Red Orchestra

A while back I was intrigued by the book title Red Orchestra by Anne Nelson, published in 2009. The description talked about Nazis and resistance. A symphony orchestra managing to do some resistance sounded like something I would enjoy. So I put it on my Christmas list a year ago and got it as a gift. I just finished reading it. Alas, no violins and cellos in sight (though one character occasionally pulled out an accordion). It is the real story of a resistance cell in Berlin during the Nazi era. They never considered naming themselves. Once officials found them they gave them the name Rote Kapelle. From the little German I know, and from what Google Translate confirms, that should translate to “Red Chapel.” The author didn’t make this translation error, it came from various official documents. The cell’s center was Greta and Adam Kuckhoff, Arvid and Mildred Harnack (she was from Wisconsin), John (born in Detroit) and Sophie Sieg, and Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen. Most had affiliations with the Communist or Social Democrat parties. Harro was notable for refusing all political labels. They were united in their rejection of what the Nazis stood for and were doing and wanted to do something about it. Several held notable positions within the Party, which gave them access to classified information, which they wanted to be used to bring the downfall of the Nazis. A big problem was who to give it to. America didn’t have an intelligence service at the start of the 1930s. Britain and France weren’t much interested – who are these people and how do we know we can trust what they give us? That left the Soviets. Which meant after the war those still alive were accused of being Soviet spies. The Jews in Berlin in the latter half of the 19th century were well integrated into society. They were German as much or more as they were Jewish. Starting in the 1880s Czarist Russia attacked the Jew there. Many fled to Berlin, which promoted itself as being welcoming (well, much more welcoming than other places in Europe – many non-Jewish Berliners declared anti-Semitism to be barbaric, though it still existed). After WWI more Jewish refugees flooded in from the newly recreated Poland and from Russia. These refugee Jews tended to stick to East European dress and religious custom. They didn’t consider themselves German and didn’t look German. That caused friction between the German Jews and the newcomers. Society in general felt overrun. In the late 1920s the German Communist and Social Democrats together could have kept the Nazis out of power. But in 1928 Stalin brought the Communist International under his control. This international body decreed that local Communist groups be under their control. Another resolution, rammed through by Stalin, declared that socialist parties were their most dangerous enemies. Unable to form a coalition these two parties could not block Hitler’s rise. Most of what the group could do was distribute flyers trying to contradict Nazi propaganda and present what was really happening out in the world. I don’t think they could tell whether they had much success in changing opinions. If Hitler had been satisfied with pulling in German speaking Austria and the Sudetenland, a German speaking part of Czechoslovakia, he might have stayed in power much longer. His attack on Poland changed world opinion. Many in the Rote Kapelle circle recognized this was a step too far and would lead to Hitler’s eventual downfall. In 1941 Germany began to implement plans to invade the Soviets. The Rote Kapelle group had access to the plans and tried various ways of warning the Soviets. Other resistance groups did too. But this all came down to Stalin, who refused to believe his pal Hitler, who had signed a non-aggression pact a few years earlier, would renege on the pact. So the Soviets were unprepared when Hitler invaded. The swift victories made the Nazis more popular with the citizens. One reason why the Nazis were so swift in their invasion of Russia was because of Stalin’s purges. He got rid (usually through execution) of anyone that didn’t express total devotion to him. That meant, for example, he got rid of fourteen of the top sixteen army commanders. Stalin’s purges killed 9-10 million people. His military was a shambles because he had killed off the leadership and their knowledge. Of course, Hitler did his own purging. In just May 1939 there were 1,639 people executed for political offenses. After the Polish and Soviet campaigns a few in the group began another phase of resistance – documenting and saving the atrocities German soldiers committed against the citizens of Poland and Russia. Along with that they began to document what we now call PTSD in the soldiers. They wanted a record for after. Their Soviet contact was in Brussels. He and those with him made a couple big blunders for a professional intelligence organization. One error was to broadcast for too many hours in a row from one place. Another was to tell Soviet agents to meet a couple people in the group giving actual names and addresses. Yeah, the radio signal was encrypted, which meant the Nazis didn’t move against the group until a year later when they had decrypted the messages. When one or two of the group went missing the rest got busy destroying evidence, including the catalog of atrocities. Most of the group were “tried” by bloodthirsty judge Manfred Roeder and executed. Part of the trials included being smeared, their actions declared to be because of some sort of sexual degeneracy. Nope, they said, we did it because we hate Nazism. That enraged Hitler. Greta Kuckhoff was one of the few who survived. We in the West tend to think the Nuremberg Trials as bringing justice to those Nazis who perpetrated atrocities and crimes against humanity. The number actually brought to justice was rather small. One who escaped justice was Manfred Roeder. Part of what he did was accuse Greta of being a Soviet agent. The Americans overseeing the Trials were more concerned about communists than they were about Nazis and kept delaying his trial while Greta was investigated. Greta lived in what became East Germany, trading one dictator for another. For a while she was the darling of the leadership and given prominent posts. After they tired of her she wanted to set the record straight by publishing her story of Rote Kapelle. Because of her association with the Soviets West German publishers wouldn’t touch it. An East German publisher agreed to publish. But then it was a long battle, page by page, because the publisher wanted the story to glorify the Communist cause. Greta won some battles and lost many others. Those reading her story now have to guess which words are Greta’s and which are from the publisher. At a time when we seem to be heading towards fascism, reading about the brutality of the Nazis towards even the slightest opposition was occasionally difficult. Even so, it seemed necessary to understand and prepare for our own future.