The Bohemians: The Lovers Who Led Germany's Resistance Against the Nazis

by Norman Ohler

Overview

“A detailed and meticulously researched tale… that reads like a thriller.”—New York Times Book Review

From the New York Times best-selling author of Blitzed, the incredible true story of two idealistic young lovers who led the anti-Nazi resistance in the darkening heart of Berlin

Summertime, 1935. On a lake near Berlin, a young man is out sailing when he glimpses a woman reclining in the prow of a passing boat. Their eyes meet—and one of history’s greatest conspiracies is born.
 
Harro Schulze-Boysen already had shed blood in the fight against Nazism by the time he and Libertas Haas-Heye began their whirlwind romance. She joined the cause, and soon the two lovers were leading a network of antifascist fighters that stretched across Berlin’s bohemian underworld. Harro himself infiltrated German intelligence and began funneling Nazi battle plans to the Allies, including the details of Hitler’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union. But nothing could prepare Harro and Libertas for the betrayals they would suffer in this war of secrets—a struggle in which friend could be indistinguishable from foe. Drawing on unpublished diaries, letters, and Gestapo files, Norman Ohler spins an unforgettable tale of love, heroism, and sacrifice in The Bohemians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328566300
Publisher:	HMH Books
Publication date:	07/14/2020
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	98,258
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Norman Ohler is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blitzed and cowrote the script for Wim Wenders’s film Palermo Shooting. He lives in Berlin.

Read an Excerpt

From the New York Times bestselling author of Blitzed, the incredible true story of two idealistic young lovers who led the largest anti-Nazi spy ring—right in the darkening heart of Berlin.
 

Editorial Reviews

With the opening scene of The Bohemians…[Ohler] masterfully establishes his trustworthiness as a narrator, which is crucial as we travel with him back to the 1930s and then on through the war. He weaves a detailed and meticulously researched tale about a pair of young German resisters that reads like a thriller but is supported by 20 pages of footnotes…The story he reconstructs is that of Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen, drawing on letters, articles, diaries and interviews to acquaint us with the couple in all their complexity—engaging, bold and flawed…Theirs is a tragic tale of defiance, espionage, love and betrayal. Ohler employs the present tense throughout, imbuing his account with a sense of urgency and reminding us that the past in many ways remains our present.

The New York Times Book Review - Ariana Neumann

04/27/2020

Husband and wife resistance leaders Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen, who established a network of anti-Nazi spies in WWII-era Berlin, receive the full Bonnie-and-Clyde treatment in this colorful yet lopsided account from German novelist and historian Ohler (Blitzed). Though the “young and good-looking” couple both came from well-pedigreed family backgrounds, Ohler writes, their love-at-first-sight meeting, unconventional communal living arrangements, artistic pursuits, and open marriage marked them as bohemians in 1930s Germany. Arrested and brutally beaten by the SS in 1933, magazine editor Harro witnessed the murder of his Jewish friend and colleague. He went undercover as an office clerk in the Air Ministry (“a nerve center of the Nazi brain”), and shared military plans with the Soviets while secretly writing and publishing anti-Nazi propaganda and establishing links with other resistance groups. Meanwhile, poetry-loving, accordion-playing Libertas used her charm to help advance Harro’s military career and talk her way out of an espionage charge for photographing Jewish refugees, though politics were not “her cup of tea.” Unfortunately, Ohler glosses over potential reasons, including sexism, why Libertas’s contributions to the resistance movement were perceived as more “superficial” than Harro’s. Still, this deeply researched and stylishly written account unearths an appealing yet overlooked chapter in WWII history. Espionage enthusiasts will be riveted. Agent: Robin Straus, the Robin Straus Agency. (July)

Publishers Weekly

06/12/2020

Readers may be familiar with the names of von Stauffenberg, Bonhoeffer, and Scholl in relation to German Resistance during World War II, but other individuals have been virtually "erased" from history. Journalist and novelist Ohler (Blitzed) profiles Luftwaffe officer and early Resistance figure Harro Schulze-Boysen, who has received little attention outside of Germany. With his wife, Libertas, Harro led a group people from different backgrounds gathered by a common goal to resist Nazi oppression. The Gestapo labeled the group the Red Orchestra in an attempt to tie them to communism and Russia; however, it wasn't so much a cohesive communist ideology for most of the members than an attempt to undermine the autocracy of the current Nazi regime. Each chapter leaves readers wanting more and rooting for the ill-fated group. Harro is a particularly heroic and strongly idealistic figure, who, along with Arvid Harnack, actively and with some success thwarted some of the regime's attempts at indoctrination. VERDICT Ohler's gifts as a writer shine as he brings to life the personalities, motivations, and machinations of the Red Orchestra. Complementary works include Shareen Blair Brysac's Resisting Hitler and Fritz Stern and Elisabeth Sifton's No Ordinary Men.—Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL

Library Journal

2020-04-20
The story of a valiant group of resisters who stealthily undermined the Nazi regime.

Drawing on a trove of unpublished and archival documents from the German Resistance Memorial Center, the Institute for Contemporary History, and German, British, Russian, and American national repositories, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist Ohler creates a taut, absorbing tale of anti-Nazi resistance. Told in the present tense, the narrative conveys a sense of immediacy and encroaching terror. Central to the history are Harro Schulze-Boysen and his wife, Libertas, an attractive bourgeois couple, “apparently ‘Aryan’ through and through,” who become the vortex for a daring movement. Harro began as an idealistic publisher of the Gegner, a prominent journal dedicated to raising consciousness about threats to society from the rise of Nazism. “A people divided by hate…cannot get up again,” Harro wrote in one piece. He felt optimistic that Hitler would fail and that Germans’ enthusiasm for the Nazis could be directed “toward a genuine social revolution.” After he was arrested and tortured for his activities, however, Harro was forced to adopt a new strategy: “to appear outwardly unsuspicious in order to change the system from within.” To further that strategy, he enlisted in the air force. Libertas, a publicist for MGM and a member of the Nazi Party, radically changed her “immature, Nazi-oriented worldview” after falling in love with Harro, soon becoming a valued, if sometimes erratic, member of their “social network,” which spread and surfaced, focused in part on printing and disseminating pamphlets and flyers. Harro, whose military position put him “at a nexus of information of the German war machine,” had a vital role in producing documents with which to “flood the country with sensitive information about how the war is going and bring about a popular revolt.” Ohler capably recounts the intrepid activities, alliances, and betrayals that led to sweeping arrests and executions.

Sharply drawn characters enliven a tragic history.

Kirkus Reviews

The Bohemians is an astonishing story of the anti-Nazi resistance—a story of love, incredible bravery and self-sacrifice, which could end only in death—and it is brilliantly told.”—Antony Beevor, New York Times best-selling author of The Fall of Berlin 1945,The Second World War, and D-Day

“An unforgettable portrait of two young lovers and their circle of friends in the anti-Hitler resistance, The Bohemians offers a fascinating glimpse of life in Nazi Germany, where the simple self-assertion of youth was a political act, and daily life was a minefield where missteps could have fatal consequences.”—Joseph Kanon, New York Times best-selling author of Leaving Berlin and The Good German

“A thrilling and urgent true story. Inside Nazi Germany, as tyranny spreads, a few friends decide to resist, and a secret circle of anti-fascists starts to grow. They are not mythic heroes but instead flawed humans struggling for meaning in a time of terror: writers, artists, a fashion designer, a dentist. With skill and passion, Norman Ohler brings these remarkable men and women back to life. The Bohemians is a gift of a book—one I feel a little stronger, a little braver, after reading.”—Jason Fagone, author of the best-selling The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies

“A taut, absorbing tale of anti-Nazi resistance . . . Conveys a sense of immediacy and encroaching terror . . . Sharply drawn characters enliven a tragic history.”—Kirkus Reviews
 

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