Those who have followed my reviews for a while know that I’m no fan of Donald Trump. At the same time, one large online annoyance during his presidency was the constant intonation of “resistance” on social media. Resistance by posting hashtags and memes. Resistance by someone who worked in his office, proud of themselves for not carrying out his more convoluted orders but still doing enough to hurt the body politic.
I blame this fascination with Resistance! on our understand of World War II. Yes, there were resistance movements in Germany, France, the Netherlands and other places. Yes, those stories deserve to be told. But they’re often told in outsized proportion to what actually happened. The vast majority of people just wanted to get through their day in peace. They might not have liked Jews being arrested as the price of this but they were willing to go along to get along with the Nazis.
What I appreciated about this book is that it’s not a book that necessarily glorifies the resistance group led by Mildred Harnack. They distributed leaflets and got info to the Soviets and they had some connections to Bonhoeffer. But it ended terribly, with all of them dying at the hands of an evil regime. No social media likes. No memes. No one in the Hitler administration to save them.
Resistance is part of war and war is brutal. It’s not something that you playact. I’m not trying to gatekeep something I’ve never been a part of. But I don’t think these stories can be fully appreciated if we as a society have a cartoonish understanding as to how political resistance works.
Anyway, I’ve talked more about the resistance concept than the book. It’s written in a specific style that I appreciated more than enjoyed; short paragraphs and suppositions. But in its own way, it brings Harnack’s story and the stories of others to life. And these are stories we should read and internalize. Because these folks did not go along to get along. They put it out there and paid the price. We glorify them from afar.