Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Anne Nelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 2009

In this unforgettable book, distinguished author Anne Nelson shares one of the most shocking and inspiring–and least chronicled–stories of domestic resistance to the Nazi regime. The Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra, was the Gestapo’s name for an intrepid band of German artists, intellectuals, and bureaucrats (almost half of them women) who battled treacherous odds to unveil the brutal secrets of their fascist employers and oppressors.

Based on years of research, featuring new information, and culled from exclusive interviews, Red Orchestra documents this riveting story through the eyes of Greta Kuckhoff, a German working mother. Fighting for an education in 1920s Berlin but frustrated by her country’s economic instability and academic sexism, Kuckhoff ventured to America, where she immersed herself in jazz, Walt Disney movies, and the first stirrings of the New Deal. When she returned to her homeland, she watched with anguish as it descended into a totalitarian society that relegated her friends to exile and detention, an environment in which political extremism evoked an extreme response.

Greta and others in her circle were appalled by Nazi anti-Semitism and took action on many fronts to support their Jewish friends and neighbors. As the war raged and Nazi abuses grew in ferocity and reach, resistance was the only possible avenue for Greta and her compatriots. These included Arvid Harnack–the German friend she met in Wisconsin–who collected anti-Nazi intelligence while working for their Economic Ministry; Arvid’s wife, Mildred, who emigrated to her husband’s native country to become the only American woman executed by Hitler; Harro Schulze-Boysen, the glamorous Luftwaffe intelligence officer who smuggled anti-Nazi information to allies abroad; his wife, Libertas, a social butterfly who coaxed favors from an unsuspecting Göring; John Sieg, a railroad worker from Detroit who publicized Nazi atrocities from a Communist underground printing press; and Greta Kuckhoff’s husband, Adam, a theatrical colleague of Brecht’s who found employment in Goebbels’s propaganda unit in order to undermine the regime.

For many members of the Red Orchestra, these audacious acts of courage resulted in their tragic and untimely end. These unsung individuals are portrayed here with startling and sympathetic power. As suspenseful as a thriller, Red Orchestra is a brilliant account of ordinary yet bold citizens who were willing to sacrifice everything to topple the Third Reich.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this inspiring account, noted journalist and playwright Nelson documents the wartime journey of Greta Kuckhoff, a young German, and her valiant colleagues who formed a potent resistance to the Hitler regime in its glory days. When Kuckhoff returned home from America in 1929 after university study, she joined with a band of young Communists, leftist Jews and other German antifascists to thwart the rise of Hitler at the risk of torture and death. Nelson explains in telling detail about the Nazis' tight grip on power after the 1933 Reichstag fire, eliminating all political foes, including Jews and other non-Aryan types, yet the Kuckhoffs, Mildred and Avrid Harnack, and other members of the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) fought fascist censorship, slid their people into Nazi ministries, helped Jews to flee and provided the Allies with vital information to aid the war effort. Nelson's riveting book speaks proudly of Greta, Mildred and all of the nearly three million Germans who resisted Hitler's iron will, and gives the reader a somber view of hell from the inside. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Hitler and the Nazi Party never achieved total political and social control over Germany. Even after the onset of World War II, a few brave voices continued clandestine but active opposition. The best known were the group of military and religious figures led by Klaus von Stauffenburg and the White Rose organization centered around university students and siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl. Nelson, a playwright and foreign correspondent, has examined the personalities and activities of another tiny and courageous group. Dubbed the Red Orchestra by the Gestapo and led by young Germans and German American members, the group was remarkably successful at serving in government positions while gathering intelligence, disseminating anti-Nazi information, and saving the lives of Jews. Nelson effectively conveys the sense of determination and tension that characterized members, particularly as the Gestapo closed in on them. A large percentage of the group was captured and executed. Nelson plays down the pro-Soviet views of many members, but this is still a worthy tribute to their courage and dedication. --Jay Freeman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Printing edition (April 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400060001
• ISBN-13: 978-1400060009
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #207,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anne Nelson is an author, lecturer and playwright who specializes in media and international affairs from a human rights perspective. Nelson's most recent book is "Red Orchestra: the Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler." It was selected as a New York Times "Editor's Choice" in 2009. Its German edition, published by C. Bertelsman, was widely reviewed and described as a "masterpiece" in the Frankfurter Rundschau. A screenplay based on the book is now in circulation. Nelson's dramatic writing include the 2001 play, "The Guys," produced across the U.S. and as a feature film starring Anthony LaPaglia and Sigourney Weaver. Her 2005 play Savages, produced off-Broadway, dealt with the trauma of counter-insurgency warfare, and was described by the New Yorker as a work of "lacerating beauty." Her 1986 book, "Murder Under Two Flags," was produced as a feature starring Robert Duvall and Kevin Spacey. Nelson has a second career as a media consultant. She blogs for PBS MediaShift and appears on twitter as anelsona. Nelson was born at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and is a graduate of Yale University. She lives in New York with her husband, author George Black. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and teaches "New Media and Development Communications" at Columbia University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anne Nelson's "The Red Orchestra" brings you inside the Nazi resistance --- and it's a real page turner!, April 8, 2009

By 

LEWNYC - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler (Hardcover)

Anne Nelson's book "The Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler" is one of the most engaging books I have read about this well-documented and painful period in our recent history. The book follows the fates of a group of friends and acquaintances living in Berlin who support each other's efforts, no matter how audacious or diminutive, to resist the Nazi takeover of Germany starting in the pre-war 1930s. Although this is without doubt a historical text, the narration reads more like a novel than a history book. Against a backdrop of suspense, we are drawn into the daily world of these underground resisters as they battle against Hitler and the Third Reich. Ms. Nelson's writing style is both unpretentious and captivating. One develops an intimacy with the real-life characters over the course of the book. The extraordinary collection of photographs which accompany the book (some formal, but many candid) literally bring the reader face-to-face with these courageous people. In the end, one can't help but to cheer on their anti-fascist actions and grieve their personal losses. A page turner, to say the least!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anne Nelson does some heavy lifting in "The Red Orchestra", April 8, 2009

By 

JAGNY - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler (Hardcover)

The author of "The Red Orchestra," Anne Nelson, does some heavy lifting. In order to give fuller meaning to the stories of individual Berliners who were part of a loosely knit group of Nazi resisters, she adroitly traces the history of the Nazi movement from its inception, through the war and even into the postwar period. Her subjects -- writers, actors, bureaucrats, laborers - are revealed through primary sources. This is decidedly not historical fiction; the author fleshes out the stories of individual resisters using letters, diaries, official records and oral histories. The book is highly readable and compelling. Perhaps the book's most important message, which is not directly expressed by the author, is about the perils of fascism, in any age. Truth-seeking individuals and institutions, in particular journalists, artists, writers and the courts as well, must be protected from government meddling and control.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You Should Read This Story of a German Resistance Group, June 18, 2009

By 

Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life" (Monona, WI) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler (Hardcover)

Red Orchestra tells the story of an anti-Nazi resistance group based in Berlin. While the story has been told elsewhere - and perhaps by more qualified historians - when Anne Nelson came across the Berlin memorial to the Resistance in 1999 she was surprised. The internal civilian German resistance to the Nazis was almost unknown in the West (largely for reasons of Cold war politics). Nelson wanted to write the story for an American audience, in particular.

The so-called Red Orchestra (or Rote Kapelle) was a group of overlapping circles. This book focuses on the group that centered on Arvid Harnack, a high-ranking German government economist, his American wife Mildred, Harro Schulze-Boysen, a Luftwaffe intelligence officer, John Sieg, a Communist and former journalist, and Adam Kuckhoff, a well-known playwright. The focal point for Nelson's story is Greta Kuckhoff - no doubt in large part because Greta survived to tell her story. (My interest in the book was originally piqued by sn interview with the author on Wisconsin Public Radio. It turns out that Greta attended the University of Wisconsin in the 1920's where she met Arvid Harnack and his future wife Mildred Fish. Mildred's birthday is officially observed in all Wisconsin public schools.).

The group at times engaged in both political resistance activities (for example, printing and distributing newspapers relating news of German atrocities on the eastern front) and intelligence work mostly for the Soviets (The British and American governments were not much interested, although individuals did make some contact with the group). Harnack and Schulze-Boysen were well-positioned to obtain important economic and military information and the risks they ran were consistent with their information's value. How much the group accomplished is open to debate. For example, Stalin had ample warnings, including information from Schulze-Boysen that the Germans were going to invade, but refused to believe it. In any event, Soviet intelligence proved to be fatally inept.

The book raised existential questions for me: what would I have done in their situation? Was it worth the risk of one's life to vandalize a public anti-Jewish exhibit? Surely they recognized the futility of their efforts to provide information to at least some of the German people. But, what is the meaning of life, the purpose of living, if one does nothing but play it safe? Life is sweet when one considers the alternative, however.

This group differed from other resistance groups in that it was neither organized to perform a military coup nor was it made up mostly of Communists and workers. These were middle-class to upper-class people with relatively comfortable lives. In that sense they risked more.

Nelson relates their story in a somewhat disjointed way. Granted that there were a dizzying number of people involved in many different ways, but she does only a middling job of sorting it out for the reader. She also seems to want to deemphasize the Communist beliefs of some of the members. Nelson gives the impression that Greta Kuckhoff was a reluctant Communist. While Kuckhoff did object to the East German government's "Leninist objectification" of her group she also rose to an important position in that government.

I hope I am not giving away too much to tell you that things end badly for the group with torture and gruesome death by being hung from a meat hook. One thing I did not anticipate (but perhaps should have), was the trouble the survivors ran into when the war ended and the Cold War began. The former Nazi prosecutor Manfred Roeder managed to avoid severe punishment by shopping his supposed ability to identify German Communists, including Greta. For many years, the resistors were portrayed by some in West Germany as traitors who put German soldiers at risk. Widows of the resistors were denied government pensions while widows of Gestapo received theirs. East Germany, on the other hand, wanted to portray all resistors as Communists motivated by the class struggle.

I highly recommend this book (with its flaws) to anyone who is unfamiliar with the story of German resistance. Nelson also mentions a couple movies, The Murderers Are Among Us, which is available on Amazon and Netflix, and a documentary, Die Rote Kapelle by Stephen Roloff, which is not, but should be. Roloff is the son of one of the members of the Red Orchestra.