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Considering that recognition is due to the resistance originally coming from the military and the church and that the victims deserve being remembered in dignity, the 20th July 1944 for many a year has been integral part of the canon of commemoration days in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the first post-war decades, however, the assassins of the “20th July” resistance group were often branded and vilified as “traitors”. Their Communist ideology commanded the rulers of the GDR to either discredit or negate that resistance.
Much less known than the date of the 20th July 1944 is the wave of arrests (“bars” operation) flowing over the country after the first imprisonments and executions and the show trials before the “People’s Court” presided by Roland Freisler. Even before the Nazis launched the “bars” (or “thunderstorm”) operation, relatives of the executed members of the “20th July” group had been held liable for their deeds and were taken into custody (“Sippenhaft”). 50 children related by blood with the assassins and conspirators, consequently, were committed to a home in Bad Sachsa, and 16 of them remained confined there until their liberation through the Americans in May 1945.
In a talk they had on 14th August 1944, Hitler and Himmler agreed on giving orders to execute the leading figures of Communism thus depriving also this oppositional faction of any chance to actively resist the Nazi regime. Among the persons killed in consequence was Ernst Thälmann who had been shot on 18th August; about one month later, the Communists Franz Jacob, Anton Saefkow and Bernhard Bästlein were executed.
In the spring of 1942, Hitler had publicly predicted what his reaction to any form of “mutiny” would be: “The very day when the first respective report had come to his attention“, he would order that all top echelons of any counteractive political currents, political Catholicism included, be called on in their homes, arrested there on the spot and executed forthwith”.
“Bars operation” was the Nazi technical term to name the wave of arrests that was flowing over former members of Democratic parties of the Weimar Republic as of 22nd August 1944 with a view to making impossible a democratic underground movement let alone a fresh start of a Democratic Germany. From 22nd August onwards, the Gestapo had been keeping tabs in particular on members and sympathizers of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the “Zentrum” party. Among the persons arrested in consequence were luminaries such as Konrad Adenauer and Kurt Schumacher and many other less outstanding persons.
Schumacher had already been incarcerated in various concentration camps between 1933 and 1943; others were deported to prisons and concentration camps for the first time now. To the Nazis putting into effect this incarceration campaign, it was completely irrelevant whether those falling victim to their action had already left the political stage, or had chosen to wholly withdraw from public life (“innere Emigration”) or had continued to actively resist them.
Many arrested persons were brought to the main prison of the Gestapo at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin; others were taken to concentration camps Neuengamme, Buchenwald and Ravensbrück. According to estimates, up to 5,000 individuals were arrested at the time, among others, the Social Democratic politicians Kurt Böhme, Hermann Drechsler, Arno Bart, Rudolf Jungmann, Otto Flagmeyer, Paul Hildebrandt, Fritz Soldmann and Fritz Behr, who had all been sent to Concentration Camp Buchenwald.
Quite a lot of the arrested came free before a month had passed, among other reasons thanks to protests voiced by their families. Others, like Otto Gerig, Heinrich Jasper or the Hamburg reformer of pedagogy Kurt Adams, did not survive detention in the concentration camp. Also Georg Elser, whose attempt to kill Hitler on 9.11.1939 had failed, was shot in Concentration Camp Dachau on 5th April 1945 under this “operational” scheme.
It was decidedly against the will of the Nazi leaders that all these brave and courageous men and women should fall into the hands of the Allies, alive. And to cap it all, they proceeded to liquidate even those now who had merely been suspected of having resisted the regime or having covered up for any resistance fighters, among them the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Ludwig Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.
The persecution of the unsuccessful assassins of the “20th July” group escalated into a wave of terror that had a far broader basis than the immediate persecution following events as of 1933 when the regime terrorised all political and ideological opponents either compelling them to go into exile or deporting them to concentration camps. This was in fact a “cleansing action” comparable to the extinction of the Polish intelligentsia.
ITS holds documents or files on many victims and survivors of the “bars” (“thunderstorm”) operation.
Selective bibliography ITS Library “Thunderstorm Action/Bars Action“
Bauche, Ulrich; Brüdigam, Heinz; Eiber, Ludwig; Wiedey, Wolfgang, Widerstand in Hamburg 1939-1945 in: Arbeit und Vernichtung. Das Konzentrationslager Neuengamme 1938-1945, Catalogue on the permanent exhibition at the documentation hall, VSA publishers, Hamburg 1991, p. 48
Fest, Joachim, Staatsstreich. Der lange Weg zum 20. Juli, btb publishers, Berlin 2004
Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (editors), Aktion „Gitter“ („Gewitter“), in: Konzentrationslager Buchenwald 1937-1945. Volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Wallstein publishers, Göttingen 2005, p. 168-169
Gedenkstätte Dachau (editors), Deutsche Regimegegner der „Aktion Gewitter“ in: Konzentrationslager Dachau 1933 bis 1945. Text and photo documents on the exhibition with CD-ROM, Comité International de Dachau 2005, p.162
Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (editors), Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und der Umsturzversuch vom 20. Juli 1944, Berlin, 2007, p. 95
Hett, Ulrike u. Tuchel, Johannes, Die Reaktionen des NS-Staates auf den Umsturzversuch vom 20. Juli 1944 in: Steinbach, Peter und Tuchel, Johannes, Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Akademie publishers, Berlin 1994, pp. 377-389
Jahnke, Karl Heinz, Der 20. Juli 1944 – Beziehungen zu Mecklenburg im Widerstand gegen die NS-Diktatur in Mecklenburg. Erinnerungen an die Frauen und Männer, die zwischen 1933 und 1945 ermordet wurden, BS publishers, Rostock 2006, p. 58-64
Meyer, Winfried, Aktion „Gewitter“. Menschenopfer für Macht und Mythos der Gestapo in: Dachauer Hefte 21, Häftlingsgesellschaft, Dachauer Hefte publishers, Dachau 2005, pp.3-20
Philipp, Grit, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939-1945, Metropol publishers, Berlin 1999, p. 140
Röll, Wolfgang, Aktion „Gitter“, Die Einlieferung ehemaliger sozialdemokratischer Abgeordneter und Funktionäre im August/September 1944, in: Sozialdemokraten im Konzentrationslager Buchenwald 1937-1945, Wallstein publishers, Göttingen 2000, pp. 171-190
Sandvoß, Hans-Rainer, Opfer der „Aktion Gewitter“ in: Die „andere“ Reichshauptstadt, Widerstand aus der Arbeiterbewegung in Berlin von 1933 bis 1945, Lukas publishers, Berlin 2007, pp. 149-150
Schüler-Springorum, Stefanie, Masseneinweisungen in Konzentrationslager: Aktion „Arbeitsscheu Reich“, Novemberpogrom, Aktion „Gewitter“ in: Benz, Wolfgang und Distel, Barbara Der Ort des Terrors. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps, volume 1 – Organizing Terror, Beck publishers, Munich 2005, pp. 162-164
Wagner, Herbert, Die Gestapo war nicht allein…, Politische Sozialkontrolle und Staatsterror im deutsch-niederländischen Grenzgebiet 1929-1945, Lit publishers, Münster 2004
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