Newspaper Reader on ‘The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany—and the Spy Who Betrayed them.’
Oct 15, 2025
Editor: Jonathan Freedland joins the other Zionists regulars at the Times: Thomas L. Friedman, David Brooks, Bret Stephens & David French! It can’t surprise the regular reader of this newspaper, that Mr. Freedland is used to embroider on well worn themes! With no mention of The Gaza Genocide, committed by Netanyahu and his Fellow Travelers: Joe Biden, A Cadre of US Senators and House Members, all with monitary support for the utterly Faschist AIPAC! Not to mention Donald Trump purchased by Miriam Adelson, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient! My digression points to Jonathan Freedland’s placement of his history in a usable past, freighted by heroism from various sections of German Life, including Jews! Yet Freedland uses his story as a toxic blind to attemp a political erasure of the Gaza Genocide by Netanyahu and his minions!
Reader recall?
heguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/05/jewish-concern-corbyn-israel-palestine-antisemitism-ihra
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/jeremy-corbyn-blind-antisemitism-hobson
Editor: A selection from the concluding paragraphs of Mr. Freedland’s Public Moralizing:
…
Several key players in the drama were women whose upbringing shared another striking aspect: a close relationship with a strong father. That was true of Ms. von Thadden and both countesses, Maria and Lagi. In all three cases, the women were not just loved by their fathers; they were trusted by them. In a way that was unusual in the era before modern feminism, they were deemed by their fathers to be the equal of any man, capable of taking on any task. Long after their fathers were dead, the women carried that confidence with them. By the time the Nazis ruled Germany, it had blossomed into courage.
The strength of those women was buttressed by that deeper conviction that is perhaps the key determinant of who defies an oppressive regime and who buckles before it: belief in an authority higher than the government of the day. Most rebels at the tea party also came to understand that such a belief demanded action as well as thought.
For some, that translated into small gestures of defiance, like Lagi Solf and her shopping bags. For others, such as Otto Kiep, it meant acts of audacious resistance, coming within touching distance of a plot to assassinate Hitler. Through deeds large and small, they demonstrated — to themselves and one another — that obedience was not the only option.
To be clear, most aristocratic Germans did not rebel against Hitler. On the contrary, the German nobility largely fell in line behind the Nazis, drawn in part by the Führer’s pledge to restore titles abolished in the Weimar era. And of course, we cannot neatly read across from that place and that time to our own age.
But if there is a lesson to be gleaned from the deadly fate of those men and women, it might just be that the best safeguard against tyranny is a legion of people who believe in an authority higher than any political program, prince — or president.
Newspaper Reader.
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