Nazi Germany's Freedom-Fighters
MUHLEN, NORBERT
Nazi Germany's Freedom-Fighters By Norbert Muhlen Author, "The Return of Germany' How many Germans were Nazis, and how many—or, perhaps, how few—were anti-Nazis while Hitler ruled? The question...
...Theodor Haubach and Carlo Mieren-dorff, two young and unorthodox Social Democratic leaders...
...Annedore Leber has remained an active Social Democrat while she has become a convert to the Catholic Church...
...laborers, society matrons, scientists...
...There is a wealth of "human interest" in the 64 tragic lives of this hook, besides its historical and political interest...
...This unusually well-qualified author was assisted in the preparation of her book by a team of outstanding experts— among them Willy Brandt, West Berlin's new Mayor...
...For a while, news about German freedom-fighters was scarcely available, or very vague, in this country...
...But every picture is accompanied by a brief life story, and you find that all these women and men have one thing in common—they were killed by Hitler's executioners because they rebelled against his ideas and his crimes...
...the Rev...
...Charged with plotting against the Fuehrer, too proud to defend himself, he wrote before his execution: "One's own life is a proper stake for so good and just a cause...
...If you merely leaf through this book, you might think that a cross-section of Germans has been caught by a camera...
...As in a hagiography, the lives in this book are bound to interest quite a variety of readers for different reasons...
...We have done what was in our power...
...Harald Poelchau, who served as chaplain in the prison in which many of this book's heroes were held...
...Many of these biographies are written in an almost artless way...
...First and foremost, however, it bears moving and impressive witness to the fact that no dictatorship seems powerful enough to silence the human conscience...
...The reader looks at casual photographs of, say, a beautiful young co-ed on her Sunday outing, or a minor trade-union official playing with his baby, a Socialist functionary skiing on her winter vacation, a young man in his new lieutenant's uniform—selected, it would seem, at random...
...While Communist propaganda tried to make all German anti-Nazis out to be either Communists or "reactionaries," U.S...
...Another picture in this book shows us a thoughtful 53-year-old Social Democratic editor, his face ennobled by suffering and faith, taken in the "People's Court" where lie faces his Nazi enemies...
...His name was Julius Leber, and his widow is the author of this book...
...wartime censors suppressed truthful publications concerning anti-Nazis in the Third Reich...
...the Lord Mayor of the city of Leipzig...
...The seeming totalitarians of yesterday often prove to be the freedom-fighters of today...
...We also see snapshots of buck privates and generals, monarchists and anarchists, of Catholics...
...Conscience in Revolt*—which has been a steady best-seller in West Germany for the past two years—is the most recent contribution...
...Fewer than half of the 64 pictures of this book depict people with well-known "names"—among them Carl von Ossietzky, the editor of a famous liberal weekly...
...The question used to agitate people abroad in the war and postwar years, but no valid answer in percentage figures could ever have been given...
...We meet, for instance, Sophie Scholl, a lovely 18-year-old Bavarian girl, whose picture is followed by extracts from her secret diary...
...An unusual and unusually appealing book, it presents—quite literally —a collection of German faces in the crowd...
...and Hilde Walter, a writer who now lives in this country...
...the city manager of Berlin...
...The reality defies easy black-and-white statements...
...A short while later, her biographical sketch informs us, she was arrested because she and her brother distributed at the University of Munich a leaflet exhorting her fellow students "to strive for the regeneration of the mortally mutilated German spirit...
...Edith Stein, the Carmelite nun and noted philosopher...
...Jews, Protestants and atheists...
...She played a leading part in West Berlin's fight for freedom against the Soviets, and now serves as a member of the Parliamentary civilian committee which investigates applicants for high-ranking positions in the new German army...
...Only in the past ten years have a number of books appeared to tell the story of widespread German opposition to the ruling Nazi gang...
...She was sentenced to death, and executed a few hours later...
...After all," she noted, "one should have the courage to believe in what is good...
...others consist only of excerpts from Nazi police files or a last letter scribbled in a prison cell and setting down a confession of faith in extremis...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 43
