Walk into any bookstore and peruse titles in the history section and you will find countless books about Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, WWII, Hitler’s inner circle and Germany in general. Of these, many are standouts. Among the best is “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” the 1960 epic by William Shirer, based on the substantial captured records kept by the Nazis themselves. Dry reading at times, to be sure, but absolutely fascinating as it details Hitler and his world from his humble beginnings to the regime’s bitter end.
Dutton Caliber ($30).
While Shirer, among many others, wrote of the Germans who defied Hitler and the thuggish Nazis he commanded with an iron fist, his work was already monumental in scope just covering the main events of the Third Reich. Where he inserted the principal anti-Nazis into the narrative, they tended to be on the periphery, due to the sheer volume of information he had to sift through. Many others who resisted Hitler and Nazism have faded throughout the seven decades since the war ended.
A detailed new history of the people dedicated to stopping a fascist madman from driving Germany into its grave has just been released. “Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule” sums it all up with an inventive weaving of key players and the steps they took to resist a monster.
Authors Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis have consolidated the major players, intertwining their stories into a riveting narrative. Thomas, who died in 2017 just after completion of this book, also wrote “Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad.” Lewis co-wrote with Thomas “Shadow Warriors of WWII: The Daring Women of the OSS and SOE.” He is also a documentary filmmaker.
This work covers the well-known, like Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (most recently portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 2008 film “Valkyrie”), who took it upon himself to attempt an assassination of Hitler by actually planting and detonating a bomb in the Fuhrer’s prized Wolf’s Lair, and the largely forgotten, like Kurt Gerstein, ordered to deliver poison gas canisters to concentration camps. Gerstein sabotaged some of the canisters and bore witness to the horror of the camps as the war dragged on.
Many people stood up to the regime, albeit too little when it was too late. Covered extensively in this work is the White Rose resistance group, led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl. While their story and their legend stand out postwar (they are heroes within Germany itself), many others within their group are now brought into the light in this new book.
Along with the White Rose, the authors have detailed the loners, such as Gerstein, the military men, like Stauffenberg but also Harro Schulze-Boysen and Col. Henning von Tresckow. This work also features brave souls among the bureaucrats in workaday German (and Nazi) society, like Arvid Harnack and his American wife Mildred Fish-Harnack.
These and many others represent ordinary Germans, brave middle men and women and the non-Germans who witnessed extraordinary times and tried to assist along the way, a Herculean task against a regime wielding the power of life and death over so many. Indeed the Geheime Staatspolizei, otherwise known as the dreaded Gestapo, was alarmingly successful at finding and arresting so many of them. Their frightening side of the story, and the jarring ends met by so many heroic people, adds a chilling element to this work as well.
Along with Germans, there were Americans, like Allen Dulles, monitoring and assisting resisters while working in Switzerland for the forerunner to the CIA, and Donald Heath, spy runner at the US Embassy, whose agents had an almost insurmountable task trying to gather intelligence in a country where everything was controlled by a ruthless dictator. These men and their colleagues are featured prominently in this gripping book that manages to keep you guessing what some of the outcomes might be, despite our overall knowledge of Germany’s ultimate fate. There are just enough unknown players to keep you on your toes as to the final days or hours of these brave individuals.
Thomas and Lewis even manage to tie in top ranking Nazis who were discreetly working to cover their own backsides should the war take an unfavorable turn. Hermann Goering and to a greater degree Heinrich Himmler, were spinning their own secret little webs as they used players on both sides to hedge their bets for a post-Nazi Germany should the Allies emerge victorious. Much of this side of the story has been known for decades but the way it dovetails within this book is one of its strengths.
Drawing from the vast Nazi and German archives, but also from documented testimonies of major and minor players, execution records, diaries, journals and long forgotten books, newspaper and magazine accounts from around the world, “Defying Hitler” brings a vast number of stories and heroes together in a concise new history. It reminds us all that good people can dare to stand and fight evil and powerful regimes regardless of the odds.
Perry Munyon is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.
First Published: June 22, 2019, 2:00 p.m.
