Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler

Dagmar Herzog

…haunting…Nelson is the author of the moving post-9/11 play "The Guys." More pertinent to the strengths of this book are her experiences as a reporter who lived and worked under military dictatorships in Central and South America as well as in post-totalitarian Romania and Cambodia. No doubt those experiences inform the deep sympathy and unsentimental compassion of Red Orchestra, with its story of a tiny band that somehow managed to summon the wild courage to take a stand against a barbarous status quo.
—The New York Times

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.)

Tom Cruise is currently starring in Valkyrie, which tells the story of the June 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, certainly exciting stuff and probably worth the price of admission. But Nelson has a tale to tell herself, and she does it quite well. The Red Orchestra was a group of intellectuals, artists, and even German military officers who gathered secretly in Berlin during the Nazi era and sought to oppose Hitler and his henchmen through the distribution of leaflets, newsletters, and other forms of stealthy communication. Although many members of this clandestine group were sympathetic to the Soviet Union, they were all united in their disgust and horror of what had become of Germany as the Nazis slowly tightened their control over all aspects of German life. Led by Greta Kuckhoff and her husband, Adam, the small group of resisters was eventually discovered; many were either imprisoned or executed. Despite its tragic demise, the Red Orchestra represents yet another relatively unknown aspect of the German resistance, which, as the archives are now starting to reveal, was much more extensive and organized than originally thought. Recommended for most collections.
—Ed Goedeken

Inspiring history of Germans who risked and mostly lost their lives to oppose the Nazis. .Journalist and playwright Nelson (Murder Under Two Flags: The U.S., Puerto Rico, and the Cerro Maravilla Cover-Up, 1986) emphasizes that the famous 1944 bomb plot by disaffected Army officers obscures the existence of substantial, ongoing resistance in the broader population. She tells their story through the eyes of Greta Kuckhoff, a rare survivor whose 1972 memoir of her antifascist activities was mangled by the dogmatic alterations of her East German editor. (Nelson got a look at the original manuscript.) Kuckhoff spent years 1927 to 1929 doing graduate work in economics at the University of Wisconsin, where she befriended several other German students later prominent in the resistance. All returned home to experience the Depression and the spectacular rise of the Nazi Party, which struck many of them as wildly irrational. Opposition was always strongest in Berlin, a vibrant city whose intellectuals and artists thought for themselves and whose millions of factory workers had more leftist sympathies than those in other cities. Kuckhoff and her friends struggled to make a living while meeting and plotting with likeminded comrades. A substantial number joined the civil service or the military and rose to high positions while passing information to the local underground or foreign diplomats. Kuckhoff fell in love with a popular writer and participated in groups dominated by intellectuals. Their sexism shunted her into minor tasks such as typing, which may have saved her life when her husband and most of their friends were caught, tortured and executed in 1942–43. Nelson admits that many resistanceactivities, such as printing and distributing leaflets, had no noticeable effect on the German war effort, and the Allies ignored a surprising amount of the information dissidents risked their lives to convey. Nonetheless, their courage and sacrifice deserves a permanent place in history books..A modest but important account of a heroic movement..One Synagogue, One Book selection.

"Nelson has a tale to tell herself, and she does it quite well." —-Library Journal