The day after the German resistance’s failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and seize power on July 20, 1944, Henning von Tresckow explained to a fellow officer the meaning of what they had tried to achieve, “If God once promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if only ten righteous men lived there, then I hope that because of us God will also not destroy Germany.” With this statement Tresckow described how he and other members of the resistance perceived themselves and their actions against the Third Reich. While von Tresckow believed the resistance to be among the few people in Germany who could save their nation from the path of destruction, the Allies and Germany itself viewed the resistance in a different way. Over the fifty years following World War II, the German people and the members of the Allied Powers had views of the resistance movement ranging from disdain to acceptance, and holding those who took part in its various actions as either traitors or saints. Both in Germany and among the Allied Powers the military and conservative resistance was viewed in a negative manner…show more content… The leader of the Kreisau Circle, one of the conservative resistance groups, Helmuth von Moltke, referred to this difference in a letter where he said, “In the other countries suppressed by Hitler’s tyranny even the ordinary criminal had a chance of being classified as a martyr. With us it is different: even the martyr is certain to be classed as an ordinary criminal.” Because the German people, and especially those who would later become part of the conservative or military resistance, had initially accepted Hitler’s rise to power and in many ways supported him, it was harder for the resistance to argue that the government of Germany was illegal and must therefore be removed from
