Hans Oster

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Hans Oster (August 9, 1887 – April 9, 1945) was a career officer in the Wehrmacht and a dedicated opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.

He was a central resistance figure; as early as 1937 he was plotting a coup against Hitler, whereby Count Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal and other officers would march into the Reich Chancellery and arrest him. The plan was aborted when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain adopted the policy of appeasement.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Oster informed the Dutch government of the exact date of invasion of the Netherlands. In 1943, growing mistrust and accusations of aiding Jews led to his dismissal. In 1944, he was arrested the day after the failed July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler; and on April 8, 1945, days before the end of the Third Reich, he, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Wilhelm Canaris were given a show trial that resulted in their conviction and sentencing to death.

The following day Oster, Bonhoeffer and Canaris were hanged in Flossenbürg concentration camp. Oster was forced to strip naked before being taken to the gallows. The camp was liberated a few days later by American forces.

Fabian von Schlabrendorff, one of the few major coordinators of anti-Nazi activities to survive the war, described him as "a man such as God meant men to be, lucid and serene in mind, imperturbable in danger."^[1]