymen reconstruction surgery is not uncommon for women who wish to prove their virginity.


title: Premarital sex

text: Different ethnic and cultural groups in America have varied religiosity and sexual attitudes. A study with college participants found that Asians had more conservative sexual attitudes compared to Hispanics and Euro-Americans. Hispanics reported sexual attitudes similar to that of Euro-Americans. Asian, Hispanic, and Euro-American women with high levels of spirituality were found to have a correlation between conservative sexual attitudes and perceived religiosity. Religiosity and religious fundamentalism predicted conservative sexual attitudes most strongly in Euro-Americans and Asians.


title: Premarital sex

text: In the Indian city of Mumbai, research showed that among college-age students, 3% of females affirmed having premarital sex and 26% of college-aged men affirmed having premarital sex. Population Council, an international NGO, released a working report in 2006 showing similar statistics nationally in India, with fewer than ten percent of young females reporting having had premarital sex, compared with 15% to 30% of young males. In Pakistan, 11% of men were reported as having participated in pre-marital sex, although a greater percentage, 29% reported having participated in non-marital sex.


title: Premarital sex

text: People who have premarital sex are recommended by health professionals to take precautions to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as HIV/AIDS. There is also a risk of an unplanned pregnancy in heterosexual relationships. Around the world, sex education programs are run to teach school students about reproductive health, safer sex practices, sexual abstinence, and birth control.


title: Premarital sex

text: Sexual activity among unmarried people who do not have access to information about reproductive health and birth control can increase the rate of teenage pregnancies and contraction of sexually transmitted infections. The rates of teenage pregnancy vary and range from 143 per 1000 girls in some sub-Saharan African countries to 2.9 per 1000 in South Korea. The rate for the United States is 52.1 per 1000, the highest in the developed world – and about four times the European Union average. The teenage pregnancy rates between countries must take into account the level of general sex education available and access to contraceptive options.


title: Premarital sex

text: Views on premarital sex are often shaped by religious teachings and beliefs, in part because ancient religious texts forbid it. People who actively practice religion are less likely to engage in premarital sex or at least go longer before having sex for the first time. Muslims and Hindus are less likely to report having premarital sex than Christians, Jews, and Buddhists. Islam has the greatest effect of attitudes on premarital sex. People in predominantly Muslim societies have the lowest report of engaging in premarital sex. A study published in 2013 found that over 60% of Muslims reported to have had sex before marriage, compare to 65% of Hindus, 71% of Christians (primarily in Europe and North America), 84% of Jewish and over 85% of Buddhists who reported to have had sex before marriage. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have strict rules about specific behaviors and sex outside of marriage, in contrast, "Buddhism does not have similarly strict rules about specific behaviors". Students who attend a faith-based (predominantly Christian) university view premarital sexual activity more negatively than students who don't.


title: Premarital sex

text: The cultural acceptability of premarital sex varies between individuals, cultures and time periods. Western cultures have traditionally been disapproving of it, on occasions forbidding it. In other cultures, such as the Muria people of Madhya Pradesh, sexuality prior to marriage is accepted and at times expected.


title: Premarital sex

text: Individual views within a given society can vary greatly, with expectations ranging from total abstinence to frequent casual sex. These views are dependent on the holders' value system, as formed by their parents, religion, friends, experiences, and in many cases the media. Unmarried cohabitation and births outside marriage have increased in many Western countries during the past few decades. Economist Jeremy Greenwood (2019, Chp. 4) discusses how technological progress in contraception led to a rise in premarital sex and less stigmatization by parents, churches, and governments. He argues that singles weigh the cost (a potential pregnancy) and benefit of premarital sex. As contraception improved the cost of premarital sexual activity fell. Parents and social institutions also weigh the cost and benefit of socialization. Technological improvement in contraception reduced the benefit of socialization because premarital sexual activity was no longer as risky in terms of unwanted pregnancies, which placed a strain on parents and social institutions. As a result, there was social change.


title: Premarital sex

text: Sex before the public marriage ceremony was normal in the Anglican Church until the Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1753, which for the first time required all marriages in England and Wales occur in their parish church. (The law also applied to Catholics, but Jews and Quakers were exempt.) Before its enactment couples lived and slept together after their betrothal or "the spousals", which was considered a legal marriage. Until the mid-1700s it was normal and acceptable for the bride to be pregnant at the nuptials, the later public ceremony for the marriage. The Marriage Act combined the spousals and nuptials, and by the start of the 19th century social convention prescribed that brides be virgins at marriage. Illegitimacy became more socially discouraged, with first pregnancies outside marriage declining from 40% to 20% during the Victorian era. At the start of the 21st century, the figure was back up to 40%.


title: Premarital sex

text: In the United Kingdom, births outside marriage were up to 47.6% by 2012. In 2014, only 13% of the population found premarital sex unacceptable.


title: Premarital sex

text: During the colonial period, premarital sex was publicly frowned upon but privately condoned to an extent. Unmarried teenagers were often allowed to spend the night in bed together, though some measures such as bundling were sometimes attempted to prevent sexual intercourse. Even though premarital sex was somewhat condoned, having a child outside wedlock was not. If a pregnancy resulted from premarital sex, the young couple were expected to marry. Marriage and birth records from the late 1700s reveal that between 30 and 40 percent of New England brides were pregnant before marriage.


title: Premarital sex

text: The growing popularity of the automobile, and corresponding changes in dating practices, caused premarital sex to become more prevalent. Alfred Kinsey found that American women who became sexually mature during the 1920s were much less likely to be virgins at marriage than those who became mature before World War I. A majority of women during the 1920s under the age of 30 were nonetheless virgins at marriage, however, and half of those who were not only had sex with their fiancés. A 1938 survey of American college students found that 52% of men and 24% of women had had sex. 37% of women were virgins but believed sex outside marriage was acceptable. Prior to the middle of the 20th century, sexuality was generally constrained. Sexual interactions between people without plans to marry was considered unacceptable, with betrothal slightly lessening the stigma. However, premarital sex was still frowned upon.


title: Premarital sex

text: Beginning in the 1950s, as premarital sex became more common, the stigma attached to it lessened for many people. In 1969, 70% of Americans disapproved of premarital sex, but by 1973 this number had dropped to 50%. By 2000, roughly a third of couples in the United States had lived together prior to marriage. During the second half of the twentieth century, premarital sex has remained steady for men, but 60% more women lost their virginity prior to marriage during this same period. This has altered the traditional nuclear family, with half of all children living with a single parent at some point in their life.


title: Premarital sex

text: During this period of sexual liberation, sexual media and pornography became more prevalent and normalized premarital sex. People who watched pornography viewed both adult and teenage premarital sex as societally acceptable.


title: Premarital sex

text: However, premarital sex was still considered unacceptable by 30% of the population in a 2014 study, while 29% found it acceptable, and 36% considered it not a moral issue.


title: Premarital sex

text: According to a 2004 peer-reviewed study published in the "Journal of Marriage and Family" found that women who have more than one premarital sexual relationship have a higher likelihood in the long run of disruptions if ever married, with this effect being the "strongest for women who have multiple premarital coresidential unions". Kahn and London (1991) found that premarital sex and divorce are positively correlated.


title: Premarital sex

text: In December 2022 Indonesia’s parliament overhauled the country’s criminal code and outlawed sex outside marriage and cohabitation.


title: NATO reporting name

text: NATO reporting names are code names for military equipment from Russia, China, and historically, the Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact). They provide unambiguous and easily understood English words in a uniform manner in place of the original designations, which either may have been unknown to the Western world at the time or easily confused codes. For example, the Russian bomber jet Tupolev Tu-160 is simply called "Blackjack".


title: NATO reporting name

text: NATO maintains lists of the names. The assignment of the names for the Russian and Chinese aircraft was once managed by the five-nation Air Standardization Coordinating Committee (ASCC), but that is no longer the case.


title: NATO reporting name

text: The United States Department of Defense (DOD) expands on the NATO reporting names in some cases. NATO refers to surface-to-air missile systems mounted on ships or submarines with the same names as the corresponding land-based systems, but the US DoD assigns a different series of numbers with a different suffix (i.e., SA-N- vis-à-vis. SA-) for these systems. The names are kept the same as a convenience. Where there is no corresponding system, a new name is devised.


title: NATO reporting name

text: The Soviet Union did not always assign official "popular names" to its aircraft, but unofficial nicknames were common as in any air force. Generally, Soviet pilots did not use the NATO names, preferring a different, Russian, nickname. An exception was that Soviet airmen appreciated the MiG-29's codename "Fulcrum", as an indication of its pivotal role in Soviet air defence.


title: NATO reporting name

text: To reduce the risk of confusion, unusual or made-up names were allocated, the idea being that the names chosen would be unlikely to occur in normal conversation, and be easier to memorise. For fixed-wing aircraft, single-syllable words denoted piston-prop and turboprop, while multiple-syllable words denoted jets.


title: NATO reporting name

text: Bombers had names starting with the letter 'B' and names like "Badger" (Tupolev Tu-16), "Blackjack" (Tupolev Tu-160) and "Bear" (Tupolev Tu-95) were used. "Frogfoot," the reporting name for the Sukhoi Su-25, references the aircraft's close air support role. Transports had names starting with 'C' (for "cargo"), which resulted in names like "Condor" for the Antonov An-124 or "Candid" for the Ilyushin Il-76.


title: NATO reporting name

text: The first letter indicates the type of aircraft, like eg 'Bear' for a bomber aircraft refers to the Tupolev Tu-95, or 'Fulcrum' for the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 fighter aircraft. For fixed-wing aircraft, one-syllable names are used for propeller aircraft and two-syllable name for aircraft with jet engines. This distinction is not made for helicopters.


title: NATO reporting name

text: Before the 1980s, reporting names for submarines were taken from the NATO spelling alphabet. Modifications of existing designs were given descriptive terms, such as "Whiskey Long Bin". From the 1980s, new designs were given names derived from Russian words, such as "Akula", or "shark". These names did not correspond to the Soviet names. Coincidentally, "Akula", which was assigned to an attack submarine by NATO, was the actual Soviet name for the ballistic missile submarine NATO named "Typhoon-class". The NATO names for submarines of the People's Republic of China are taken from Chinese dynasties.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Many individuals and groups in Germany that were opposed to the Nazi regime engaged in active resistance, including attempts to remove Adolf Hitler from power by assassination or by overthrowing his established regime.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: German resistance was not recognized as a collective united resistance movement during the height of Nazi Germany, unlike the more coordinated efforts in other countries, such as Italy, Denmark, the Soviet Union, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and Norway. The German resistance consisted of small, isolated groups that were unable to mobilize widespread political opposition. Individual attacks on Nazi authority, sabotage, and the successful disclosure of information regarding Nazi armaments factories to the Allies, as by the Austrian resistance group led by Heinrich Maier prevailed alongside this as well. One strategy was to persuade leaders of the Wehrmacht to stage a coup against the regime; the 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler was intended to trigger such a coup.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: It has been estimated that during the course of World War II 800,000 Germans were arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activities. It has also been estimated that 15,000 of those Germans were executed by the Nazis, although new evidence suggests the death count may have been up to 77,000. These resistance members were usually tried, mostly in show trials, by Special Courts, courts-martial, People's Courts and the civil justice system. Many of these Germans had served in government, the military, or in civil positions, which enabled them to engage in subversion and conspiracy; in addition, the Canadian historian Peter Hoffmann counts unspecified "tens of thousands" in Nazi concentration camps who were either suspected of or actually engaged in opposition. By contrast, the German historian Hans Mommsen wrote that resistance in Germany was "resistance without the people" and that the number of those Germans engaged in resistance to the Nazi regime was very small. The resistance in Germany included German citizens of non-German ethnicity, such as members of the Polish minority who formed resistance groups like Olimp.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Historiographical debates on the subject on "Widerstand" have often featured intense arguments about the nature, extent and effectiveness of resistance in the Third Reich. In particular, debate has focused around what to define as "Widerstand" (resistance). The German opposition and resistance movements consisted of disparate political and ideological strands, which represented different classes of German society and seldom able to work together—indeed for much of the period there was little or no contact between the different strands of resistance. A few civilian resistance groups developed, but the Army was the only organisation with the capacity to overthrow the government, and from within it a few officers came to present the most serious threat posed to the Nazi regime. The Foreign Office and the Abwehr (Military Intelligence) also provided vital support to the movement. But many of those in the military who ultimately chose to seek to overthrow Adolf Hitler had initially supported the regime, if not all of its methods. Hitler's 1938 purge of the military was accompanied by increased militancy in the Nazification of Germany, a sharp intensification of the persecution of Jews, homosexuals, and trade union leaders and aggressive foreign policy, bringing Germany to the brink of war; it was at this time that the German Resistance emerged.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Those opposing the Nazi regime were motivated by such factors as the mistreatment of Jews, harassment of the churches, and the harsh actions of Himmler and the Gestapo. In his history of the German Resistance, Peter Hoffmann wrote that "National Socialism was not simply a party like any other; with its total acceptance of criminality it was an incarnation of evil, so that all those whose minds were attuned to democracy, Christianity, freedom, humanity or even mere legality found themselves forced into alliance...".


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Banned, underground political parties contributed one source of opposition. These included the Social Democrats (SPD)—with its paramilitary group the Iron Front and activists such as Julius Leber—Communists (KPD), and the anarcho-syndicalist group the Freie Arbeiter Union (FAUD), that distributed anti-Nazi propaganda and assisted people in fleeing the country. Another group, the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle), consisted of anti-fascists, communists, and an American woman. The individuals in this group began to assist their Jewish friends as early as 1933.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Whereas the German Christian movement sought to create a new, positive Christianity aligned with Nazi ideology, some Christian churches, Catholic and Protestant, contributed another source of opposition. Their stance was symbolically significant. The churches, as institutions, did not openly advocate for the overthrow of the Nazi state, but they remained one of the very few German institutions to retain some independence from the state, and were thus able to continue to co-ordinate a level of opposition to Government policies. They resisted the regime's efforts to intrude on ecclesiastical autonomy, but from the beginning, a minority of clergymen expressed broader reservations about the new order, and gradually their criticisms came to form a "coherent, systematic critique of many of the teachings of National Socialism". Some priests—such as the Jesuits Alfred Delp and Augustin Rösch and the Lutheran preacher Dietrich Bonhoeffer—were active and influential within the clandestine German Resistance, while figures such as Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller (who founded the Confessing Church), and the Catholic Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen (who denounced Nazi euthanasia and lawlessness), offered some of the most trenchant public criticism of the Third Reich—not only against intrusions by the regime into church governance and to arrests of clergy and expropriation of church property, but also to the fundamentals of human rights and justice as the foundation of a political system. Their example inspired some acts of overt resistance, such as that of the White Rose student group in Munich, and provided moral stimulus and guidance for various leading figures in the political Resistance.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: In Austria there were Habsburg-motivated groups. These were the special focus of the Gestapo, because their common goal—the overthrow of the Nazi regime and the re-establishment of an independent Austria under Habsburg leadership—was a special provocation for the Nazi regime, and especially because Hitler bristled with hatred of the Habsburg family. Hitler diametrically rejected the centuries-old Habsburg principles of "live and let live" with regard to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures and languages.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Because of Hitler's orders, many of these resistance fighters (according to current estimates approx. 4000–4500 Habsburg resistance fighters) were sent directly to the concentration camp without trial. 800 to 1,000 Habsburg resistance fighters were executed. As a unique attempt in the German Reich to act aggressively against the Nazi state or the Gestapo, their plans regarding the later executed Karl Burian to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna apply. The Catholic resistance group, led by Heinrich Maier, wanted to revive a Habsburg monarchy after the war on the one hand, and very successfully passed on plans and production sites for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks, Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and other aircraft to the Allies. From the fall of 1943 at least, these transmissions informed the Allies about the exact site plans of German production plants. The information was important to Operation Crossbow. With the location sketches of the manufacturing facilities, the Allied bombers were given precise air strikes. In contrast to many other German resistance groups, the Maier Group informed very early about the mass murder of Jews through their contacts with the Semperit factory near Auschwitz—a message the Americans in Zurich initially did not believe in the scope of.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: But even the Habsburg resistance on a small scale was followed extremely strictly. For example, in a People's Court ("Volksgerichtshof") trial in Vienna, an old, seriously ill and frail woman was sentenced to 4 years in prison for possessing a self-written note found in her wallet with the rhymed text "Wir wollen einen Kaiser von Gottesgnaden und keinen Blutmörder aus Berchtesgaden. (German: We want an emperor of divine grace and not a blood murderer from Berchtesgaden.)". Another Habsburg supporter was even sentenced to death by a Nazi court in Vienna for donating 9 Reichsmarks to "Rote Hilfe". The pro-Habsburg siblings Schönfeld were also sentenced to death for producing anti-Nazi leaflets.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Ernst Karl Winter founded in 1939 in New York the "Austrian American Center", a non-partisan national committee with a Habsburg background. This organized regular demonstrations and marches and published weekly publications. In the US there were also the "Austrian American League" as pro-Habsburg organizations. Otto von Habsburg, who was on the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. ("Special Search List Great Britain"), strongly opposed the Nazi regime. If he had been arrested by Nazi organs, he should be shot immediately without further proceedings. On the one hand, Habsburg provided thousands of refugees with the rescue visas and, on the other, made politics for the peoples of Central Europe with the Allies. The decisive factor was the attempt to keep the peoples of Central Europe out of the communist sphere of influence and to counterbalance a dominant post-war Germany. He obtained the support of Winston Churchill for a conservative "Danube Federation", in effect a restoration of Austria-Hungary, but Joseph Stalin put an end to these plans.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Individual Germans or small groups of people acting as the "unorganized resistance" defied the Nazi regime in various ways, most notably, those who helped Jews survive the Nazi Holocaust by hiding them, obtaining papers for them or in other ways aiding them. More than 300 Germans have been recognised for this. It also included, particularly in the later years of the regime, informal networks of young Germans who evaded serving in the Hitler Youth and defied the cultural policies of the Nazis in various ways.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: The German Army, the Foreign Office and the "Abwehr", the military intelligence organization became sources for plots against Hitler in 1938 and again in 1939, but for a variety of reasons could not implement their plans. After the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, they contacted many army officers who were convinced that Hitler was leading Germany to disaster, although fewer who were willing to engage in overt resistance. Active resisters in this group were frequently drawn from members of the Prussian aristocracy.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to concentration camps. As early as 1935 there were jingles warning:


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: "Dear Lord God, keep me quiet, so that I don't end up in Dachau." (It almost rhymes in German: "Lieber Herr Gott mach mich stumm / Daß ich nicht nach Dachau komm.") "Dachau" refers to the Dachau concentration camp. This is a parody of a common German children's prayer, "Lieber Gott mach mich fromm, daß ich in den Himmel komm." ("Dear God, make me pious, so I go to Heaven")


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: While it cannot be disputed that many Germans supported the regime until the end of the war, beneath the surface of German society there were also currents of resistance, if not always consciously political. The German historian Detlev Peukert, who pioneered the study of German society during the Nazi era, called this phenomenon "everyday resistance." His research was based partly on the regular reports by the Gestapo and the SD on morale and public opinion, and on the "Reports on Germany" which were produced by the exiled SPD based on information from its underground network in Germany and which were acknowledged to be very well informed.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Peukert and other writers have shown that the most persistent sources of dissatisfaction in Nazi Germany were the state of the economy and anger at the corruption of Nazi Party officials—although these rarely affected the personal popularity of Hitler himself. The Nazi regime is frequently credited with "curing unemployment," but this was done mainly by conscription and rearmament—the civilian economy remained weak throughout the Nazi period. Although prices were fixed by law, wages remained low and there were acute shortages, particularly once the war started. To this after 1942 was added the acute misery caused by Allied air attacks on German cities. The high living and venality of Nazi officials such as Hermann Göring aroused increasing anger. The result was "deep dissatisfaction among the population of all parts of the country, caused by failings in the economy, government intrusions into private life, disruption of accepted tradition and custom, and police-state controls."


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Otto and Elise Hampel protested the regime by leaving postcards urging resistance (both passive and forceful) against the regime around Berlin. It took two years before they were caught, convicted and then put to death.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Opposition based on this widespread dissatisfaction usually took "passive" forms—absenteeism, malingering, spreading rumours, trading on the black market, hoarding, avoiding various forms of state service such as donations to Nazi causes. But sometimes it took more active forms, such as warning people about to be arrested, hiding them or helping them to escape, or turning a blind eye to oppositionist activities. Among the industrial working class, where the underground SPD and KPD networks were always active, there were frequent if short-lived strikes. These were generally tolerated, at least before the outbreak of war, provided the demands of the strikers were purely economic and not political.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Another form of resistance was assisting the persecuted German Jews. By mid-1942 the deportation of German and Austrian Jews to the extermination camps in occupied Poland was well under way. It is argued by some writers that the great majority of Germans were indifferent to the fate of the Jews, and a substantial proportion actively supported the Nazi programme of extermination. But a minority persisted in trying to help Jews, even in the face of serious risk to themselves and their families. This was most pronounced in Berlin, where the Gestapo and SS were headquartered, but also where thousands of non-Jewish Berliners, some with powerful connections, risked hiding their Jewish neighbors.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Aristocrats such as Maria von Maltzan and Maria Therese von Hammerstein obtained papers for Jews and helped many to escape from Germany. In Wieblingen in Baden, Elisabeth von Thadden, a private girls' school principal, disregarded official edicts and continued to enroll Jewish girls at her school until May 1941 when the school was nationalised and she was dismissed (she was executed in 1944, following the Frau Solf Tea Party). A Berlin Protestant Minister, Heinrich Grüber, organised the smuggling of Jews to the Netherlands. At the Foreign Office, Canaris conspired to send a number of Jews to Switzerland under various pretexts. It is estimated that 2,000 Jews were hidden in Berlin until the end of the war. Martin Gilbert has documented numerous cases of Germans and Austrians, including officials and Army officers, who saved the lives of Jews.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Nazism had a powerful appeal to German youth, particularly middle-class youth, and German universities were strongholds of Nazism even before Hitler came to power. The Hitler Youth sought to mobilise all young Germans behind the regime, and apart from stubborn resistance in some rural Catholic areas, was generally successful in the first period of Nazi rule. After about 1938, however, persistent alienation among some sections of German youth began to appear. This rarely took the form of overt political opposition—the White Rose group was a striking exception, but was striking mainly for its uniqueness. Much more common was what would now be called "dropping out"—a passive refusal to take part in official youth culture and a search for alternatives. Although none of the unofficial youth groups amounted to a serious threat to the Nazi regime, and although they provided no aid or comfort to those groups within the German elite who were actively plotting against Hitler, they do serve to show that there were currents of opposition at other levels of German society.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Examples were the so-called "Edelweisspiraten" ("Edelweiss Pirates"), a loose network of working-class youth groups in a number of cities, who held unauthorised meetings and engaged in street fights with the Hitler Youth; the Meuten group in Leipzig, a more politicised group with links to the KPD underground, which had more than a thousand members in the late 1930s; and, most notably, the "Swingjugend", middle-class youth who met in secret clubs in Berlin and most other large cities to listen to swing, jazz and other music deemed "degenerate" by the Nazi authorities. This movement, which involved distinctive forms of dress and gradually become more consciously political, became so popular that it provoked a crackdown: in 1941 Himmler ordered the arrest of Swing activists and had some sent to concentration camps.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: In October 1944, as the American and British armies approached the western borders of Germany, there was a serious outbreak of disorder in the bomb-ravaged city of Cologne, which had been largely evacuated. The "Edelweisspiraten" linked up with gangs of deserters, escaped prisoners and foreign workers, and the underground KPD network, to engage in looting and sabotage, and the assassination of Gestapo and Nazi Party officials. Explosives were stolen with the objective of blowing up the Gestapo headquarters. Himmler, fearing the resistance would spread to other cities as the Allied armies advanced into Germany, ordered a savage crackdown, and for days gunbattles raged in the ruined streets of Cologne. More than 200 people were arrested and dozens were hanged in public, among them six teenaged "Edelweisspiraten", including Bartholomäus Schink.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Across the twentieth century public protest comprised a primary form of civilian opposition within totalitarian regimes. Potentially influential popular protests required not only public expression but the collection of a crowd of persons speaking with one voice. In addition, only protests which caused the regime to take notice and respond to are included here.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Improvised protests also occurred if rarely in Nazi Germany, and represent a form of resistance not wholly researched, Sybil Milton wrote already in 1984. Hitler and National Socialism's perceived dependence on the mass mobilization of his people, the "racial" Germans, along with the belief that Germany had lost the First World War due to an unstable home front, caused the regime to be peculiarly sensitive to public, collective protests. Hitler recognized the power of collective action, advocated non-compliance toward unworthy authority (e.g. the 1923 French occupation of the Ruhr), and brought his party to power in part by mobilizing public unrest and disorder to further discredit the Weimar Republic. In power, Nazi leaders quickly banned extra-party demonstrations, fearing displays of dissent on open urban spaces might develop and grow, even without organization.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: To direct attention away from dissent, the Nazi state appeased some public, collective protests by "racial" Germans and ignored but did not repress others, both before and during the war. The regime rationalized appeasement of public protests as temporary measures to maintain the appearance of German unity and reduce the risk of alienating the public through blatant Gestapo repression. Examples of compromises for tactical reasons include social and material concessions to workers, deferment of punishing oppositional church leaders, "temporary" exemptions of intermarried Jews from the Holocaust, failure to punish hundreds of thousands of women for disregarding Hitler's 'total war' decree conscripting women into the work force, and rejection of coercion to enforce civilian evacuations from urban areas bombed by the Allies.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: An early defeat of state institutions and Nazi officials by mass, popular protest culminated with Hitler's release and reinstatement to church office of Protestant bishops Hans Meiser and Theophil Wurm in October 1934. Meiser's arrest two weeks earlier had stirred mass public protests of thousands in Bavaria and Württemberg and initiated protests to the German Foreign Ministry from countries around the world. Unrest had festered between regional Protestants and the state since early 1934 and came to a boil in mid-September when the regional party daily accused Meiser of treason, and shameful betrayal of Hitler and the state. By the time Hitler intervened, pastors were increasingly involving parishioners in the church struggle. Their agitation was amplifying distrust of the state as protest was worsening and spreading rapidly. Alarm among local officials was escalating. Some six thousand gathered in support of Meiser while only a few dutifully showed up at a meeting of the region's party leader, Julius Streicher. Mass open protests, the form of agitation and bandwagon building the Nazis employed so successfully, were now working against them. When Streicher's deputy, Karl Holz, held a mass rally in Nuremberg's main square, Adolf-Hitler-Platz, the director of the city's Protestant Seminary led his students into the square, encouraging others along the way to join, where they effectively sabotaged the Nazi rally and broke out singing "A Mighty Fortress is our God." To rehabilitate Meiser and bring the standoff to a close, Hitler, who in January had publicly condemned the bishops in their presence as "traitors to the people, enemies of the Fatherland, and the destroyers of Germany," arranged a mass audience including the bishops and spoke in conciliatory tones.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: This early contest points to enduring characteristics of regime responses to open, collective protests. It would prefer dealing with mass dissent immediately and decisively—not uncommonly retracting the cause of protest with local and policy-specific concessions. Open dissent, left unchecked, tended to spread and worsen. Church leaders had improvised a counter-demonstration strong enough to neutralize the party's rally just as the Nazi Party had faced down socialist and communist demonstrators while coming to power. Instructive in this case is the view of a high state official that, regardless of the protesters motives, they were political in effect; although church protests were in defense of traditions rather than an attack on the regime, they nonetheless had political consequences, the official said, with many perceiving the clergy as anti-Nazi, and a "great danger of the issue spilling over from a church affair into the political arena".


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Hitler recognized that workers, through repeated strikes, might force approval of their demands and he made concessions to workers in order to preempt unrest; yet the rare but forceful public protests the regime faced were by women and Catholics, primarily. Some of the earliest work on resistance examined the Catholic record, including most spectacularly local and regional protests against decrees removing crucifixes from schools, part of the regime's effort to secularize public life. Although historians dispute the degree of political antagonism toward National Socialism behind these protests, their impact is uncontested. Popular, public, improvised protests against decrees replacing crucifixes with the Führer's picture, in incidents from 1935 to 1941, from north to south and east to west in Germany, forced state and party leaders to back away and leave crucifixes in traditional places. Prominent incidents of crucifix removal decrees, followed by protests and official retreat, occurred in Oldenburg (Lower Saxony) in 1936, Frankenholz (Saarland) and Frauenberg (East Prussia) in 1937, and in Bavaria in 1941. Women, with traditional sway over children and their spiritual welfare, played a leading part.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: German history of the early twentieth century held examples of the power of public mobilization, including the Kapp military Putsch in 1920, some civilian Germans realized the specific potential of public protest from within the dictatorship. After the Oldenburg crucifix struggle, police reported that Catholic activists told each other they could defeat future anti-Catholic actions of the state as long as they posed a united front"." Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen may well have been among them. He had raised his voice in the struggle, circulating a pastoral letter. A few months later in early 1937, while other bishops voiced fear of using such "direct confrontation," Galen favored selective "public protests" as a means of defending church traditions against an overreaching state"."


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Some argue that the regime, once at war, no longer heeded popular opinion and, some agencies and authorities did radicalize use of terror for domestic control in the final phase of war. Hitler and the regime's response to collective street protest, however, did not harden. Although a number of historians have argued that popular opinion, brought to a head by Galen's denunciations from the pulpit in the late summer of 1941, caused Hitler to suspend Nazi "Euthanasia," others disagree. It is certain, however, that Galen intended to have an impact from the pulpit and that the highest Nazi officials decided against punishing him out of concern for public morale. A Catholic protest in May the same year against the closing of the Münsterschwarzach monastery in Lower Franconia illustrates the regime's occasional response of not meeting protester demands while nevertheless responding with "flexibility" and "leniency" rather than repressing or punishing protesters. That protest, however, represented only local opinion rather than the nationwide anxiety Galen represented, stirred up by the Euthanasia program the regime refused to acknowledge.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Another indication that civilians realized the potential of public protest within a regime so concerned about morale and unity, is from Margarete Sommers of the Catholic Welfare Office in the Berlin Diocese. Following the Rosenstrasse Protest of late winter 1943. Sommers, who shared with colleagues an assumption that "the people could mobilize against the regime on behalf of specific values," wrote that the women had succeeded through "loudly voiced protests". The protest began as a smattering of "racial" German women seeking information about their Jewish husbands who had just been incarcerated in the course of the massive roundup of Berlin Jews in advance of the Nazi Party's declaration that Berlin was "free of Jews." As they continued their protest over the course of a week, a powerful feeling of solidarity developed. Police guards repeatedly scattered the women, gathered in groups of up to hundreds, with shouts of "clear the street or we'll shoot." As the police repeatedly failed to shoot, some protesters began to think their action might prevail. One said that if she had first calculated whether a protest could have succeeded, she would have stayed home. Instead, "we acted from the heart," she said, adding that the women were capable of such courageous action because their husbands were in grave danger. Some 7,000 of the last Jews in Berlin arrested at this time were sent to Auschwitz. At Rosenstrasse, however, the regime relented and released Jews with "racial" family members. Even intermarried Jews who had been sent to Auschwitz work camps were returned.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Another potential indication that German civilians realized the power of public protest was in Dortmund-Hörde in April 1943. According to an SD Report from July 8 of 1943, in the early afternoon of April 12, 1943, an army captain arrested a Flak soldier in Dortmund-Hörde because of an insolent salute. The townsfolk looking on took his side. A crowd formed of three to four hundred comprised essentially of women. The crowd shouted lines such as "Gebt uns unsere Männer wieder" or "give us our men back" which suggest some in the crowd were aware of the protest on Rosenstrasse. The recentness of the weeklong protest on Rosenstrasse strengthens this possibility. On Rosenstrasse the chant had been coined as the rallying cry of wives for their incarcerated husbands. Here on behalf of one man it made little sense.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: The Rosenstrasse protest of February 1943 was the only open, collective protest for Jews during the Third Reich. It was sparked by the arrest and threatened deportation to death camps of 1,800 Jewish men married to non-Jewish women. They were "full" Jews in the sense of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws and the Gestapo aimed to deport as many as it could without drawing attention to the Holocaust or alienating the "racial" public. Before these men could be deported, their wives and other relatives rallied outside the building in Rosenstrasse where the men were held. About 6,000 people, mostly women, rallied in shifts in the winter cold for over a week. Eventually Himmler, worried about the effect on civilian morale, gave in and allowed the arrested men to be released. Some who had already been deported and were on their way to Auschwitz were brought back. There was no retaliation against the protesters, and most of the Jewish men survived.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Intermarried German Jews and their children were the only Jews to escape the fate Reich authorities had selected for them, and by the end of the war 98 percent of German Jews who survived without being deported or going into hiding were intermarried. Hitler told Goebbels in November 1941, Jews were to be deported aggressively only as long as this did not cause "unnecessary difficulties." Thus "intermarried Jews, above all those in artist circles," should be pursued somewhat reservedly. A protest during wartime showing public dissent and offering an opportunity to dissent represented an unnecessary difficulty for a Führer determined to prevent another weak home front like the one he blamed for Germany's defeat in the First World War.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Even up until the end of 1944, Hitler remained concerned about his image and refused to use coercion against disobedient "racial" Germans. On October 11, 1943, some three hundred women protested on Adolf Hitler Square in the western German Ruhr Valley city of Witten against the official decision to withhold their food ration cards unless they evacuated their homes. Under increasing Allied bombardments, officials had struggled to establish an orderly program for evacuation. Yet by late 1943 many thousands of persons, including hundreds from Witten, had returned from evacuation sites. "The Westfälische Landeszeitung," the daily Nazi Party regional newspaper, branded evacuees who returned as pests ("Schädlinge"), a classification for persons subverting the Reich and its war. Officials called them "wild" evacuees, exercising their own against the party and state, according to Julie Torrie.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: The Witten protesters had the power of millions of likeminded Germans behind it, and venerable traditions of family life. Within four months Hitler ordered all Nazi Party Regional Leaders (Gauleiter) not to withhold the ration cards of evacuees who returned home without permission. In July 1944, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and Hitler's Private Secretary Martin Bormann jointly ruled that "coercive measures" continued to be unsuitable, and in October, 1944 Bormann reiterated that coercion was not to be used against evacuees who had returned.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: "One dare not bend to the will of the people in this point," Goebbels wrote in his diary several weeks later. The shuffling back and forth of Germans between evacuation sites and their homes strained the Reichsbahn, and the regime must "dam up" the stream of returning evacuees. If "friendly cajoling" failed "then one must use force." At the moment, however, "the people know just exactly where the soft spot of the leadership is, and will always exploit this. Should we make this spot hard where we have been soft up until now, then the will of the people will bend to the will of the state. Currently we're on the best path to bending the will of the state to the will of the people." Giving in to the street is increasingly dangerous, Goebbels wrote, since each time this happens the state loses authority and in the end loses all authority.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: In Berlin, leaders continued to assuage rather than draw further attention to public collective protests, as the best way to protect their authority and the propaganda claims that all Germans stood united behind the Führer. In this context, ordinary Germans were sometimes able to exact limited concessions, as Goebbels worried that a growing number of Germans were becoming aware of the regime's soft spot represented by its response to protests.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: In November 1939, Georg Elser, a carpenter from Württemberg, developed a plan to assassinate Hitler completely on his own. Elser had been peripherally involved with the KPD before 1933, but his exact motives for acting as he did remain a mystery. He read in the newspapers that Hitler would be addressing a Nazi Party meeting on 8 November, in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich where Hitler had launched the Beer Hall Putsch on the same date in 1923. Stealing explosives from his workplace, he built a powerful time bomb, and for over a month managed to stay inside the Bürgerbräukeller after hours each night, during which time he hollowed out the pillar behind the speaker's rostrum to place the bomb inside.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: On the night of 7 November 1939, Elser set the timer and left for the Swiss border. Unexpectedly, because of the pressure of wartime business, Hitler made a much shorter speech than usual and left the hall 13 minutes before the bomb went off, killing seven people. Sixty-three people were injured, sixteen more were seriously injured with one dying later. Had Hitler still been speaking, the bomb almost certainly would have killed him.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: This event set off a hunt for potential conspirators which intimidated the opposition and made further action more difficult. Elser was arrested at the border, sent to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, and then in 1945 moved to the Dachau concentration camp; he was executed two weeks before the liberation of Dachau KZ.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: In late 1942, von Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and stage a coup. On 13 March 1943, returning from his easternmost headquarters FHQ Werwolf near Vinnitsa to Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Hitler was scheduled to make a stop-over at the headquarters of Army Group Centre at Smolensk. For such an occasion, von Tresckow had prepared three options:


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Von Tresckow asked Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Brandt, on Hitler's staff and usually on the same plane that carried Hitler, to take a parcel with him, supposedly the prize of a bet won by Tresckow's friend General Stieff. It concealed a bomb, disguised in a box for two bottles of Cointreau. Von Tresckow's aide, Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, set the fuse and handed over the parcel to Brandt who boarded the same plane as Hitler.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Hitler's Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor was expected to explode about 30 minutes later near Minsk, close enough to the front to be attributed to Soviet fighters. Olbricht was to use the resulting crisis to mobilise his Reserve Army network to seize power in Berlin, Vienna, Munich and in the German Wehrkreis centres. It was an ambitious but credible plan, and might have worked if Hitler had indeed been killed, although persuading Army units to fight and overcome what could certainly have been fierce resistance from the SS could have been a major obstacle.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: However, as with Elser's bomb in 1939 and all other attempts, luck favoured Hitler again, which was attributed to "Vorsehung" (providence). The British-made chemical pencil detonator on the bomb had been tested many times and was considered reliable. It went off, but the bomb did not. The percussion cap apparently became too cold as the parcel was carried in the unheated cargo hold.


title: German resistance to Nazism

text: Displaying great sangfroid, Schlabrendorff took the next plane to retrieve the package from Colonel Brandt before the content was discovered. The blocks of plastic explosives were later used by Gersdorff and Stauffenberg.