NEIN! STANDING UP TO HITLER AN INTERNIEW WITH PADDY ASHDOWN

Occupied Europe became famous for its various resistance networks to Nazi tyranny, but the fight against Adolf Hitler’s regime inside Germany has received less attention. Paddy Ashdown’s new book Nein! tells the story of those within Hitler’s high command who became committed to destroying the German leader both before and during World War II.

This powerful internal resistance to Nazism included many plots to kill Hitler, as well as the systematic passage of military secrets to the Allies through determined spy rings. Those authorising these actions included generals and the head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.

Speaking at the Malvern Festival of Military History, Ashdown revealed the plotters’ motives, Allied complacency and how the dangerous world of the 1930s-1940s echoes our own unstable times.

What aspects of the German resistance does the book cover?

This is not about the ‘small people’ in the German resistance like the White Rose student movement or