The Traitor by V.S Alexander

 White Rose was a peaceful resistance group in the Third Reich led by a group of students including siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl at the University of Munich. The group mailed leaflets to random people picked from the phone book, appealing to the “blindness of German people” and spreading “words of resistance, struggle, and hope.” They were mailed from different cities to different cities to “allay suspicion from the home city of Munich and to make the group seem much larger than it was.”

Munich, 1938. Sixteen year old Natalya Pertovich notices her Jewish friends disappearing from her life, hiding in their houses to avoid any attention.

1942. Numb to the horrors of war and feeling powerless, she then takes a step and heads to the Russian Front as a volunteer nurse for German Red Cross. There she makes friends, who back in Germany introduce her to the White Rose movement. “Everyone in the White Rose was chosen for their intelligence, their convictions, and their politics…” After witnessing horrors of war on the Russian front, she joins the movement.

She gets involved in writing the leaflets, expressing about the oppressive government, the strangling of creativity of artists, the disappearance of originality and individuality, the death of the soul of the German People. “The Spirit of Germany has been crushed under a foul dictator’s iron boot.”

As Sophie’s and Hans’ behavior become more and more brazen, they put themselves in danger of being discovered. Ultimately leading to their arrest and putting others in danger’s path.

The character of Natalya exemplifies a strong woman. A woman who stands behind her convictions. Despite Hitler’s regime and his teachings on Aryan supremacy, she had “an urge to be free, to be my own woman, a nascent rebelliousness.”

Drawing atmosphere of the time period by bringing the pressure put on students at university, which wasn’t a place for a woman. She should be by her husband and reproducing Aryan race. “Women should present a child every year to the Fuhrer.” By clashes between students and SS officers. By the restrictions of free movement, which made distribution of leaflets very dangerous.

The story of Hans and Sophie is very touching. Sophie was a young student, who was mature beyond her years. “Child, but one of immense maturity and unyielding courage.”

This beautifully imagined and poignant story pays honors to those young students and professors whose lives were cut short, who took a stand and fought peacefully for humanity, for what was right.

This story doesn’t bring the graphic atrocities of WWII. It is informative and focuses on the lives of those who took part in the White Rose, with profoundly deeply moving characters and surroundings reflecting the time of war-torn places.

“We had stood against tyranny when few did and many more should have taken a stand.”

P.S. Also by this author, highly recommend The Taster – Hitler’s obsession with being poisoned.

Release date: 25 February 2020

Source: Kensington