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By Benjamin Carter Hett

It is well known that someone set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin on the evening of 27 February 1933 – eighty-one years ago. It is also well known that Hitler’s new government took this opportunity to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree, gutting the Weimar constitution and effectively initiating a 12-year dictatorship. Many readers will know that ever since 1933 controversy has raged about who actually set fire to the Reichstag: was it the first step in a Communist coup, was it a Nazi conspiracy to supply a justification for their Decree, or was the rather confused young Dutch stonemason Marinus van der Lubbe telling the truth when he claimed he had set the fire himself?

One matter that is less well known, however, is just how much, and for how long, various intelligence services have taken an interest in these questions.

Spies were a part of the story from the beginning. In March 1933, a senior officer of Britain’s MI5 named Guy Liddell traveled to Germany to make contact with the newly reorganized German Secret Police (soon to be christened the Gestapo) and its leader, the brilliant but sinister Rudolf Diels. At the time, one of the main tasks facing Diels and his officers was the investigation of the Reichstag fire. Liddell wrote a long report on his experiences in Germany, noting among other things that the weakness of the police evidence against Marinus van der Lubbe led him to the view that “previous con­clusions that this incident was a piece of Nazi provocation to provide a pretext for the wholesale suppression of the German Communist Party were amply confirmed.”

After the Second World War, Rudolf Diels and the small group of his former Gestapo subordinates who had investigated the fire in 1933 faced a difficult legal situation. To varying degrees they had been involved in Nazi crimes (including the thoroughly corrupt fire investigation itself) and they had to navigate the tricky waters of war crimes and “denazification” investigations and prosecutions. One of their real advantages, however, was their intelligence experience – coupled with their undeniable anti-Communism. This made them attractive to the Western Allies’ intelligence services. Rudolf Diels was, for many years, a key paid source on politics in Germany for the American CIC (military counter intelligence). His payment, as recorded in a written contract from 1948, was 12 cartons of cigarettes per month, supplemented now and then by ration cards and cans of Crisco – the real sources of value in Germany at the time. A few years later one of the leading figures in the West German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) complained to American intelligence officers that overly-zealous prosecutions of ex-Nazi police officers were a Cold War danger. They were weakening the BKA to the point that West Germany itself would become “a push-over for Eastern intelligence services” and thus “a weak link and danger point in the whole Western defense system.” The CIA officer who recorded these comments noted that they were “worth attention.”

One of the things that Diels and his former subordinates had to worry about was the testimony and the book of a man named Hans Bernd Gisevius, who accused them of covering up Nazi guilt for the Reichstag fire as well as involvement in a number of murders. Gisevius had himself been a Gestapo officer in 1933; from there he went on to serve in Germany’s military intelligence service, the Abwehr, during the war – and became active in the resistance that led to the famous Valkyrie plot. Diels and Gisevius hated each other. Around 1950 many well-informed people – no doubt including Diels and Gisevius – thought these men were both candidates to head the newly created West German domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. When Diels and Gisevius argued about who set the Reichstag fire – which they did both publicly and vitriolically – it is hard to overlook the fact that they were competing for jobs and influence in the emerging West German intelligence sector.

The Cold War also explained why the infamous East German Stasi spent many years and considerable effort doing its own discreet research into the Reichstag fire and the people who had been involved in it. Above all the Stasi hoped to find information that would discredit prominent East German dissidents, along with ex-Nazi police and intelligence officials in West Germany. The Stasi also tried to recruit at least one well-known western Reichstag fire researcher to be, in Stasi-speak, an “unofficial employee.”

But the most important link between intelligence services and the Reichstag fire came in the form of a man named Fritz Tobias, who from the 1950s to the 1970s was a senior official of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the West German federal state of Lower Saxony. Earlier, in the 1940s – by his own account at least – he had served as a “scout” for the British Secret Intelligence Service. This meant that, while working on a “denazification” tribunal, he was supposed to keep his eyes open for former Nazis who might be useful to the British.

In 1951 Tobias started devoting his spare time – by his account, only his spare time – to research on the Reichstag fire. By the late 1950s his work was already becoming known, and, to some German officials, somewhat troubling. Tobias could and did use the powers of his office to get information. He was able to get access to classified documents that were closed to the public, and on at least one occasion he brought a prosecutor along with him to question a retired judge who had evidence to give about the fire. Was this all really just a spare time project? In the early 1960s, when Tobias’s lengthy book on the Reichstag fire was published (lengthy in German anyway – the English translation cut it by about half), Tobias used agents from the Office for Constitutional Protection to threaten academic historians who disagreed with his arguments, and blackmailed the director of a prestigious institute with classified documents revealing that director’s Nazi past. There seems at least a possibility that Tobias’s work was really an official commission. When asked about this while testifying in court in 1961, Tobias declined to answer because of his duty to maintain official secrets.

Why would German security services in the 1960s care about who had burned the Reichstag? There are several possibilities, admittedly only speculative. Tobias’s book, like Rudolf Diels’s before him, was to a considerable extent an attack on Hans Bernd Gisevius. Gisevius had made himself very unpopular with the West German government through his advocacy of a policy of neutrality in the Cold War and his friendship with gadflies like Martin Niemöller. There are materials in the FBI’s file on Gisevius (and yes, the bureau had one) that seem likely to have come from a German security service. There is also the issue that all the state and the Federal West German governments were very much on the defensive in the early 1960s about the number of senior officials they employed who had bad records from the Nazi era. Tobias’s own state of Lower Saxony was one of the worst offenders in this regard. Tobias’s book was very much a defense, indeed a glorification, of those former Gestapo officers who had worked with Rudolf Diels – one of whom, Walter Zirpins, had an office just down the hall from Fritz Tobias at the Lower Saxon Interior Ministry.

These spies and their various schemes make up a fascinating, if murky, part of this murky historical mystery.

Benjamin Carter Hett, a former trial lawyer and professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, is the author of Burning the Reichstag, Death in the Tiergarten and Crossing Hitler, winner of the Fraenkel Prize.

The post Spies and the burning Reichstag appeared first on OUPblog.

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While it may be hard not to make some comparisons of Amy McAuley's Violins in Autumn with the very excellent Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, I think it is always better to form my opinion about a book on its own merits.

It is 1944 and Adele Blanchard, her friend radio transmitter Denise Langford, and two men have just parachuted into Nazi-occupied France as undercover agents for the Britain's Special Operations Executive, or SOE, to work with the French Resistance sabotaging German operations in preparation for D-Day.

Of course, the landing doesn't go exactly as planned.  One of the men is arrested almost as soon as they hit the ground, but Adele, Denise and the other man, Bishop, find each other and make their way to the agreed upon meeting place with Pierre, a member of the French Resistance.

It's not long before the two girls must make their way to Paris,  With false papers, they impersonate two French girls traveling by bike, securing Denise's radio in a suitcase to one of them.  But along the way, Adele and Denise witness a British plane crash after being hit by enemy fire.  They manage to find and rescue the American pilot, Robbie, before the German's do.

The three continue on to Paris, but along the way, they run into some Germans.  Denise and Robbie manage to get by them, but Adele is stopped and her bike to taken away.  Now she must go on on foot, and she's still a long way from Paris.  Luckily, a car comes by and she gets a lift from a Dr. Devereux all the way to Paris.  Devereux gives her is address should she need it.

But Adele and Robbie never show up at their safe house, and she discovers the it has been compromised and everyone was arrested.  With no place to go, Adele rides the metro day after day, avoiding Germans and possible capture.  Eventually, she ends up at the house of Dr. Devereux, where she has a brief encounter with his Nazi-collaborator wife in the process of leaving her husband.  Adele, Denise and Robbie finally find each other. but they must find a safe way out of France for Robbie as well as perform the tasks they are supposed to do as agents for SOE until the hear the coded message from London: "The long sobs of the violins of autumn" signaling that the allies are beginning their preparations of D-Day.

OK, so this doesn't sound majorly exciting, but take my word for it, Violins in Autumn is a very exciting novel.  It is full of espionage, intrigue, danger, kindness, cruelty, and even love.  In the course of this historical fiction novel, McAuley manages to work in lots of information about how operatives for the SOE are trained, how the Gestapo conducted interrogations and how messages were sent and received by couriers like Adele in the resistance.  And what dangerous jobs these were.

One of the things I like when I read a book like this is discover something I don't know.  I knew coded messages where sent between the allies and their operatives in the field, but I didn't know that the one signaling the start of  D-Day within 24 hours to operatives and resistance workers was from the first stanza of Chanson d'Automne by Paul Verlaine: The long sobs of the violins of autumn/would my heart with a monotonous languor.  

But Violins of Autumn is, above all, a story about the deep friendship that develops between the two young women who must rely on each other at a time when it is hard to know who one can really trust.  This can be especially difficult when each person can hide behind a false identity. To begin with, Adele is really Betty Sweeney, a 17 year old American who had been sent to boarding school in Switzerland when her father remarried, spoke German and French with native fluency and moved in with her English aunt and uncle when the war began.  Like Robbie, she lied about her age.  And if Adele is really Betty, it stands to reason that Denise is someone else, too.

If you enjoyed Code Name Verity, most likely you will enjoy Violins of Autumn and hopefully appreciate them both for their differences, because both are well worth reading.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL

To learn more about the real lives of female SOE couriers and radio transmitters like Adele and Denise, see the chapter on Great Britain in Kathryn Atwood's book Women Heroes of World War II, 25 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance and Rescue (my review here)

For more information on Special Operations Executive operatives can be found here.

Tools of the SOE Trade (Note the radio in the suitcase)

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With Victory, Book 3, the talented team of Carla Jablonski and Leland Purvis will bring their graphic novel trilogy about kids working in the French Resistance during World War II to its conclusion when it is published on July 17, 2012.

Victory begins after the Nazi occupation of France and one month after the allied invasion of Normandy.  For the first time, victory seems to be a possibility for the allied forces, but tensions are also running very high.  As Nazi losses increase, so does their cruel treatment of their victims.  And now, to make matters worse, there is infighting among the different resistance groups.

Paul Tessier has just gotten himself arrested by the Milice (a paramilitary group of Frenchmen formed by the Germans to do their dirty work) to find out what cell another resistance worker is being held in.  When he is freed, Paul hurriedly reports back to his friend and fellow resistance worker Jacques with the information.

Meanwhile, Paul's older sister Sylvie is still dating a German soldier in order to get information from him about Gestapo plans.  When the soldier tells her that the Gestapo is going to search in the Jura Mountains for the Marquis, a group of resistance fighters, she immediately reports back to Jacques and Paul.  Trouble is, however, it looks like Sylvie is beginning to fall for the German soldier, which could be a real problem.

Paul and Jacques now want the resistance workers to arm themselves with stolen German weapons.  Since they only have a few weapons, they decide to sabotage a trains using what they have and manage to get more of from the Germans on the train. In retaliation and believing the citizens of this small southern French town know who attacked the train, the Nazis begin to execute 10 townspeople every hour until someone turns the saboteurs in.

While all this is going on, Marie, Paul's younger sister, has been deeply depressed about their father, who is missing in a German POW camp, and their Jewish friend and former neighbor Henri, whom Paul and Jacques helped to escape to Paris earlier, where he was reunited with his parents that everyone had believed to be dead.  While out walking in the woods, Marie finds a downed allied airplane with a wounded pilot.  She gets Paul to help her hide the pilot so his wounds can be taken care of.  The pilot was on a mission to deliver a message to resistance fighters in Paris from DeGaulle in London about the direction he wants the resistance to go in now that the Germans are losing the war.  Naturally, Paul and Jacques volunteer to complete the pilot's message, arriving in Paris just in time participate in the Battle of Paris that ultimately leads to its liberation from its German occupiers and the return of Charles DeGaulle.  But not before a few surprises for Paul.

Victory is every bit as exciting, informative and well done as the previous two volumes, and every bit a well written as Resistance and Defiance.  This story, like it predecessors, is full of intrigue, adventure, danger, and suspense.  Altogether these excellently done graphic novels give an interesting perspective on a part of World War II most people don't really know about and would probably not like to think about their kids participating in - young peoples involvement in resistance movements throughout Europe.  But it makes you realize how incredibly brave these young people were in the face of such odds.

Leland Purvis has also continued to produce exceptional

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Eva Ibbotson was an unusual writer. She didn’t begin publishing children’s books until she was 50 and, she didn’t publish The Dragonfly Pool until she was 83. In addition, because of her own unhappy childhood, she had penchant for happy endings.

Yet, when I first began reading The Dragonfly Pool, I didn’t think I would like it. But I was wrong. The story begins in London, in the spring of 1939. Everyone is preparing for the expected war, and the Hamilton household is no different. Tally Hamilton has received a scholarship to a boarding school in the countryside. She doesn’t really want to go and leave her friends and her family, her dad Dr. Hamilton and her two aunts May and Hester.

Tally is quite pleased, however, when she reaches the school, Delderton, to find it is nothing at all like the schools she has read about in books, rather it is a progressive school where students can pursue their interests. Tally quickly settles in and makes friends with the other students, particularly with Julia.

One Saturday, while at the movies with Julia, Tally sees a newsreel about a small country in Europe named Bergania, whose king is trying to hold out against Hitler who wants to use the small country to his advantage. Tally immediately feels herself drawn to this country, particularly the young boy who is the king’s son.

Later, she school receives an invitation from Bergania to participate in a dance festival it is holding. Tally manages to convince the school to participate in the dance festival as a show of support to the small country. The Deldertonian kids make up a dance, and travel to Bergania. One day, while out walking around, Tally meets the Prince of Bergania, Karil, and together they go exploring the forest that surrounds the town. There they come across a pool of water, the Dragonfly Pool, a favorite place of Karil and his father. Karil asks Tally why they had come to Bergania and she tells him about the newsreel. She thought the King was strong and brave to hold out against Hitler’s pressure and she wanted to come as a show of support. Tally and Karil become instant friends.

As it happens, one of their escorts, science teacher Matteo, was once a very good boyhood friend of the King, but had long ago parted ways over a disagreement. On the day of the dance festival, the King and Prince Karil, ride into the center of town, and just as the King is opening to festival he is shot dead by people hired by the Gestapo. Before dying, the King asks Matteo to look after his son.

The real adventure begins when it is time to leave Bergania and the students, led by Tally, must try to sneak Karil back to England with them because the Gestapo men want to take him into their custody and send him to Colditz, a castle in Leipzig used by the Nazis as a POW prison.

After successfully get Karil to England, and it is a very exciting part of the book not to be missed, he and Tally both assume he will now be a student in Delderton. But that is not to be. Instead, he is taken by his dreaded and dreadful nursemaid the Countess Frederica, nicknamed the Scold by Karil, to the large, but shabby London home of his grandfather, the Duke of Rottingdene. It seems no one has any money in the Prince’s family, including himself, but they still live like they do.

Will the prince ever succeed in being able to attend Delderton and be with the only friends he has ever had?

This was an exciting, adventurous novel, based on real events with the exception

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Joan Wolf has written novel based on truth. The first part of Someone Named Eva is based on the famous massacre of the residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. The second part is based on a little known practice of the Nazis in which children who looked Aryan were forcibly taken from their families, placed in a Kinderheim (children’s home) and Germanized. After their Germanization was completed, they were adopted by German families.

The novel begins in the middle of the night on June 10, 1942, a few weeks after Milada Kralicek’s 11th birthday. There is a knock on the Kralicek’s front door and armed Nazis order the family to pack a few things and go with them. In the yard, Milada, her mother, grandmother and baby sister are separated from her father and older brother. Before they leave the yard, Milada’s grandmother surreptitiously gives her a star shaped garnet pin and tells her she must always keep it to remember who she is. The stars had always held special meaning for them; growing up, her grandmother had taught Milada all about the constellations and how the North Star can always help you find you way home.

On the road, they are joined by the other women and children of Lidice. These are all people who had believed that they were safe from the Nazis because they were not Jewish, but Hitler was enraged about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich* in Prague by two Czechs. He gave an order that all adult men over 16 were to be executed, all women were to be sent to a work camp, the village of Lidice was to be burned to the ground and all children suitable for Germanization were to be removed. Wolf does not go into all the grime details of this terrible event, but the reader does slowly learn something about it as the story goes along.

From Lidice, the women and children are driven to Kladmo, where they are held in a large gymnasium. The floor is covered with hay and each family quickly claims a space for themselves on the floor. On the second day, two men go through the gym, looking over the children and picking a few to go with them, including Milada. These children have one thing in common - blond hair and blue eyes. They are lined up and examined, including measurements of their noses and heads. Even the color of their eyes is compared to an eye color chart. Late on the third day, Milada is taken away from her mother, who is later sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Milada and one other girl are put on a bus by themselves. In reality, it is estimated that around 100,000 children were stolen from their families for Germanization just as Milada is.

The girls are taken to Puschkau, Poland, a village surrounded by barbed wire. It is filled with Nazi women and girls who look just like Milada – blond hair, blue eyes. She is at a Lebensborn center, where she is about to be Germanized. Here, Milada ceases to exist as she is turned into Eva, an Aryan girl.

Milada/Eva spends two years at the center in Puschkau being Germanized, better known as brainwashing – learning how to speak German and how to be a proper Nazi wife and mother. There are no shortages here, none of the hunger she had felt at home, and there are always new warm clothes and shoes whenever they are needed. Though she tries hard to hang on to her original identity, Milada begins to slip away and Eva takes over.

After two years, Eva is adopted by a German family, and her new father is the commandant of Ravensbrück. At first, life is good there, with the exception of the terrible smell

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