Resistance in Berlin
RECENTLY two extremely informative books have appeared on the German resistance—the von Hassell diaries and Gisevius's To the Bitter End. About each disastrous event, and each personal intrigue, these authors usually had means of finding out the truth behind the headlines of the Volkische Beobachter. Even after the fall of France they were able to travel extensively, concealing the true nature of their missions under the cloak of economic lecturer or Almehr official. However, and this is important, we must remember that both von Hassell and Gisevius were ostensibly on the side of the Nazis, and until the final catastrophe were privileged persons who did not experience many of the day-to-day inconveniences of their fellow countrymen.
Fraulein Andreas-Friedrich, in her book, writes about what I would call the other side of the resistance. She tells the story of a small, and comparatively unknown, group of people who worked in Berlin from 1939 to 1945. With the exception of Count Helmuth von , Moltke, her group had no influential friends, and had virtually no connection with the big names of the resistance—Beck, Oster, Goerdeler and their circle. Thus they were working alone, a small body of good Europeans stranded in the madness of the Third Reich. In the early days their work was directed mainly towards helping the Jews. They got them ration cards and false identity papers and found friends who would shelter them. Apart from this, they helped others to avoid being called up and did their best to spread defeatism. Their work culminated in the "Neinaknon"; scrawling up in large letters the word NEIN throughout Berlin. It stood for no to the aristocracy of the N.S.D.A.P., • no to the war, and no to the suicide which was being forced on the German people by Hitler. That its message was apparent to Berlineis is made clear by the subsequent action of the Gestapo, who preceded this impassioned cri du coeur with the question, "Kapitulation ?"
With all this mass of interesting material at her disposal, it seems a little unfortunate that the authoress has not taken more trouble with her book. She prefaces her work with the bland remark, " This is not a work of art ; it is the truth." The reader will endorse both of these statements. She writes in the slangy style of the tough American novel, although this may be the doing of her translator. One wonders about the original of such sentences as, " Oh, boy, was I walking on eggs ? " or " So sleep is what we don't get none of again." Nevertheless, the book is highly readable. It moves at a good pace, and presents, amongst other things, a picture of the kind of life that was going on in the days when we used to hear the quiet, unruffled voice of a B.B.C. announcer saying, " Last night our bombers were out in strength. Their target was Berlin." We hear of the interminable queues, the gradual deteriora- tion of the food, the cuts in the water, gas and electricity, and all the other difficulties that confronted the average Hausfrau ; and behind this, always, the fear of the Gestapo and the bombs.
Two things emerge clearly from this book : the difficulty and danger of co-ordinating effective resistance under a dictatorship, and the way in which a great city can be destroyed in modern war- fare. Reading about these brave, dramatic characters of the '4os, I found myself thinking about another inhabitant of Berlin of a different age: Mr. Norris. But I doubt whether in the terrible conditions which Fraulein Andreas-Friedrich describes so graphic- ally, even he would be able to distinguish the Charlottenburg from
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