Dissens, Resistenz, politischer Protest : Zum Widerstandsbegriff in der deutschen Historiographie der Nachkriegszeit

Dissens, Resistenz, politischer Protest : Zum Widerstandsbegriff in der deutschen Historiographie der NachkriegszeitIn the time immediately after the war the interest of West research in the field of Resistance was focused on the bourgeois-military Resistance, especially on the assassination attempt made on Hitler on July 20th, 1944. The "legacy of the Resistance" was not only meant to give evidence of another Germany to the world but also to politically legitimize the Federal Republic Research, however, also had to fight the bad image the men of July 20th had at home and abroad: Anglo- Saxon historiography regarded them as militarists, who were close to National Socialism and wanted to cheat the Allies of the full victory, and in Germany many regarded them as "traitors". This resulted in the neglect of other groups and forms of Resistance. A critical and controversial research about the Resistance set in only in the 1960s and it is still active today. This critical research resulted from a change in interest. The focus of the researchers now shifted from a "resistance without the people" to a "resistance through the people", from a "resistance from above" to a "resistance from below". The Resistance within the labour movement attracted great interest. Also the communist Resistance gradually was recognized and researched. In the last decades other fields have been researched as well: youth Resistance, the Resistance in the concentration camps, in exile, among prisoners of war, and the politically motivated desertion. This new research interest lead to a theoretical-conceptual discussion from which several typologies to the Resistance emerged. In the article some of them are explained here, only two examples can be mentioned briefly. First: The political scientist Richard Löwenthal makes a differentiation of the term Resistance, which has hecome widely accepted. He distinguishes three large areas of Resistance: A. political opposition, B. civil disobedience, and C. ideological dissidence. Second: The British historian Jan Kershaw criticizes Löwenthal's differentiation for using Resistance as generic term for all sorts of deviant behaviour, which is fundamentally directed against the regime. For all other forms he offers the term "dissent", which to him seems to be better suited to describe the necessary differentiations. Kershaw differentiates three areas of dissent: A. socio-economic dissent (e.g. the farmers criticism of NS agricultural policies). B. denominational dissent (e.g. the repelling of the nationalist socialist attack on the institutions, traditions, and customs of the Christian churches), and C. the dissent regarding race politics (e.g. the uneasiness in the population about the euthanasia actions)