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Show 167 Second, the assertion that the Hitler regime was illegal and, by implication, that assassination would reinstitute legal government is straight out of the writings of the monarchomachs and earlier thinkers. Third, so was the clear indication that from an un- successful attempt at tyrannicide, an even worse form of tyranny results -- in this particular case in the deaths of some 5,000 men and women who, in Knappsteinvs words, "represented the best of our peeple.u Fourth, Knappsteinvs emphasis on the individual conscience as the ultimate arbiter of what one should do about a tyrant reflects the criticism of the monarchomach doctrine that only the elite of a community should decide a tyrantvs fate. The impracticality of that doctrine is seen not only in the impotent workings of the Kreisau Circle, as mentioned before, unless, as Herr Knappstein urged, but also in what can happen citizens act when their government clearly oversteps the bounds of legality and morality. Other writers, such as Dr. Paulus von Husen,20 have found a defense of the plot to assassinate Hitler in the right of self~defense -- a notion that also has its roots at least as far back as the writings of John Locke, in Chapter V of this dissertation, if not earlier. 20Jaszi and Lewis, Op. cit., p. 200. as noted |
