- Hans Oster
Hans Oster (
August 9 ,1887 –April 9 ,1945 ) was deputy head of theAbwehr , underWilhelm Canaris , and a dedicated opponent ofAdolf Hitler andNazism .Originally from
Dresden , Saxony, Oster served as an officer on theGerman General Staff duringWorld War I .Oster was a central resistance figure; as early as 1937 he was plotting a coup against Hitler, whereby Count
Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal and other officers would march into theReich Chancellery and arrest the Nazi leader. The plan was aborted when the BritishPrime Minister Neville Chamberlain adopted the policy ofappeasement .After the outbreak of the
Second World War , Oster informed his friendBert Sas , the Netherlands' military attaché in Berlin, more than twenty times of the exact date of the repeatedly delayed invasion of the Netherlands. Sas passed the information through to his government but was not believed. In 1943, after growing mistrust and accusations of aidingJew s, Oster was dismissed from his post. He was arrested one day after the failedJuly 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler, and onApril 8 ,1945 , he was given ashow trial , along withDietrich Bonhoeffer andWilhelm Canaris . They were convicted and sentenced to death.The following day Oster, Bonhoeffer and Canaris were hanged in
Flossenbürg concentration camp . Oster was forced to strip naked before being taken to thegallows . The camp was liberated a few days later by American forces.Fabian von Schlabrendorff , one of the few major coordinators of anti-Nazi activities to survive the war, described Oster as "a man such as God meant men to be, lucid and serene in mind, imperturbable in danger." [cite book|last=William L. Shirer|title=The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich| year=1960| pages=p.1024]Further reading
Roger Moorhouse , "Killing Hitler", Jonathan Cape, 2006.
Terry Parssinen, "The Oster Conspiracy of 1938", Harper Collins, 2004.
Joachim Fest, "Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945", Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1996See also
*
List of members of the July 20 Plot Footnotes
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