Intrigue

An English woman's marriage to a German lawyer is tested when her husband is imprisoned for an anti-Hitler plot, forcing her to consider using her tie to Winston Churchill to secure his release.

An English girl marries a German lawyer in the 1930s and they try to live as normal a life as they can in Hitler's Germany. When Allied bombs start falling on German cities, Christabel takes her two young sons to a village in the mountains. Then she learns that her husband and some of his friends have been arrested for plotting to assassinate Hitler. She travels to the prison where he is held, wondering if telling the commandant that she knows Winston Churchill will help her husband or seal his fate. This is said to be based on a true story.—Dale O'Connor <daleoc@interaccess.com>

Christabel Bielenberg's historical memoir, "The Past Is Myself," looking back on the years 1932-45, was the source for this depiction of life in Germany during Hitler's rise. Daughter of middle-class English-Irish parents, Christabel became a German citizen in 1934 when she married German law student Peter Bielenberg of a prominent Hamburg family. The couple raised their two sons amid Germany's shifting political climate. In 1939, as the situation became acute, Peter joined a military organization planning to remove Hitler from power. Dennis Potter chose to dramatize their story because, "One, it's a celebration of married love, and, two, it's the perfect answer to the idea of collective guilt. They were confronted with this raving maniac and yet managed to emerge without doing anything degrading."—Bhob Stewart <bhob2@aol.com>