Trudel Baumann Betrays a Secret

Otto Quangel visits Trudel Baumann at her factory to break the news that his son, her fiancé Otto, has been killed. Getting her called away costs him a favour with her foreman. When she meets him in a drafty corridor lined with posters, he pulls her away from one announcing a hanging 'In the Name of the German People', but after hearing the news she returns to it anyway, weeping into its shadow. Grief-stricken, Trudel reveals she belongs to a small resistance cell at the factory, three men and herself, built on the idea that they are 'good seeds' in a field of weeds who must refuse to become Nazis. Horrified at having blabbed, she swears him to secrecy; Quangel offers to cut contact for her safety, but she refuses, resolving to visit Anna that night. Left alone, he nods grimly at the poster she wept before, then hurries home by streetcar despite his usual thrift.

Trudel's cell gives Quangel his first glimpse of organised resistance, her 'good seeds' language planting an idea rather than a plan. His nod at the poster, disowned at once as theatrical, catches a man testing a gesture of defiance before he can admit to wanting one.