Erika Mann openly opposed the Nazis, and in 1933, along with the actress Therese Giehse, she started a cabaret called "Die Pfeffermühle," or "The Pepper Grinder." It had an anti-fascist message that was barely concealed under performances of fairy tales and fables. The act didn't last long in Germany — she went into exile, and the Nazis revoked her passport — but she and Giehse traveled all over Europe, giving 1,000 performances, and the cabaret was extremely popular. She and her friend, poet W.H. Auden, married in 1935, even though she was a lesbian woman and he was a gay man, because the marriage got her a British passport so she could be free of Nazi persecution. She went on to write several books about the Nazis, including School for Barbarians (1938), about the German education system under Nazi control. She was one of the only women who was allowed in to interview the defendants during the Nuremberg trials, and she continued to work as a journalist documenting the climate of post-war Europe.