The traitor's circle The true story of a secret resistance network in Nazi Germany--and the spy who betrayed them

In this dramatic study, Guardian columnist Freedland (The Escape Artist) explores the secretive world of upper-crust anti-Nazi activists in the Third Reich. The focus is on a 1943 Berlin tea party held by one such activist, Elisabeth von Thadden, the aristocratic head of a girls' school (where she eschewed "Heil Hitler" salutes). Guests included Otto Kiep, a Foreign Ministry official who was part of a clandestine government anti-Nazi ring, as well as Paul Reckzeh, a young doctor who applauded other guests' musings about overthrowing Hitler--only to later make a report to his Gestapo handlers. Fellow anti-Nazi government officials leaked the report to Kiep, who warned others about Reckzeh's allegiances, but not in time to save the tea partiers, most of whom were tortured and executed. The author also recaps the extraordinarily cinematic deeds of Countess Maria von Maltzan, a friend of von Thadden's who luckily skipped the party: she sheltered Jewish fugitives, harangued SS officers over their investigations, hid in a tree to evade searchlights and guard dogs, and shot a man in a Berlin sewer. Freedland makes his narrative into a tense cat-and-mouse game, pitting sadistic Nazi apparatchiks and their unsavory minions against prey whose considerable resources, privileged sense of entitlement, and sheer moxie give them a fighting chance. It's a thrilling account of the struggle against Nazism at its most up-close and nerve-wracking. (Oct.)

Elite Germans oppose the Nazis and suffer the consequences. Journalist and commentator Freedland, author ofThe Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz To Warn the World, writes that Adolf Hitler enjoyed overwhelming support from everyday Germans soon after he took office--and nearly to the end. He drew their backing with his declaration that supposedly depraved foreigners working with perfidious fellow citizens were sucking the nation's blood. But Nazi violence and suppression of liberty offended plenty of educated, upper-class, often religious Germans, many of whom lost jobs as teachers or civil servants. They expressed their unhappiness and took risks by hiding Jews or helping them flee the country. After the war began, they discussed ways to end it, perhaps by removing Hitler, and provided what aid they could to the few resisters still in the government. Their existence was no secret to Nazi security services that opened mail, tapped telephones, and employed an army of informers, including Jews. Even as Allied armies poured into the country, the Nazis were harrying fellow Germans for insufficient loyalty. Taking advantage of archives in a nation that has kept many records, the author paints vivid portraits of a group of admirable anti-Nazis who met in Berlin in 1943. Freedland writes, "They came together for what, to the outsider's eye, would have looked like a wholly innocent gathering: an afternoon tea party to celebrate the birthday of a friend. But that single event would eventually expose them to the hangman's rope and the guillotine's blade." Defeatism was a capital crime, and the author details how the Gestapo carefully assembled evidence, then arrested, interrogated, and tortured the dissenters, extracting a few confessions. A trial followed, presided over by a legendary brutal Nazi judge, ending in gruesome consequences. Several escaped, but executions continued even during the final days of the war. Excellent niche history of a group of heroes who defied Hitler. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.