REVIEW #27 RESISTANCE WOMEN AND THEIR BATTLE TO RESTORE ORDER IN GERMANY

Resistance Women
By Jennifer Chiaverini
William Morrow, 2020

Jennifer Chiaverini has carefully researched the lives of many of those who were working to undermine Hitler’s power and bring the Second World War to an end. At first they were feeding crucial economic and political information to the allies, but later they started cooperating with Russia in a desperate attempt to bring down Hitler’s Nazi regime. It seemed that the allies were making little use of their clandestine information, despite many risking their lives to get that information out. The constant appeasement of Hitler was a great frustration to the Resistance workers, as they watched German society disintegrate under the oppressive and violent forces that were responsible for the increasing discrimination, torture, imprisonment and murder of millions of Jews.

      THEIR DESPERATE EFFORTS TO DEPOSE                     HITLER AND RESTORE ORDER

It was clear that Hitler was intending to extend his power into Austria, the Sudetenland, Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia. Later, they worked with the Russians, in hopes that they might put an end to this nightmare of the constant bombing of Berlin and the displacement and fear felt by a population that was under constant surveillance to ensure they remained loyal to their leader. This group of Resistance workers became known as the Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra, as their messages sped through the airwaves, but their decision to open themselves up to the Russians proved their undoing, as the Russians were sloppy and led to the arrests and deaths in many cases.

Chiaverini became interested in their story when she read about the life of Mildred Harnack who happened to be from her hometown which had declared a day in her honour, as a result of her courage in resisting Hitler, but also for the dubious honour of being ‘the only American woman executed by direct order of Adolf Hitler.’

All but one of the characters were based on real people and their experiences in fighting the rise of Hitler and the wide-spread devastation he caused in Europe, as he brought everyone under his subjugation, in order to make Germany great again. I found the book especially moving because it made you so aware of the effects of Hitler’s policies on everyday people, as well as on European Jews, and helped to show how Hitler was able to extend his power with such little opposition from the most powerful countries in the world for the first few years. Seeing families risking their lives every day to oppose him without any support from their own nations was so exasperating. For them to hear Chamberlain bragging that ‘a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour’ and that people could ‘go home and get a nice quiet sleep’ because he had brought about ‘peace for our time’ must have been so galling to those Resistance workers. There were many years and many deaths to follow that declaration in 1938. And it wasn’t just the allies that disappointed them. Writing from one of the brave Resistance women’s point of view, Chiaverini makes the point that ‘there were Germans who did not beat Jews in the streets or paint graffiti on synagogues but stood by passively, watching it happen, convincing themselves that it was none of their business. To Greta, they were no better than the Nazis who declared themselves with armbands and lapel pins.’ She goes on to show their unflagging spirit when she writes that ‘the resistance would rally.’ They had to rally ‘or everything they once loved about their country would be gone forever.’ The other point to be made is that many of these women and their husbands had children and that gave them a special motivation to keep fighting to end the madness that had been thrust upon the world by the totalitarian state that Hitler created.

Chiaverini detailed many of the oppressive laws that prevented Jews from running their businesses, or participating in daily activities, or being unceremoniously ‘dumped like so much rubbish over the border’ in Poland. The curfews, the restrictions to movement, the burning of synagogues were endless. I really appreciated they way Chiaverini was able to take you into the lives of individuals and families to see how they coped, especially knowing this novel was based on true accounts of real people who were willing to put their lives on the line for a world that seemed to be living in a delusional fantasy that Hitler would be great for Germany and a powerful Germany would be great for the world. Just reading the novel is frustrating enough. I can’t imagine how it would have felt for these Resistance women and their male colleagues, suffering under the most impossible and cruel conditions and knowing that the rest of the world was not taking them seriously. As Chiaverini records, ‘two hundred thousand exultant Austrians gathered to celebrate as their Fuhrer declared their once independent country to be the “newest bastion of the German Reich.”’ And then there was the spectacle of the Berlin Olympics. Even after reading this novel, it is hard to imagine how easily the world bought the lie that Hitler was a benign leader with a grand vision, rather than a power-hungry dictator on a murderous crusade to destroy anyone who would stand in the way of achieving his warped vision of a great Aryan nation in which his power would not only go unchallenged, but be revered by all in Germany and beyond.

I highly recommend this book, if you want to capture the zeitgeist of the time when Hitler rolled onto the world stage and steamrolled us all, until we woke up and realized we had to fight back or lose what matters most: our freedoms to participate in all aspects of our societies, our capacity to work together with those of different races and religions, and our democratic governance that enables every citizen to participate in the social institutions and activities of their communities. Though it is based firmly on facts about known members of the Resistance, it would come under the category of historical fiction. There is one woman depicted as a Resistance fighter who was entirely fictional. However, I felt this novel gave me a stronger sense of the tensions and turmoils of the time than any historical text has portrayed and includes detailed evidence about all the major events, decisions and political players on the world stage during this period of time.