Starting in 1935, she utilized her position to recruit left-leaning Germans into discussion groups which she hosted at her and Harro's apartment, where they sought to influence their guests.

When her husband was arrested in August 1942 by the Gestapo, she made a valiant attempt to destroy evidence of their work and warn other members of the group, but it was to no avail.

Her father was the Heidelberg-born Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye (1879–1959), couturier to the aristocracy, and her mother was noted pianist, Countess Viktoria Ada Astrid Agnes zu Eulenburg (1886–1967).

[3] She was the youngest of the eight children of the Prussian diplomat and composer Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg and his Swedish wife, Countess Augusta Constantia Ulrike Charlotte Sandels.

[12] In May 1933, when the studio started to feel the effects of Nazi censorship, it was forced to drop Herman Mankiewicz's screenplay The Mad Dog of Europe, a film meant to illuminate the worsening treatment of Jews in Germany at that time.

On 15 January 1935, Schulze-Boysen left to join the Reich Labour Service for female youth (Freiwilligen Arbeitsdienst für die weibliche Jugend) for six months' voluntary work near Glindow, close to Potsdam.

At the time, Harro wanted to give James the details on prisoner numbers from the Spanish Civil War, compiled from situation reports his office received, so he could get them published by the BBC.

[34] Libertas was successful as Göring made an enquiry to Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, who reported the Harro Schulze-Boysen was considered unreliable due to his political involvements before 1933.

[37] Among the 30 odd guests were Gisela von Pöllnitz and a doctor, Elfriede Paul who was the girlfriend of Walter Küchenmeister who had been invited on the advice of Elisabeth Schumacher—wife of Kurt Schumacher who also attended.

[39][40] Among the other guests were Heinrich Karbe, a journalist for the Essen National Newspaper [de], the actor Werner Dissel and the Rowohlt editor Ernst von Salomon.

The information was from "Special Staff W", an organisation established by Luftwaffe general Helmuth Wilberg to study and analyse the tactical lessons learned by the Legion Kondor during the Spanish Civil War.

[42] The unit also directed the German relief operations that consisted of volunteers, weapons and ammunition for General Francisco Franco's FET y de las JONS.

[53] In the same month, they collaborated in writing a play Die guten Feinde (The Good Enemies)[54] about the German physician Robert Koch and his competition with Max Pettenkofer and their search for the causes of tuberculosis .

The visits along with von Pöllnitz's illness led Schulze-Boysen to suffer from a general malaise that caused her to flee to Zurich, a city she felt safe in.

[71] The Harnak's also held group meetings with a preplanned agenda, where they debated the political and economic perspectives of the time[73] but were considered rather austere compared to Libertas and Shulze-Boysen's fun filled nights of music and dancing.

[74]The initial meeting of the women gave rise to a licentious image of the group that persisted for decades after the war, based primarily on Gestapo and Abwehr reports.

[72] Other friends who joined their parties and who became staunch anti-Nazis, included the actor Werner Dissel who they met in 1935 as well as Albrecht Haushofer, Kurt Schumacher and his wife Elisabeth Schumacher, Elfriede Paul, Walter Küchenmeister, the writer Günther Weisenborn, the dancer and sculptor Oda Schottmüller as well as the actor Marta Husemann and her husband, Walter Husemann who was an editor.

Beginning in May 1939, on a weekly basis each editor received a copy of the Zeitschriften-Dienst,[85] a confidential newsletter from the ministry that described various directives as to what could be published and the particular theme the Nazi Party wanted to see in use.

[87] Her last article Resurrection the mask in art dance introduced the dancer Oda Schottmüller, to the general public[88] and her successor as film critic was Adam Kuckhoff.

[89] From that point forward, their combined undercover political faction, developed from a resistance organisation into an espionage network, from a small cadre of close friends, that began to collaborate with Soviet intelligence.

[107] A Luftwaffe report consisting of the Russian city names and their railway stations that were to be bombed during the initial attack of Operation Barbarossa had to be manually transcribed to Erdberg, instead of being transmitted.

[107] In August 1941, during a dinner party that Karbe and his wife held with the Schule-Boysens, he described how Libertas had blurted out the fact they were in the resistance, while they were discussing Harro working for Hermann Göring.

This included the lawyer Maria Terwiel and her fiancée, the dentist Helmut Himpel as well as the factory worker Friedrich Rehmer and the student Ursula Goetze.

[126] By 15 February 1942, Schulze-Boysen had written a six-page pamphlet titled Die Sorge Um Deutschlands Zukunft geht durch das Volk!

[133] In the spring of 1942, Schulze-Boysen confided in Günther Weisenborn that for five years she had worked to resist the Nazis on behalf of Harro, but she found that she could not face the fear any longer.

[138] She immediately demanded a divorce stating she would seek legal advice from Herbert Engelsing but Harro convinced her to stay, informing her that they knew too much about the resistance effort.

[141] In another letter she received, a soldier spoke in lyrical terms of certain insects that he loved and could not harm, one was the potato beetle and included a photograph of him about to hurl a small baby against the wall.

Kurt Schumacher took several copies when he returned to his unit in Poznan and the group hoped for a snowball effect in its distribution, to see the letter pass up the chain of command.

[149] When Wilhelm Vauck, principal cryptographer of the Funkabwehr, the radio counterintelligence department of the Abwehr,[148] received the ciphers from Wenzel, he was able to decipher some of the older messages.

[155] She was taken to the basement cells (German:Hausgefängnis) in the most dreaded address in all of German-occupied Europe, Reich Security Main Office headquarters at 8 Prinz-Albert-Straße (Prince Albert street) containing department AMT IV, the Gestapo and put into protective custody (Schutzhäftlinge) by them.