“A detailed and meticulously researched tale… that reads like a thriller.”—New York Times Book Review
From the New York Times best-selling author of Blitzed, the incredible true story of two idealistic young lovers who led the anti-Nazi resistance in the darkening heart of Berlin
Summertime, 1935. On a lake near Berlin, a young man is out sailing when he glimpses a woman reclining in the prow of a passing boat. Their eyes meet—and one of history’s greatest conspiracies is born.
Harro Schulze-Boysen already had shed blood in the fight against Nazism by the time he and Libertas Haas-Heye began their whirlwind romance. She joined the cause, and soon the two lovers were leading a network of antifascist fighters that stretched across Berlin’s bohemian underworld. Harro himself infiltrated German intelligence and began funneling Nazi battle plans to the Allies, including the details of Hitler’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union. But nothing could prepare Harro and Libertas for the betrayals they would suffer in this war of secrets—a struggle in which friend could be indistinguishable from foe. Drawing on unpublished diaries, letters, and Gestapo files, Norman Ohler spins an unforgettable tale of love, heroism, and sacrifice in The Bohemians.
Norman Ohler is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blitzed, the non-fiction books Tripped about Nazi research into LSD during World War II and The Bohemians about resistance against Hitler in Berlin, as well as the novels Die Quotenmaschine (the world’s first hypertext novel), Mitte, Stadt des Goldes (translated into English as Ponte City), as well as the historical crime novel Die Gleichung des Lebens. He was cowriter of the script for Wim Wenders’s film Palermo Shooting. He lives in Berlin.