White Knights in the Black Orchestra: The Extraordinary Story of the Germans Who Resisted Hitler

by Tom Dunkel

Overview

They were a small group of conspirators who risked their lives by plotting relentlessly to obstruct and destroy the Third Reich from within. The Gestapo nicknamed this shadowy confederation of traitors the “Black Orchestra.” This is their tension-filled story.
 
As the “Final Solution” unfolds, a loose network of German military officers, diplomats, politicians, and civilians are doing everything in their power to undermine the Third Reich from the inside: reporting troop movements to the Allies, feeding disinformation to the Nazi high command, plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and more. The Gestapo nicknames this shadowy confederation of traitors the “Black Orchestra.” Its players include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a dissident Lutheran pastor, and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, a staff attorney at the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.
 
In this tension-filled narrative, Tom Dunkel traces the perilous movements of these “white knights” as they and their families face constant danger of being exposed and executed. Some act out of moral outrage and patriotism. Some want to atone for their own Nazi sins. When their treasonous activities are finally discovered, Hitler’s SS and the Gestapo are hell-bent on taking bloody revenge as the end of the war rapidly approaches and lives hang in the balance.
 
White Knights in the Black Orchestra is a tautly written, meticulously reported account of men and women heroically resisting Hitler’s ruthless regime. It packs the punch of the best espionage thrillers, but the cat-and-mouse drama and plot twists are grounded firmly in fact. This is a stirring story of people willing to risk all by doing the right thing in a country gone mad, a story that may prompt readers to ask themselves “What would I have done?” 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306922183
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	616,519
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Tom Dunkel is a Washington, DC-based journalist and author, a former staff features writer at The Baltimore Sun, and a long-time freelancer for publications ranging from The Washington Post Magazine (where his byline has appeared for more than twenty years) and The New York Times Magazine, to Sports Illustrated and Smithsonian. His first book, Color Blind, was published in 2013 by Grove/Atlantic.

Table of Contents

1 Home and Abroad 1

2 The Fog of After-War 6

3 Sounds and Fury 12

4 Church and Stateless 22

5 Dangerous Situation 27

6 "Thinking with Blood" 31

7 Writing Down, Speaking Up 36

8 Tending Flocks 41

9 The Party's Party 48

10 Enemies of the State 52

11 Crossing the Line 56

12 Costly Grace 62

13 Meeting of the Minds 68

14 Brinkmanship 73

15 "Make it clear that you mean business" 81

16 The Big Sell 91

17 Getaway Weekend 99

18 Umbrella Diplomacy 102

19 Czechmate 106

20 "That is a pity" 113

21 God and Country 120

22 Safe Harbor 125

23 The Little Greek 133

24 Dressed to Kill 139

25 Unspectacular Evil 145

26 Try, Try Again 151

27 A Bust and a Boom 157

28 Aftershocks 163

29 Hot and Cold 169

30 Case Yellow 175

31 Brown Birds and Other Sorrows 180

32 Cities of the Dead 185

33 Expendable 190

34 V-Mann 196

35 Sad Certainties 201

36 Seeing Stars 206

37 Summer Lightning 212

38 Final Solutions 216

39 War and Love 224

40 Orchestrated Espionage 234

41 Execution Nation 240

42 Turning Points 249

43 Special Delivery 254

44 Facing the Music 263

45 Fighting the Dragon 268

46 Something Very Bad 273

47 Secrets and Survival 282

48 Messages 286

49 Sunlight and Shadows 292

50 Fire and Smoke 298

51 White Knights 305

52 Biding Time 310

53 Last Straw 315

54 Saving Souls 321

55 Germs and Warfare 326

56 The Orchestra Plays 331

57 A Fine Mess 336

58 One Week 341

59 The Custodian 345

60 Merciless 349

61 Lost and Found 357

62 Home Prison 361

63 Birthday Bombs 366

64 Buchenwald 372

65 Uncertain Life 376

66 Bombs and Away 379

67 The Road to Somewhere 382

68 Bombshell 385

69 Flossenburg 388

70 Paths 394

Acknowledgments 403

Notes 407

Bibliography 435

Index 441

Editorial Reviews

White Knights in the Black Orchestra is the absolutely riveting story of what true courage looks like when principled men and women risk their lives to confront evil. What’s more, it is incredibly relevant to our world today.”—Robert J. Mrazek, award-winning author of The Indomitable Florence Finch and A Dawn Like Thunder

“White Knights in the Black Orchestra is a much needed book whose meaning runs deep. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. At a time when everything was at stake in the world, when lies stole truth, when madness became power, men and women of faith and principles fought back. America today is experiencing what I call its ‘Bonhoeffer Moment.’ Read this book and, most importantly, reflect deeply upon it. Tom Dunkel’s account of the Germans who resisted Hitler is not just about then, but also now.”—Jim Wallis, Chair in Public Policy and Director of the Center for Faith and Justice at Georgetown University

“Tom Dunkel has written a timely book about great courage, both moral and physical, in the face of evil government. He has used exceptional research and the gifts of a thriller writer to uncover an important part of the war against Hitler. Both a fast-paced narrative and a moving tribute to some remarkable men and women.”—Richard Cohen, author of Making History and By the Sword

“A highly readable and timely account of Germans who resisted Nazism. Veteran journalist Tom Dunkel paints a comprehensive and compelling mural of the who, what, when and why of political courage that should be read by Americans today.”—Helen Epstein, author of Children of the Holocaust and Where She Came From

"Tom Dunkel’s White Knight in the Black Orchestra is a book for our times, when political expediency and immorality in the service of ambition have become commonplace. This story of the decent, principled Germans who resisted the Nazis at peril for their lives is meticulously researched, elegantly told, and an imperative, tragically timely tale."—Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, columnist and author

"Dunkel...frames the suspenseful narrative around the work and family of Dietrich Bonhoeffer...A thoroughgoing history of indispensable purveyors of active and passive resistance in Nazi Germany."
 —Kirkus Reviews

"Dunkel’s nonfiction narrative is surprisingly suspenseful, as well as elegantly written…. White Knights in the Black Orchestra is a tale of great heroism…. Because the German resistance failed to stop Hitler…the tremendous courage they displayed often has been overlooked. Dunkel’s book is a stirring corrective."—The Forward

"A fascinating look at the brave 'White Knights' — a loose network of German military officers, diplomats, politicians, and civilians who risked their lives to undermine the Third Reich, from reporting troop movements to the Allies to plotting to assassinate Hitler."—New York Post, naming White Knights one of the best books of Fall 2022

From the Publisher

2022-08-23
The story of a group of valiant German voices of opposition to Hitler’s murderous regime.

Troubled by Hitler’s racist, unhinged, warlike rhetoric, these Germans, largely from the Christian upper class of Berlin, expressed alarm and attempted to sabotage a variety of Nazi plans. Journalist Dunkel, author of Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball's Color Line, frames the suspenseful narrative around the work and family of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, leader of the Confessing Church, established in spring 1934 as “an offshoot of the Protestant National Church,” which operated “without ties to the Nazi Party, staking out a position firmly opposed to the deification of Hitler.” By 1937, the Gestapo had shut down the church, jailed many of the pastors, and suppressed the teachings of Bonhoeffer and his associates. At the time, his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, a staff attorney at the Ministry of Justice, began secretly compiling a list of Nazi transgressions, which he referred to as the “Chronicle of Shame.” Both had connections to high-ranking Nazi officials, which they used to their advantage during their dangerous, clandestine plotting, creating a confederation known as the Black Orchestra. In addition to chronicling the actions of the Black Orchestra, the author weaves in the lives and fortunes of other early Hitler critics, including American journalist Dorothy Thompson, who believed that “Nazi Germany out-eviled almost everybody’s frame of reference”; Paul Schneider, the first Confessing Church pastor murdered by the Nazis; and Carl von Ossietzky, a pacifist journalist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935 and then spent the next three years being tortured in a series of concentration camps before he died in 1938 in Berlin. “After some of the beatings,” writes Dunkel, “guards would ask Ossietzky to sign a statement retracting his criticisms of the German government. He never took back a word.”

A thoroughgoing history of indispensable purveyors of active and passive resistance in Nazi Germany.

Kirkus Reviews

Expertly narrated, richly detailed, and charged with drama, this history of the courageous Germans who stood up against the Nazis will linger in the mind well after one has finished listening. Expect no German accents here, no overtones of menace or impending tragedy. Jamie Renell’s restrained, finely nuanced narration vividly conveys the dilemma of Germans who opposed the Nazis, many out of moral and religious conviction, nearly all of whom suffered imprisonment and death. “What would I have done in their place?” we ask ourselves and wonder what history might have been if one of the many plots against Hitler had succeeded. Renell’s firm voice and steady delivery underscore complex questions of opposition and compliance, duty and loyalty that still sound in our ears today. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile

Expertly narrated, richly detailed, and charged with drama, this history of the courageous Germans who stood up against the Nazis will linger in the mind well after one has finished listening. Expect no German accents here, no overtones of menace or impending tragedy. Jamie Renell’s restrained, finely nuanced narration vividly conveys the dilemma of Germans who opposed the Nazis, many out of moral and religious conviction, nearly all of whom suffered imprisonment and death. “What would I have done in their place?” we ask ourselves and wonder what history might have been if one of the many plots against Hitler had succeeded. Renell’s firm voice and steady delivery underscore complex questions of opposition and compliance, duty and loyalty that still sound in our ears today. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile