The Good Germans

Resisting the Nazis, 1933-1945

By: Catrine Clay

Narrated by: Karen Cass

After 1933, as the brutal terror regime took hold, most of the two-thirds of Germans who had never voted for the Nazis - some 20 million people - tried to keep their heads down and protect their families.

They moved to the country, or pretended to support the regime to avoid being denounced by neighbours, and tried to work out what was really happening in the Reich, surrounded as they were by Nazi propaganda and fake news. They lived in constant fear. Yet many ordinary Germans found the courage to resist. Catrine Clay argues that it was a much greater number than was ever formally recorded. Her ground-breaking book focuses on six very different characters. They are not seen in isolation but as part of their families. Each experiences the momentous events of Nazi history as they unfold in their own small lives - Good Germans all.©2020 Catrine Clay

Critic reviews

Historians have long grappled with the question of how popular the Nazis really were ... The Good Germans suggests that there was much more resistance than was ever formally recorded ... The Good Germans shines the spotlight on people who didn't opt for the path of conformity, but instead made often small but nonetheless defiant choices in their everyday lives that put them at risk ... [Clay] is a great story-teller who proves adept at conjuring her characters straight off the page (Hester Vaizey)

A brilliant and deeply disturbing account of six individuals, ranging from Prussian aristocrat to law student to factory hand, who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives to oppose Hitler (Hilary Spurling)

Timely, intriguing and extremely well informed

As beautiful as it is heartbreaking

This book has been my rock the last few months and I've been begging everyone I know to read it. With fascism on the rise in America, this book is a reminder that everyone, big and small, rich and poor, can and should resist. Thank you.

Interesting but....

I love books of ordinary people doing extraordinarily brave things during times of intense danger. This is one of those books. Problem is that the book is set out badly in my opinion. It is set according to timeline rather than tell the story of each person in turn. This made it hard to follow and hard to care about any of these real people. Very sad.