Extent of support for Nazi Regime

• On their road to power, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag, but they never won an overall majority.
• The majority of Germans either supported or conformed with (went along with) the regime.
• Resistance meant refusing to support or speaking out against Nazi policies
• Opposition was rarer, meaning actively working against the regime to try and remove it.
• Opposition was hard as alternative political parties and trade unions were banned, while the Gestapo spied on the German people and the fear of the concentration camps powerful.
• Most of the opposition was located in the following areas:

  1. secret trade union sabotage, sometimes supported by the Communists;

  b. youth groups like the Edelweiss Pirates who refused to conform;

  c. secret political opposition like SOPADE;

  d. socialist supporters sent into Germany from abroad;

  e. opposition within some sections of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Pastors Emergency League (later becoming the Confessional church);

  f. and some opposition within the army Generals led by General Ludwig Beck.