German Resistance Memorial Center

It was opened in 1980 in part of the Bendlerblock, a complex of offices in Stauffenbergstraße (formerly Bendlerstraße), south of the Großer Tiergarten in Tiergarten. It was here that Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and other leaders of the 20 July plot, who had just attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler as a decapitation strike and a prelude to regime change, were executed without trial after the plot failed.

Although the memorial is primarily intended to commemorate those members of the Wehrmacht who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944, it is also a memorial to the German resistance in the broader sense. Historians agree that there was no united, national resistance movement in Nazi Germany at any time during Hitler's years in power (1933–45). Joachim Fest describes it as "the resistance that never was." In the divided, ideologically different, and often mutually hostile nature of the many different resistance groups, however, Germany was actually highly similar to other countries in Nazi-ruled Europe.

Nevertheless, the umbrella term "German Resistance" (Deutscher Widerstand) is now widely used to describe all elements of opposition and resistance under the Orwellian Nazi Regime, including the underground networks of the SPD and KPD, dissident writers and intellectuals living a secret life of inner emigration and who defied government censorship by illegally circulated anti-Nazi samizdat literature like Weiße Rose ('White Rose'), opposition activities of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations such as the Confessing Church, along with the resistance groups based in the civil service, intelligence organs and armed forces.