Between 1933 and 1945, a variety of groups offered resistance to the Nazi regime, both in Germany and in German-occupied territory.
Among the earliest domestic opponents of Nazism were Communists, Socialists, and trade union leaders. Although mainstream church hierarchies either supported the Nazi regime or acquiesced in its policies of discrimination and persecution, individual German theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposed the regime. Bonhoeffer, who was connected to anti-Hitler military officers in the German Armed Forces intelligence service (Abwehr), was arrested in 1943 and executed in 1945.
Within the German conservative elite and the German General Staff, small pockets of opponents to the Nazi regime existed. In July 1944, under the leadership of Colonel Klaus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a coalition of these groups and a handful of moderate Social Democratic politicians conspired unsuccessfully to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime.
