Werner Schrader

[1] At approximately the same time, Schrader became a member of Der Stahlhelm (English: The Steel helmet), a veterans organisation after the First World War.

After the Nazi takeover of power in Weimar Germany he vehemently opposed aligning the Stahlhelm with Hitler’s storm troops, eventually losing both his leadership position in the institution and his teaching post.

That month Werner von Schrader attended the Harzburg Congress; in the presence of the up-and-coming Adolf Hitler, he denounced the excesses of the SA or Storm Troopers.

Thus after Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, the unsuccessful so-called "Stahlhelm Putsch" occurred on 27 March 1933 in Braunschweig and Schrader was removed from school service and imprisoned.

While in Munich, he met fellow resister Rudolf von Marogna-Redwitz; while in Vienna, he began to collect documentary evidence of Nazi crimes.

The small four-man sub-unit called the Special Duties Section was completely staffed by anti-Nazis - including Werner Schrader.