This book presents and uses a major new database of the most serious forms of internal
resistance to the Nazi state to study empirically the whole phenomenon of resistance to an
authoritarian regime. By studying serious political resistance from a quantitative historical
perspective the book opens up a new avenue of research for economic history.The database
underpinning the book was painstakingly compiled from official state records of treason and or
high treason tried before the German People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) between 1933 and 1945.
It brings together material on resistance groups stored in the archives of the Federal Republic
of Germany and Austria with previously inaccessible files from the former German Democratic
Republic Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union. Through searching these records the authors have
been able to reconstruct in hitherto unattainable detail the economic social political
ethnic and familial profiles backgrounds and influences of all 4 378 civilians of the Third
Reich active in Germany Austria and the outside territories for whom there are complete
records.The findings of their research afford fresh new interdisciplinary insights and
perspectives not only on the configuration timing impact and profile of resistance to the
Nazi state but also on a range of real-world behaviours common within authoritarian states
such as defection reward and punishment and commitment to group identities. The book's
statistical analysis reveals precisely the who how where and when of serious resistance. In
so doing it advances significantly our understanding of the overall pattern and nature of
serious resistance within Nazi Germany.
