The churches provided open opposition to Hitler, particularly as he had declared a form of war on them as he wanted the state to take over the churches and to direct them in ways compatible with National Socialism. Various religious leaders were arrested, hundreds of them, eventually resulting in a diminishing of the resistance from that front. Shirer notes that this persecution of religion did not arouse the German people as it should have: "A people who had so lightly given up their political and cultural and economic freedoms were not, except for a relatively few, going to die or even risk imprisonment to preserve freedom of worship" (Shirer 240).
While a large proportion of the intellectual class has rightly been blamed for failing in its responsibility to criticize the rise of National Socialism, there were also leading men in philosophy and education, history, jurisprudence, economics, physics, and other disciplines who were involved in open opposition or at least refused to follow orders. These intellectuals often preserved their ethical structure in small groups where they would read the old works and refuse to support the official Party publications. Scholarly literature was still published, often free of all Nazi coloring though some disciplines -- notably historiography...
The refusal to conform merged with more or less covert forms of resistance: "From abstention it is only a step to an attitude which deliberately undermines National Socialist dogmas or which incites to opposition against a tyrannical regime in all its forms and effects" (Rothfels 36). Some individuals went further and published indirect attacks on the Nazis, a difficult proposition given the fact that the Gestapo and the Propaganda Ministry were thought to be everywhere. An examination of these works shows, though, that resistance was found more often than many foreign observers believed then or since.
The decision made by the people can be seen as irrational given what it produced, but there were clear reasons why an appeal to emotionalism and patriotism concerning the German state was effective. It can also be argued that the majority did not know what they were voting for in a sense, which in itself is an irrational act based again on emotion and not reason.
Works Cited
Rothfels, Hans, the German Opposition to Hitler. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1962.
Shirer, William L., the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and…
