The Killing Machine Turns on Its Own

June 6, 1944, D-Day, was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. The Allies in the West had finally pierced Fortress Europe, and Adolf Hitler saw his vision of a "thousand-year reich" progressively loosing currency. The killing machine that the Nazis had used against the rest of Europe now turned on its own people -- at all levels. Klaus von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Hitler was certainly the most prominent case of resistance. In the final months, anyone who even raised a whisper against Nazi Germany acted heroically but paid the highest price, as Hitler, in desperation, was willing to sacrifice everything and everybody.

Less than five months after D-Day, the first German city had fallen into the hands of the US Army -- Aachen. The Americans did not wait long to return control to a German and, on October 21 installed Franz Oppenhoff as the city's mayor -- not so much to govern, but rather to regain some semblance of normalcy.

"There is nothing to administer. Everything has to be started over," wrote Oppenhoff (photo). "The task is seemingly hopeless and is almost beyond our strength. But it’s our duty of conscience to start working."

Few people were aware that Oppenhoff was the man in charge.

"No names were ever officially named," said Otto Pesch, a journalist who would become editor-in-chief of the first German non-Nazi newspaper, Aachener Nachrichten, in 1945. Oppenhoff knew that his new title, his new duties, would endanger his life. As if he had had a sixth sense, he told his wife numerous times: "Somewhere a parachutist is ready and waiting to kill me."

"For months everything was quiet," said Pesch. "Nobody reckoned with murder." SS chief Heinrich Himmler, however, had already called for Oppenhoff’s "removal."

Unrelenting terror

Oppenhoff, a Catholic lawyer who had represented Jews and Catholic priests from Aachen, was now considered a traitor as a collaborator with the Americans.

Hitler had promised in his so-called werewolf speech in March 1945 that blood would flow, even behind enemy lines. The Germans used a B-17 bomber to drop six "werewolves," including a teenage boy and a teenage girl. Their orders came directly from Himmler -- kill Oppenhoff.

The boy and the girl had entered the city to find out his address. On March 25, two of the werewolves, SS men, went to Oppenhoff’s home in Aachen. Oppenhoff unsuspectingly invited them in, offering them bread. Seconds later, he lay on the floor dead with a single gunshot to his head. Nazi propaganda celebrated the "assassination." However, Operation Karneval, as it was called, would remain the only successful mission carried out by the werewolves.

What the werewolves were unable to do behind enemy lines, namely kill supposed German collaborators, the much-feared SS did in cities, towns and villages that remained under Nazi control. Berlin historian Johannes Tuchel described these last months as an "orgy of terror."

Continue reading to find out about other last-minute heroes

Wherever resistance sprang up, SS troops with the symbolic skull and crossbones on their uniforms would make sure that it was suffocated.

On April 22, US tank divisions were nearing the city on the Danube with its traditional Gothic cathedral and much of the town still intact. But Commissar Ludwig Ruckdeschel's order was intended to leave the Bavarian city in ashes: "Defend Regensburg to the end!" The next day, hundreds of citizens gathered up the courage to protest. Regensburg Cathedral priest Johann Maier tried to organize the city's peaceful surrender until he was whisked away by plainclothes policemen.

A hastily organized court-martial condemned Maier to death. The late date of his arrest and the fact that he was a clergyman gave Maier some hope that he would receive a stay of execution. But Maier waited in vain for his rescue. His superior, Regenburg’s Bishop Buchberger, did not even try to delay the execution. Out of fear for his life -- or possibly shame -- Buchberger resigned his position, having defended his inaction in the matter by saying an attempted intervention would have been without a chance.

On April 25 at 3:25 a.m., Maier was one of two men hanged. It was the last act of the SS in Regensburg, after which they vacated the city without putting up a fight.

Villages still under firm control

Three days later, a group of German officers in Munich who called themselves Freiheitsaktion Bayern, or "Operation Freedom for Bavaria," prepared for the eminent collapse of the Third Reich. The group seized control of a radio station.

"Attention! Attention! You are listening to the radio station Operation Freedom for Bavaria! …The codeword ‘pheasant hunt’ is being transmitted," they broadcast. "Workers, protect your factories against sabotage by the Nazis. Secure work and bread for the future … Prevent the functionaries from entering your factories!"

They called on listeners to raise the blue and white Bavarian flag that would send a surrender signal to approaching US troops. In the village of Götting, south of Munich, teacher Georg Hangl and priest Josef Grimm followed the orders, removing the Nazi swastika flag from the steeple and raising the Bavarian flag in the early morning hours. Their actions had fatal consequences.

An SS unit took the two men into custody and interrogated them. Then the two men were taken to a forest outside of Götting, beaten and shot. Later that evening, the SS troops, wearing civilian clothes, evacuated the village.

People like Oppenhoff, despite a latent existing danger, attempted to start the rebuilding process before hostilities were over. Maier, Grimm and Hangl, aware of how desperate the situation was, acted to prevent the complete destruction of their towns. Nazi Germany, though, failed in its bid to dominate and suffered the consequences -- not only under a storm of bombs or the wheels of the rapidly advancing Red Army in the East and American and British forces in the West, but also in the cogs of the Nazi machinery itself.