I grew up in a home where nothing German was allowed. No Siemens dishwasher or Krups coffee machine in the kitchen, no Volkswagen, Audi, or Mercedes in the driveway. This rule came from my mother. She wasn’t a Holocaust survivor, but she had felt the shadow of the Shoah close by. She was only eight years old on March 27, 1945, when her own mother was killed by the last German V-2 rocket to hit London. That bomb destroyed part of the East End, killing 134 people, nearly all of them Jewish. In one way or another, the impact of that explosion would shape the rest of my mother’s life—and much of mine.
She knew the bomb hadn’t deliberately targeted Hughes Mansions. But she also knew how pleased the Nazis would have been with the outcome—that fate, or chance, had chosen a site where so many Jews died. At 7:21 that March morning, it added 120 more to the eventual toll of six million. So the rule was born: no trace of Germany would touch our family. No visits, no holidays, no contact. In her eyes, the Germans were a guilty nation, every last one implicated in the 20th century’s worst crime.
Other Jewish families I knew had similar rules, but few were as strict as my mother’s. Still, her underlying belief wasn’t unusual. Many people, inside and outside the Jewish community, shared—and perhaps still share—the idea I was raised with: that aside from a few exceptions, Adolf Hitler found a willing accomplice in the German nation.
We often hear about the French resistance and underground movements across Europe, but we rarely learn about opposition within Germany itself. Many assume that dissenters were quickly rounded up after the Nazis took power in 1933: “First they came for the communists…” But that’s not entirely accurate. Some Germans defied the Third Reich from the start and throughout its reign. After the war, one Allied investigator estimated that three million Germans had been in and out of prisons or concentration camps for acts of dissent—sometimes punished just for a critical remark.
They shared forbidden information, whispered plans, and dreamed of a future free from the Führer’s rule.
In 1933, there were 67.7 million German citizens. The vast majority—over 95%, including children—did as they were told. They saluted and said, “Heil Hitler!” But not everyone did.
What does it take to step out of line like that? What makes someone refuse when everyone else obeys? And why take such a risk when staying silent is so much easier, and defiance brings only pain, hardship, or death?
Anyone who has looked closely at the horrors of the mid-20th century has likely asked these questions, especially one: What would I have done? Most of us like to think we would have been brave—one of the rebels. But the numbers suggest otherwise. Most of us would have stayed silent.
More than three years ago, I came across the story of a group from Berlin’s high society who belonged to that rare category: they refused to bow to Hitler. Their story, largely forgotten except by a few experts, was marked by terrible cruelty, but at its heart was something just as hard to explain: radical, unnecessary, and mortally dangerous goodness.
There was also a twist. These remarkable individuals mostly defied the regime on their own, through acts of…The rescue and resistance efforts were clandestine and never spoken of openly. But on one fateful—and ultimately fatal—day, they converged.
Officially, it was a tea party to celebrate a friend’s birthday. In reality, it was a chance to exchange forbidden information, share whispered plans, and plot for a future free from the Führer’s rule. That afternoon, they took comfort in their camaraderie and the relief of knowing they weren’t alone. Yet that very gathering would lead to their downfall, due to a threat none had anticipated—one that came from within.
How did they end up there that day? How did a handful of Berlin’s elite, more accustomed to nights at the opera and embassy parties, become caught up in a drama that would soon turn deadly—one whose consequences would reach the highest levels of the Nazi state? Why did those who could have easily kept quiet and stayed out of trouble choose to risk everything?
Their path to rebellion was neither smooth nor straightforward. Each came to the decision in their own way, often through winding and indirect routes. For some, it wasn’t even a choice—it felt like the only possible response to the darkening world around them. These questions weighed especially heavily in 1930s and 1940s Germany, but they are not confined to that time or place. Some still echo through the decades, and some resonate particularly strongly today.
To understand the remarkable individuals in this group, it helps to begin with Maria Helene Françoise Izabel von Maltzan, Baroness of Wartenberg and Penzlin—and the autumn day in 1943 when the Gestapo came to her door.
Maria was just 34 years old. Now, armed men were swarming through her home, searching for the Jew—or Jews—they were certain she was hiding. As it happened, there was a Jew in the very room where she stood, hidden and holding his breath. Still, she refused to show even a trace of fear. From her previous encounters with the secret police, she had learned one vital lesson: confidence was everything. The key was to project unshakable self-assurance.
The hidden man was her lover, Hans Hirschel. They had prepared for this moment for over 18 months. When he moved in, Hans brought a heavy mahogany sofa bed with a base large enough for someone to lie inside. Once the cushions were in place, the opening was invisible. Maria added hooks and eyelets so whoever was inside could lock it from within, making it impossible to open from the outside.
Hans had worried he might suffocate, so Maria used a hand drill to make air holes, covering them from the inside with red cloth to match the sofa. Each day, she placed a glass of water inside, along with enough codeine to suppress his persistent cough—which might otherwise give him away. The hiding place was always ready, waiting for an emergency.
Now that emergency had arrived. Hans was inside, doing his best to stay silent as the two Gestapo men tore the apartment apart.
He could hear them. A warning had come hours earlier. The building’s concierge had slipped Maria a yellow index card left in the hallway. Just five words—one not even a real word—but enough to mean a death sentence:
“At Maltzan’s there are ‘J’!”
It was the kind of denunciation all too common in Berlin at the time, as neighbors accused one another of hiding Jews. Prying eyes were everywhere, watching for any sign of an Aryan concealing someone in an attic or basement. Sometimes, the accused even became accusers—to divert suspicion and win favor with the secret police.Hans and Maria were certain the police had arrived. The woman who wrote the note—apparently misplaced by a Gestapo officer—had already been under suspicion. So when the knock came, it was no surprise.
Maria opened the door to two men demanding entry. She stalled them just long enough for Hans to slip into the bedroom and silently crawl into the hollow space beneath the mattress, lying flat. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.
The Gestapo agents moved quickly, pulling out drawers and tearing open cupboards. Soon they found a row of men’s suits and confronted Maria. She told the truth: she had given birth to a baby boy the previous September and said, “I can assure you, he was not born of the Holy Spirit.” Only then did she lie, naming the father not as Hans, but as Eric Svensson, a gay friend who had pretended to be her lover.
The search continued. Hidden in the box, Hans could hear footsteps on the floorboards. Maria was throwing a ball for her two dogs. The Gestapo men, clearly annoyed, told her to stop, but she refused, explaining that this was the dogs’ usual time for their afternoon walk. They needed exercise.
As three o’clock passed, then four, the questioning continued. “We know a Jewish girl used your apartment for two weeks,” they said, certain they had missed nothing.
“It’s true I employed a girl, but she wasn’t Jewish,” Maria replied. “Her papers were completely in order.”
“No, they were fake,” one of the men insisted.
Maria asked how she, a mere veterinary student, could possibly know about such things, acting shocked at the idea.
By now they were in the bedroom. Hans could hear the three voices as the formal interrogation began. The men told Maria to sit, and she lowered herself onto the sofa bed.
“We know you’re hiding Jews,” they said.
“That’s completely ridiculous,” Maria replied with all the haughtiness she could muster. Just inches below her, Hans lay motionless.
She gestured toward the portrait of her father, an aristocrat in dress uniform, which held pride of place in the room. “You don’t believe that I, as this man’s daughter, am hiding Jews.”
Hans stayed rigid, listening to every word. Then came the moment he dreaded.
The Gestapo men insisted Maria open the two sofa beds in the room. Hans heard her open the first one easily, no doubt revealing the empty space inside with a flourish, as if to show the agents were wasting their time.
They turned to the second one—his. He could feel movement, the effort to lift the lid.
“Sorry, it won’t open,” Maria said. She explained that she had tried to open it soon after buying it, but it was stuck. The men weren’t convinced. They tugged at it, determined to force it open.
Then Maria took a gamble, one that required iron self-control. Hans heard her words but couldn’t react as she made her suggestion to the Gestapo.
“Take out your gun and shoot through the couch.”
She sounded deadly serious, as if offering a reasonable solution to the standoff. “If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is take out your gun and shoot through the couch.”
How long did Hans lie there, waiting for the Nazis’ response? How long did Maria’s words hang in the air as he braced himself? It would have taken only a second for one of them to pull out a pistol and call her bluff. If they did, how long would it take for Hans to die? A few seconds? A minute?
Was one of them even now—He aimed his weapon at the bed box, the barrel just inches away. Then Maria spoke again.
“However,” she said. She had one condition: if they opened fire, she insisted they provide a credit note for new upholstery fabric and cover the repair costs. She was firm—there would be no “raggedy piece of furniture” in her home. “And I want that in writing from you, in advance.”
After nearly a decade of dealing with National Socialist officials and bureaucrats of all kinds, Maria had learned one more thing: such men feared overstepping their authority. There would be expense forms to fill out, superiors to answer to. Sure enough, the bullets stayed in their chambers.
By 6 o’clock, the Gestapo agents had finally left. They spent nearly four hours in the apartment and left with nothing but a promise from the countess that if the Jewish girl reappeared, she would report her immediately.
Only when Maria was certain the men were gone for good did she signal for Hans to unseal his hiding place and come out. He emerged deathly pale, clammy with sweat, convinced those long hours might have been his last. What saved him was the unshakable confidence of the woman he called Maruska. Though she now lived in an abandoned Berlin shop as a trainee vet, she came from a class that had ruled the land for centuries. Not even the Gestapo could intimidate her—at least, not yet.
Otto Kiep’s diary was always full, less because of his social charm or his young wife’s, and more due to his position as Germany’s consul-general in New York. Invitations poured in daily, but one stood out: a dinner in honor of one of the world’s most admired men, Professor Albert Einstein.
Scheduled for mid-March 1933, planning had begun months earlier, well before the Nazis seized power at the end of January. Initially, inviting Germany’s official representative in New York was simply a courtesy—Einstein was, after all, one of the country’s most distinguished figures. But by the time Otto Kiep looked at the invitation on his desk, its meaning had completely changed.
Einstein was now a symbol as well as a man—a Jew in a country that had turned against its Jews. A dinner in his honor would inevitably become a rally in solidarity with Germany’s persecuted Jews and a protest against the new Nazi government. If Otto attended, he would be standing with the protesters. In the eyes of his superiors, he would be siding with the enemy—a traitor.
Yet if he refused, he would be tacitly endorsing those hounding Einstein, both in Germany and in New York. Otto had even heard of an assassination plot against the scientist: a group of…German exchange students at Columbia University were plotting to assassinate Einstein just before he boarded the ship to return to Europe.
As tensions rose, the situation became clearer to Otto. Attending the dinner in Einstein’s honor would mean the end of his diplomatic career. Refusing would mean aligning himself with National Socialism and its violent supporters. That was the choice he faced.
It was March 16, 1933, and Einstein had arrived in New York. Surrounded by reporters, he praised “Germany’s contribution to human culture” as “so vital and significant that you cannot imagine the world without it.” He added that it was all the sadder that “the true representatives of this culture are now being mistreated in their own country.” Any ambiguity about what a German official’s public support for Einstein would mean—any gray area where Otto might have found diplomatic cover—was now gone. He had to decide.
He resolved to do what he believed was best for the country he served and loved. For the sake of Germany’s reputation and in the name of decency, he accepted the dinner invitation. The organizers asked him to give a speech.
This time, there was no dilemma. The request was standard protocol—as the highest-ranking German official present, he was expected to speak. Besides, he saw no point in half-measures. If he was going to risk his career, he would do it openly and with pride. He began preparing a short speech.
The dinner was a typical Manhattan gala. At the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue, women wore gowns, men were in white tie and tails, and a string quartet played as guests arrived. Otto Kiep was seated at the head table.
After pleasantries and formal welcomes, it was his turn to speak. In the quiet room, the weight of the moment was unmistakable. Everyone knew every word mattered.
He began by honoring Einstein’s contributions to science and humanity. He praised the United States for welcoming German intellectuals, then subtly criticized his own government by saying that great nations are open to new ideas and do not judge them by their origin.
Finally, he turned to Einstein: “This gathering does not honor you, Professor Einstein. On the contrary, you honor this gathering—and any gathering you choose to join.”
The applause was long and heartfelt. Few were surprised when the event made the front page of the next day’s New York Times. Otto was equally unsurprised by the report that soon appeared in Berlin’s Nazi party newspaper, which accused a German official of insulting the Third Reich in a room full of Jews. Shortly after, he was ordered to return to Germany for “consultations.” Among those he would have to answer to was Germany’s new chancellor: Adolf Hitler.
Elisabeth von Thadden, headmistress to the daughters of Germany’s elite, had initially approached Nazism with an open mind. But the reality of National Socialism soon became impossible to ignore. First, some of the women she most admired lost their positions and had to shut down their institutions because they were Jewish.
Next, Elisabeth sa—Elisabeth von Thadden understood the Third Reich’s intentions for Christianity—it aimed to establish a new “German church” that would serve as an extension of the all-powerful Nazi state, with Adolf Hitler elevated above Jesus Christ. By November 1934, she had aligned herself with the dissenting Confessing Church.
Soon, she found herself caught between two conflicting forces. On one hand, she felt a deep revulsion toward the country’s direction and wanted to remain true to her convictions. On the other, she needed to keep open the school she had founded just a few years earlier in Wieblingen, which had quickly gained a strong reputation among many of Germany’s leading families.
To navigate this, she chose her battles carefully. She tolerated much that she found unacceptable and found clever compromises where she could. For example, she allowed her students to join the girls’ branch of the Hitler Youth—the League of German Girls—but made sure it was supervised by the school’s own teachers rather than outside Nazi officials. This way, she hoped to control and limit the indoctrination happening under her roof.
Elisabeth complied with whatever the authorities demanded, such as displaying the Nazi party program at the school entrance, just to keep the institution running. She believed that without the school, she could not pass on the values of social responsibility and Christian piety that she held dear. More practically, without it, she could not offer refuge to girls in need—a need that was becoming increasingly urgent.
Quietly, Elisabeth had been admitting students of “non-Aryan” background. Pupils noticed new girls arriving suddenly mid-year, only to disappear again soon after. The likely explanation was that these girls were staying at the school while their families secured the documents needed to flee the country.
In 1936, as state hostility toward denominational schools and Christianity intensified—with the Nazi party increasingly promoting an imagined pagan German past—she discreetly removed the word “Evangelical” from the school’s name. But inside the renamed Rural Education Home for Girls, neither staff nor students were required to use the “German greeting”; there were no Hitler salutes.
She had found a delicate balance that kept her just on the right side of the Reich, allowing her to subtly resist it. This balance held until the day she made a mistake. Ironically, it was a passage from her beloved Bible that led to her downfall.
The incident occurred during a school ceremony celebrating Germany’s victory over France in June 1940. Elisabeth read aloud a psalm. Unbeknownst to her, one of her pupils was paying close attention—not out of religious interest, but because she was a spy.
This situation stemmed from the careful line Elisabeth walked between her principles and the practical need to maintain civil relations with Germany’s new rulers. That summer, at her 50th birthday celebration, her guests included both a Jewish woman—a convert to Catholicism originally named Margot Kohn—and Baroness Martha Reichlin von Meldegg, the local leader of the Nazi Women’s Association. Inviting the baroness seemed a prudent diplomatic move to keep a prominent local Nazi supporter appeased.
The problem was, the baroness’s fervor extended to encouraging her 13-year-old daughter to act as a secret informant within the school, monitoring everything.She reported anything she saw or heard that strayed from Nazi beliefs to her mother, who then informed the authorities of these “deficiencies of conviction.” Soon after, an official letter arrived. The regime had learned that Fräulein von Thadden had read from the Old Testament during a ceremony meant to honor the German people. By including Jewish scripture, she had tainted a national occasion. The Gestapo sent an inspector.
He found many violations. The students did not use the required “Heil Hitler!” greeting. At that same victory ceremony where a Hebrew psalm was read, not a word had been spoken about the Führer. His portrait was also missing from display.
Eventually, a decision was made. Elisabeth’s state permit was revoked, and the school she had dedicated herself to was shut down for “not offering sufficient guarantee of a National Socialist education for young people.” It was replaced by a new, renamed secondary school. Most pupils and staff were allowed to stay, but Elisabeth was forced out.
So, in September 1943, jobless and without a mission, Elisabeth von Thadden invited some friends for tea—including Maria von Maltzan and Otto Kiep. Also invited were a former finance ministry official, a doctor, a one-time model, a high-ranking diplomat, and Hanna Solf, the widow of an ambassador known for hosting anti-Nazi dissidents in her salon. It promised to be a pleasant afternoon—a gathering of like-minded souls where they could share information, plans for a future after the Nazis, and, perhaps most importantly, the reassurance that they were not alone.
But what none of them knew was that among them, drinking tea and eating cake, was someone they trusted as one of their own—who was actually about to betray them all to the Gestapo. That act of deceit would lead to pursuit by one of the Nazis’ cruelest men, torture, a show trial, and ultimately execution by guillotine and noose. The repercussions would even reach Adolf Hitler himself.
This is a story of courage and betrayal, of resistance and its cost. And it is not just a story from the past. The bravery of these rebels, and what it teaches us about standing up to tyranny, endures even today.
This is an edited excerpt from The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them by Jonathan Freedland, published by John Murray on 11 September, priced at £25. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about the topic of German resistance during the Nazi era inspired by the story you mentioned
General Beginner Questions
Q What is this story about an aristocrat and a sofa bed
A Its about Countess Maria von Maltzan a German aristocrat and resistance fighter She hid her Jewish lover Hans Hirschel and other Jewish people from the Nazis by constructing a hidden compartment inside her sofa bed
Q Werent all Germans Nazis during that time
A No thats a common misconception While many supported or complied with the regime there were individuals and groups across German society who actively resisted Hitler in various ways
Q What does German resistance mean
A It refers to the oppositionboth open and secretby individuals and groups within Germany to the Nazi regime and its policies from 1933 to 1945
Q Why is this story significant
A It highlights the incredible courage of ordinary people who risked everything to protect others challenging the idea that no one in Germany tried to stop the Nazis
Intermediate Detailed Questions
Q Besides hiding people what other forms did resistance take
A Resistance was diverse It included distributing antiNazi leaflets assassination attempts espionage for the Allies helping prisoners of war escape and simply refusing to give the Nazi salute
Q Who was the White Rose
A They were a nonviolent intellectual resistance group led by students like Hans and Sophie Scholl They wrote and distributed leaflets calling on Germans to passively resist the Nazi government before being captured and executed
Q What was the July 20 Plot
A This was a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler by a group of highranking German military officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg on July 20 1944 Its goal was to seize control of the government and make peace with the Allies
Q Werent these resisters also antiSemitic or nationalist
A Their motivations varied widely Some were primarily motivated by moral or religious objections to the Holocaust Others were conservative nationalists who opposed Hitler because they believed he was leading Germany to ruin in the war It was a complex mix of ideals
