We are told that history is written by the victors, ergo the vanquished receive short shrift. What little we were taught about World War Two in Europe features the evil of Hitler and the Nazis, a superficial mention of Valkyrie, then skips to D-Day and the epic battles of Europe. All facts, precious little feelings – the human element. Helena P. Schrader has produced a brilliant view of this history through the eyes of the German people who lived it, agonized over its evil, and suffered its consequences. Traitors for the Sake of Humanity is written as historical fiction so that we can hear the words and thoughts, and feel the fear, anger, longings, and deep human emotions of real people who are forgotten by a conventional record of the war in Europe and Hitler. This is a novel about the German Resistance to Hitler.

Beginning in 1938 in the village of Altdorf in southern Germany, we meet Philip Freiherr von Feldburg, a German Army Officer, and his family as he returns home on Christmas leave. Through the eyes of his mother, Sophia Maria, his brother Christian, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot, and Theresa, his younger sister, and extended to friends, spouses, and compatriots, we see Hitler’s war through a different lens.
A lens that magnifies the experiences and attitudes of those who opposed the diabolical Nazi regime on moral grounds and who fought to restore the old rule of law and defend basic human dignity sacrificed to an evil ideology. Traitors for the Sake of Humanity is a journey set in violence and despair, but with the core of the human fight for survival always upfront. From Philip’s meeting and marrying Alexandra to their circle of friends in various walks of life, we experience the deep feelings of hopelessness and isolation that slowly evolve into the discovery that their concerns are shared in the highest echelons of the German High Command. The end for some is tragic, but for many others, it is vindication and freedom.

Helena P. Schrader earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation about German General Friedrich Olbricht, a significant participant in the German Resistance to Hitler. This and her extensive research, which included interviews with survivors, have come together in Traitors for the Sake of Humanity and delivers a spectrum of personal experiences and gut-wrenching individual struggles to retain dignity and sanity in a world gone mad. A meticulously detailed history is interwoven with touching personal interactions amid the eternal struggle for survival and self-worth while under the yoke of evil. One example is the chapter on the butchery and inhuman treatment of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. Schrader relates it through the eyes of a young German girl who struggles to match what she has been taught with the horror she sees. Utilizing the format of historical fiction, allowing her to engage us in the interactions and communications of the people in context, Helena P. Schrader avoids the usual report of history of the vanquished, dehumanized, and facts only. The usual “war story” pales as we hear the German airmen and soldiers amidst the vivid battle scenes speak, groan, sometimes scream their fear, their hate, their love, their emptiness of hope.

Schrader masterfully mirrors those feelings with the civilian counterparts to the warriors as she describes in aching detail the cognitive dissonance that bedevils all of them – caught between their beliefs and traditions and the behaviors they are forced to display in order to simply survive in what Germany has become. We are guided through this world through the eyes of Philip Freiherr von Feldburg. And Helena P. Schrader guides us through a tense and vivid conclusion as the Traitors for the Sake of Humanity crash through fear, face horror, and make the final sacrifices in the name of all that is decent. Some survive, many do not. My recommendations for this brilliant work cannot be higher. I offer personal thanks to Helena P. Schrader for her poignant and sensitive treatment of the human side of the vanquished.

Traitors for the Sake of Humanity: A Novel of the German Resistance to Hitler by Helena P. Schrader can best be described as a history lesson of World War II from the German perspective, softened by the fictional characters who breathe life and humanity into the often violent and maniacal machinations of the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and his SS and Gestapo henchmen. Baron Philip von Feldburg was the archetypal German aristocrat, wedded to a career serving his country in the nation’s army. Determined to succeed and attain his dream of serving on the German Army’s General Staff, he heads home for Christmas 1938 to the family estate at Altdorf, having just received notification of his selection for General Staff training. The discussion that Christmas would center on the probability of war as Hitler continues his expansion into Europe, reclaiming the lost territories from World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, and more besides. With Philip’s brother Christian, a pilot in the Luftwaffe, the future direction of Germany and the possibility of war weigh heavily on the family. We will follow Philip, his family, and many well-known historical figures from the successes of the Blitzkrieg through to the abject failure on the Eastern Front and the ill-fated invasion of the Soviet homeland. Disgusted by the excesses of the Nazis, many high-ranking German officers were looking at ways of ending the war honorably and the idea of assassinating the prime mover, Hitler, was foremost in their minds. Philip, his beautiful wife, Alix, and many of his colleagues would find themselves caught up in a desperate fight for survival and to restore the dignity of the German people by eliminating the madman in charge.

Traitors for the Sake of Humanity is an outstanding read, partly because it gives such a fascinating insight into the psyche of the German soldier and the German population during World War II that so often we view from an Allied perspective. However, also because it is an excellent history lesson of the many battles that we may have read about but never from a German perspective. Author Helena P. Schrader has done a masterful job of putting together real-life drama, overlaid with fictional characters that humanized and softened the horrors of war, highlighting the immense moral struggle many of the German officers were fighting with as they weighed their consciences and their strict Army traditions against the extreme excesses of the Nazi regime. In Philip and Alix, she has produced two superb characters that embody the principles of equity and equality that were so ruthlessly repressed by the regime, with their emphasis on racial stereotypes and the concept of Aryan superiority.

I particularly enjoyed the breakdown of familial relationships explored by the author where competing emotions between love of country and adoration of the Fuhrer sat at the same dinner table as family members who condemned the excesses, the lack of humanity, and the power-crazed Nazi regime. I also loved that the author explored the background to Hitler’s rise to power in a country that had been so humiliated and whose people had experienced such shame at their loss in the First World War and the crippling sanctions and reparations that made Hitler’s ascension so palatable to the average German citizen. A lesson from history here that we would do well to heed, even in the twenty-first century. If you love historical novels laced with reality and if you like a story that makes you think and question your perceptions and beliefs about a period of history, then this is the book for you. I call it a thinking man's novel and I can highly recommend it.