Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after July 20, 1944

Disobeying Hitler tells the story of resistance to National Socialism and Hitler after July 20, 1944, the date of Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg’s failed attempt to kill the dictator. The book explores (i) the extent and nature of German resistance after July 20th and ii) the effect it had on the course of the war. It does so by telling the story of three types of disobedience to Hitler’s orders: (a) the refusal to destroy Paris and (possibly) key strategic harbours in southern France; (b) the refusal to implement a ‘scorched earth’ policy on German soil; and (c) the refusal to defend German towns and cities to the last bullet.

The book is unique in several ways:

All books on German resistance end on July 20, 1944, following the failure of the coup executed by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. This book begins here.

The portion of the book devoted to July 20, 1944 focuses on Paris rather than Berlin. Paris gets little historical attention although the coup there was far more successful than it was in Berlin: for a few hours, the capital was entirely in the hands of the resisters.

It shows how officers’ refusal to implement Hitler’s orders spared Paris (though in a much more complicated way that Collins and Lapierre suggest), allowed the Allies to secure key supply routes in southern France, and spared several German towns and cities from total destruction, saving both Allied and German lives.

It offers a revision account of the liberation of Paris, rejecting Collins and Lapierre’s argument in Is Paris Burning as overblown, but also defending General Dietrich von Choltitz as a brave and principled resister of Hitler’s orders

It established that not Albert Speer alone (as he claimed) but rather a whole host of generals, officers, and foot soldiers worked together to preserve German industry and infrastructure from Hitler’s insane scorched earth orders.

It shows how complex negotiations, taken under chaotic, unstable, and dangerous conditions, between the Allies, on the one hand, and German officers and civilians (including many women), on the other, determined whether German cities were occupied intact or ravaged by artillery barrages. For the Allies and the Germans, these negotiations meant the difference between life and death.

It illustrates that, as awful as the end of the war was, it would have been worse without these acts of disobedience.

The book is written with a narrative historical approach. The events, involving deceit, subterfuge, lying, and immense personal danger, all set in the context of advancing Allied armies, lend themselves naturally to dramatic reconstruction

Book Author

Randall Hansen is a Professor of Politics and holds a Research Chair at the University of Toronto. He was born in Canada and has lived in the UK, US, France, Ireland, and Germany. He has a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he was a Commonwealth scholar. He was elected to a Research Fellowship at Christ Church Oxford at the age of 26, a tutorial fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, at the age of 29, and an established Chair in Politics at the University of Newcastle at the age of 33. He was selected for his current position after a major internationa...
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