Chasing after Strange Gods

In tandem with German restoration, all Europe would benefit, claimed Nazi votaries. Wielding shield and sword, Hitler would protect the deserving from scheming Jewry, Soviet menace, and Marxist nihilism, a proposition eventually winning adherents abroad. These included some US citizens, such as the designer and architect Philip Johnson. In July 1944, Wehrmacht officers tried to dispose of Hitler. By this action, they also hoped to retrieve Germany’s reputation and their personal honor. The martyrdom of Claus von Stauffenberg and associates after the coup’s failure was a sacrifice to idealism, ultimately conducive to Germany’s moral rebuilding. More regenerative than belated efforts by military men were the doings of the Kreisau Kreis, the White Rose students, and the Red Orchestra. These groups testified by their deeds to moral laws, survivable even in the Third Reich. Scholarly Mildred Fish-Harnack, an American in Germany, joined the anti-Nazi underground in the 1930s. Fish-Harnack’s decision to resist cost her life. Arrested in late summer 1942 with her German husband, Arvid Harnack, she was guillotined in Berlin’s Plotzensee Prison on 16 February 1943.