The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany―and the Spy Who Betrayed Them
Jonathan Freedland
Harper Pub
October 2025
The Traitors Circle by Jonathan Freedland is the true story of bravery, love, and treachery. Readers travel to Berlin in 1943 and become a fly on the wall when a group of high society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador’s widow, and a pioneering head mistress. Their backgrounds included educated, upper-class, often religious Germans. Unbeknownst to them is that someone there will betray them.
As they stand up to the Nazis for more than a decade, it becomes evident they are heroes who meet in the shadows, rescue Jews, or plot for a future Germany freed from the Nazi rule. They considered the torturous violence and suppression an afront to what they stood for and believed.
The Gestapo carefully collected proof that they were plotting against the Third Reich. They then arrested, interrogated, and tortured the dissenters. A kangaroo court ensued, presided over by a legendary brutal Nazi judge, that ended in horrific consequences.
Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?
Jonathan Freedland: It relates to the previous book I wrote, The Escape Artist, who escaped Auschwitz. In July 1944 there was an attempted assassination against Hitler. Himmler mentions to the SS top branch about the reactionary tea party in custody. In September 1943 there had been a tea party of upper-class people discussing their reaction to Hitler. Here is a group of elite Germans who did gather around a tea party, with one of them portraying them to the Gestapo. This is a story of evil versus good.
EC: Do you think the conspirators had something in common, if not why?
JF: I do think they had something in common. They are very different who made different choices. What they have in common is they are from the top draw either by birth or people who served at high levels of government. People are very interested in the personality type of someone who resists and defies Nazism. The one thread that ties together this group is that they believed in an authority higher than Hitler. For those with German aristocratic background and class, they embodied an older and better Germany, that did not treat minorities, the oppressed, or unfortunate badly. They believed it was their obligation to be noble in treating the less fortunate than themselves. The other version of the united thread is the belief in their religious faith, a higher authority that is God. The authority to whom they will be ultimately accountable is God Almighty. This enables them to be loyal to their conscious.
EC: Can you explain the surprising statistic, that only 5% stood up against the Nazis?
JF: It is fascinating because it is surprisingly large and surprisingly small, all at the same time. Surprisingly large, people are shocked that only 3 million Germans were arrested or detained during the 12 years of the Reich. Little is well-known about German resistance. There were enormous risks people took. It is almost a certainty that they would pay a high price for this kind of deviation. The monitoring surveillance was intense without any free speech and independent sources of news. People were monitored everywhere; people were informed on by their neighbors and even by their own family. If they were found out the consequences were severe, grave, or lethal. There was a lot to lose, and the risks were too great. This is why so few stood up against the Nazis and 95% fell in line.
EC: What does the above statistic say about those who stood up?
JF: The 5 % who did are extraordinary brave, heroic, and admirable. Those I wrote about did much, much more by harboring Jews, hiding them, helping them to get out of the country, passed information along, and were involved in physical resistance.
EC: I have always been upset and tried to understand that even when it became obvious the Nazis were losing, they still did their killings and atrocities. Can you explain the quote, “The war against the allies was nearly over but the Reich’s war on the German citizens it had branded as traitors would be fought to the very end.”
JF: It is an enigma, a puzzle, to the historians. The Holocaust intensified as the Germans lost the war. I know from my previous book, The Escape Artist, the Holocaust reached its most intense period in the spring/summer of 1944. Between mid-May and the beginning of July, a 56-day period, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported, an overwhelming majority murdered at Auschwitz. This time-period encompassed D-Day where the Germans know they are losing yet they devote huge resources to the killings of Jews. This kind of perverse logic was extended to its internal enemies. The only way that sense can be made is to understand it was an ideological fanatical regime who believed they would be thanked for ridding the world of Jews. In their warped imagination it was a noble one. Plus, by then the regime had developed its own momentum, which was the case with the extermination and murder of European Jewry.
EC: Can you compare the personalities of Otto, Elisabeth, Arthur, Maria, Hanna, and Lagi?
JF: The whole book compares the personalities. Otto is a passionate man but is not one of life’s rebels. Most of his life he played by the book in pre-Nazi Germany. He was a star in the diplomatic corps and landed a plush job as consul general in New York. In contrast there is Maria, a Bohemian rebel, disobeys instructions all the time. Similarly, Elisabeth is much more like Otto, a “good girl.” She had her life turned upside down in her thirties and needs to find purpose to her life. Arthur is a successful bureaucrat whose life changed once Hitler was elected. His wife Editha is a Jew which changes everything for him. Hannah is more inclined to descent because she and her husband had hosted a salon of free thinkers before Hitler. Lagi, her daughter, had a rebellious streak, in the pre-Hitler period, when she eloped. It’s a mix of rule breakers and rule followers. What they had in common is they believe there is a higher authority than the Third Reich, as mentioned above.
EC: What about the women above?
JF: They had strong fathers and strong relationships with their fathers. Their fathers raised them to believe they were the equal of any man and there is nothing they could not do. This equipped them with confidence to do brave things which hardened into courage after Hitler and the Nazis arrived.
EC: Who do you think was the bravest, most daring, strongest and why?
JF: Using the traditional definition of courage, Maria von Maltzan stands out because of her physical courage. She hides her secret Jewish lover even during the raid on her apartment. She faced the Gestapo down and looked them in the eye. Lagi was not fearless but overcame her anxiety. Perhaps that is braver than Maria who was fearless, while Lagi was fearful. Elisabeth faced her fate without wavering, requiring a deep inner courage. All the people focused on in the story can be described as brave, daring, and strong.
EC: What was the role of Leo Lange and how would you describe him?
JF: He is the detective who pursued the members of this group. He was a shoe leather Berlin cop. He is not incidental in the history of the Holocaust. He was with the Gestapo in occupied Berlin tasked with the elimination and execution of resistors. He was also tasked with gassing people. He and his unit, the Langer detachment, roamed the Polish countryside in vans that were adapted to be a mobile gas chamber on wheels. It would eventually be static in a fixed location, Chelmno, the first death camp whose first commandant was Leo Lange, a core perpetrator of the Holocaust.
EC: How would you describe the traitor and their motivations?
JF: Motivations are fascinating when it comes to informers to the Nazis. They saved their skin by pointing the finger at someone else. Those who were agents of the Gestapo were either drawn to money, ideology, or committed Nazis. Others were drawn to making history, being important, and having an impact on world events. The traitor in this story had vanity and an ego. What appealed to the Agents was seeing the Nazis making history and thinking that by working for them they will have a role in making history.
EC: Next book?
JF: I do not know. I was working on the two books, this one and The Escape Artist for the last six years. Now I am pausing to catch my breath.
THANK YOU!!
