When the whole world is lying, someone must tell the truth.
Berlin, 1943: A group of high society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer’s afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo.
They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador’s widow and a pioneering head mistress. What unites every one of them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance: meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer’s rule. Or so they believe.
How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap?
Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich’s cruelest men, they showed a heroism in the face of the most vengeful regime in history that raises the question: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?
THE TRAITOR’S CIRCLE by Jonathan Freedland is a nonfiction novel that reads like a gripping spy thriller. This book features a group of aristocratic Germans during WWII who come together to voice their objections to Hitler and the Nazi regime, help Jewish friends, families, and even strangers escape the Holocaust and are then betrayed by a traitor within. The terrible retribution of the Gestapo on all involved during the final years of the war is stark and terrible and yet their stories need to be told and remembered for their bravery and moral resistance to the depravity of the Nazi regime.
This is a nonfiction book that I was unable to put down, even with scenes of torture and depravity. The author masterly introduces the members of the group, and you become invested in the varied individuals and the various reasons for them opposing the new regime. I have read many nonfiction history books and historical fiction books about WWII and that era, so I assumed this story would not end well, but the author does a great job of following all the characters to the end of their journeys whether they lived or died. This book gives the reader a look at German dissenters during a time that a radical regime sought to eliminate all dissent.
I highly recommend this gripping nonfiction WWII novel!
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About the Author
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and former foreign correspondent. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View, as well as two podcasts, Politics Weekly America for the Guardian and Unholy, alongside the Israeli journalist Yonit Levi. He is a past winner of an Orwell Prize for journalism. He is the author of twelve books, the latest being The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World. He has written nine thrillers, mostly as Sam Bourne, including The Righteous Men which was a Sunday Times number one bestseller.
In March and April of 1944, Gestapo gunmen killed fifty POWs—a brutal act in defiance of international law and the Geneva Convention.
This is the true story of the men who hunted them down.
The mass breakout of seventy-six Allied airmen from the infamous Stalag Luft III became one of the greatest tales of World War II, immortalized in the film The Great Escape. But where Hollywood’s depiction fades to black, another incredible story begins . . .
Not long after the escape, fifty of the recaptured airmen were taken to desolate killing fields throughout Germany and shot on the direct orders of Hitler. When the nature of these killings came to light, Churchill’s government swore to pursue justice at any cost. A revolving team of military police, led by squadron leader Francis P. McKenna, was dispatched to Germany seventeen months after the killings to pick up a trail long gone cold.
Amid the chaos of postwar Germany, divided between American, British, French, and Russian occupiers, McKenna and his men brought twenty-one Gestapo killers to justice in a hunt that spanned three years and took them into the darkest realms of Nazi fanaticism.
In Human Game, Simon Read tells this harrowing story as never before. Beginning inside Stalag Luft III and the Nazi High Command, through the grueling three-year manhunt, and into the final close of the case more than two decades later, Read delivers a clear-eyed and meticulously researched account of this often-overlooked saga of hard-won justice.
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Elise’s Thoughts
Memorial Day honors and mourns those military personnel who died while serving their country. After watching the movie “The Great Escape” people might want to honor those in the allied armed forces who were captured by the Germans and brutally killed. Immortalized in the film is the mass breakout of seventy-six Allied airmen from the infamous Stalag Luft III. Not long after the escape, fifty of the recaptured airmen were taken to killing fields throughout Germany and shot on the direct orders of Hitler.
People might wonder what happened to these Nazi killers. In the book Human Game, Simon Read delivers a clear-eyed and meticulously researched account of this often-overlooked saga of hard-won justice. This “after story,” starting where the movie left off, explains in detail how the German Gestapo killers were brought to justice.
When the nature of these killings came to light, Churchill’s government swore to pursue justice at any cost. Francis P. McKenna led a three-year manhunt that brought twenty-one Gestapo killers to justice.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Which came first the movie, “The Great Escape,” or your idea to write the book?
Simon Read: The movie came first. I am from the UK originally. There, it is a tradition that they show “The Great Escape” movie every Christmas Day. My grandfather flew with the Royal Air Force during the Second War. From a very early age I used to sit with him and watch. It is still one of my favorite movies of all time. I was always traumatized by the ending where the escapees were gathered in a field and machine gunned down. I wondered what happened to the Nazi who gunned all the escapees down. This was the genesis for the idea of the book. It is also a great adventure story.
EC: How does this fit into Memorial Day?
SR: Memorial Day is a time to reflect and ponder the sacrifices made by those in uniform. The Great Escape was an exercise in allied ingenuity, bravery, and rebellion. It was a massive propaganda victory. I think they are very much heroes for what they did. Not every victory is on the battlefield. This is an example of cunning and bravery.
EC: Can you explain the quote by Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels in May 1944?
SR: You are referring to when he said, “We owe it to our people, which is defending itself with so much honesty and courage, that it is not allowed to become human game to be hunted down by the enemy.” This is where the title for the book came from. This in response to the allied bombing campaign. He thought it was perfectly legitimate to attack downed allied airmen and to take revenge. There is something cold and barbaric about this quote.
EC: This reminds me of the unfair criticism of Israel where Hamas can replace the Nazis and Israel replaces the allies.
SR: People can look at the British bombing campaign during WWII where they used targeted bombing of cities. People need to look at the context of the times. It might not be very appealing, but Britian was fighting for its very survival against its merciless enemy. They did what they needed to do to survive. In warfare both sides are dealing in morally grey areas, which is just how war is. My grandfather flew in RAF bomber command, 48 operations over Germany. It used to fire him up when he would hear people criticizing the British bombing campaigns against German cities. His attitude, ‘these people do not know what they are talking about,’ considering London was being bombed and devastated. The context cannot be ignored.
EC: There are pictures in the beginning of the book and an appendix in the back of the book. Why?
SR: These men could not just be numbers, because otherwise it does not hit home. This is why I put in the pictures. It is one thing reading a name on a page, but putting a face to the name really drives it home. Auschwitz has a twitter feed of those who perished in the gas chambers. It is more than a name and a number. People can see the emotions of the faces, the terror and fear. It really underscores the tragedy. The appendix tells when and how the fifty died.
EC: How realistic was the movie?
SR: Regarding Stalag Luft III it is true as depicted in the movie that the Germans tried to make it escape proof by trying to make tunneling impossible, had trap doors, set the barracks on concrete stilts, and had subterranean microphones buried deep underground. The top layer of soil was a different color than the soil underneath making it hard to hide the dug-up soil. Yet, the escapees found a way. The fake documents are also true. Where the movie deviates there were American characters, but the American and British POWS were actually separated. Also, true, the Germans took all the “problem airmen,” the ones who escaped from multiple camps and stuck them in one camp together. This all backfired on the Germans in spectacular fashion.
EC: Hitler ordered all the escapees to be found and executed?
SR: It was a huge embarrassment for the Germans. Hitler flew into an absolute rage when he found out. It was a very brutal response and violated every rule of warfare. The German Luftwaffe who ran the camp treated the inmates well because they were not Gestapo. There is a scene in the movie “The Great Escape” where the camp commandant told the British high-ranking official in the camp that fifty escapees were shot. This really reflects what happened in real-life, that they were upset.
EC: What about the execution?
SR: They were shot in the back, they were cremated, and their names were not supposed to be recorded. There was a list. The movie did not reflect what really happened because it had the escapees machine gunned down. In actuality, the escapees were murdered in groups of two and three by Gestapo assassination teams. They were put in a car, driven out to isolated spots, and told to stretch their legs. This is when the Gestapo would come up behind them and shoot them in the back of the head. Their bodies were taken to a local crematorium and destroyed. Stalag Luft III did get a list of those who were executed, and it was passed on to the British POWs.
EC: How would you describe Frank McKenna, the RAF officer in charge of investigating the fifty murders?
SR: He had detective skills and sought justice with a strong moral code. He was very determined and driven. He was outraged and disgusted by what had happened. Over the course of a few years, he did get results.
EC: Who would you say are the worst Gestapo murderers for this incident?
SR: Erich Zacharias wore a watch of a British airmen. He also raped and then shot a woman witness. He is a horrible human being who was a true believer in the Nazi cause and Hitler. Then there was Johannes Post, the chief executioner who took real pleasure in killing some of the escapees. He was a sadist. They were just vicious with no redeeming qualities. It is unfathomable how someone resorts to such barbaric acts.
EC: What do you want readers to get out of the book?
SR: There were those low-level guys, like Emil Schultz who justified killing in cold blood because they claimed their families was threatened. I pondered and wanted the readers to question, what would they have done in that situation. Schultz confessed to shooting Roger Bushell, the main architect. He had true regret. The RAF investigators did have sympathy but because he did a terrible thing was sent to the gallows. I did not approve or excuse of what Schultz did.
EC: Next book?
SR: It is titled Scotland Yard coming out in September. It is a history of the Yard told through many of its most famous cases and cases that helped advance criminal investigation like how finger printing developed, criminal profiling, and why police officers wear rubber gloves at crime scenes. It covers the Yard from its creation in 1829 to the Eve of WWII in 1939. I tried to write it as a thriller. There is a great mix of true crime and history.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
