Die rote Kapelle Page #2

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... The US Secretary for the Treasury

We went to Krumme Lanke,

a suburb of Berlin...

... and went for a long

walk with Arvid and Mildred.

I listened to the conversation and I thought, wow.

My father and Arvid were good friends and they argued and called each other names

... and this is secret. When we got home,

my father said:

... you must not tell where we are

going and with whom...

... or who's calling us.

What my father needed most...

... was as much detail as possible about the

Russian invasion

Through his job, SchuIze-Boysen had information

... about what reconnaissance aircraft had found...

... and about troop movements.

Harnack knew a lot about the economic preparations and stuff.

Morgenthau and Roosevelt let my father know that a priority was...

... to find people who would warn about

anything that Hitler and Mussolini might

do that could lead to

... Wall Street collapsing again.

Donald Heath and Arvid Harnack

became friends.

Arvid explained as we walked through

the Spreewald

I can be the bridge between the U.S.

and the Russians, here in Germany

I understand them and they understand me.

I can be very useful for both camps.

The Soviet Union suggested that the group in Berlin

use radios...

... but things just did not work.

Hans Coppi took the radio

to Fritz and Hannelore Thiel ...

... who hid the radio in their home.

These actions

to send messages ...

... they were real acts of resistance

here in Berlin.

As were pasting posters, and distributing leaflets

on the Eastern Front...

.. and helping persecuted people

My father helped many people

to get away from Germany.

To America, where he had contacts.

I heard from my sister that she met

with Cato and another friend...

... on a part of the S-bahn ...

along which the French prisoners

of war were transported

Any contact with foreigners

was totally opposed my most people

It was prohibited in all cases.

We found that nonsense.

It started with notes on paper

where they tried to say ..

... what they needed most.

Every day I went from

Witzleben to Westkreuz.

I waited near a tunnel, where

the French came

Then I joined in that group, gathered notes

and disappeared.

It was a kind of adventure.

But there was also human warmth.

The French were happy and I was happy too.

In the spring of 1942 they had

a large anti-Soviet Exhibition in Berlin...

... under the title: The Soviet Paradise.

They're back:
the Huns,

fast becoming a nightmare

A fist in our face

At this exhibition the Red Orchestra

wanted to do something.

For example, they made small posters with slogans like:

The Nazi paradise: War, hunger,

lies, Gestapo - How much longer?

They went in pairs, usually

a man and a woman...

... Who then pretended to be a couple in love

while the girls stuck the posters.

In the background stood

Harro Schulze-Boysen, watching the action.

In uniform, with a gun.

He covered them, so nothing happened to them.

He looked like the perfect German officer:

Slim, a head like a greyhound,

his eyes...

But he was extremely intelligent.

That did not fit the image.

He wanted people to

realize that there were war crimes...

... and that

human rights were being violated.

These Jews were agitating against the Wehrmacht

When the German attack on Moscow

was repulsed...

... they began to make and distribute pamphlets

Schulze-Boysen took photographs, which was very dangerous...

... And foreign newspapers,

Swiss and Spanish...

... told us how the war was going.

That gave us courage.

The broadsheet AGIS

(named after a Spartan King)

... was written and distributed by

the group in the winter of '41-'42

That was a very sharp,

critical text about the Nazis.

In the name of the State

atrocities against...

civilians and prisoners are made

Every day that the war lasts longer,

brings more suffering and casualties

Each new war day increases the

debt that we will have to pay

What can we do to show our free will?

... one must ensure that he

does what he can...

... the opposite of what this state demands of him.

There were very careful with secret address books...

... with important people in it,

names removed...

... and those people were sent letters

very carefully.

Anonymously?

-Anonymoulys, of course.

Sometimes we provided a return address

Then I put the name von Adelsheim on the back.

That brought some laughter

The members of the Red Orchestra

took a typewriter...

... Typed pamphlets on it

and put everything in envelopes.

We used gloves.

It was hard to get envelopes.

And it was difficult to put so many similar items

in a mailbox...

.. because they could be noticed

in the Post.

I took the subway to the Thiel Platz,

from the Hohenzollern Platz, where we lived.

I had a briefcase

on my lap...

... which was filled with anti-government leaflets.

For my safety no-one else

knew what i was doing

So it was not possible,

should they be arrested...

... for them to say anything incriminating

Many of them did not know anyone else other

than three, four,or five people ...

... with whom they worked.

It also happened that you could,

for no reason...

...... be searched by a group of Gestapo

... and they suddenly went searching

through all your stuff

But it was part of your approach,

to not appear worried.

You did not think:

"What can happen"?

You just thought, I need to

behave as inconspicuously as possible.

Many people who received such a pamphlet,

did not read it anyway and threw it away.

Most handed them to the Police and the Gestapo.

In the Gestapo files

we find lists of recipients...

...and Post Offices

Some investigators

worked out that it was the work of

the Red Orchestra...

...but detailed investigations by the

Gestapo, in 1942 ...

... came to nothing.

At this time, the Russian Military Intelligence

had an employee in Brussels.

There was a radio message from Moscow ...

.. in the autumn of 1941,

that he had to go to Berlin.

.. because the radio traffic between

Berlin and Moscow did not work.

In that radio message

were also the coded addresses...

... of three members of the Red Orchestra,

here in Berlin.

After the Gestapo had crushed the Brussels and Paris branches of the Orchestra in 1942 ...

... they had learnt to decipher their radio messages

It was on September 12, 1942.

It was very early in the morning and I was asleep

in the room where we children slept ...

Suddenly I heard loud voices:.

Halt. Stop, or I'll shoot

I carefully looked out the window.....

... and saw that they had got their hands on my

father, who had ...

.. escaped through the basement.

On the 16th September 1942

the Gestapo came ...

... with as many men as we had rooms

Libertas (Schulze-Boysen) pulled me off the bus

and said ...

... something terrible has happened

Harro (Schulze-Boysen) is arrested.

After the arrest of Schulze-Boysen...

.. the Thiels no longer wanted

the radio in their house

They put it into a stroller

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