BY G. CONNOR SALTER

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), a theologian within the Confessing Church who worked for the German resistance and ultimately died for his connection to a Hitler assassination plot, has gone from being a niche historical figure to a hero to Christians across denominations. Less has been Johann Georg “Hans” von Dohnányi (1902-1945), his brother-in-law who played a key part in connecting Bonhoeffer with the resistance.

Leah Fisher is a scholar currently working on the first English-language biography of Dohnányi. She was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Interview Questions:

For the benefit of those unfamiliar, how did Hans von Dohnányi influence Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

Hans and Dietrich were friends. In a letter Hans wrote from prison, he says to Dietrich, “We are, I feel, more than ‘just’ relatives by marriage.” He reflects to his wife how dear Dietrich is to him, how indebted to him he feels… and one of his first thoughts upon his arrest is to suggest that his wife go to Dietrich for help in his absence. He mentions how dear the children are to Dietrich and how fond they were of him. Hans and his wife had three children, and Dietrich was the godfather of their younger son, Christoph. Dietrich also stayed with Hans’ wife, Christel, while she was recovering from an illness. So, the three of them were very close.

When this business with the resistance started, Hans kept Dietrich informed. He went to him for spiritual advice, and Dietrich helped him to compile evidence of crimes and other acts of attrition committed against the church. Later on, he employed Dietrich as an agent for German counter-intelligence. Officially, Dietrich worked as a spy, but in reality, he was working as an emissary between the resistance and sympathetic foreign powers.

What kind of work did von Dohnányi do for the German resistance?

Hans was a lawyer noted for his nobility, piety, and brilliance. One of his fellow conspirators remarked of Dohnányi that he had spent his life working as a prosecutor and talked like one. Hans had spent his teenage years thinking of becoming a historian, probably partially because of the paternal influence of Hans Delbrück. Ultimately, he studied constitutional law and ended up working on the staff of the Justice Minister. It was there that he began compiling evidence of government corruption. Nazi crimes, scandals, and constitutional infringements were all catalogued by him and kept in hopes of putting the culprits on trial and bringing about a change in the public opinion. He began that file, which he called his “Chronicle of Shame,” in 1933 and continued it through the time of his arrest ten years later.

While in prison, he ordered the documents to be destroyed, because the Gestapo had learned of their existence. He was concerned for the lives and wellbeing of those who were named as his collaborators, and even argued for the documents’ destruction over the use of their historical significance. “I don’t care about history!” he said, “This’ll cost heads!” In the end, only a subset of the evidence was destroyed, and the remaining files, especially those he compiled during the war years when he was working as a Civilian Staff Major at the Abwehr (German Counter Intelligence), were used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

That was the main thing, but he also was involved in attempting to moderate laws, ensuring fair trials, assisting persecuted persons in need, exposing scandals, and rather famously smuggling Jews out of the country as part of a false counterintelligence operation known as “Operation Seven.” Dietrich was involved in Operation Seven, as well, and it was really as a result of that operation that they were ultimately arrested.

How did you first hear about von Dohnányi and Bonhoeffer?

Years ago, a friend of mine was preaching a sermon and told the story of Bonhoeffer in an abbreviated context. This was in contrast to overwhelming sentiment of the day that tells us the rule of government bears weight over everything. What initially drew me to Bonhoeffer is his commitment to Christ over everything and his understanding, similar to mine and other saints throughout history, that the government derives authority only by its submission to Divine Law. But I hadn’t actually read anything by him until I read Discipleship[1] in December of 2020. I was dealing with some severe depression, which lifted whenever I put on the audiobook, and the writing really impacted me on a heart level. So, remembering that there was an interesting story about Bonhoeffer’s life and having an aversion to reading, I watched a movie adaptation of his life called Agent of Grace, which is simply atrocious. But even in that movie, Hans still charmed me, probably in spite of the script.

Did you know much about World War II German history before getting into their work?

No. Honestly, I never had much interest. I’ve always preferred American-centric conflicts and 19th Century warfare. I thought that World War II was overplayed, and the lines between good and evil were so clear cut in that conflict that it seemed a bit dry to me. Having genuinely good and decent people to follow on the German side intrigued me. I’ve always held much greater interest in the human side of a struggle, for me it brings greater dimension to history as a whole. Probably, I was always doomed to be a biographer for that.

Was there a point where you realized your interest was leading you past being a fan, that you wanted to study and write about this topic?

That was essentially immediate. I’m not sure I had time to be a fan before I was a writer. From the moment I finished watching the movie, I wanted to fix it. That’s when my research started.

Quite a lot of people have written about Bonhoeffer, but von Dohnányi gets discussed far less. What inspired you to break new territory and look at his story?

It is precisely because the story hasn’t been told that I feel attracted to write it. There is a considerable chasm between how Dohnányi is seen in Germany compared to the way his story is treated abroad. There, he’s a national hero. He’s celebrated. They have his face on stamps. Here his name would be lucky to inspire a glimmer of vague recognition. I taught myself German reading Dohnányi’s prison letters to his wife. I had to, because they’re not available in English. There is a very good biography of Dohnányi in German, written by Marikje Smid,[2] but it’s untranslated. The more I read about Hans and his wife, Christel, the more I liked them. I didn’t think it was fair that the English-speaking world should be cut off from their story. I’m writing out of a love and admiration for them, but I’m also hoping to save future historians some trouble. Theirs has been called “a story of great love,” and I think that the world could benefit from it.

I know you’ve got a developing fiction series called Good Fellows, but had you published any nonfiction before you started working on the biography?

With the exception of religious writings, I’ve only worked in fiction up to now. I have two novels published online that I would like to have edited and republished in a physical form, in addition to the Good Fellows duology that you’ve mentioned. The common thread between the novelized works is that they’re all fantasy stories dealing with religious themes. I dedicated my life to God while reading a historical fiction book, and I believe that there are certain truths that can be captured through stories and impact a person in ways that a traditional sermon won’t. So, although I prefer nonfiction in reading, writing it is new to me. Thus far, I’ve found it has its own unique beauty, as well as its challenges.

Does your historical research inform your fiction writing?

Very much so, and most emphatically in the case of the Good Fellows books. There are elements of historical fact and themes in my first two novels, Forgotten Embers and The Wolves of Banglador, which deal with questions of Christ’s Kingship and original sin respectively, the one in a fantasy adventure world and the other in a paranormal historical setting. However, the historical elements are much more abundantly present in the Good Fellows novels, as I said, because those are as close to true historical fiction as I’ve come, apart from a few short stories. In fact, the thought behind the Good Fellows books (Debt & Dishonor and Shadow & Sword) is that I would record the lives of real people and events in such a way as would maintain accuracy while also giving the audience a deeper understanding of what happened in Germany. Sometimes I think we’re so familiar with the story and the evils of the Nazi regime that we forget what it was actually like to be alive. We forget that these are real people, just trying to live their lives. They don’t know what we know. They don’t have the privilege of hindsight. They don’t see Hitler as evil incarnate; he’s a man, a politician. I would like us to be able to approach the topic and the conversation with fresh eyes, and I invented Good Fellows for that.

I’m actually writing the biography on Hans, because of the Good Fellows series. Good Fellows was my attempt to right Agent of Grace, and Under God’s Sun—that’s the title of the biography—is my attempt to right the dearth of information available on Dohnányi in English. I started out reading his letters for the sake of my presentation of Dohnányi’s character in the novel, but I was a little annoyed about having to learn another language in order to write for a character in a historical fiction novel, especially one which I had specifically set in an alternate universe in order to avoid that level of study.

How long did you spend researching von Dohnányi?

Too long. I think I spent about three months just reading his prison letters over and over. Part of that was that I was trying to understand Hans as person. Another was that I was working with a strange language. But also, I just liked to read them when I went to bed at night, because I found the emotional warmth and genuine wholesomeness expressed in them to be a great balm to my heart. At the same time, I feel like I haven’t done enough research. It seems that no matter how much one finds, there’s always something more that was lost. My intention is simply to ensure that I do my due diligence in uncovering the heart of the matter and representing Dohnányi’s person and motives rightly. There’s a line from Bonhoeffer where he says to his fiancé, “I want you to love not an image of me, but me.” I don’t want to write a book presenting someone as I perceive them, in so much as I can help it. I would much rather simply present them as they are. That is especially true of Hans in this. My goal is to show who he is.

What kind of resources did you draw on—were you able to talk with family members or associates?

To speak with the family is a deep want of mine, yet unfulfilled. It poses some trouble, because the two remaining children are both up in age and quite well-known. Christoph is a world-renowned conductor, and his elder brother, Klaus, is a politician of some influence. The grandchildren also tend to be professionally successful, something for which I’m delighted and grateful, but it does make it difficult to contact them.

However, I have relied heavily on the family accounts, whether they be written records or interviews. It has always been a historical preference of mine to give the most credence to the opinions of those closest to the subject in question, and it helps here that the family is so notably trustworthy in their retellings. I felt fortunate that Hans and Christel’s granddaughter, Dorothee Röhrig, published her memoirs[3] just as I was beginning work on the biography in earnest. It was like a gift from God. But in that book, she actually complains that her mother’s family always had to say things exactly as they happened. Exaggeration and shading were out of the question in their storytelling, which makes them excellent witnesses from my perspective. I should also be grateful that there is such an abundance of interviews with Klaus, which one would expect of the son of a national hero who has established himself as a statesman.

The sweeping interest in the Bonhoeffer family helps, too. I’ve gleaned some fascinating information and moving anecdotes which shed greater light on Hans and Christel’s life and attitudes from those family members who survived the war and either wrote memoirs, kept a diary, or participated in later interviews.

Were you able to connect with any Bonhoeffer scholars who could advise or support you?

The people from the International Bonhoeffer Society have been brilliant. I’ve spoken to a handful of people involved with them, and each has been exceedingly kind. They’ve been very good about answering questions and lending advice. I should give special thanks to John Matthews, who was a close friend of Eberhard and Renate Bethge, and Wilfried Schulz, a German scholar, each of whom have been quite magnanimous in the giving of their time. In addition to those two, I have a couple of German friends who have been stalwart in their assistance. Although, the person who really helped the most was Peter Hoffmann, whom I dearly miss. He was an accomplished historian and a lover of the German resistance, although not a Bonhoeffer scholar especially. Stauffenberg was his man, much as Dohnányi is mine. But he was the first person who responded to my many request letters asking for advice, and the early encouragement and guidance he offered along with his well-wishes meant a great deal to me.

What’s been the most challenging part of the writing process?

It’s the research aspect. I always want something more than what I have available, and I would like to be able to answer my own questions, even when I’m sure nobody else will ask them. I want to know I have the answer, but some things simply aren’t known. There’s a part of me that can’t stand that, because I want to know everything, even what has been carefully hidden. Sometimes I feel like an archeologist, digging in the desert sands for some forgotten ruins. I want to know what time has lost, the truth that’s buried under all that dust. But the answers aren’t always there for me. What I don’t know bothers me. I worry that I’m missing something.

Frequently, when you’re writing about someone’s life, there are lots of little pieces that are great by themselves but don’t make the final version. Anything you’ve had to omit?

For me, it’s stories that belong in another book or points of curiosity that don’t have a real conclusion. In the case of the first, there are anecdotes I’ve found wherein the point of the story isn’t really relevant to anything. Hans and Christel might happen to be there, but it doesn’t do anything for an understanding of their persons to mention it. Usually in those cases, it’s a story that illuminates something about someone else and that other person’s character. It might be better suited to that person’s biography than it is to this one. As I said, it belongs in a different book. In the latter case, unfortunately, there are some stories that lack resolution.

One thing I’ve left out that I really wish I could have found a way to unknot but I’ve given over as a lost cause is a story Christel’s sister Susi recounts in her autobiography. She says that the last year all of the Bonhoeffer siblings went up to their parents’ summerhouse together for a vacation, one of the nights there was a terrible row, centered around Hans and Karl-Friedrich, who was the eldest of the Bonhoeffer children. The argument ended with Karl-Friedrich stormily driving off and Hans’ little sister, Grete, running away in tears. Susi wasn’t actually present for the argument, and although she tried to comfort Grete, who was a dear friend, no one would ever tell her what the fight was over. What I do know is that Hans and Christel were secretly engaged at the time of this quarrel, and Grete eventually ended up marrying Karl-Friedrich, albeit not until some years later. For context, this was the summer of 1923, and I believe Grete married in 1932. Hans and Christel married in 1925. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were arguing over romance. It may have been that they were having a difference of opinion on something like politics. Both Hans and Karl-Friedrich held passionate opinions on that, and their views weren’t entirely in sync. Grete might have been upset simply because her suitor and her brother had been fighting at all, not necessarily because she (or Christel) was the subject of it. There are other possibilities, too. But the bottom line is that we don’t know, and because of that I chose to exclude the story, fascinating though I find it.

Another point of interest I omitted from the book is one about Hans’ father, Ernö. I try to give the relevant background about him in the first chapter where I capture Hans’ childhood and upbringing. Hans’ father was extremely talented, but a strong touch egotistical. He made some very selfish and harmful decisions in his life. I cover that in the book, but what I didn’t include was the considerable circumstantial evidence that he was a committed draft dodger. I gloss over it a bit the second time when he flees from Germany with his mistress, but there was a time before that in Hungary, which I omitted entirely. He and his first wife, Elsa Kunwald, had suffered a long engagement at the insistence of Ernö’s father. At the time, Austria-Hungary required military service for all unmarried men of a certain age, and while it was Ernö’s father who had put the brakes on the marriage, Ernö himself had not pushed for a resolution with any real passion until he reached the age that those laws threatened to interfere with his career as a concert pianist. Another Dohnányi biographer, Jochen Thies,[4] is the one who really presents these stories as a point of consideration, and he makes a very compelling case.

I know you also volunteer with the Holocaust Center in Pittsburgh. How has looking at a Jewish perspective on World War II informed your research?

It’s actually the opposite. I started working there in order to help my research. I guess you could say that my research spurred my work in the Jewish community here, and not the other way around. What I’m constantly chasing is a personal view. What I’ve commonly told experts in emails is that I’m perusing a “very human” retelling of the story. So, I go looking for people, and institutions like that have a way of collecting people.

The way I ended up at the Holocaust Center is—and this is kind of a funny story—I have a shirt with a quote from Dohnányi on it: “Mir hat Gott keinen Panzer ums Herz gegeben,” which roughly translates to “God gave me no armor around my heart.” I was wearing that shirt one day whilst going into a store, and a little old Jewish lady with a broad sun-hat and a walker was on her way out, so I held the door for her. She looked up to thank me as she was leaving, and she saw my shirt. All at once, her eyes lit up and she got a huge grin. “I like your shirt!” she told me, and then she waited for me to open the second set of doors for her while she encouraged me about following God… and I suddenly remembered that a number of the people Dohnányi helped had ended up living in my state for a while. His son, Christoph, recalls how after the war when he came to study with his grandfather in America, some of those people had waited for him at the dock in Philadelphia, smiling and waving, and thanking him for what his father had done for them. I had been sending out emails to people in other countries, trying to get any insight into Dohnányi’s person. When that woman read my shirt and had such a heartfelt reaction, I realized that I had been neglecting to employ the help of the people in my own neighborhood.

I was speaking recently with another Bonhoeffer scholar about his circle, and she mentioned no matter what part we’re discussing—the Abwehr’s plan to assassinate Hitler, the Confessing Church’s work to rescue Jews, whatever—there are things they said and did which we struggle to understand today. “Complicated people moving through a complicated time,” as Erik Larson would say.[5] What has helped you navigate those complications as you write about these complicated people?

People are complicated. I’m reminded of Bonhoeffer saying that one must know a person in order to understand their writings. The important thing for me is that I view the story through the eyes of the people I’m representing. In the case of the biography, that’s Hans von Dohnányi and his wife. Instead of looking at the story from my perspective, I try to see it though theirs. Christel calls the resistance work “a matter of the heart,” and so I try to show that. Who they are is just as important as what they say or how they act. In fact, it gives insight into those words and actions that cannot be gained through any other means. In short, I let my opinions be formed by the words and actions of the people whose story I’m recording, and I try to retain that for the readers, also. Any preconceived notions are done away with: they are who they are.

Interest in these men seems to be undergoing a renaissance right now—there have been several movies and documentaries made since the 2000s, and a new one appearing this year. Any thoughts on why interest in these men has revived?

These are men who honored God in times of immense darkness, who pursued righteousness and love until they bled. Proverbs 21:21 says: “Whoever pursues righteousness and unfailing love will find life, righteousness, and honor,” and in 1 Samuel 2:30, God says further: “those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” If you want my short opinion: they honored God, and now God is honoring them. But furthermore, I think the times demand it. In her last letter to her husband, Christel writes: “In times of darkness, you let the light of your love shine.” She thanks him for that, and I think we all do. Humanity has and will see some dark times. When we’re in the midst of that darkness, it helps to know that there are still decent people in the world, that love still burns in human hearts, and that the light is not extinguished. It encourages us to be that person in our time, and it rekindles our spirits.

What are some misconceptions about Bethge, Bonhoeffer or their associates that you’d like to see corrected?

Charles Marsh wrote an atrocious book titled Strange Glory. I refer to it as academic fanfiction. It’s a biography on Bonhoeffer which propagates the idea that he had taken a romantic attachment to his assistant, Eberhard Bethge. In an interview, I heard Marsh suggest that Bonhoeffer may not have been conscious of his romantic feelings towards Bethge and that they might have been buried so deep that Dietrich was simply unaware of them. The entire biography is shaded by that belief of Marsh’s. It’s a tragically inaccurate portrayal that has been taken up and championed in some circles. Where I see it being discussed among people who aren’t promoting it, I often see them saying, “It’s good that we’re having this conversation.” It isn’t. It’s a reflection on our own poverty as academic scholars that we superimpose our present culture upon historical persons.

Marsh doesn’t bring evidence. He brings adjectives, and once the adjectives are removed, there is no longer a case. For example, one of the main points of Marsh’s accusations is that Dietrich wrote Eberhard from prison far more than he did his fiancé, Maria. But Marsh himself includes a quote from Dietrich in which he confesses to Eberhard that he can hardly bear to think on Maria, because it hurts him too deeply to think of what he cannot have with her: the life that he so desperately wanted. In that same letter, Dietrich tells Eberhard that it is much easier for him to think of things with him, because those times existed already in his memory. The past was somewhere that the imprisoned preacher could dwell in safety and conjure up with fondness; the future was something that caused him considerable pain, because he felt as though he had been robbed of it.

Another thing is this notion that we can take this story and make it about whatever we want it to be in terms of our society today. Bethge battled this a lot throughout his later life. He spoke of “what Bonhoeffer cannot teach us” and advocated that we not assume more than can be known. There are people who say that Bonhoeffer is a social justice warrior, people who think he taught us why Christians need to be involved in politics, people who want to strap dynamite to his chest and make him an assassin. We need to take a step back, put aside our favorite causes, free ourselves of the modern world, and let Bonhoeffer be who he is.

He was an introvert who struggled with depression and anxiety, a perfectionist who once threw his college friend’s thesis into the fire, because he said it could be done better, a preacher whose sermons were so weighty that congregation would accept him in Berlin. He was a man who had to be converted from his own desires to do good into a genuine Christian faith of following Jesus. He pondered eternity and death and loved the martyrs. He cared deeply about doing right in the eyes of God, guarded himself against the allure of riches, and felt a deep responsibility to care for the weak, the weight of the noblesse oblige. I’d like to see him portrayed like that.

Lastly, people miss Bonhoeffer’s humor. He was a notorious prankster. I remember reading an interview with Klaus von Dohnányi containing a question along these lines. The interviewer asked him to describe his uncle, the renowned theologian who held the Christian line against Hitler. “What was he like?” the interviewer asked. Klaus responded, “Hilarious. Quite hilarious.” That seemed to take the interviewer aback a little. He clearly expected something more serious. But Bonhoeffer was one who found room for laughter even in the most serious things. A favorite quote of mine from him is: “Ultimate seriousness is never without a dose of humor.” It was a stray thought that he jotted down, but I believe he really meant it.

Who are some other figures in von Dohnányi’s circle you would like to see explored more?

His wife, Christel, honestly. We have such an obsession in our culture with this concept of the strong, independent woman who’s right there in the action that I’m almost surprised no one has latched onto her as a character. She was a brilliant lady who abandoned a fiercely desired career in zoology in order to embrace the role of a wife and mother. The relationship that she shared with her husband was something very beautiful, a high school romance that bloomed into a passionate life-long love affair. When writing about the conspiracy work, Christ makes the statement: “It was natural that [Hans] told me things and discussed them with me, just as it was natural that I kept silent about them.” So, everything that Hans was involved in, she was too. Every time I see a new book about a female dissident in Nazi Germany, I hope it’s about Christel, but it never is.

On a lighter note, what’s your favorite or least favorite movie about von Dohnányi and Bonhoeffer?

It isn’t a movie, but I genuinely love the portrayal of Dohnányi’s character in the miniseries Charité: At War. Now, the tragedy there is that it’s a German program and the Bonhoeffer family (Dohnányi included) is only actually in two of the six episodes. But there is a very heartwarming Christmas episode, which adequately mirrors the historical reality. There is some creative license taken, of course, but everything was done respectfully and the changes that were made were not unreasonable. The screenwriters did a particularly wonderful job of capturing Hans’ relationship with his family, and the portrayal of his father-in-law, Karl Bonhoeffer, is first-rate. The only real complaint I have is the apparent decision to use Christel as a means of conveying information about the resistance to the audience by having her blabber everything to the friendly Dr. Sauerbruch. As I mentioned previously, Christel was admirably discreet in reality.

What are some things you would like to see in a later movie or stage adaptation of their story?

I would love to see the story treated properly. It is yet to be done, and I think that there are just a few necessary scenes in order to really capture the essence of their lives and resistance. I would like to see Hans being portrayed more with his wife and kids, being the warmhearted family man. I would like to see Dietrich navigating some of the actual struggles he dealt with, rather than the imaginary ones with which he is often saddled. I would like to see Eberhard as an actual character; he is often pushed to the background or omitted from the story entirely.

Above all, I would like to see Hans and Dietrich struggle more with the prospect of assassination. In the dramatic adaptations so far, Hans is entirely fine with it and manages to quickly get Dietrich on board. That’s not what happened in reality. It was a major struggle for both of them.

There are four conversations which I consider to be key moments for Dietrich. The first is with his sister-in-law, Emmi Bonhoeffer. She complains that Dietrich says it is good what the conspirators are doing but is still refusing to be directly involved. She accuses him to his face, confronting him with his own hypocrisy, and says the problem with Christians is that they’re always happy when somebody else is doing something, but they refuse to get their own hands dirty. Dietrich responded that nobody should be happy that anybody is killing anybody, but he understood what she meant. The second is with Hans, when he asks Dietrich about Jesus saying “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” [Matthew 26:52]. Dietrich tells him that the saying is true, but still he must act, knowing it is true. The third is in a meeting with one of Hitler’s body guards. The young man asks whether he should kill the Fuhrer, says it would be easy for him to take the shot, given his position. Dietrich responds by telling him that it would make no difference to kill Hitler simply to have him dead; the death of the dictator would only hold value if it were in conjunction with a planned coup. So, the pastor talked him out of it. The last really necessary scene, I think, is when Dietrich finally proclaims that he would kill Hitler himself, if had to.

Dietrich’s time in prison is always extremely well covered, but the actual complex elements of the conspiracy and the real moral struggles that these men go through is often overlooked. I think that the screenwriters often stretch themselves a bit thin and become enticed by the idea of shooting some American scenes. But honestly, I don’t believe that there is any real need for America to be in the movie at all. It would be much better merely to reference it where necessary and spend more time developing the plot in Germany.

People interested in Leah Fisher’s Good Fellows series can read its first installment on Wattpad. Her essays and stories can also be found on the Fellowship & Fairydust website and in its print issues. She can be contacted through Facebook or LinkedIn.

[1] Interviewer’s Note: Bonhoeffer’s book Nachfolge is better known to many English-speaking readers as The Cost of Discipleship. Fisher wrote more about the book for Fellowship & Fairydust in July 2023.

[2] Interviewer’s note: See Marikje Smid, Hans von Dohnanyi – Christine Bonhoeffer: Eine Ehe im Widerstand gegen Hitler (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2002).

[3] Interviewer’s note: see Dorothee Röhrig: Du wirst noch an mich denken (dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, 2023).

[4] Interviewer’s Note: See Jochen Thies, Die Dohnanyis: eine Familienbiografie (Propyläen, 2004).

[5] Interviewer’s Note: I am quoting from Larson’s book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American’s Family in Hitler’s Berlin: “These were complicated people moving through a complicated time, before the monsters declared their true nature.”