In The Good Germans, Catrine Clay highlights the stories of Nazi resisters

The Good Germans is a deceptively long book. There is an element of repetition in the coverage of the six characters but, on the whole, it is an easy book to read.

However one aspect of its presentation appals me. Using many photographs to flesh out the characters, the author has chosen wisely. But the publisher decided to print the captions to the photographs at the end of the book, just before the end-notes. Readers will hope this does not become a common practice in publishing. It is a cheap solution and unworthy of such a good book.

The strangest of the characters is Rudolph Ditzen, novelist and writer, drunkard, drug addict, husband, father, philanderer and much more. An obsessive and very fast writer, successfully earning a very high income, though regularly impoverished, Rudolph wrote an astonishing amount.

Known as Hans Fallada (recently re-published by Scribe in Australia) Rudolph once polished off a novel in three weeks, working day and night. Admired by leading Nazis and under constant pressure to tell the stories that the Nazis could bask in, Ditzen managed - just - not to do the evil bidding offered him.

The best loved person in the book is German Communist leader, Ernst Thalmann. Though Thalmann endures more than 11 years in solitary confinement in different German prisons, it is his daughter Irma who is one of the six in this book.

Irma, in her early teens when her father is arrested in 1933, visits him several times in prison, supports her mother in her grief, growing up in her father's shadow, but devoted to the causes he had made his own.

She passionately embraces his vision of socialism and lives by his rules, demanding a better world. She is a thoughtful, devoted, committed daughter and easily gains the readers' respect.

My favourite character in the book is Count Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg (known to all as Fritzi). Coming from a large, wealthy and prominent family most of his siblings became enthusiastic Nazis.

Fritzi joined with them in this for reasons we may understand. Germany after the Great War was simply a mess. As a party supporter, Fritzi was appointed to senior government positions, proving himself to be a sympathetic and talented administrator.

Gradually the scales fall from his eyes and, though very happily married with a large young family, Fritzi determines that he must play a part in eliminating Hitler. Fritzi quickly understood that the assassination of the man he now regarded as a monster is the only way to save his beloved Germany from the regime. He works relentlessly to achieve this.

A senior military officer by 1943, free to roam around his contacts across Germany and at the battle fronts, Fritzi builds up an impressive group of collaborators.

It is secretive and highly dangerous work. Hitler, aware of the danger he faced from within, rarely travels outside his two secure bunkers, only dealing with the senior Nazis he trusts and the highest levels of the military. Therefore, Fritzi realises, assassination must come from within that group.

Readers will know the outcomes of the various assassination attempts before ever picking up this book. It is the skill and imagination of Catrine Clay still to convey to the reader the excitement and the expectation of the major attempts on Hitler's life. Honour is achieved, to some extent, in the effort to kill Hitler.

But there is much more to this book than these attempts. The reader is taken into the heart of the German political process, is taken into the lives of dozens of people who hate the regime and will try to do something for its victims.

These are good people who will suffer, some grievously, for their belief in a better way for their country.

Catrine Clay is at pains to point out that the majority of German people regarded war and their leaders with concern, if not outright rejection.

The book cannot go into the postwar process of recovery, in fact readers are not even told of the end of Hitler and his gang of thugs.

But there must be hope for Germany's future in the goodness, simplicity and devotion of those about whom we read. They are a small sample, of course, and it is brave to base the narrative on only six characters.

But the book works because of the intense connection the author makes between her characters and her readers.