New Approaches to Bourgeois Resistance in Germany and Austria, 1933–1945 Eric Kurlander Stetson University Abstract Middle class Protestants and Catholics constituted the largest single constituency in the Third Reich, inclusive of Austria. Yet few historians in recent years have examined the role of bourgeois resistance. Rather, contemporary scholarship tends to emphasize the willingness of the German middle classes to accommodate National Socialism (Anpassung), focusing almost exclusively on working class, women’s and minority opposition (Resistenz or Verweigerung). The purpose of this article is to offer some fruitful lines of inquiry that might help us to reassess the role of the German and Austrian middle classes in resisting the Third Reich. I. Introduction In surveying Modern German historiography over the last thirty years, Helmuth Walser Smith has observed, one might get the erroneous impression that Jews constituted a majority of Germans, Catholics a near majority, and Protestants an insignificant minority. 1 This statement holds equally true with regard to the resistance against National Socialism. Middle class Protestants represented the largest, most powerful constituency in the Third Reich. Bourgeois and aristocratic Germans also engineered the most famous and successful of resistance acts, the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Yet the lion’s share of research over the last thirty years has been devoted to Jewish, Catholic, proletarian, and various other forms of subaltern resistance. Moreover, despite the fact that virtually all documented cases of open resistance (Widerstand) against the Third Reich occurred after March 1938 – that is, after the union (Anschluß) with Austria – none of these histories integrate Austrian resistance into the wider narrative of domestic opposition to National Socialism. There are good reasons for such lacunae. Early research in both countries was profoundly influenced by the Cold War. West German and Anglo-American historians emphasized the central role of the Protestant middle classes while East German historians argued that the working classes alone had resisted in a meaningful way. In Austria few scholars wished to question the exculpatory Moscow Declaration, promulgated by the Allies © Blackwell Publishing 2006 History Compass 4/2 (2006): 275–292, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00307.x