In political debates on the effectiveness of non-violent resistance, it is often claimed that it was only successful in democracies. Against dictators like Hitler, nonviolent resistance would have had no chance.
This is wrong. Under the Nazi rule during World War II, there were numerous examples of successful mass-free resistance in the occupied countries – for example against the deportation of the Jewish population into the death camps. In the 20th century, numerous dictatorships with nonviolent resistance were also overthrown. In 1986, for example, the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marco in the Philippines was terminated by the nonviolent EDSA revolution. And in December 2024, a nonviolent uprising in South Korea prevented a coup d’état by President-in-Office Yoon Suk-yeol.
The speaker of the evening, pastor Dietrich Becker-Hinrichs, will look at the partly completely unknown nonviolent resistance of the years 1933 to 1945 and also current examples. He has been chairman of the workshop for non-violent action for many years, which organizes seminars and trainings in non-violent resistance and has its seat in Freiburg.
