The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them by Jonathan Freedland, John Murray Press, £25

On a late summer afternoon in Berlin, September 1943, an unlikely group of conspirators gathered for tea in an elegant apartment. They included aristocrats, a diplomat, a headmistress and an ambassador’s widow, and they had come together not only to provide mutual consolation and companionship – many of them had long nursed misgivings about Hitler and the Nazi regime – but also to chart the seemingly inexorable decline and decay of a world they had once loved. They spoke in whispers and snatched conversations – of defeat, of catastrophe and of what little might yet be done to stem the tide.

Yet, among them, sat an informer. And every casual remark, every sigh of despair, every shared conviction was being noted and would become a weapon that would ultimately be used to destroy them. That gathering, that innocent tea party, was the point at which the circle was compromised: the moment when trust collided with treachery – and where all the fates of these present suddenly turned.

This scene – the betrayal of the Solf Circle – lies at the heart of Jonathan Freedland’s new book The Traitors Circle. To his credit, Freedland has unearthed a story that, until now, has tended to linger at the margins: that of a circle of Germans, drawn from positions of privilege and influence, who resolved to resist the Nazi regime not by bombs or bullets, but by discussion and the free exchange of opinion, thereby creating a haven of humanity in the very heart of the Nazi Reich.

Freedland is blessed with a rich cast of characters. The hostess, Hanna Solf, was the widow of the former German ambassador to Tokyo, and her circle included numerous significant individuals, including the former headmistress Elisabeth von Thadden, diplomat Otto Kiep, industrialist Nikolaus von Halem, and the aristocrat Maria von Maltzan.

In Freedland’s account, their respective journeys to resistance – from concern, through disillusionment, to moral clarity and horror are deftly traced. The author resists the temptation to romanticise them; instead, he shows their fears, their hesitations and their moments of self-doubt, while giving equal weight to the petty acts of kindness and moral rebellion that, under ordinary circumstances, might have meant little, but in that moment of history counted for everything.

Freedland does well to incorporate the activities of the Solf Circle within the broader narrative of Nazi Germany’s increasingly repressive nature: showing the developing machinery of terror, the culture of surveillance and the corrosive effect of the regime’s propaganda. Much of it will be grimly familiar to those with some knowledge of the wider story. But the author weaves his narrative with considerable panache, maintaining a sense of drama, and giving readers a feel for the persistent background drone of threat, the risk of a misstep and the ever-present possibility of betrayal. He reminds us that the choices made by the group were never without cost.

In the process, Freedland poses several questions that not only deftly illustrate the perils of the Nazi period but also have some pertinent echoes for our own era: on the sanctity of conscience, the importance of discussion and – crucially – on the price of speaking the truth in a system dedicated to falsehood. Freedland avoids the facile parallels, but he is pleasingly unafraid of the resonances.

Overall, this is a powerful, absorbing history very well told. Freedland has taken a story that has traditionally been a footnote – a less dramatic aside to the activities of the Kreisau Circle, or of the wider conspiracy around Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg – and put it at centre stage: compelling, urgent and full of human texture. The Traitor’s Circle is a tribute to the quiet bravery of those who managed to maintain an open mind and to the noble pursuit of truth in a world of lies.

The book has been widely praised, then, and on the whole, rightly so. If there is a caveat to be raised, however, it is stylistic. One of the most significant trends in modern popular history is that of aping the breathless drama of the novel – the whispered conversations rendered verbatim, the conspiratorial asides, the precise insight into a character’s innermost thoughts – aspects which, as any historian would attest, are as rare as hen’s teeth when one is dealing with original sources.

Such methods have their uses, of course, not least in drawing the reader in and providing a pleasing emotional immediacy. And, clearly, many readers enjoy these stylistic flourishes and are content to jettison scholarly circumspection in the name of narrative tension.

Freedland is most certainly not among the worst offenders in this regard. He is a gifted writer, and his account rattles along, both convincingly and engagingly. Yet, I was occasionally left wondering whether the emotions on display were those of the sources or those imagined by the storyteller, and once that thought has been lodged in the mind, it can be difficult to dislodge. That is not a fatal flaw; indeed, it is part of what makes the book so readable. But it is one which both authors and discerning readers might wish to consider.

Nonetheless, The Traitor’s Circle is an elegant and moving account of a story that has for too long remained in the shadows.  It restores honour to the forgotten resisters and enriches our understanding of the concept of moral courage.