The Traitors Circle

The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany—and the Spy Who Betrayed Them

By: Jonathan Freedland

Narrated by: Jonathan Freedland

""An astonishing true story of courage, love, and betrayal, told with the verve of a thriller. Freedland is a master at weaving spellbinding entertainments drawn from forgotten corners of history.""—Mick Herron, bestselling author of Slow Horses

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Escape Artist, an extraordinary true story of resistance, heroism and betrayal.

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 stories help believe in people

Unknown facts that are so important for the wider audiences to know. The stories get additional mining at the time we are living … Thank you!

Suspenseful with romance and intrigue

Story stars with a dinner party and as everyone is arrested then who leaked these people were anti nazis - as it’s Hitlers time. This book makes history come to life.

A masterful arrangement of facts to tell a story

Freedland does a wonderful job of arranging facts he researched from a wide array of sources into a story. Make no mistake, there are so many facts here I found myself happy I was not reading this for a course that later I would be tested on! The prose is what sets this over the top. Wonderful

an important, meaningful book

it's so rare to hear a story about Nazi resistance inside Germany. I felt in equal parts worried for them, Elizabeth, Otto, Hanna, Maria and all, but also admiration, deep. Jonathan Freedland's research and writing is stellar. thank you

Traitors to Authoritarianism

The story is compelling. German aristocracy and members of the pre-National Socialist government who acted against the interests of the Nazis and in favor of decency, humanity, and the integrity of a pre-war, pre-National Socialist Germany. The outcome of this true story, including the epilogues of the lives of many involved, is especially interesting and, in some cases, very moving. And the significant lesson for today: when history tells our story, which family names will bear honor; which will bear disgrace.