The new concept of transnational history is not yet well established; does it mean a special paradigm between national and global history or only an enlargement of the first one? In the history of resistance to the Nazi-regime there are some transnational phenomena, but no discussion about the new methodological question. The differences between the resistance movements in the different countries make it impossible to write an European history of resistance, in contrary according to the methodical differentiation the history of resistance lost the character of a ‘great narrative’ as it was in the time after World War II. In the western countries the history of resistance dealt as an authorisation of the respective national rebirth, in the eastern countries it got part of the communist resistance as a continental history. But each type of research has its own lacks in consequence of a selective perspective. The differences between the resistance in Germany and in the occupied countries are centred on three topics: the relation to the own nation, the temporal and local differences of development, the distance or partnership to the reigning power. Therefore the question arises: Is the Exile of German Socialists a transnational constellation? The study emphasises the correspondences of the developments in Germany and exile and the comparability of plans for a Germany after Hitler made by the resistance and the exile. This case study shows the right of enlargement of the national view but not of a transnational paradigm. There are different levels of history and interdependence between them but on the basis of theory of history the transnational question has not the character of a paradigm.