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Berlin underground resistance
By Dagmar Herzog |
June 14, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
"IF history is written by victors," Anne Nelson observes in "Red Orchestra," her haunting account of a long-neglected network of people who resisted the Nazi regime, "fame accrues to those who succeed rather than those who attempt the impossible."
In the most terrifying years of the Third Reich, a loose confederacy of more than 100 individuals did attempt the impossible, trying to assist and rescue Jews and to surreptitiously distribute leaflets and post handbills and stickers against the Nazis.
The participants worked to turn an enthralled populace against Hitler. They also strove to bring news of the regime's crimes (and eventually the Nazi military's war plans) to the attention of the Allies. And as mass-murder operations on the Eastern front escalated, members began to put together a secret archive of photographs and documents in the hope that if the Germans were ever militarily defeated, the material could be used to bring the perpetrators to justice.
They were labeled the "Red Orchestra" by German military intelligence operatives who intercepted radio transmissions between members of the group and their (as it turned out, phenomenally feckless) Soviet contacts. As Nelson adeptly documents, the Soviets' haplessness was matched by the myopic lack of interest of the Americans and the British in German resistance activities. Had the military information gathered by Red Orchestra members been properly received by the Allies, the war might have been shorter -- and the Holocaust smaller.
Red Orchestra members came from all walks of life and every possible anti-Nazi political orientation -- from Protestant aristocrats in the highest echelons of the nation's elite to academics to bohemians involved in theater and film to Catholic, Social Democratic and Communist Party-affiliated workers.
Participants also included a number of Jews and so-called half-Jews. Most never knew more than a handful of the others. They were linked by ties of romance, friendship and sheer disgust at Nazism and revulsion at its anti-Semitism.
Nelson grippingly describes the insanity-inducing sensation they felt at being unable to convince their fellow citizens of the evil engulfing German society while, at the same time, having no idea if and when the madness would end.
Many Red Orchestra members were captured and beheaded or hanged. A number of others survived.
Nelson writes with deep sympathy and unsentimental compassion about a tiny band that somehow managed to summon the wild courage to take a stand against a barbarous status quo.
In the most terrifying years of the Third Reich, a loose confederacy of more than 100 individuals did attempt the impossible, trying to assist and rescue Jews and to surreptitiously distribute leaflets and post handbills and stickers against the Nazis.
The participants worked to turn an enthralled populace against Hitler. They also strove to bring news of the regime's crimes (and eventually the Nazi military's war plans) to the attention of the Allies. And as mass-murder operations on the Eastern front escalated, members began to put together a secret archive of photographs and documents in the hope that if the Germans were ever militarily defeated, the material could be used to bring the perpetrators to justice.
They were labeled the "Red Orchestra" by German military intelligence operatives who intercepted radio transmissions between members of the group and their (as it turned out, phenomenally feckless) Soviet contacts. As Nelson adeptly documents, the Soviets' haplessness was matched by the myopic lack of interest of the Americans and the British in German resistance activities. Had the military information gathered by Red Orchestra members been properly received by the Allies, the war might have been shorter -- and the Holocaust smaller.
Red Orchestra members came from all walks of life and every possible anti-Nazi political orientation -- from Protestant aristocrats in the highest echelons of the nation's elite to academics to bohemians involved in theater and film to Catholic, Social Democratic and Communist Party-affiliated workers.
Participants also included a number of Jews and so-called half-Jews. Most never knew more than a handful of the others. They were linked by ties of romance, friendship and sheer disgust at Nazism and revulsion at its anti-Semitism.
Nelson grippingly describes the insanity-inducing sensation they felt at being unable to convince their fellow citizens of the evil engulfing German society while, at the same time, having no idea if and when the madness would end.
Many Red Orchestra members were captured and beheaded or hanged. A number of others survived.
Nelson writes with deep sympathy and unsentimental compassion about a tiny band that somehow managed to summon the wild courage to take a stand against a barbarous status quo.
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