The most obvious kind of opposition was offered by the two great Christian churches. How much and how often were the antichrist and his false prophets not preached against, how many clergymen of all confessions were sent to prisons, penitentiaries, concentration camps, nay, to death? It is true, the churches could venture forth more openly than other people. For they did not intend to participate in a _forcible_ removal of the system, in the killing of its leaders and representatives, in the fight with arms. But the nonecclesiastical resistance groups had realized that the Nazi dictatorship could not be overthrown without violence; they were not subject to the political-philosophical impediments and restrictions of the churches, they could not throw off the mask until the day of action had dawned. Up to that time they were condemned to be silent, they had to camouflage, acting on the old principle of all conspirators: “Never speak of your aim, but always think of it!” If they had forgotten this principle, sooner or later unquestioningly they would have been betrayed by a spy and liquidated by the Gestapo. They would never have got as far as action. Did not the group round Stauffenberg act in this way too? Who knew of its existence before the bomb burst in Hitler’s headquarters on 20 July 1944? The same was the case with all the other resistance groups which unfortunately no longer had the possibility of acting and some of which were traced and secretly killed in spite of this. The fact that all of them existed is proved, however, by the small number of publications: the pamphlets of Emil Henk, of Franklin L. Ford and other authors, and Neuhaeusler’s book, “Cross and Swastika”. But downright classical witnesses are the numerous bloody victims whom the People’s Court of Justice [Volksgerichtshof] and the Gestapo had sent to the concentration camps and to death. One of these groups was the group around Hielscher, a member of which was the defendant Sievers.