Robinsohn-Strassmann Group

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The Robinsohn-Strassmann group , along with the Freie Hamburg group around Friedrich Ablass, was the only group that existed for a long time (1934–1941) in the resistance against National Socialism and which invoked left-wing liberal positions. It had its centers in Hamburg and Berlin and consisted of up to 60 members. Leading members were the businessman Hans Robinsohn , the Berlin judge Ernst Strassmann and the journalist Oskar Stark , most of them came from the left wing of the German Democratic Party and its youth association of young democrats , some also from the SAJ .

The group did not have a name of its own, but was called the Strassmann Group after Hans Robinsohn's emigration and Oskar Stark's departure after the end of the Third Reich . It made it its task to collect news and to point out the existence of resistance groups among the German civilian population abroad and to set the course for a form of government after Hitler. To this end, in the spring of 1939, members of the group asked the British Foreign Office for assistance in their work. However, they did not receive any concrete help, and so the group continued to limit itself to working out plans for post-war order. There were contacts with other resistance groups such as the Goerdeler circle , the confessing church and the Kreisau circle as well as through Hans von Dohnanyi on the military resistance . Shortly before his emigration to Denmark in 1938, Robinsohn put forward fundamental theses for foreign policy after the "Hitler era". These included peaceful cooperation between peoples and required this for an intact domestic and economic policy. In the fall of 1942, Strassmann was arrested but not murdered, and the successful secrecy of the group made it impossible for the Gestapo to uncover it like many other resistance groups . Strassmann could only survive because the group was clearly and strictly organized and there was only a small circle of people who knew about it. Due to the strict observance of conspiratorial rules and the principle of not recording anything in writing, the group was never exposed as a resistance organization by the Gestapo.

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