Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule

by Gordon Thomas, Greg Lewis

"A terrifying and timely account of resistance in the face of the greatest of evils.”—Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The First WaveAn enthralling story that vividly resurrects the web of everyday Germans who resisted Nazi ruleNazi Germany is remembered as a nation of willing fanatics. But beneath the surface, countless ordinary, everyday Germans actively resisted Hitler. Some passed industrial secrets to Allied spies. Some forged passports to help Jews escape the Reich. For others, resistance was as simple as writing a letter denouncing the rigidity of Nazi law. No matter how small the act, the danger was the same--any display of defiance was met with arrest, interrogation, torture, and even death.Defying Hitler follows the underground network of Germans who believed standing against the Fuhrer to be more important than their own survival. Their bravery is astonishing--a schoolgirl beheaded by the Gestapo for distributing anti-Nazi fliers; a German American teacher who smuggled military intel to Soviet agents, becoming the only American woman executed by the Nazis; a pacifist philosopher murdered for his role in a plot against Hitler; a young idealist who joined the SS to document their crimes, only to end up, to his horror, an accomplice to the Holocaust. This remarkable account illuminates their struggles, yielding an accessible narrative history with the pace and excitement of a thriller.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, War, Germany, Politics, Holocaust

691 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 23, 2019

About the author

Gordon Thomas (born 1933) is a Welsh author who has written more than fifty books.
Thomas was born in Wales, in a cemetery keeper's cottage where his grandmother lived. He had his first story published at nine years old in a Boy's Own Paper competition. With his father in the RAF, he traveled widely and was educated at the Cairo High School, the Maritz Brothers (in Port Elizabeth, South Africa) and, lastly, at Bedford Modern School. His first book, completed at the age of seventeen, is the story of a British spy in Russia during World War II, titled Descent Into Danger. He refused the offer of a job at a university in order to accompany a traveling fair for a year: he used those experiences for his novel, Bed of Nails. Since then his books have been published worldwide. He has been a foreign correspondent beginning with the Suez Crisis and ending with the first Gulf War. He was a BBC writer/producer for three flagship BBC programmes: Man Alive, Tomorrow's World and Horizon.

He is a regular contributor to Facta, the respected monthly Japanese news magazine, and he lectures widely on the secret world of intelligence. He also provides expert analysis on intelligence for US and European television and radio programs.His book Gideon's Spies: Mossad's Secret Warriors became a major documentary for Channel Four that he wrote and narrated: The Spy Machine. It followed three years of research during which he was given unprecedented access to Mossad’s main personnel. The documentary was co-produced by Open Media and Israfilm.

Gideon's Spies: Mossad's Secret Warriors has so far been published in 16 languages. A source for this book was Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence agent, and legendary Israeli spy Rafi Eitan. According to Charles Foster in Contemporary Review: "Writers who know their place are few and far between: fortunately Mr Thomas is one of them. By keeping to his place as a tremendous storyteller without a preacher's pretensions, he has put his book amongst the important chronicles of the state of Israel."

Reviews

[Beata · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this book some time ago, but I was unable to decide what to include into my feedback. There is so much in it, so much information that I would not like to leave unmentioned. This is not the first book I have read on the German resistance against Hitler, but I admit this one is well-written and perfectly researched. The Authors’ focus is not just on the military and not only on the actual war; they do describe in detail some of the assassinations on Hitler, but I believe their main target is civic resistance and the highest price paid for it. And the resistance that in most cases described started well before the break-out of WW2 and the Stalingrad defeat. I learnt a lot, and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who would like to read more on the topic.

[Cj Zawacki · Rating 5 out of 5]

" Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment?" Sophie Scholl
Sophie Scholl has almost two hundred schools named in her honor across Germany. She was a member oh the White Rose, a group of resistors who fought bravely against Hitler and the Nazi Party.Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis non-fiction book tells of several of groups of Germans that defied Nazi Rule. Very well documented, one learns of the those heros and herions that passed information to Allied Forces, saved Jews By forging passports, and lead a military coup. Some who had even given their lives to try to end evil.
The stories cover the Us Ambassador, William Dodd and family, the Baum Group, The White Rose Students, those who acted alone, and those of the German Military who hunted them.

[Kristi Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.” Sophie Scholl
I received this book from a Goodreads Giveaway. I had already heard about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Valkyrie assassination attempt on Hitler, but the majority of these resistors were unknown to me. In many ways, it changes my feelings on Germany and WWII, but it also points out that once someone like Hitler comes into power, it is very hard to turn the tide. In other words, if you don’t stop it from happening it will be very hard to keep it from getting worse.
There are many unsung heroes in this large book (over 500 pages). The ones that really stood out to me where the young people who put their lives on the line for a purpose. They formed a group called the White Rose. Ultimately the majority gave their lives in their fight against fascism.
The other person who was fascinating to read about was Kurt Gerstein. Was he a hero for letting people know what was going on in the SS, or was he just as bad because he didn’t try and stop it? It would make a good discussion.
I learned a great deal from this book and I believe the documentation in this book will help other scholars to further the work. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Lewis wrote a book that is very readable and engrossing.
Even in the midst of evil, we can still have beauty. I highly recommend this book which is scheduled to be released in April of this year.

[Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this as an audiobook, which helpfully kept me occupied learning the interesting history of various resistance movements in Nazi Germany over a three-day road trip (22 hours). The book traces the stories of a large cast of diverse characters: the idealistic teenagers of the White Rose, rich and aristocratic socialists and communists who shared intelligence with both the Soviet Union and the U.S., tormented Christians acting out of religious convictions, military commanders who plotted multiple assassination attempts while pretending to remain loyal to the Nazi regime, rabid Gestapo interrogators and detectives ...

Many of the stories were more frustrating and tragic than they were inspiring. A repeating pattern in the stories is that people engage in fairly mild vocal dissent against the Nazi regime, make some trivial mistake of indiscretion, get denounced by Nazi loyalists, and are then horrendously tortured by the Gestapo and brutally murdered. Very few of these acts of extreme courage seemed to make any kind of dent in the iron grasp of the all-consuming, all-seeing totalitarian government. One of the few exceptions to this general pattern of tragic failures was the story of the spy Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat who successfully passed on helpful intelligence to Britain and the U.S., and actually survived without getting caught by the Gestapo.

A big takeaway for me was just how thoroughly the Nazis were able to suppress effective dissent through terror, surveillance, torture, and murder. It helps explain why more people didn't join the resistance movements, given how ruthlessly they were stamped out. It also caused me to ponder agonizing "what-ifs" ... what if more people had been so courageous? Could the regime have suppressed the resistance groups so well if there had been more people engaging in more widespread dissent? Could there have been a way for the resisters to reach a critical mass to the point of being impossible to contain - if only enough people had been willing to risk themselves to join them? Or was the terrorizing violence of the regime just too strong for most people to be able to conceive of defying it? There is also a lot to think about here in terms of practical considerations of the types of resistance actions that would be the most effective, versus those that might express noble intentions and rhetoric but not accomplish as much.

If the worst ever came to pass in the U.S. and the neo-fascists gained (even more) power over our government, and we fully went the way of the Nazi regime ... I can't help but wonder after listening to this book how many of us who believe in constitutional democracy, decency, rule of law, and humanitarian values would have the courage to engage in serious acts of resistance ... And of those who had the courage, how many would have Kolbe's prudence, wisdom, and practical intelligence to resist effectively, to not make mistakes, to not get caught, to choose actions that actually made a difference?

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book highly. If you want to see the model for Donald Trump's administration, read about how the Nazis took over everything. The brave people who risked their lives to report the truth are the heroes of this book. And they came from all walks of life, from students to members of the Abwehr. The book refutes the despicable judgement of the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners".

[John McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have spent a great deal of my adulthood trying to understand how a civilized, Western nation permitted atrocities carried out in the name of law under Adolph Hitler. What enabled Hitler, the National Socialists (Nazis), and simple people--citizens, bureaucrats, soldiers--to persist for so long in either permitting or encouraging the atrocities or in denying them once the evidence became known and irrefutable. Nazi Germany did not collapse, even though it was militarily defeated, until Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide, the Wehrmacht Divisions of the Reich had capitulated, and the city of Berlin with its beautiful plazas and imposing architecture that housed the government of the Reich had been bombed and incinerated and a hundred thousand of Berlin's denizens killed in those bombings.

Were the institutions of law, the government, the military so weak that it could not put an end to Hitler's madness, seen as early as the 1920s? Did the German culture produce citizens who presumed that obedience to all authority, even evil authority was the only expected route to happiness? Were Germans and its leaders so anti-Semitic and prejudicially nationalist that the rounding up, murdering, and gassing of Jewish and foreign children, men, woman, and foreigners seem like a reasonable solution?

Some argue that Germany was in a state of economic decay, a triage that Hitler redirected. Others cite the partitioning of Germany after WWI as stirring nationalist impulses, while still others believe that the humiliations Germans suffered following its defeat created the mood that allowed sympathy for Hitler's predations, all in an effort to be redressed for these humiliations. I, personally, have never bought these arguments, although I do believe that there is ample evidence that a combination of all these factors led to a stagnant and unproductive German economy following WWI and that, like most Western nations, economic collapse beginning in the 1920s stimulated the desire for political change to reinvigorate the German economy.

And yet, not a single reform or action instituted by Adolph Hitler spoke to economic growth or called upon the German central banking to adjust monetary policy in an effort to focus on economic stimulation. What seems evident to me is that, while many, perhaps most Germans felt uneasy about Hitler and his thug tactics and the murder and brute force he employed to obtain power, the German people, largely, were willing to stand behind Hitler, more than suggesting that Germans of the era were culturally and morally amenable to Hitler's uses of power once he solidified those powers in a government that existed solely at his command.

Laws were changed to support deportations. A 'People's Court' with judges answerable only to Hitler assumed jurisdiction over 'political' issues, which included virtually every civil issue except perhaps the enforcement of contracts between Aryans. Property, in defiance of German laws, was seized from Jews and any other person who defied the Reich. No independent media or news reporting was permitted except media sanctioned by the State. Young people were forcefully 'encouraged' the join Hitler Youth movements. Military officers and soldiers, sailors, airman, and marines swore oaths not to Germany and its constitution, but Hitler personally and the Third Reich. The list of Hitler-imposed modifications ranged over all of German life, and it is very clear that these changes were not meaningfully resisted, opposed, or defeated. In short, it has always appeared to me that Germans and Germany welcomed Hitler until it became obvious that Hitler had wrought the destruction of Berlin and other important cities, had decimated German industry which had largely operated for the benefit of the Reich since the mid 1930s, and had wiped out the military strength of the Reich be sending the greatest part of the German army, tank, and air corps into Russia, against both the historical lessons of warfare inside Russian and the admonition of his Generals. In short, Hitler had become Germany, and Germans permitted it and accepted it, as they permitted and accepted carrying out the deportations and deaths in the concentration camps of Germany, Poland, and other eastern European camps where atrocities were carried out (not to mention the medical research performed by Mengele and other German doctors and scientists who found ways of murdering people based on eugenics).

There were, however, those inside government and the military in particular, who formed a resistance movement over time and were able to carry out plots to assassinate Hitler, although every one of them failed and most captured. This work describes that resistance, but when I finished reading it, I was struck that virtually none of the resistance, except for certain activities of students and the White Rose, and there was no groups of resistors the Allies could call upon to rise up, as happened in France.

The authors cite the personal integrity of the military and civilian resistors as a motivation, and I suppose the authors are right:

" . . . there are those among us who cannot help but maintain personal integrity, a sense of the individual, and political and moral principles. The individuals who played an active part in the Holocaust were able to continue because of the tolerance and passivity of others. Doing something meant that you stood against it and maintained your humanity. Fighting back, as Baum group member Herbert Budzislawski to his Gestapo interrogators, was the only way to live in Germany as a human being." Defying Hitler, page 487.

The saddest lesson is that maintaining a sense of humanity was not the prevalent force in Germany, except among the few, the honorable, and the courageous. This may be the single most important warning about resisting despots, namely the need for masses of citizens who are honorable and courageous enough to sacrifice for interests of humanity.

[Maria Almaguer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book deserves to be widely read. This is the first time I have read a book about the German resistance movements inside the Third Reich and Thomas and Lewis do a superb job of making it both gripping and heartbreaking. It's an important story to tell and one that pays tribute to all those who stay the course in the name of what is right. Memorable quote: "fighting back was the only way 'to live in Germany as a human being.'" (Herbert Budzislawski, resistance fighter)

[Emily Squires · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a book. I didn't know half of the German resistance besides the White Rose Resistance and there were parts of the book that I got very emotional because of how close people came to stopping Hitler.

Quotes:

'But as Bonhoeffer wrote in his journal: We cannot escape our destiny.'

'I wish I could shop the Germany people a film entitled, 'Germany at the end of the war' he said sadly. Perhaps then they would realize with horror what we're heading for.'

'A person's moral integrity only begins at the point where he is prepared to die for his convictions'

[Corin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. It's hard to put down, even when you know how it turns out (spoiler: almost everyone is murdered). A tremendous amount of research obviously went into the writing. I've been reading and teaching about WWII for years and this is the first time I have come across such a complete, well organized source about the *internal* German resistance. The connections are explained, the roles of each individual spelled out, and the interpersonal dynamics are clear. I highly recommend it.

[Will Warnuu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched and well written. I was pleased to have learned some new things from this book, and will do a bit of research on my own with some of the things I learned, especially regarding Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It's always both interesting and surprising when something new comes up about Bonhoeffer.

The book was very disturbing, as it is so sad. So much waste of so many lives. I continue to be astonished by it -- back then, and today.

I hope to add this book to my library as a reference book.

[Mark Nenadov · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book. It is massive (almost 600 pages) and challenging to work through at times and at times deeply disturbing.

[Jacob Fershee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alot of information. But shows Germany didn't just lay back and accept nazism

[Kathy (Bermudaonion) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

DEFYING HITLER is the engrossing story of people involved in the Resistance, fighting against Hitler’s Nazi Germany. These people were willing to give their lives to bring down his regime and some did just that. My only issue with the book is there are a lot of people to keep track of and impossible for me to do so at times.

[Zeb Kantrowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a free book from NetGalley

Defying Hitler: Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule by Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis

Few People were brave enough to commit their lives to working against the Nazi Regime that took control of Weimar Germany in 1933. Every Party, non-Nazi voluntary organization were replaced with Nazi dominated organizations, religion was declared under the control of the Government. All manner of news, movies and radio came under the control of Dr Goebels and the Ministry of Propaganda.

The Police were centralized under what became known as the Gestapo. The ‘special’ security service of the Nazi Party (the SS, Schutzstaffel) which would become the militarized Waffen SS was in charge of purifying the Germans. It was the SS who decided who was or wasn’t an Aryan German, they ran the Concentration Camps (KG) and trained the Einsatzgruppen whose job was to murder the enemies of the State and those considered “sub-humans”. Lastly, there was a counterintelligence department (SD, Sicherheitzdeitz) whose remit was to ferret out any resistance to the Nazi regime.

But, there were resistance groups, though none were as successful as those fighters in Poland and France, none was a truly organized partisan group. Those who resisted fell into two groups, the first were propagandists who secretly produced leaflets that were randomly mailed to German citizens or left in train stations and in public places. The second were military men who knew that Hitler and his henchmen were leading German down a road to annihilation and tried on many occasions to assassinated Hitler.

Hitler had had the military swear an oath to him, and to the Prussian military this prevented any resistance because it would reflect poorly against their honor should they go against their oath. There were five major assassination attempts against Hitler. In one, a bomb was placed on his private plane, but hadn’t detonated because the fuses had frozen in the belly of the plane. In the other, occurred in 1944 with a bomb in the Wolf’s Lair in Prussia, Hitler was protected by a heavy wooden table that took the brunt of the explosion. After this it was impossible to get close enough to Hitler to attack him.

None of the private citizens who went into resistance had military training so that the use of explosives was precluded by most groups. None of these groups would have been considered truly ‘dangerous’ to the Nazi regime. Most were made up of small student groups, usually less than fifty, whose most effective weapon was propaganda leaflets. They were only effective at annoying the SS and Himler, and did little lasting work. Sad as it may seem, no one did anything that stopped the Nazis until Berlin and the country were left totally destroyed.

Zeb Kantrowitz zebsblog@gmail.com zworstblog@blogspot.com

[Reggie Virus · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOW! That was a lot of information!! I haven’t read a book like this before and it was very informative. I still think it’s crazy that with all the attempts on Hitler no one was successful. A lot of people gave their lives to try to end all the evil that was going on and I think that it’s nice to read about them and learn about how they tried to save all the Jewish people.

Thank you NetGalley and Gordon Thomas; Greg Lewis for this read.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Very fact-driven, and therefore it could be a bit of a slog, at times, but I learned so much more about names that I had read many times before....Sophie and Hans Scholl, Wilhelm Canaris, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and many, many more. I am so happy that I stayed with the book. The in-depth research has made me want to know as much as I can about the people who lived in the hell of Nazi Germany, and yet found it within themselves to fight behind the scenes.

[Carolynne]

Defying Hitler was the most dangerous path for Germans in the 1930's and 1940's yet many people of conscience did just that. This very well researched book tells us the story of The White Rose, Bonhoeffer, the Harnacks and the other courageous individuals in a more detailed and intimate manner that has been told before. Despite the horror, this is a readable book and unputdownable.
I read an advance reading copy which I won in a Goodreads giveaway so there were a few minor typos and no pictures which did not distract from this amazing and humbling story

[John Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defying Hitler, by Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis; Caliber:New York; $30.00 hardback

What did resistance mean in the spirited, reborn German Reich of Adolf Hitler? As Nazi control of every aspect of life, from news organs, to churches, to all levels of government, to youth and every social aspect of life grew, resistance died. To stand up to Hitlerism brought arrest, sippenhaft, the arrest of all a resister's relatives, imprisonment and the concentration camp. As the war dragged on, resistance meant torture to reveal others involved, and execution. So who were The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule?
We discover in this remarkably researched book by Gordon Thomas, revered British investigative journalist of intelligence matters, and respected author, and his colleague Greg Lewis, journalist with equal mastery of the documentary field, case histories of those who fought in the secret world against what seemed insuperable odds.
Groups began to form when the goals of Nazism became clear. War, for many of the wealthier, more cosmopolitan Germans, was a fool's errand led by the mad corporal of Bohemia, Adolf Hitler. The Harnacks of Berlin thought long about how to fight, and then they did. He an economics minister, was able to pass information to the Allies through cut outs developed through an array of like minded colleagues and friends. Their social circles were never completely in the thrall of the Nazis, so they believed they were safe to recruit from among them. Aristocrats, plutocrats, and other bourgeois made up their number. Tragically, the mindless assumption that such classes would never support communists caused Stalin, with a vulgar dismissal, to denounce their virtually exact prediction of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
Students such as the doomed Scholl siblings were active at their Munich University. The long Calvary of Stalingrad threw them into action; they came to understand the war heralded doom for their nation. Likewise an engineer, Kurt Gerstein, fought alone when he tried, vainly, to pass to the Allies his personal eye witness account of the slaughter of Jews by poison gas. Others sought out the Western Allies. Allen Dulles of the United States, in his office in Switzerland, took reports from disgruntled diplomats, military officers, and a host of others who for reasons of their own came to hate what Hitler was doing to their country and Europe. Religious leaders fought not only the attempts to take away their youth groups, but countered Nazi claims from the pulpit. This too led to the concentration camp.
The Jewish people themselves tried to resist. They, like the Scholls, engaged in secret propaganda with newsletters and forged documents. Again, the end result was often the same. Without well organized planning and compartmentalization, they were rounded up in time and executed by a mockery of justice overseen by fanatical Nazi judges. To be fair, Thomas and Lewis make it clear that there was excellent investigative work on the Nazi side. The story of how the military resisters were discovered, primarily in the German counterintelligence Abwehr, is worth a book in itself. A vast, honorable Wehrmacht Army resistance movement had developed in various Abwehr offices throughout Europe, up to and including the Bendler Bloc, headquarters of the German General Staff in Berlin. These are the men who created Valkyrie, the secret plan to blow up Hitler in his lair.
Gordon and Lewis will keep you reading. This is narrative history at its best. They wend the stories together, giving a background to all the events decided upon by the resisters. You'll find a great respect for the boundless heroism of these people who did right even when doing good appeared a lost cause.

[Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exciting account of Germany's anti-Nazi resistance groups is a great supplement to Shirer's comprehesive history of the Third Reich, which only scratches the surface of the resistance movements. This book paints a vivid picture of how deep and wide were the roots of the resistance, demonstrating that the German support for Hitler was not nearly as ubiquitous as many commonly assume. In fact, resistance to Hitler began well before it was clear that Germany was headed for destruction, indicating that these individuals were not merely self-serving in their attempt to absolve Germany of its sins, but that they shared a moral conviction in opposition to everything Hitler stood for.

Some of the more eye-opening details here are how the failures of various parties compounded at crucial junctures to work against the resistance. For example, Chamberlain's famous capitulation to Hitler at the Munich conference effectively foiled a plot that likely would have spared Europe from war. Had Chamberlain stood by his convictions and strictly forbade Hitler from annexing Czechoslovakia, Hitler would have been forced to invade, at which point the resistance movement was prepared to initiate a detailed series of actions that would have resulted in the deposition of Hitler and the prevention of catastrophe.

In all, this is an exciting and endearing narrative; each individual carries a unique story, and the authors paint for each of them a vivid portrait of the human will for justice and peace. Yet the story is ultimately heart-wrenching; it's an utterly frustrating account of good people whose efforts to save Germany from itself constantly met with disaster and always fell just short of success. But this is not a criticism of these individuals or their cause; what they were fighting against was not just a common enemy, but a system in which they could never expect to be labeled anything but traitors. Of course, their stories have survived, and they are now seen as the heroes they were. But they saw no future in which they would be revered as such, only a future in which their greatest hope was that the world would see that not all Germans were guilty of Hitler's sins. So, there is a lesson here for modern readers: resistance often seems futile, and those who stand up against tyrants may not live to see their efforts succeed, but they always leave a legacy of bravery for later generations to imitate.

[Paul Janiszewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule - Gordon Thomas & Greg Lewis

It has become increasingly apparent in self reflection that one's readings and subsequent reviews seem to evolve into something other than a "book review". Herein lies a prewarning. This is not so much a book review. It is a sounding of a reading that might reflect ones predisposition with respect to time, place, perception, conscience and thought. It shapes what one might already presume to know, what one might want to know, and and what one might have willed to know. May it be a process of consciousness?
A story of the past: a history. A story of today: the here and now. A story of tomorrow: a hope and a dream.
A story of the past: Nazi rule. A story of today: resistance and defiance. A story of tomorrow: ????

The vantage point of today's post modern world presumes the evolution of a righteous high moral ground such that it is at the pinnacle of a continuously developing hierarchy, well laden with the wisdom of the lessons of the past. So much so that it is hard to imagine how the here and now could ever cede to a state of being, that which might sully who we as a society and culture have today become. Without a doubt the catastrophic outcome of the immorality and injustice perpetrated last century in the name of the German "better good" bears little resemblance to the lived experience of those of us living in the comfortable "first" world of western society. Or it might just be that in our experience today, we are still in the midst of a journey to the outcome, an outcome that we would never believe nor imagine for want of those accumulated lessons.

Defying Hitler is refreshingly presented in the style of a narrative history, engaging and easily accessible to the ordinary reader. It presents the not so well traversed stories of the internal struggles of a people coming to terms with their conscience, their integrity, their morality, and ultimately their humanity. In opposition to the proposed world view of their authoritarian minders: they sought to exercise a right of passage of commitment to self and collective. One, criminalized by the ruling authority, and one denounced and vilified by the sea of their fellow constituents: of the fanatics, or the convinced, or the coerced, or the indifferent, of a society whipped into a sense of strength of conformity (or indeed a fear of nonconformity) against a perceived threat of existential dimension. It is a story of today's postmodern world, all be it not yet concluded, and as yet without its brutal extremes, but in hope that its course points in a direction far from that of the last century. How might humanity reconcile the moral challenge in its midst?

The passage of commitment for those who resisted the attack of moral dimension upon the human condition, manifested itself in many varied acts of defiance. All avenues risked the punishment of death, a far cry from the consequences imaginable in today's post modern world. There were those who were committed to the harvesting of intelligence to be passed on to the allies. Those of whom, whose intense empathy, would drive them directly to interpersonal humanitarian missions, aiding in the concealment and escape of those hapless victims of persecution. But some simply sought to awaken the moral conscience of their fellow human beings, remind them of their responsibility to the soul of their being, make sense of an affirmation that asserts ones own conscience of ethical compass and integrity over a sense of allegiance to a dubious flag of authority and conformity. And all this through the dissemination of the idea itself, in the common communication of the day, in written word and in hushed voice. It was this voice of dismay, of conscience, shared and heartfelt that remains as the essence. This vestige of scruples is today in contention, not recognized, understood nor reconciled in our world of inconsciousness.

The story of the White Rose resistance group is a mirror to the past of an imagined analogy to the resistance groups of today that most (government officials and ordinary citizens) would not see, nor want to recognize, but instead they would with dubious suspicion, decry any such relevance. Hans and Sophie Scholl were ordinary German citizens, students at the University of Munich, who had come to denounce the Nazi regime's misrepresentation of the truth, the persecution of their fellow human beings, the dismemberment of individual rights, and its oppression and crimes against humanity, all imposed in justification for the safety and preservation of the German volk. In 1942 they and their group began a peaceful protest of resistance to anonymously write and distribute a leaflet and graffiti campaign which culminated in their arrest, imprisonment and sentence of death. Here is how Thomas and Lewis rationalizes the humanity of the White Rose and their countless other conscientious resistors of the time:
"In refusing to be dehumanized and crushed as individuals, they sought to prove to themselves and to others that not all of the nation had submitted. They were keeping alive the part of the country they loved in their own actions. And to the civilized world today, their actions still matter, as they shine a message to us: Decency and honor can be maintained, and the instinct for human solidarity will survive even in the most fascistic of regimes. When power and violence attempt to crush all into conformity, there will always be those who cannot be suppressed."

Their heroic legacy remains today in world conscience as an example of the strength of the human spirit in times of moral threat. It is the severity of their circumstance in a world filled with unimaginable violence and catastrophe that, from our viewpoint today, we are blinded to the realization that the essence of the actions and voice for truth they exerted, finds its likeness today in a world seemingly well at ease, but in the midst of a catastrophe of somewhat dissimilar appearance, proportion and consequence.

On the 12th of February 2022 in the Australian Capital City of Canberra, mirroring protests around the world, an estimated crowd of more than one hundred thousand citizens descended on our seat of parliament to peacefully voice their defiance of the authoritarian regulations, infringement of individual rights, restrictions and mandates the government had imposed on its people. It was an incident belittled, bearing no coverage or significance in avenues of mainstream popular media and Australian consciousness, but instead was characterized and demeaned as a small gathering of a troublesome rag tag bunch of deplorables. It was effectively wiped out of our nations history. It is of little relevance that the treatment and "punishment" of those resistors in today's world bears no resemblance to that of the plight of those last century. It is the act and call to ones conscience that stands as testament to the human spirit. In a democratic world of purported freedoms and rights, the authoritarian cry of today's governments for "the better good" is again in oblivious disregard for the wrongs they have enabled. Once again those with a human spirit rose to peacefully show their defiance. It was a White Rose moment of the post modern world.

[Forest Ormes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was impressed by the difference in background among the resistance documented by the authors We hear the stories of the White Rose students Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christopher Probst, followed by the near success of aristocratic military men like Stauffenberg and the less well-known, Tresckow. I had to disengage for a time after reading how close the military came to killing Hitler. Hitler cut short a tour of captured Russian weapons just before a bomb could go off carried by a German military office, Christoph von Gersdorff. The well-known Valkyrie attempt is retraced for those unfamiliar with its history. The book is well indexed, allowing us to check on the many characters. Almost every actor in the resistance was found out and executed --Bonhoeffer, less than a month before the war's end. The authors do not waver from entering the life of the most controversial resister of all -- Kurt Gerstein -- the man who became an SS officer in order to "bear witness." They document his life until, at the end of the war, he commits suicide in a French prison before Swedish diplomats and others can corroborate the sincerity of his efforts to produce evidence of war crimes. To their credit, the authors resist the temptation of forcing a comparison to the present. Instead, the authors cite how all of the German resistance seemed able to see beyond their short-term failure. A closing quote from the book honors this vision: "... while they could not save their nation, they did ensure that, as Germany sought to find itself again, it could cling to a spirit of goodness and purity: a resistance, an opposition, a White Rose."

[Dan Dundon · Rating 4 out of 5]

For years, I've been bothered by an insistent question, how could an entire population fall under the spell of an insane dictator and commit truly horrible acts against other human beings?
This book has caused me to rephrase that question. How could so many Germans fall under the spell of such a dictator?
"Defying Hitler" makes clear that a certain element of the German people not only failed to fall under the spell but actively worked for its downfall. Yes, some of the stories about the assassination attempts against Hitler have been told in other books. However, this book collects many other stories of how everyday Germans put up a resistance to the Nazi regime. The book also highlighted for me the fatal flaw in much of the resistance - timidity. Many German resisters were simply too timid and indecisive to overcome the ruthlessness of the SS and the Gestapo. I came away from reading the book wondering how different world history might have been had they succeeded even though in many cases some paid with their lives.
My only criticism, is the failure of the authors to make clear the lessons readers can take from this well-researched book. Perhaps the authors felt those lessons should be left to each individual reader to consider. But for me, I concluded timidity is a danger, when bold action is needed to save the humanity of an entire nation. I hope more readers will recognize this danger in today's world for surely such evils as Nazism were never completely defeated.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Defying Hitler is a timely narrative, recounting the stories of the little known German resistance to Nazi rule. It's clearly written and describes Germany's descent into horror and madness with compelling and depressing detail. Reading the story arc of how individual Germans, banding together to strike at the depraved government under which they lived, put themselves and their loved ones in mortal danger because, to paraphrase one of the resistors, it was the only way to live as a human in Germany, is truly inspiring.
I found the story of Kurt Gerstein to be particularly moving. A deeply religious young man, who was profoundly revolted by Hitler's regime, he nevertheless wound up in the SS, tasked with providing Zyklon B to the camps. He took it upon himself to bear firsthand witness to the Holocaust, in order to provide testimony to later generations. His eyewitness account of the treatment meted out to the Reich's victims is horrifying. The price he paid for his actions was devastating.
If a reader wishes to read a cautionary tale of where nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry, and racism, ultimately lead, one could hardly do better than to start with this book.

[Jacob Child · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. The sacrifice, courage, anguish, and hope that so many had during a horrifying time period is humbling. I read (listened actually, the audiobook was great), to this because I realized my view/story of World War II and the Holocaust was largely missing stories and perspectives from Germans who resisted. This book opened my eyes and heart to a breadth and depth that was impactful both intellectually and emotionally. Worth breaking my lack of recent Goodreads reviews for.

What I initially saw as a shortcoming of the book became one of its strengths. The beginning of the book bombards you with names and mini-introductions to so many people, while that may be a side effect of me listening to it (I typically struggle to follow a little more), as I got used to the writing style, it was amazing to see the vast web of people who resisted and how they fought. After the initial overload, Gordon Thomas brings all the names together in a well presented way. He mixed following a person vs following time, but it formed a coherent presentation. I probably won't be able to remember specific names in connection to specific actions, but I will remember their examples.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an account of the many Germans who resisted the radicalism of Nazism during World War II … at the risk of their lives and the lives of their families. The allies were wary of their information, often dismissing it as propaganda. The resistance persisted until some were believed … passing on valuable lifesaving information about German military movements. Most were discovered and executed or sent to concentration camps where many died. Their bravery and courage is so inspirational to all of us who see the rise of radicalism and the government crackdown on freedoms that we have held sacred since our country’s founding ie. Freedom of speech including free expression of opposing ideas. The resistance movement in Germany spoke out against Nazi atrocities because they were convinced it was “the only way to live as a human being in Germany” at the time … and they paid a great cost!

[Debbie Wiseman]

A powerful book, especially as we are seeing, what could be considered, the same type of actions in our country.

I have read or heard of many of these resistance efforts but they are amplified and personalized here.

I share this quote from the Afterword : "In refusing to be dehumanized and crushed as individuals, they sought to prove to themselves and to others that not all of the nation had submitted. They were keeping alive the part of the country they loved in their own actions. And to the civilized world today, their actions still matter, as they shine a message to us. Democracy and honor can be maintained, and the instinct for human solidarity will survive even in the most fascistic of regimes .When power and violence attempt to crush all into conformity, there will always be those who can't be suppressed."

[John Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched and written account of civilians who resisted the Third Reich. There are a lot of names so it can be a little hard to keep track of all the people involved, but this is a gripping, important, and often heart breaking account of individuals and groups, some of whom were only college students, standing up against the evil they saw destroying their country and the world around them. While it includes an excellent description of the famous July 20 plot, the book also gives an in depth look at several lesser known, at least on the US, resisters like the Scholl siblings, Oster's Abwehr conspiracy, and the complicated and tragic story of Kurt Gerstein. If you've ever asked yourself what you would have done if you'd lived in Hitler's Germany, or if you simply want to learn the names of heros who were willing to sacrifice everything for their principles, this book is for you.

[Marijo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of us would love to believe that we would be among the ones to stand against oppression. However, when it comes to taking action against a terrifying force, most of us hang our heads and do nothing to endanger ourselves. Defying Hitler follows the networks of Germans that composed the German underground--the people who risked their lives and often sacrificed them to help the victims of Nazi oppression. It looks at German patriots who worked to bring sanity back to their country and also at ones who funneled intelligence to the Allied powers. To me, the most interesting characters included a man who joined the SS to document its atrocities only to become an unwitting accomplice. The book leaves the reader wondering what they would do, and how much they would sacrifice for justice.

[KP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic overview of the many and varied groups and individuals who resisted the Nazi regime in Germany, from as early as 1933. I found this absolutely inspiring, and now I want to read more detailed accounts of each of the groups he covered. And a big thing I appreciated about this book was that it didn't forget that women were involved in resistance groups as well - I often only hear of the men who resisted when I read about this period of time, but women were involved and did resistance work as well. It was refreshing to read a book that didn't just mention them, but emphasized how important their work was.

[Ionut Iamandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este destul de neclar care au fost dimensiunile dizidenţei anti-naziste. Probabil că e injust să o comparăm cu dizidenţa anticomunistă postbelică, şi mai ales cu cea est-europeană şi non-sovietică. În perioada interbelică, în Germania şi în URSS gradul de presiune totalitară a fost cu un ordin de mărime mai mare decît în alte ţări cu regimuri autoritariste şi chiar şi faţă de aceleaşi ţări, dar în perioada ulterioară, postbelică. Altfel spus, şi dizidenţei îi ia un timp de gestaţie şi maturizare.
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