Freedland, Jonathan: The Traitors Circle

‘An astonishing true story of courage, love and betrayal, told with the verve of a thriller. Freedland is a master ‘ MICK HERRON ‘This remarkable book reads like a novel . . . The narrative style is gripping; the morality searing. This is how the best history books will be written in the future‘ ANDREW ROBERTS ‘Excellent . . . both history and parable, perfect reading for this moment ‘ ANNE APPLEBAUM ‘ T hrilling, humane, and deeply moving . . . the best sort of history, one whose rich characters breathe life and perspective into our present circumstance. Haunting, and not to be missed‘ DAVID McCLOSKEY ‘ The Traitors Circle rivals Freedland‘s superb The Escape Artist . Totally gripping and timely ‘ JONATHAN DIMBLEBY ‘ Haunting and heart-poundingly suspenseful . . . Freedland‘s powerful story-telling has intense resonance in today‘s darkening world‘ SINCLAIR MCKAY ‘As tense as a thriller yet perceptive, thoughtful and thoroughly researched‘ KATJA HOYER 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 afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo - revealing their secret to the Nazis‘ most ruthless detective. 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 headmistress. Meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer‘s rule, what unites them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance. 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? And who betrayed them? Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich‘s cruellest men, they showed a heroism that raises a question with new urgency for our time: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?