On 10 September 1943, a loose group of well-connected friends met in a small apartment in the Charlottenberg area of Berlin. The host was Elisabeth von Thadden and the nominal reason for the get-together was her younger sister’s 50th birthday. Really, though, this was a cover story for nine influential people meeting to discuss what should happen now that it was clear that Hitler was losing the war.
Otto Kiep, a former diplomat, talked hopefully about how Mussolini’s recent toppling meant that Italy was ready to make peace with the allies, while political hostess Hanna Solf gleefully anticipated the moment when Hitler fell: “We’ll put him against a wall.” Meanwhile, Von Thadden herself, a devout Protestant and former headteacher of an elite girls’ school, warned of the humanitarian crisis that would follow the end of hostilities. For those who gathered on that late summer’s day for tea, sandwiches and a particularly unappetising food item called “war cake”, Germany’s rebirth as a democratic nation state felt so near that they could almost touch it.
None of these people were natural rebels, and Jonathan Freedland does an excellent job of reaching inside their heads to reveal a slow-growing and late-flowering disillusionment with the Nazis. Many were from distinguished military families who had been burned by the defeat of the first world war and the subsequent humiliation of the treaty of Versailles. To these quintessential patriots, the national socialists’ promise to restore Germany’s military pride, not to mention economic stability, had been initially appealing. A return to the enduring values of Goethe and Beethoven could surely not be far behind.
This naivety didn’t last long. As the full horror of the Nazis’ programme for racial cleansing became clear, it was impossible to stand by. In 1933, Kiep, then consul general to the US, risked everything to publicly honour Albert Einstein, the best-known Jewish refugee from nazism. It earned him an immediate recall to the fatherland. For Von Thadden, the moment of reckoning had come when she saw what the Third Reich had planned for Christianity – a new “German church” in which Hitler outranked Jesus Christ. For Countess Lagi von Ballestrem, the challenge was helping hundreds of “submarines” – Jews in hiding – survive the terrible Berlin winters, before pointing them to freedom via a network of tunnels and false papers. The countess had perfected the art of the silent insult: everywhere she went, she made sure to carry a bag of heavy laundry in each hand – it was the perfect excuse for failing to give the obligatory “Heil Hitler” salute.
What no one realised until it was too late was that there was an informant in their midst. He arrived at the tea party with excellent references, but in retrospect, there was something fishy about him. He hung on to everyone’s words as if taking mental notes and tried to pump people for further revelations. That was because he was typing it all up and presenting it to his Gestapo boss, the notoriously ruthless Herbert Lange. Within 18 months, nearly everyone who had attended the gathering would be either dead or imprisoned.
In 74 short, punchy chapters, each ending on a cliffhanger, Freedland tracks the twists and turns by which these reluctant heroes sought to evade and then face their fate. At first there was an unnerving silence, but then came a knock at the door, or a tap on the shoulder. Given that these were prestige prisoners with names or fortunes associated with Germany’s prewar elite, it was inevitable that they would be exploited for propaganda purposes. There were show trials, complete with expensive barristers and witnesses and family pleas for mercy. It didn’t do any good. Kiep was hanged, Von Thadden beheaded. Arthur Zarden, a mandarin at the German ministry of finance, managed to break away from his captors and jump to his death, while the rest got long prison sentences.
Freedland has produced that elusive thing – an impeccably sourced history book that reads as propulsively as an airport thriller. Yet this is also a profoundly serious work, posing an uncomfortable question. How many of us, given the chance to sit out an unpalatable political present without too much discomfort, would find the courage to step up, speak out and face the inevitably terrible consequences?
• The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them by Jonathan Freedland is published by John Murray (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
