European Union (resistance group)

The original European Union (German: Europäische Union) was an antifascist resistance group during Germany's Nazi era, which formed around Anneliese and Georg Groscurth and Robert Havemann. Other important members were Herbert Richter and Paul Rentsch.

The Berlin-based resistance group was founded in 1939. Founding members, Robert Havemann, a chemist and Georg Groscurth, a doctor, met each other at the beginning of the 1930s. Rentsch, a dentist, met Groscurth in 1934. Richter, an architect, was Richter's neighbor. They became friends not because of politics, but because of common interests. They were intellectual, free spirits and came to their political views independently.

Three of the four core members of the EU had direct contact with high-level Nazis. When war broke out, both Havemann and Groscurth tried to extend their work in such a way that they wouldn't be called upon to serve in the military. They took on projects from the Heereswaffenamt, biochemical research that was to put Germany in position to use chemical weapons, but neither they nor other scientists were terribly ambitious about the nominal goal. The architect, Richter, received contracts from the Reichshandwerkskammer and got to know and win the trust of Hermann Göring. He was already interested in the Communist Party and the information he learned from his personal contact with Göring filled him with hate for the Nazis and only pushed him further toward the idea of resistance. Groscurth, a doctor, had both Rudolph Hess and Wilhelm Keppler as his patients.

The European Union (EU) stood for the restoration of democratic rights and freedoms and a united, free and socialist Europe. They tried to strengthen the domestic German resistance through contacts with the resistance groups of the foreign forced laborers. It was an international organization organized as a network of smaller groups of individual resistance fighters. They weren't trying to bring down the Nazi regime themselves, which they expected to collapse of its own, rather they worked to create a political structure that could step in, which would be necessary when the Hitler-regime finally fall apart.

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