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Title details for Red Orchestra by Anne Nelson - Available

Red Orchestra

The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler

by Anne Nelson
Anne Nelson
Audiobook
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This riveting account of German resistance is based on years of research by the distinguished journalist Anne Nelson. This is a beautiful and moving portrait of ordinary but heroic figures—an untold story of a circle of Germans and German-Americans in Berlin who took a principled stand against Hitler and the Holocaust. They expressed their opposition by infiltrating the Nazi ministries, distributing samizdat literature to break through the information blockade, and trying to help the Allied forces achieve a military victory.


The narrative is constructed around the life of Greta Kuckhoff, an "ordinary woman" educated at the University of Wisconsin, who returned to Germany only to see it sink into a fascist nightmare. The book relates the history of her resistance circle against an explanation of how Germany's civil society was systematically eroded.


Greta and her friends grapple with questions of ongoing concern today. How can a citizen balance the tensions between patriotism and ethics? How can civic duty be defined in a period when peaceful protest fails? How do government restrictions and the concentration of media ownership compromise democratic expression?

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 21, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400190171
      • File size: 392572 KB
      • Duration: 13:37:51

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Listeners can expect a large collection of true anecdotes told by Germans and foreigners living through the scourge of National Socialism under Adolf Hitler. So great was the revulsion to Hitler's government that an underground resistance--called the Red Orchestra by the Gestapo--developed. Author and narrator Anne Nelson tells the stories of the famous and not-so-famous in the movement. Her German has an accent identifiable as American; it blends seamlessly with her English. Nelson's taciturn voice, a purring monotone, only strays once from her natural one as she shouts an angry quote. Both this work and Nelson's performance reassure listeners that many Germans so hated their Austrian fŸhrer that they were willing to risk their lives and families to subvert his dictatorship. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 16, 2009
      In this inspiring account, noted journalist and playwright Nelson documents the wartime journey of Greta Kuckhoff, a young German, and her valiant colleagues who formed a potent resistance to the Hitler regime in its glory days. When Kuckhoff returned home from America in 1929 after university study, she joined with a band of young Communists, leftist Jews and other German antifascists to thwart the rise of Hitler at the risk of torture and death. Nelson explains in telling detail about the Nazis’ tight grip on power after the 1933 Reichstag fire, eliminating all political foes, including Jews and other “non-Aryan” types, yet the Kuckhoffs, Mildred and Avrid Harnack, and other members of the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle
      ) fought fascist censorship, slid their people into Nazi ministries, helped Jews to flee and provided the Allies with vital information to aid the war effort. Nelson’s riveting book speaks proudly of Greta, Mildred and all of the nearly three million Germans who resisted Hitler’s iron will, and gives the reader a somber view of hell from the inside.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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