Bendlerblock in the context of "Ministry of the Reichswehr"

The German resistance to Nazism (German: Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus) included unarmed and armed opposition and disobedience to the Nazi regime by various movements, groups and individuals by various means, from attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler or to overthrow his regime, defection to the enemies of the Third Reich and sabotage against the German Army and the apparatus of repression and attempts to organize armed struggle, to open protests, rescue of persecuted persons, dissidence and "everyday resistance".

German resistance was not recognized as a united resistance movement during the height of Nazi Germany, unlike the more organised efforts in other countries, such as Italy, Denmark, the Soviet Union, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Norway. The German resistance consisted of small, isolated groups that were unable to mobilize mass political opposition. Individual attacks on Nazi authority, sabotage, and the disclosure of information regarding Nazi armaments factories to the Allies, as by the Austrian resistance group led by Heinrich Maier, occurred. One strategy was to persuade leaders of the Wehrmacht to stage a coup d'état against the regime; the 20 July plot of 1944 against Hitler was intended to trigger such a coup. Hundreds of thousands of Germans had deserted from the Wehrmacht, many defected to the Allies or the anti-Fascist resistance forces, and after 1943, the Soviet Union made attempts to launch a guerrilla warfare in Germany with such defectors and allowed the members of the National Committee for a Free Germany which consisted mostly of the German prisoners of war to be engaged in the military operations of the Red Army and form small military units.

The Federal Ministry of Defence (German: Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsminɪsˌteːʁiʊm deːɐ̯ fɐˈtaɪdɪɡʊŋ] ; abbreviated BMVg) is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The ministry is headquartered at the Hardthöhe barracks itself located at the Hardthöhe district in Bonn and has a second office in the Bendlerblock building in Berlin, which is occasionally used as a metonym to denote the entire Ministry.

According to Article 65a of the German Constitution (Grundgesetz), the Federal Minister of Defence is Commander-in-chief of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, with around 260,953 active soldiers and civilians. Article 115b decrees that in the state of defence, declared by the Bundestag with consent of the Bundesrat, the command in chief passes to the Chancellor. The ministry currently has approximately 2,000 employees.