Flowers in the Gutter: The True Story of the Edelweiss Pirates, Teenagers Who Resisted the Nazis

In the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party began seizing power in Germany. In the city of Cologne, three young children — Fritz, Jean, and Gertrud — watched their country change overnight. Their parents and neighbors, working-class and unabashed communists and socialists, were being arrested, beaten, and sent to labor camps. The Nazis’ ever-tightening grip was a constant contradiction to everything they believed in. 

With the outbreak of World War II, Fritz, Jean, and Gertrud, now teenagers, felt more emboldened than ever before to resist the Nazis. They join a resistance group called the Edelweiss Pirates, consisting of hundreds of young Germans who refuse to wear the Hitler Youth uniform. As Pirates, they sang illegal songs, went on unauthorized hiking trips in the countryside, and began small acts of resistance, such as distributing anti-Nazi flyers throughout Cologne under the cover of Allied bombing runs.  

As the war raged on and the Nazis became more desperate to win, the Edelweiss Pirates became bolder in their acts of defiance: committing acts of sabotage, stealing weapons and rations, and even shooting at SS officers. Dealing with the Pirates’ growing influence became the Gestapo’s top priority. Fritz, Jean, and Gertrud were arrested, brutally beaten, and interrogated. With death hovering over them, the Edelweiss Pirates continued to resist the Nazis despite the dangers. 

Flowers in the Gutter is a fascinating nonfiction piece that tells the largely untold story of the youth resistance in Germany during World War II. The book is broken into seven parts, beginning in Cologne in 1932 and ending in the winter of 2000. Each part is divided into mini-chapters, and told from the perspective of either Fritz, Jean, or Gertrud. They are ordinary kids from working-class families who yearn for freedom and are forced to take extreme measures to achieve it. Fritz was initially a member of the Hitler Youth but grew to resent their authoritarianism; he is the most determined and rebellious of the group, sabotaging the Nazis in broad daylight. At a young age, Jean witnessed his father being attacked by the Nazis. He is a thoughtful boy who loves to sing with the Pirates. Gertrud is a young girl who, along with the other female Pirates, defied the rigid gender norms of Nazi Germany.  Gaddy puts the reader into the teenagers’ shoes, and the fact that this is a true story makes the book even more immersive.  

What makes Flowers in the Gutter such a compelling read is the seamless blending of thorough research and engaging storytelling. The stories of Fritz, Jean, and Gertrud feel personal and grounded and are accompanied by contemporary documents and historical facts. Through her writing, Gaddy captures the internal conflicts the teens experience, such as dealing with loss, fear, and the increasing costs of resistance. The teens also encounter many external battles against the Gestapo, Hitler Youth, and Nazi Germany as a whole. The inclusion of both internal and external conflicts allows today’s readers to connect with and understand the Edelweiss Pirates.  

Flowers in the Gutter is a thorough and well-researched book that tells an important story and raises the question of what constitutes resistance. After the war, the Allies and the West German government initially dismissed the Edelweiss Pirates and other youth groups, labeling them as criminals. It wasn’t until decades later that the government formally recognized the Pirates and commemorated their courage. As Gaddy concludes, “There are always more stories to be told, if we take the time to listen.”  

Sexual Content 

• In 1939, Gertrud and her mother visited the women’s society’s office. While there, “a woman told Gertrud about the role and duty of a German woman, which was, put simply, to have children- ‘Aryan’ children — preferably with an SS man.” 
• Gertrud told her friend, Lolli, about a boy she liked named Gustav. Lolli asked, “So, have you and Gustav. . .” Gertrud turned red because “they didn’t normally talk about guys, and they definitely didn’t talk about sex.” Furthermore, “‘Normal’ sexuality fit into a small box in Germany: anything other than being heterosexual and cisgender was considered deviant.” 
• Before an interrogation in 1944, Jean noticed an SS man and a female stenographer kissing. “Jean thought they looked like they were going to have sex. He couldn’t watch; he was so embarrassed.”

Violence 

• In 1936, Jean and his father were staying at his grandparents’ apartment when suddenly two SS officers barged in. When they located Jean’s father, they began beating him as they arrested him. Jean, who was hiding in another room, “could hear everything — every blow, every cry of pain, every plea to stop.” 
• During an altercation with the Hitler Youth in 1940, one of the members bumped into Gertrud. “She felt a tug on her scalp. He had her hair . . . the front of her neck strained as he pulled his hand back and her head came with it.” This escalated into a brawl between the Pirates and the Hitler Youth. After the fighting, Gertrud noticed that two other Pirates named Jus and Banjo Willi were injured. “Blood trickled down from both their nostrils and dripped off their chins. She hoped their noses weren’t broken.” 
• In the winter of 1941, Jean and his grandparents ran to a bunker as the air raid sirens began to blare. The next morning, they returned to their apartment building, which was devastated by the bombing. “People were there, cleaning the rubble and pulling out bodies.” Jean found one of his neighbors who survived, but her daughter did not. “She just screamed over and over again, ‘Why do I have to live when my child is dead!’” 
• Gaddy writes about the mass deportations in Cologne during the spring of 1942, noting “44,000 people are sent from the Messe to Theresienstadt, a camp-ghetto where they face almost certain death to disease or further transport to extermination camps like Auschwitz.” 
• One day in spring 1942, Fritz discovered a bunker “where a bomb had broken through the shelter and destroyed everything — and everyone — inside.” Fritz “couldn’t imagine the gruesome scene where people realized they were about to die.” 
• Gertrud is detained at the Gestapo’s Cologne office, the EL-DE House. While there, she was brutally interrogated. The Gestapo wanted to know the names of the Edelweiss Pirates. “Who were they? No answer. A blow to the side of the head. Where did they meet? No answer. Another smack.” Gertrud was hit multiple times but wasn’t seriously injured and was released the next day. 
• Gertrud was soon arrested again. “According to Gertrud, they hit her so many times in so many places that her skin was shades of blue, violet, red, or green, depending on where they’d hit her and how hard.” 
• In October 1943, Fritz was arrested at the EL-DE House. He and about a dozen other boys were “whipped, punched, and verbally abused.” 
• After being transported to another facility, a guard punished Fritz and two others for whistling. He was hit over the head by a guard’s baton. “Fritz heard Emil crying and screaming. They all knew they couldn’t fight back; they just had to accept what was happening.”  
• During an interrogation, Fritz remained tight-lipped when asked who distributed the anti-Nazi leaflets. A man with a baton hit him, saying, “Open your mouth, or I’ll kill you!” 
• After being released from prison, Fritz was forced to work at a Ford factory. He noticed that one guard “was particularly sadistic with the starving forced laborers. When he caught someone, he’d shove their faces into the bowls and hit them on the back of the head. Fritz saw another guard kick a pregnant laborer in the belly for talking back. Others were simply worked to death.” 
• Fritz, accompanied by his mother, was called back to the EL-DE House for questioning. When his mother defended him, an officer choked her. “Her color drained from her face and her lips turned from red to blue. She gasped for air.” 
• In 1944, two Pirates named Barthel and Lang discussed how much further they could go. “We gotta get these party fat cats out of the way,” said Barthel. “‘What you mean. . . ’ Lang stuck his index finger and thumb out from his fist and made a shooting motion.” The implication is that they were thinking about escalating by killing certain Nazis. Later, when chased by SS officers, Barthel “pulled out his gun from his pocket and fired two or three shots in the direction of the patrol.”  
• One day, Jean opened his apartment door expecting his friend but was instead met with a Gestapo officer, who asked where a Pirate named Ferdi Steingrass was. When Jean hesitated to answer, the officer “suddenly hit Jean in the face so hard that he flew backward into the cupboard, smashing the glass window.” Jean was bleeding from the back of his head due to this assault. 
• Gestapo Officer Joseph Hoegen brutally interrogated Barthel. Hoegen’s “interrogation techniques included laying Barthel with his belly on the seat of a chair, placing a cord around his neck and a gag in his mouth so he couldn’t scream, and then beating him with chair legs until he couldn’t feel or think anything.” Barthel admitted that these interrogations broke him, forcing him to tell the Gestapo key details about the Pirates’ operations, in order to stop the pain. 
• Jean, while imprisoned, noted that “the Gestapo men seem to take pleasure from making the prisoners hurt.” 
• In November 1944, a group of Edelweiss Pirates were publicly hanged in Cologne. “Hangings aren’t supposed to happen in a public place like this, but the Nazis were desperate and wanted to show any resistance in this neighborhood what would happen if they continued.” Describing the hanging, Gaddy writes, “Instead of an instant death, strangling by hanging can last as long as twenty minutes.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

• One night, twenty Pirates, including Gertrud, met up in an old German tavern. “Spread out across the checkered tablecloths were light and dark beers in big steins. Sometimes the girls mixed the beers with apple juice for a drink called schorle.” 

Language 

• In 1940, Fritz, then a member of the Nazi Youth, was tired of being obedient to the Nazis. “This was bullshit, and he didn’t want to do it anymore.” 
• A Pirate named Sepp wrote graffiti that read, “IS YOUR NOSE STILL FULL OF BROWN SHIT?” 
• During Gertrud’s Gestapo interrogation, she was verbally abused. She was told she was a “piece of shit,” as well as being called a “slut”, a “bastard”, a “whore”, and a “devious bitch.” 
• When returned to his cell after an interrogation, Fritz yelled, “How could you say such things and have done this to me! You’re fucking crazy! You assholes, do you know what they did to me?” 
• When Fritz and his friend Bubbes walked past a group of starving Russian prisoners, Bubbes said, “These Nazi shits.” 
• In September 1944, Fritz was sent to a “reeducation camp.” Accurately, Fritz thought, “Reeducation was bullshit; this place was a forced labor camp and children were the forced laborers.”

Supernatural 

• None 

Spiritual Content 

• Two Pirates, brothers Bub and Wolfgang, were half-Jewish. Bub recalls being with his aunt at the train station when “family friends and the rabbi were loaded on trains for the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, friends they never saw again.” 

by Nicholas Paragano