Dan Snow's History Hit - Leading Germany's Resistance against The Nazis

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

Norman Ohler joined me on the pod to discuss two remarkable lovers who led Germany's resistance against the Nazis. Harro Schulze-Boysen and Libertas Haas-Heye led a complex network of antifascists, which operated across Berlin's bohemian underworld. They infiltrated German intelligence leaked Nazi battle plans to the Allies, including the details of Hitler's surprise attack on the Soviet Union. But in a world where friend could be indistinguishable from foe, nothing could prepare Libertas and Harro for the ultimate betrayals they would suffer. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Down Snow's History. I'm very excited to get Norman Ola back on the podcast. He's the best-selling author of the book Blitzed about the Nazis and drugs. Man, I got overexcited last time he was on the podcast. I had to be restrained by World War II historians. It was just such a fascinating account of piecing together the archives, trying to work out what Hitler's mad doctor was giving him. And the answer was all sorts, all sorts really. Now Norman has got a stunning new book out. It's called The Infiltrators. Wonderful new book about opposition to the Nazis from extremely brave Germans. I mean, you think of these people standing up against an authoritarian regime as they did

and their almost inevitable fates. It's too much. They are as brave as anybody on any battlefield in the Second World War. This was on the live podcast. Once a week, we do a live Zoom podcast for History Hit subscribers. And so we had people chiming in, asking questions, and I was able to use some of their questions, put them to Norman as well. If you want to become a subscriber to History Hit, it's like Netflix for history. We've got audio, we've got video on there. We've all got the possibility to come on the live Zoom podcast.

You just go to historyhit.tv, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free, and then one month, just one pound, euro, or dollar. In the meantime, everyone, here's Norman Ola. Enjoy. Norman, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. I'm very happy to be here again and talking to you again. I'll never forget the conversation we had when we talked about the Nazis and Hitler and their relationship with hard drugs. It was one of the most successful podcasts we've ever done and your book was a phenomenon. You know the tricky follow-up but you've only smashed out of the park. The infiltrators. Tell me who were

these lovers who led Germany's wrist and gait to the Nazis. Who were they? They are two remarkable characters, highly intelligent and beautiful and lively people who were living in the astonishing city of Berlin, which suddenly was turning into a very dark place when the Nazis took power in 1933. These people are called Harrow, that's the guy, and Libertas, that's the woman. I look at in this book how they dealt with the

dictatorship because they dealt with the dictatorship in a very interesting way because they formed a resistance network which grew into the largest resistance network against Nazi Germany. So this book, The Infiltrators, is about these two people and their friends and how they dealt with a suddenly completely changed reality. Why have we not heard of these people before? We all know Stauffenberg, who planted the bomb against Hitler. We all know the White Rose, who distributed the students from Munich that distributed leaflets against the dictatorship. But even in Germany, not many people know about Harro and Libertas, which surprised me as well.

I also didn't know about Harro. I came across his farewell letter to his parents before he was executed. And that letter was so intense and so well written and talk about his year-long resistance that I asked myself the same question, why do we not know anything about this group? Because there are not so many German resistance fighters. We should at least think that at least the Germans would know all about it and know their story. But when I started the research on these two people, I quickly found out that when Hitler found out about them, he had an order to erase the memory, even the memory,

erase the people, execute the people. Most of them were killed in the end and before Christmas 1942, but he raised the memory, which meant all documents were destroyed, their parents were told that they could never again speak about their kids. Hitler was so furious that part of his punishment was that this story shall never be told. What was it particularly? Is it the fact that they successfully managed to provide the Allies with intelligence? What was it about this couple that particularly enraged Hitler? I think it has deeper psychological reasons.

They were happy. They were happy and they were simply not listening to the moral commands of the regime. They were artists, lots of them. The group in the end was over 130 people, so it was a very large network within Berlin. And people from all flights of life were part of this network. This is what enraged Hitler, that normal people or intelligent people, even artists, he always wanted to be an artist, but failed miserably. That is maybe why he was so enraged. He couldn't understand, he couldn't tolerate,

he couldn't deal with the fact that there were these highly intelligent people who are not the traders from the Wehrmacht. They didn't fall into his categories of people that are his enemies. They were the people that actually support him. These were the good Germans, but they turned against him. They created this network in Berlin.

They ratted on him and the army by giving military intelligence to the Allies. Everything they did was going against his grain. They also were very liberal and unorthodox in their way of life. In a way, they developed resistance techniques that later in the 60s were taken on again by people from the counter-revolution or however you want to call it the 60s movements things like free love

and we are rebelling against patriarchy so we also want to live as freely as we can they already did this in the late 30s and 40s so this was a complete negation of all of the values that National Socialism tried to preach in Germany. It's obviously, in retrospect, an astonishingly brave to take on one of the most efficient and most evil authoritarian regimes in recorded history. But did they think they were going to survive? Was this a sort of hopeless act of resistance, do you think? How did they summon up the courage to do this? The first person of the group was Harrow. He had a libertarian or very free magazine in the Weimar Republic which was called Gegner, Oppons. His idea was that everyone could publish. Leftists, right-wing people, conservatives, even communists were allowed to publish.

He just thought that it's good to exchange information and opinions. And when the Nazis took power in January 30th, 1933, he continued to publish his magazine because he thought, why would I stop now? Now things are changing in Germany. I want to contribute. But in April 33, he was arrested by the SS, very early SS unit, together with his best friend who was half Jewish, Henry Erlanger, who also worked for the magazine, and they were tortured by the SS and Henry was actually killed. He was probably one of the first

Jewish victims of the regime. And Harrow saw this, this was this all happened, like it was called at the time, wild concentration camp in Berlin, it was called at the time Wild Concentration Camp in Berlin. It was basically a torture cellar. So at that moment, Harrow realized with this regime, no communication is possible. So he started to go underground in a way or into resistance already in 1933. You know, it seems so hopeless taking on the might of that regime. Do you think they thought they might survive? From the records that I've read, Harrow knew from the start that he was putting his life on the line. But also the records show that he didn't think he had any choice. He

could not function within the regime and not oppose the regime. That was either the way to leave Germany, which many people did, like Thomas Mann, who was actually not a friend of Harro, but they had communications. Thomas took the right of Thomas Mann. He just left. But Harro said, no, I'm not going to leave. I'm going to stay here and see what I can do within the system, which is, in retrospect, crazy, maybe, because, I mean, the Nazi dictatorship was a very oppressive regime. You could not even make a joke about Hitler without ending in concentration camp if someone overheard the joke and told the Gestapo, for example. But Harris still took that risk. He thought this is the only way

I can lead a dignified life. So he was very conscious of this. Well, he thought they had a chance because his idea was to create an underground network within Berlin that grows so large and infiltrates so many offices in Berlin and institutions that there would be, especially once the war started and the war turned difficult for the German army, there would be like a growing, I call it a résumé, it's a French philosophical term, like a mushroom that grows, that there would be such a strong infiltrating organism of resistance that this would make a difference. So this was his plan. Very difficult plan. And not all in the group had the same awareness that they were putting

their life on the line. This is very interesting to see how Libertas, the love of his life and his wife reacted. She was much more afraid. She voiced her doubts and her concerns much more openly. There were times when she wanted to quit the resistance. She said, we're not going to change anything. Why are we, you know, getting ourselves killed? And so it's very interesting to see how their relationship works, what crises they go through, how they actually get stronger together, how their love then makes them continue their struggle. It's such a beautiful story, that side of it. Can I ask about the intelligence? What did they achieve? Did they manage any of their goals? Did they hurt Germany's war efforts, support Germany's enemies in any way?

It's highly debated. When they were tried, Göring, who was the head of the trial, emphasized how terribly they had hurt the German war effort. What they did do is they did tell secrets to the Allies and the secrets that probably hurting the Germans most were the intelligence that they were feeding to the Red Army. Because Harrow was convinced that on the ground, it will be the Red Army that basically will beat the Wehrmacht in the battles on the Eastern Front. the Wehrmacht in the battles on the Eastern Front. So the first thing he did was give information to the Soviets about the day that Germany would attack. At the time, Stalin was convinced that his pact with Hitler would hold. So when he got the information that Germany would attack on June 22nd, 1941. And he was informed that this information comes from a young German Air Force worker, because that is what Harrow was.

He joined the Air Force. He wrote a very nasty Stalin-esque remark next to the report that it was about Harrow's mother and that he should go back to the whore that gave birth to him. So he was enraged. He basically didn't believe it. He didn't believe the intelligence. And he was quite surprised when the intelligence was right. And then the Soviet Union actually tried to get more information from Harrow and his group. And Harrow did give more information. Basically, Germany

would have lost the war against the Soviet Union and the rest of the world also without Harrow's information. But it did help. I don't know how to evaluate the weight of the help, but it was a voice coming out of Berlin, reaching the Soviet command centers. And so that sure gave them a boost. Also, Harrow tried to contact the British military because he had found out through his work in the Air Force Ministry that Germany could read the encrypted messages that the British were using when they sent supply ships, the supply convoys to the Soviet Union through the North Seas. So he tried to get that message to the British that they had to change their communication because the Germans could intercept that. So he was actually trying to help Hitler's enemies east and west in order to speed up Hitler's downfall. This is, for example, very different from the White Rose, who just published leaflets, which is also a very brave thing. But

this is something that Harold Libertas and the group also did. So they had various techniques of resistance. How did the regime eventually infiltrate this group? Harrow's idea was that they would actually form a network, not an organization. In a way, this is a social network that he created. In order to recruit people, you had to personally become a friend. They did parties in their big apartment in Berlin every two weeks on Thursday. And these parties were basically parties where they danced and kissed and probably made love too. Got to know each other, formed connections. But at these parties, Harrow also would approach new guests from which he knew that they were friends of this friend that he trusted.

And so he spoke to them. And if he had the feeling that they were interested also in political information, not just in having a drink and pretending the dictatorship doesn't exist, he would invite them to future meetings where he would then sit one-on-one or two or three people together. And then he would basically ask them if they want to join the network. This type of organization or network, not an organization, it was not hierarchical. This worked actually quite well in contrast to the social democratic and communist resistance cells, which were easily infiltrated by the Gestapo, who just said, yeah, I'm also a communist, let's work together. It didn't work like this with Harrow's group. You couldn't just come in. No Gestapo agent was able

to infiltrate this group. So your question, how did they get found out? The answer is quite tragic, because as I mentioned before, the Soviets in the early fall of 1941 became very interested in the information that the network could send to them. And they sent a cable from Moscow to Brussels, asking their Brussels agent to go to Berlin and find Harrow and get more information from him. And that cable that was sent through the air had Harrow and Libertas' clear names and their addresses. Obviously, it was encoded, but the Gestapo, the Funkabwehr, as it's called in Germany, was very good and the Germans decoded it.

It took them one year, but in the summer of 1942, they had the clear message. And from that moment on, the Gestapo had the group under surveillance and then started arresting people and arrested Harrow, August 31st, 1942. And you point out in the book that once people start getting arrested and tortured, then it's quite easy to turn witnesses and turn members of the group. And of course, I would. I mean, I would not last long under torture, I'll tell you that much. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt.

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Well, it's interesting because some of these files can still be read. I still found some of the actual Gestapo interrogation files. So not all was destroyed because also so much information was created about that group. And it's very interesting to see how people react in this situation. to see how people react in this situation. And the guy who actually told the most secrets, he was not from the group, but he was part of that spy ring in Brussels.

So when he was put under torture, he told quite a bit from the group itself. Actually, not a lot of information came through. So they were quite brave, but also they did talk. I i mean the gestapo don't rely only on torture they were trained agents that get people into conversation people just talk if they talk to a gestapo agent every day for weeks release a harmless piece that they think is a harmless piece of information like we went to a party at Harrow's. This was already used. You can read about that in the trial file. The Gestapo turns these parties into clandestine gatherings where

political information was exchanged. And that was already enough for the death sentence. This is a live Zoom record. We got history hit subscribers on the call. We got Shimon Aronson asking, this is on following that point, if you say Hitler wants to erase everything about them, it sounds like you did have a lot of source material to work with. I mean, that must have been harrowing, getting to grips with that original source material. I met a person who was actually a protagonist in the book because he was born in November 1941. His parents were friends of Harrow. His name is Dr. Hans Koppi. I talk about him in the book, How I Meet Him in Berlin. He's now 77 years old. He's a historian, and he works in the German Resistance Center, which is a body funded by the German government, which is not public, but they do historical research. not public, but they do historical research. And by meeting him, he invited me into the holy room where he has gathered all the information that he has collected throughout his life, because he always wanted to know what actually happened to my parents. And he was able in the early 90s to

visit the Moscow archives when Perestroika and Glasnost created this window of opportunity when actually the archives there were open. Now they're closed again. And he was able to make copies of documents. For example, in these documents, you can actually read that Harrow never was a Soviet spy. He always said, I'm not going to do that. I'm here working in Germany. We're creating a resistance network that is open to the West and the East. Because after the war, actually, this is another answer to the question, why do we not know so much about the group? After the war in East Germany, the legend was created that there was this communist spy group within Berlin. And the West basically took that legend because it was the starting Cold War.

So this look how dangerous is communist activities. Even during Nazi times, they had a communist spying here. So the whole story of the group had been distorted. And only through Dr. Hans Koppi and going to Moscow in the early 90s and finding these files and bringing them to this room in Berlin, which then I could access a few years ago, the story now, and hopefully a true way can come to light. When they were executed, when did they last see each other? Were they allowed to see each other in prison at all, or they kept separate and then put to death?

It's very interesting how it works, and I'm quite happy that a lot of documents survived about this last phase, which is the last part of the book. You can get a very good sense of where the Gestapo prison was. It was in the Gestapo headquarters in the center of Berlin, how they were interrogated. And sometimes they would meet and sometimes actually the Gestapo would bring people together to cross interrogate them. And then at the trial, which was held in the military trial of Germany in Berlin, they were for the first time, all the people put on trial. This was 11 people in the first trial run and Harold Libertas were among them. They all for

the first time actually sat next to each other in the courtroom. And then during the breaks, they were together for the first time and could communicate. And then in the last days, when they were being brought to the place where the execution was in Berlin, they could again communicate. And there are very interesting communications going on between Haro and Libertas and the others, where they talk to each other for the last time, explain what happened to them and try to create a common narrative with which they can live and which they can die, go those last steps. And after they are killed in late 1942, does anything of that organization survive? Well, not all actually were killed. It's also quite fascinating to read about some within the group that were able to trick the Gestapo in the interrogations and basically pretend that they had no political

information. They were just going to parties, they were just being friends, they were just going camping. Some of them were actually able to get out and were freed and were not tried and were then later after the war trying to rehabilitate their friends. So the story actually does go on. And it's interesting, I mean, about half of the group were women. And so also quite a few women survived. And then later on, after the war, they connect and they actually try to bring the main guy who was responsible for the trials, Ander Göring, this is Röder, he was the prosecutor. They try to bring him to justice in post-war West Germany.

We've got Laura Chavon asking here, the family weren't allowed to speak about them, but did the families, I guess they were split when Berlin was split after the war. It must have, as you mentioned kind of interrupted the commemoration and the study of these this group but were the families have they been able to keep their memory alive well you've mentioned one particular doctor of course but is there now a group of people there is actually and I was invited to one of these meetings and I was able to speak to five or six people whose parents were part of the group. For example, Günter Weisenborn, quite a known writer, was part of the group.

He survived and I was able to actually become friends with his son, Christian Weisenborn, who is a filmmaker now in Germany. I met the daughter of John Graudens, who was the best friend of Harrow towards the end. And the daughter is now 85 and she still lives in that house on the outskirts of Berlin where her father and herself actually, with her sister, she was 16 at the time, were arrested by the Gestapo. So she could show me the stairs where her father tried to run away from the Gestapo agents and the terrace where they were sitting later with the Gestapo agents. Her sister was 17, she was 16. And she said the Gestapo agents were about 19 or 20 and were flirting with them. She actually said that they were very uncomfortable in arresting

her father because they were young guys. They basically wanted to have a good time, but they had to do this job of arresting her father and so these stories obviously are very interesting because they give you a look into history that you usually don't get from documents so i was trying to meet as many people as possible that had relations to the group and got a lot of descriptions of the daily life of these people, which gave me the opportunity to paint a picture of how it actually was to live in Berlin in the late 30s and early 40s, which is fascinating. Some of the restaurants that they went to are still there

and are really happening restaurants now, but no one, like the Borscht in Berlin is like the number one restaurant in berlin everyone goes there at night but no one knows that actually harrow and libertas they went there too it was already active back then so that was for me one of the fascinating aspects of writing this book to get a sense of what life was about in berlin well it sounds like elements of berlin have actually gone back to being that kind of progressive cafe and social scene. It's cool. I'm definitely going to go on a pilgrimage to some of the places you mentioned, but when I'm next in your wonderful city, I'll be your guide. Oh, Norman, I'll be an

honor. Thank you. Can I just ask, were they picking up gossip? I mean, he was in the Air Force. Were they trying to just human intelligence? Were they just trying to meet people and hear things that were going on? I mean, Harrow realized at one point that in the Air Force ministry where he was working, he was getting quite valuable information. So he tried to become an officer to get even better information. The problem was that because of his shady past as being the publisher of this more left wing or open magazine, he didn't get the promotion to becoming an officer. He asked Libertas whether she could help, because Libertas comes from an aristocratic family that has its castle in the north of Germany, quite close to Karin Hall, which was Göring's

hunting estate. And the family was actually friends with Göring. So when she knew that Göring would visit her family, she traveled to the castle and met Göring before he went to his guest room and told him about her husband, who was really ambitious to climb the ladder. And he's being blocked because he was politically foolish a few years ago. And he's being blocked because he was politically foolish a few years ago. And Göring actually made it happen that Harro became an officer and then got really, from the place that he was working at, valuable information. And that's actually why Hitler was furious at Göring when the group was found out and told Göring to organize the trial and make sure that they all get killed. Why do you think it's important now that we're revisiting and retelling these stories of resistance? I just think it's interesting to follow people who suddenly found themselves in a political situation

where they thought, I cannot continue my life as it was before. This is just not something that I would feel comfortable with. Obviously, these people were in a very radical situation, but even then changing, I mean, it's even more interesting to see that.

And I don't know if we can learn from it. I don't know if it teaches us something about strategies of resistance that we can apply today. But it did interest me because I have always been teaches us something about strategies of resistance that we can apply today. But it did interest me because I have always been a political being and I always think,

what is my role in society? When should I resist or what is there to resist against? So for me, it was rewarding to tell a tale of resistance. And obviously, I think that we have a lot of reason these days, where we can see the decay of our cherished democracy to resist or to find ways to act politically conscious. So that's why I think this book was at least to me, a relevant endeavor. Well, thank you, Norman. It's fascinating, if very different to your last one. So thank you very much. The book's called The Infiltrators. And it is out now, is it? It's out now in the United States with the title The Bohemians. Don't ask me why we have two titles. But in America, it's called The Bohemians because these people were Bohemian. And in the UK, it will be published

as The Infiltrators, August 8. Okay, well, make sure you go and pick up that book, everybody. Thank you very much, Norm, for coming on this podcast. Thank you, everybody, for asking your questions, which I stole the best ones of. See you next time. Thank you. It was a pleasure again. hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask i totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money makes sense but if you could just do me a favorites for free go to itunes or wherever you get your podcast if you give it a five star

rating and give it an absolutely glowing review pur purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.