Rote Drei or The Red Orchestra was a Soviet Spy Ring in Germany during WWII. Mostly the work was carried out by Polish Jews, but one British Spy was also in the ring. The National Archives have released some of the documents concerning Alexander Foote, the British Agent in Rote Drei.

There is nothing like primary source documents to really come to grips with history.

THE RED ORCHESTRA (Witnesses to War)

by Gilles Perrault

Gilles Perrault’s tense and dramatic documentary history depicts the rise and fall of the notorious Soviet spy ring the Germans called the Red Orchestra, which operated within the highest circles of the German General Staff from 1941 to 1944.

Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra

By Shareen Blair Brysac

This gripping and heartbreaking narrative is the first full account of an American woman who gave her life in the struggle against the Nazi regime. As members of a key resistance group, Mildred Harnack and her husband, Arvid, assisted in the escape of German Jews and political dissidents, and for years provided vital economic and military intelligence to both Washington and Moscow. But in 1942, following a Soviet blunder, the Gestapo arrested, tortured, and tried some four score members of the Harnacks’ group, which the Nazis dubbed the Red Orchestra. Mildred Fish-Harnack was guillotined in Berlin on February 16, 1943, on the personal instruction of Adolf Hitler—she was the only American woman to be executed as an underground conspirator during World War II. Yet as the war ended and the Cold War began, her courage, idealism, and self-sacrifice went largely unacknowledged in America and the democratic West, and were distorted and sanitized in the Communist East. Only now, with the opening of long-sealed archives from Germany, the KGB, the CIA, and the FBI, can the full story be told.

In this superbly told life of an unjustly forgotten woman, Shareen Blair Brysac depicts the human side of a controversial resistance group that for too long has been portrayed as merely a Soviet espionage network.

Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler

By Anne Nelson

In this unforgettable book, distinguished author Anne Nelson shares one of the most shocking and inspiring–and least chronicled–stories of domestic resistance to the Nazi regime. The Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra, was the Gestapo’s name for an intrepid band of German artists, intellectuals, and bureaucrats (almost half of them women) who battled treacherous odds to unveil the brutal secrets of their fascist employers and oppressors.

Based on years of research, featuring new information, and culled from exclusive interviews, Red Orchestradocuments this riveting story through the eyes of Greta Kuckhoff, a German working mother. Fighting for an education in 1920s Berlin but frustrated by her country’s economic instability and academic sexism, Kuckhoff ventured to America, where she immersed herself in jazz, Walt Disney movies, and the first stirrings of the New Deal. When she returned to her homeland, she watched with anguish as it descended into a totalitarian society that relegated her friends to exile and detention, an environment in which political extremism evoked an extreme response.

Greta and others in her circle were appalled by Nazi anti-Semitism and took action on many fronts to support their Jewish friends and neighbors. As the war raged and Nazi abuses grew in ferocity and reach, resistance was the only possible avenue for Greta and her compatriots. These included Arvid Harnack–the German friend she met in Wisconsin–who collected anti-Nazi intelligence while working for their Economic Ministry; Arvid’s wife, Mildred, who emigrated to her husband’s native country to become the only American woman executed by Hitler; Harro Schulze-Boysen, the glamorous Luftwaffe intelligence officer who smuggled anti-Nazi information to allies abroad; his wife, Libertas, a social butterfly who coaxed favors from an unsuspecting Göring; John Sieg, a railroad worker from Detroit who publicized Nazi atrocities from a Communist underground printing press; and Greta Kuckhoff’s husband, Adam, a theatrical colleague of Brecht’s who found employment in Goebbels’s propaganda unit in order to undermine the regime.

For many members of the Red Orchestra, these audacious acts of courage resulted in their tragic and untimely end. These unsung individuals are portrayed here with startling and sympathetic power. As suspenseful as a thriller, Red Orchestra is a brilliant account of ordinary yet bold citizens who were willing to sacrifice everything to topple the Third Reich.

Subcutaneously, My Dear Watson — Sherlock Holmes and the Cocaine Habit

 by Jack Tracy and Jim Berkey.

A detailed study of the use of cocaine in Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal Detective stories. It provides an insight into the attitudes prevalent in the late nineteenth century toward the use of and addiction to cocaine. The authors trace the effects of Holmes’s drug habit on his career as a detective and on his relationship with Doctor Watson. The concise and interesting style is enhanced by many illustrations giving graphic historical perspective to the narrative. The book is a must for the Holmes buff and for those interested in early Anglo-American beliefs about cocaine and its effects. 89pp, 5”x8”, pub 1978, illustrated.

A LIMITED NUMBER OF COPIES OF THIS TITLE ARE AVAILABLE ORDER ONLY DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHER, ORDER HERE.

FYI: JACK TRACY’S ENCYCLOPEDIA SHERLOCKIANA WON A 1999 POLL AS THE MOST IMPORTANT SHERLOCKIAN BOOK OF THE 20TH CENTURY, BEATING OUT TITLES BY W. S. BARING-GOULD AND VINCENT STARRETT— SEE THE POLL AT HTTP://WWW.SHERLOCKIANA.NET/BOOKS/LIST.HTML