Berlin

THE WORDS I NEVER WROTE . . . Between the covers

Jane Thynne’s novel spans many decades, and takes us from London, Paris and Berlin to New York. The central characters are sisters Cordelia and Irene Capel. Born into an aristocratic English world, the sisters take very different paths when Irene marries the heir to a German industrial empire and moves to Berlin. Cordelia, meanwhile, hoping for a career as a writer, takes a job as a secretary at the Paris office of a London newspaper.

Irene discovers – at first with amusement and then, as the true nature of the party is revealed to her, dismay – that her husband Ernst is an admirer of the Nazi party – and the feeling is mutual. At social functions she rubs shoulders with, among others, Herman Goering and Reinhardt Heydrich. She also meets Martha Dodd, the captivating daughter of the American Ambassador. Dodd went on to have a career as a novelist and Soviet spy, but shortly before her father is recalled to America, she tells Irene what Berlin is really like:

“I had a lover once who was chief of police and he put the fear of the devil into me. He said Berlin was a vast network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate from which no one could escape.”

Along the way, we meet other real life characters such as Hardy Amies, Adolph Eichmann, Arthur Koestler and Kim Philby. Jane Thynne’s account of the paradox of late 1930s Germany is familiar, but still painful to read. On the one hand there was the booming economy, miniscule employment, and a burgeoning sense of national identity. On the other hand, the relentless surveillance by the Gestapo and the descent into state sponsored thuggery should haunt everyone, including modern Germans and its neighbours who sat back and watched it happen.

The narrative is cleverly constructed, and its master stroke is the introduction of modern day photographer Juno Lambert who buys an old portable typewriter for a photo shoot and uncovers a mystery that is as enchanting as it is chilling. Jane Thynne poses an exquisitely painful moral question, which is centred around the life of Irene. We see her as a newly-wed in the heady days of pre-war Berlin, with a glittering social life on the arm of her husband, Ernst. Their villa on the shores of the Wannsee, is a paradise, with a fertile garden rich with fruit and delicious vegetables. Literally ‘the house next door’ was where Reinhardt Heydrich chaired the infamous conference which drove the final nail into the coffin of Europe’s Jews.

We see Irene in the early months of 1945. The house is undamaged, but Ernst is long dead, killed on the Eastern Front. She boils the remains of vegetables to make an apology for soup. She trades her Cartier watch for a rabbit at the butcher shop. Everywhere, the talk is ‘what will happen when the Ivan’s arrive?’ The women of Berlin know only too well.

The moral question is this. Do we sympathise with people like Irene, betrayed by a corrupt and vainglorious government, or do we opt for that word (that only the Germans could invent) Schadenfreude? Although, wordwise, most of the novel is full of the stories of Irene and Cordelia, Juno Lambert is the key which unlocks the past. Juno rents the Villa Weissmuller in 2016 and, having read Cordelia’s manuscript, hidden in the case of the antique typewriter, she is anxious to find out if the sisters were ever reconciled.

There is an exquisite moment of irony when, with the Red Army rampaging through Berlin, we read how Irene’s recent lover, Obersturmbannführer Alex Hoffman, and the young Jewish man she has been sheltering for weeks, cower together in the hastily constructed hiding place behind the ornate shelves of the house’s library.

This magnificent novel is many things: a record of atrocities almost too awful to contemplate, let alone describe in words; several stories of love, some of which end in tragedy; a hymn of praise for Berlin, a city which has suffered unspeakable cruelty, but a place resilient enough to reinvent itself; finally, it is an encomium for the human spirit and an echo of Larkin’s words, “What will survive of us is love.” The Words I Never Wrote is published by Sharpe Books and is available now.

July 1, 2026 0

LEHRTER STATION . . . Between the covers

John Russell is an Anglo American journalist turned spy. His problem is that he has spied for too many different countries. He has spied for the Russians, the Nazis, the British and the Americans – and they all have a piece of him. In his heart of hearts he is a pre-Stalin communist. Once a member of the party, he is a man who once believed in the promise of genuine socialism.

December 1945 finds him in London with his long term girlfriend Effie Koenen, his son by his marriage to a wife long since dead, and Effie’s sister. He is basically a puppet waiting for the next tug on his strings. This time it comes from the Russians. Such is Stalin’s power and reach in the postwar world that he can easily persuade his allies to terminate Russell’s temporary haven in London, and so it is that Russell and Effie are forced to return to the shattered remains of Berlin.

Effie was a considerable star in the pre-war film world and is anxious to resume her career. For Russell it is a question literally of life and death. If he does not follow the instructions of the NKVD he knows that his life will not be worth living, nor those of Effie or his son Paul. Paul fought in the Wehrmacht in the dying days of the war but has been allowed to re-settle in London as part of the Russian deal for Russell’s continued cooperation.

One historical issue that runs through the book is the plight of Europe’s Jews. Despite survivors living in Berlin being given special victim status by the occupying administration, and thus receiving better rations, further afield many Jews still found themselves homeless and unwanted. The British are determined to limit the number of Jews heading to the new land in Arab Palestine. The Russians are indifferent and the Americans are torn between support for the British and an awareness of the voting power of Jewish American citizens.

Across central Europe there are several Jewish organisations determined to avenge the deaths of their fellow citizens, by whatever means necessary. Russell meets a young man called Michael who is in one such group.

Michael smiled for the first time and it lit up his face.

“Do you know Psalm 94?” he asked.
“Not that I remember.”
“He will repay them for their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness. The Lord our God will wipe them out.”
“The Nazis I assume? So if God has them in his sights, where do you come in? Are you God’s instruments?”
“Not at all. if there is a God he has clearly abandoned the Jews. We will do the work that he should have done.”

Screen Shot 2023-07-09 at 08.43.41

David Downing (left), writing this book in 2012, was obviously well aware of how things have played out in our own times, but he has Russell reunited with a young Jew who he had helped escape Germany years earlier.

“And I’ll tell you something else,”. Albert said. “I understand why the Poles are expelling the Germans from their new territories, and I understand why they are making it impossible for the Jews to return. If my friends and I have our way the Arabs will all be expelled from Palestine. Anything else is just stirring up trouble for the future.”
“That will put a bit of a strain on the worlds sympathy, don’t you think?”
“Once we have the land we can do without the sympathy.”

Russell’s sense of world weariness and and the depth of his cynicism about those who employ him does not prevent him from being a compassionate man. In order to file a marketable story with his London agent, Russell embeds himself with what could be called a gang of people smugglers, except the people that are being smuggled are Jews desperate to get away from Europe and start a new life in Palestine. The route involves a long and arduous trek – literally across mountains and rivers in – order to get to Italy and then to the Mediterranean Sea. There is one bitterly ironic scene where, on the way, Russell meets up with a man who he knows is a former SS officer. The man is with his young son and Russell promises not to betray them to the Jews, basically because of the young boy. In an awful reversal of what happened to so many Jews years earlier, the pair are identified as non Jews because they are uncircumcised. Russell cannot prevent the father being gunned down; neither can he persuade the boy to leave his father’s body as the convoy moves on.

In another sub plot of the book, Russell tries to locate two missing Jewish people. One is very much close and personal to him and Effie. Earlier in the war Effie had given a home to Rosa, an apparently orphaned Jewish girl. She has now taken Rosa as the child she now knows she will probably never have, and Rosa has gone with them to England. However, at the back of Effie’s mind is that if either of Rosa’s parents should be discovered alive, this will pose a great problem should they wish to reclaim their daughter. Using the same sources – mostly meticulous Nazi bureaucratic records of who was sent where – Russell also tries to discover the fate of a young Silesian Jew called Miriam who we met in an earlier book in this excellent series. (Click the link below for more information)

https://fullybooked2017.com/tag/david-downing/

With a mixture of luck, cunning – and favours from friends – Russell manages to survive the t. ands of his Russian minders goes fatally wrong. By the end of the book Russell has peeled back layer after layer of spectacularly evil deeds committed by all parties and nationalities, but somehow his personal integrity – and that of Effie – survive. This is a compelling literary journey through a wasteland which is both moral and literal.

July 9, 2023 0

TWO MEN IN BERLIN . . . Bernie Gunther and John Russell (part two)

In part one of this feature I looked at the two fictional characters Bernie Gunther and John Russell and what happens in the novels, by Philip Kerr and David Downing, both series being rooted in Berlin. There, I dealt with the two series separately, and here I look at what divides them, and what common ground they share

In an imaginary world the two men might have met but, of course, they never did, despite Gunther being House Detective for the celebrated Adlon hotel (below), an establishment sometimes patronised by Russell.

Both men fought (for opposing sides) in the Great War and, in theory, coul have faced each other on opposite sides of No Man’s Land. Both have indelible memories of comrades being blown away by artillery and their tunics smeared with the brains of best mates. Both have an almost umbilical connection with Berlin, its parks and rivers, its tram and railway stations and its monumental architecture.

Gunther is on nodding terms with such Nazi luminaries as Joseph Goebbels, Rheinhardt Heydrich and Arthur Nebe. In contrast, John Russell operates well below this elevated level of the Nazi heirarchy, although he references such monsters as Beria and Himmler, and does have face to face meetings with Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (left).

John Russell is, largely, lucky in love. True, he has a failed marriage behind him but Paul, the son conceived and born when he was still married to Ilse, is a huge part of his life. He is also madly in reciprocated love with a prominent German actress, Effi Koenen. In the final novel, Masaryk Station, they are married. Effi is safe and well in Berlin – albeit in a Berlin being carved up between the Americans, the British, the Russians and the communist Germans who would go on to rule East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall. John and Effi have an adopted daughter Rosa, and Paul, who served as a teenager with the Wehrmacht, has survived the cataclysm of Hitler’s strategic blunders in the last two years of the war, and by 1948 he is living in London.

Gunther, in contrast, has known nothing but trauma in family terms. His wife dies in tragic circumstance and then his girlfriend – whi s regnant with his child – dies in one of the most infamous acts of WW2 – the sinking (by a Russian submarine) of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945. This account, detailed in The Other Side of Silence (2016) is, for me, the most compelling part of any of the Gunther novels:

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a cruise liner pressed into service as a military transport vessel, and in January 1945 it attempted to sail across the Baltic from Prussia. It was overloaded with some 10,000 personnel, mostly Germans fleeing the advance of the Red Army. The Soviet submarine S-13, captained by a maverick drunk and against orders sent three torpedoes into the side of the Wilhelm Gustloff. The ship sank killing 9,400, and is the worst maritime disaster in history.

Gunther is not a sexual predator, but beds women when they they present themselves, wherever and whenever. Russell remains resolutely faithful to Effi, but as she is an improbably beautiful film star with a healthy sexual appetite, we should not be placing the martyr’s crown on Russell’s head just yet, but he always has someone to fight for – Effi and Rosa, and his son Paul. By contrast Gunther is mostly only fighting for himself and his tarnished ideas of what is right and what is wrong. When he dies, he suspects that there will be few mourners as his coffin is laid in earth.

As far as Berlin is concerned, the two series run on parallel tracks. They share the final decadence of the Weimar years, the descent into Nazi rule, the devastation after the spring of 1945, and the finger-on-the-trigger tensions of the 1960s.

Russell’s geographical stamping grounds are tight: his domain is Europe – Prague, Triest, Belgrade, Danzig, occasionally London but – of course – always Berlin. Gunther goes where the job – or his pursuers – send him. In the novels, we see him operating all over the world – Argentina, Cuba, Greece, the South of France and Russia. Neither David Downing nor Philip Kerr waste time on political posturing, but both remind us that no known measurement – not even the thickness of the proverbial Rizla cigarette paper – separates the degeneration of Hitler and Stalin. This is never more prominent than in A Man Without Breath in which Gunther is sent by Goebbels to Smolensk. His task? To prove that it was the Russians who murdered thousands of Polish officers and flung their corpses into deep trenches. In the real world, it was not until the 1990s that Russia admitted its guilt.

Gunther is – first and last – a cop. He is physically imposing and familiar with violence. Russell is – at least in his day job – a freelance journalist, and avoids physical confrontation if he possibly can. Stylistically, the novels are also chalk and cheese. We share Gunther’s world through his own voice while we learn what John Russell is up to via the invisible third party. There is another important difference in the way the two series sit in what could be called a family tree of thrillers. Philip Kerr shapes his man more in the image of Philip Marlowe, albeit a Marlowe much more enthusiastic about using his fists (or any other available weapon). Gunther also echoes Marlowe’s bitter poetry, and talent for memorable descriptions. This is Bernie Gunther on Heidrich:

“Tall, skeletally thin, his long, pale face lacking expression, like some plaster of Paris death mask, and his Jack Frost fingers clamped behind his ramrod-straight back, Heydrich stared outside for a moment or two, saying nothing to either of us.”

David Downing portrays the world of espionage in a way familiar to readers of John Le Carré; this world is undeniably dangerous and fatal to those who make mistakes, but it it is less overtly dramatic, and – although more subtle – nonetheless deadly. John Russell is – in his heart – a socialist, but one who despairs of the direction taken by post 1945 communist regimes. Bernie Gunther is resolutely German and someone who has suffered grievously at the hands of the Russians, but a man who has gazed into the depths of evil plumbed by Hitler and his minions and realises that there are four combatants in his particular battle – the Germans, the Russians, the Anglo-Americans – and himself.

David Downing’s series ends with John Russell and Effi, like tens of thousands of other Berliners, becoming engulfed by the total Russian shut-down of land access to the city in 1948 – the act that precipitated the legendary Berlin Airlift. Philip Kerr’s premature death in 2018 means we shall never know if Bernie Gunther eventually enjoyed his retirement, but David Downing is – happily – still with us, and an eighth novel, Union Station, is due in 2024, and jumps forward to 1953, with Russell living in California.

June 23, 2023 1

TWO MEN IN BERLIN . . . Bernie Gunther and John Russell (part one)

Bernie Gunther is the anti-hero of fourteen novels by the late Philip Kerr. Berlin cop, turned private investigator, sometime employee of Goebbels and Heydrich, and finally an international pariah, Gunther’s exploits span post Great War Germany to international intrigue in the 1950s. John Russell is an Anglo American journalist who begins the series of seven books by David Downing based in Germany. The books are all named after railway stations and span the years 1938 – 1948.

BERNIE GUNTHER

Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir series was published between 1989 and 1991, and introduced the world to Bernie Gunther. Strangely, it wasn’t until 2006 that the books March Violets, The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem were followed up with The One from the Other, and until his death the Edinburgh-born author brought us regular episodes from the life of his tough, resourceful and compassionate hero. The final novel in the series, Metropolis, was published in 2019 after Kerr’s death and, ironically, is set in the earliest part of Gunther’s career.

To begin with, Gunther has survived two world wars and seen death in all its forms. However, what makes the series fascinating is the challenge he faces, which is to keep his moral compass steady. Uniquely amongst fictional detectives, Bernie has to operate during the dark and savage days of the Third Reich.

Having returned from the trenches of The Great War, Gunther becomes a member of Kripo (Kriminalpolizei), the investigative branch of the Berlin police. During the turbulent years of the 1930s, he tries to steer an even and honest course between the rival political thuggery of the Nazis and the Communists, and when Hitler seizes power he eventually finds himself forced to join the SD (Sicherheistdienst), the intelligence division of the SS. Sent to Ukraine as part of an extermination group but having no stomach for this, he is shunted into the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, and is captured by the Russians. After the War, his ambiguous record makes him a person of interest to the Americans, the Russians and the leadership of the GDR, and he leads a dangerous existence among Nazi refugees in Cuba and South America.

Like John Lawton and George Macdonald Frazer, with their respective Freddie Troy and Flashman series, Kerr places fictional characters within real events and alongside celebrated or notorious historical figures. And, he manages to do so in a fascinating and totally plausible way. Assuming that Gunther was born in the mid-to-late 1890s, he can still be at work in the mid 1950s, albeit a heavier, slower and more breathless version of his former self – a latter day Ulysses.

“Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield,” writes Kerr of his hero.

The author’s style, particularly his use of dialogue, set him apart from most contemporary writers. His books were genuine literature, although I suspect written without literary pretension. In Prague Fatale, he described Gunther meeting an American war correspondent in a Berlin blackout:

“His Old Spice and Virginia tobacco came ahead of him like a motorcycle outrider with a pennant on his mudguard. Solid footsteps bespoke sturdy wing-tip shoes that could have ferried him across the Delaware….his sweet and minty breath smelled of real toothpaste and testified to his having access to a dentist with teeth in his head who was still a decade off retirement.”

In his toughness, moral strength and cynical view of the world, Gunther is very much the heir of Philip Marlowe. His descriptions, sarcasm and one-line put-downs can be very funny. This is a line from A Quiet Flame, which came out in 2008:

“The isosceles of muscles between her chin and her collar-bone had stiffened, like something metallic. If I’d had a little wand I could have used it to tap out the part for triangle in the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin.”
For more on Bernie Gunther, click the link below

https://fullybooked2017.com/tag/bernie-gunther/

JOHN RUSSELL

Russell is an English journalist with an American mother. Until 1927 he was a member of the Communist Party but, like many others, he fell out of love with the kind of socialism being espoused by Stalin and his acolytes. After serving with the British army in The Great War, he moved to Berlin, married Ilse, and they had a son – Paul. The marriage didn’t last.

In terms of the actual time setting, Wedding Station (2021) gives us the earliest glimpse of John Russell.It is just months after Hitler’s rise to power, and Russell watches the Reichstag burn. Four weeks after Hitler’s accession, brownshirt mobs stalk the streets and the press prints what the Party tells it to.

In the first book (in publication terms) in the series, Zoo Station (2007) we are are introduced to Russell. It is 1939, Berlin, and Russell is an accredited American journalist, safe (for now) from the excesses of Hitler’s government. He has a glamorous girlfriend in Effie Koenen, who is a rising star in German cinema, but he still has a relatively civilised relationship with Ilse – and her new husband – and has regular access to Paul.

His communist background, American passport and fluency in both Russian and German make John Russell a unique target for the intelligence services of all the major powers and, almost like a serial bigamist he becomes wedded to the Sicherheitsdienst, the NKVD, the Abwehr, and the OSS. He plays each one off against the other, more or less successfully and, along with Effie and son Paul, survives the war, but finds ‘the peace’ post 1945 just as traumatic. In Masaryk Station (2013) set in 1948, Russell is told by a Soviet stooge that there is still a war, but that it is different:

“That war is over. It’s time you realised that another struggle – one every bit as crucial – is now underway.”

One of the main anxieties in Russell’s complex life is his son Paul. As the boy reaches his teens he becomes – like millions of other German lads – a member of the Hitlerjugend, and this threatens to drive a wedge between father and so. In Stettin Station (2009) we are in November/December 1941, and a famed German air ace of WW1, Ernst Udet is dead. In fact, he shot himself, disillusioned with Luftwaffe chief Goering, and the general conduct of the war, but for the purposes of national solidarity the official story is that he died in a plane crash. As his elaborate funeral cortege passes their viewing point, Paul chides his father for not making the Seig Heil salute with enough reverence. Russell dreads the day when Paul is conscripted to the army and sent to fight on the Eastern Front.

John Russell’s contact with senior Nazi officials is limited, but he does occasionally come face to face with Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, the intelligence service of the German army. One of Russell’s many uneasy allegiances is to the Abwehr which, in fiction if not in fact, has been seen as the acceptable face of the Third Reich. This is perhaps born out by the fact that Canaris was executed for treason on 9th April 1945, in the dying days of Hitler’s regime.

Russell’s connection with Joseph Goebbels is more distant, and it is through Effi Koenen. She is probably the most ‘box office’ star of German cinema, and Goebbels – as propaganda minister – has absolute control over what films can be made, and what message they send out. As such, Effi is much sought after. Again in Stettin Station David Downing presents us with the bitter irony that Effi – pale, dark haired and sexually vibrant – is required to play a Jewish woman in a film with a vehemently anti-Jewish screenplay. For full reviews of Silesian Station and Wedding Station click the link below.

https://fullybooked2017.com/tag/david-downing/

IN PART TWO OF THIS FEATURE
I will examine the differences – and similarities between Bernie Gunther and John Russell.

June 18, 2023 0

BLACKOUT . . . Between the covers

December 1939. Berlin. The snow lies deep and crisp and even, and Kriminalpolizei Inspector Horst Shenke is summoned to the Reich Security Main Office to meet Oberführer Heinrich Müller, a protege of Reinhardt Heydrich and recently appointed head of the Gestapo. Müller has a tricky problem in the shape of a former film star, Gerda Korzeny. Her husband is a lawyer and Nazi Party member who specialises in redrafting potentially awkward pieces of existing legislation in favour of the Party. And now Gerda is dead. Found by a railway track with awful head wounds. She had also been brutally raped. But what does this have to do with Heinrich Müller? His problem is that Gerda Korzeny was known to be having an affair with Oberst Karl Dorner, an officer in the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence organisation, and the Gestapo man wants the matter dealt with quickly and discreetly.

We learn that Schenke is a very good copper, but that his career has stalled because he has, thus far, refused to become a Party member. In his younger days, Schenke was a well-known racing driver, until a near-fatal accident forced him to quit the sport. His only legacy from those heady days is a permanently damaged knee. He is romantically involved with a woman called Karin Canaris, and if that surname rings a bell with WW2 history buffs, yes, she is the niece of the real-life head of the Abwehr, Admiral William Canaris.

Although he initially believes that the case will not bring him into direct conflict with local Nazi officials, Schenke’s discovery that Berlin has a serial killer on the loose is of little comfort, as everyone in the Party, from Goebbels down to the lowliest apartment block supervisor is anxious to preserve public confidence in these early months of the war. Oberst Dorner takes a step or two down the ladder of Schenke’s suspects when the killer strikes again, but this time fails to finish the job. The victim survives with bruises and shock, but Schenke finds himself in a tight corner when, after investigating the young woman’s several false identities, he discovers that her real name is Ruth Frankel, and she is Jewish. In normal times, her racial profile shouldn’t matter, but these are not normal times, and Party officials take a dim view of wasting valuable resources on any case involving Jews.

Oberführer Müller, (right) in an attempt to keep tracks on what Schenke is doing, sends a young Gestapo officer called Liebvitz to shadow the Kripo officer, and that allows us to meet a rather unusual fellow. These days, we would probably say he has Asperger’s Syndrome, as he takes everything literally, has no sense of humour and a formidable eye for detail. He is also a crack shot, and this skill serves both Schenke and the department well by the end of the book.

Simon Scarrow cleverly allows Schenke makes one or two mistakes, which makes for a very tense finale, but also establishes him as a human being like so many other fictional coppers before him – tired to the point of exhaustion, frustrated by officialdom and trouble by his conscience. Before the book ends, we also meet the deeply sinister – despite a superficial icy charm – Reinhardt Heydrich.

Comparisons between the worlds of Horst Schenke, Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther and David Downing’s John Russell are inevitable, but not in any way damaging. A good as they are, neither Kerr nor Downing have taken out a copyright on the world of WW2 Berlin. Simon Scarrow shines a new light on a city and a time that many of us think we know well. He creates vivid new characters – and revitalises our enduring fascination with some of the historical monsters that stalked the earth in the 1930s and 40s. I sincerely hope that this becomes a series. If so, it will run for a long time, and grip many thousands of readers. Blackout was first published in hardback in March this year, and this Headline paperback is available now.

September 30, 2021 1

SILESIAN STATION . . Between the covers

Followers of this website will, hopefully, have read my 1st May review of David Downing’s Wedding Station (click link to visit). It is actually the seventh book in the series, but is a prequel, being set in 1933. I was so impressed by it that I have raided my piggy bank and bought several others. This review, then, is of a book I have bought for pleasure, rather than a freebie from a publisher. Silesian Station was first published in 2008, and is the second in the series. The central character is John Russell, an Anglo-American political journalist. He married (but later divorced) a German woman, and as their son Paul is a German citizen, Russell is allowed to make his home in Berlin. We are in the late summer of 1939. Six years into the Thousand Year Reich. Six months since Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. Just days away, maybe, from an invasion of Poland?

Russell is a survivor, a man who can usually talk his way out of trouble. Multilingual, and with that all-important American passport, he keeps a wary eye on the features he wires back to his newspaper in the states, but has – more or less – managed to stay out of trouble with the various arms of the Nazi state – principally the Gestapo, the SS and their nasty little brother the Sicherheitsdienst. Russell fought in the British Army in The Great War, but in its wake became a committed Communist. Although he has now ‘left the faith’ he still maintains discreet contacts with the remaining ‘comrades’ in Berlin. With that in mind, it is unsurprising, perhaps, that he has been manoeuvred into the sticky position where both the German and Russian intelligence services believe that he is working uniquely for them, and he is being used to pass on false information from one to the other.

It’s probably not a bad idea at this stage to do a brief political and strategic summary of how the land lay in the late summer of 1939. Germany and the Soviet Union were – in theory – the best of friends, but divided both geographically and in terms of future intent by Poland. Hitler still smarted from the loss of previously German territory after the Treaty of Versailles, while both he and Stalin had eyes on encroachment, to the east in Hitler’s case and to the west for Stalin. Hitler knows that Britain and France are treaty-bound to protect Poland, but is more worried about the reaction from the Kremlin should he try to retake the former German lands of Prussia.

Back to the more human and personal elements of Silesia Station. Russell has agreed to do a favour for his brother-in-law, and investigate the disappearance of a Jewish girl, Miriam Rosenfeld, who has been sent by her parents – who own a small farm near Breslau (modern day Wrocław) to live with her uncle in Berlin, for the chillingly ironic reason that the family are among the few Jews left in the area, and they feel threatened. Russell – aided by his film star girlfriend Effie Koenen – start their search, but Miriam seems to have vanished into thin air. Effie is integral to the story. Very beautiful, and a fine actress, it doesn’t hurt that Hitler’s minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, is an avid film buff, and has rubbed shoulders with Effie at premieres of her films, and is apparently a great admirer.

Months later, of course, all these ambiguities were wiped out by the fury of war, but John Russell has one other contradiction to deal with. Another acquaintance, Sarah Grostein is ‘walking out’ with a prominent SS officer who is – clearly – unaware that she is Jewish. When their relationship goes disastrously wrong, Russell feels obliged to pick up the pieces.

Aside from the human dramas, Downing describes with great clarity the fateful days before the Soviets and the Nazis – via the short-lived Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – agreed to allow each other to live and let live, and how that fateful decision gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland, thus triggering six years of death, terror and mayhem.

Is Miriam Rosenfeld found? Where did she go? Can John Russell and Effie Koenen keep one step ahead of both the SS and the NKVD? Well, the fact that they appear in later books will answer the last question, at least, but you will have a few hours of tense reading a classic piece of historical fiction while you find out how. Silesian Station is published by Old Street Publishing Ltd and is available now.

June 1, 2021 0

WEDDING STATION . . . Between the covers

Coming late to a well-established series can pose problems for a reviewer but, happily, this book is a prequel to the six published previously. The series is known as the Station Series, written by David Downing, and featuring the investigative crime reporter John Russell. The titles all take their names from railway stations around Berlin. They are Zoo Station (2007), Silesian Station (2008), Stettin Station (2009), Potsdam Station (2010), Lehrter Station (2012), and Masaryk Station (2013).

Fans of the books will have to excuse me while I paint a quick background picture. It is early 1933, and Hitler has been Chancellor for just a few weeks. We begin just hours after the Reichstag fire, and the SA – Sturmabteilung – are going about their grisly business with renewed vigour. Russell is English, a veteran of WW1 – and a former communist – but due to his marriage (now failed) to a German woman, he can happily say, “Ich bin ein Berliner.“

While reporting on the death and mutilation of a young rent boy, Russell is asked by a friend to take on another case, this time on behalf of a senior army officer whose daughter is missing. It is a delicate business, because there is a strong suspicion that Lili Zollitsch has run off with a boyfriend who is an active member of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands.

Russell seems to collect mysterious deaths and disappearances like some men collect stamps. Hard on the heels of the Colonel’s missing daughter, he hears that a prominent genealogist has been killed in what seems to be a case of hit-and-run. One of Herr Mommsen’s most popular services had been producing evidence of racial purity – as in no trace of Jewish blood – for his clients. Had he made a rather unfortunate discovery and signed his own death warrant? If this weren’t enough, a well-known astrologer has gone missing – believed permanently – and when Russell investigates via one of Harri Haum’s customers he is astonished when she tells him that in a crystal ball-reading session a few days before the event, the seer had predicting the burning of the Reichstag.

But there is yet more for Russell to deal with. One of the friends of the murdered rent boy contacts the journalist and hands him the dead lad’s diary, in which he has faithfully recorded the names of his clients, as well as intimate physical descriptions. As Russell turns the pages, he finds the names of prominent members of the SA. Now while homosexuality is – along with communism, and being Jewish – a big no-no in the eyes of the Schutzstaffel (SS) it is a different matter in the rival organisation, the SA. The SA’s head, Ernst Röhm along with a good number fellow brownshirts are, as coy newspaper obituaries used to say, “confirmed bachelors.”

The final straw for Russell – and one that very nearly breaks the back of the proverbial desert beast of burden – is when a knock on the door of his apartment reveals a young woman called Evchen who, years earlier, was a communist comrade. Not only is she still a party member, she has just shot dead one SA trooper and seriously injured another. And now she seeks shelter. How Russell gets himself out of these various pickles is gripping stuff. Some of the tension is obviously diminished by the fact that we know that the journalist survives to feature in six further books, but it is still a very good read.

We are clearly in Bernie Gunther territory here, and comparisons are inevitable, but in no way negative. This is a compelling read and a chill reminder – if any were necessary – of the gathering storm facing Germany and the wider world in the 1930s. Wedding Station is published by Old Street Publishing. The hardback is available now, and the paperback version will be out on 4th May.

May 1, 2021 1

METROPOLIS . . . Between the covers

First up, Metropolis is a bloody good detective story. Philip Kerr gives us a credible copper, he lets us see the same clues and evidence that the central character sees and, like all the best writers do, he throws a few false trails in our path and encourages us to follow them. We are in Berlin in the late 1920s. A decade after the German army was defeated on the battlefield and its political leaders presided over a disintegrating home front, some things are beginning to return to normal. Yes, there are crippled ex-soldiers on the streets selling bootlaces and matches, and there are clubs in the city where the determined thrill-seeker can indulge every sexual vice known to man – and a few practices that surely have their origin in hell. The bars, restaurants and cafes of Berlin are buzzing with talk of a new political party, but this is Berlin, and Berliners are much too sophisticated and cynical to do anything other than mock the ridiculous rhetoric coming from the National Socialists. Besides, most of them are Bavarians and since when did a Bavarian have either wit, word or worth?

The copper is, of course, Bernie Gunther. Enthusiasts have followed his career from its infancy in the Berlin kripo of the Weimar Republic, through the dark days of World War II (accompanied by such luminaries as Reinhard Heydrich and Joseph Goebbels.) We have held our breath in the 1950s as Gunther tries to elude hunters who, mistakenly, have his name on a list of Nazi war criminals. We have been in the same rooms as Eva Peron and William Somerset-Maugham. Our man has led us a merry dance through mainland Europe, Cuba and Argentina but, sadly:

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

Metropolis sees Gunther in pursuit of a Berlin Jack The Ripper who is certainly “down on whores.” Four prostitutes are killed and scalped, but when the fifth girl to die is the daughter of a well-connected city mobster, her death is a game-changer, and Gunther suddenly has a whole new world of information and inside knowledge at his fingertips. He is drawn into another series of killings, this time the shooting of disabled war veterans. Are the two sets of murders connected? When the police receive gloating letters, apparently from the perpetrator, does it mean that someone from the emergent extreme right wing of politics is, as they might put it, “cleaning up the streets”?

As ever in the Gunther novels, we meet real people from the period, exquisitely researched and re-imaged by the author. As well as the actual senior police officers of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei, Kerr introduces us to the artists Otto Dix and George Grosz. Gunther rubs shoulders with theatre folk too, but he is no fan of the singing of Lotte Lenya:

“..the mezzo-soprano could hold a note no better than I could hang on to a hot poker. She was plain, too – I caught sight of her onstage as I made my way up to one of the dressing rooms – one of those thin, pale-faced, red-haired Berlin girls who remind me of a safety match.”

On the bright side, Gunther’s trip to The Neues Theater (above) is not entirely wasted, as he meets Brigitte Mölbling. He sees:

“..an Amazonian blonde whose perfectly proportioned windswept head lookd like the mascot on the hood of a fast car; she had a cool smile, a strong nose, and eye-brows that were so perectly drawn they might have been put here by Raphael or Titian.”

Mölbling helps Gunther disguise himself as one of the disabled ex-soldiers, as he reluctantly accepts the role in order to attract the killer who, in his letters to the cops, signs himself Dr. Gnadenschuss. Gunther’s trap eventually draws forth the predator, but not in the way either he or his bosses might have anticipated.

Philip Kerr died on 23^rd March 2018 and Metropolis is his final work. Of all the many portraits of Bernie Gunther, which one does he leave us with? Our man is young. He is handsome. His four years in the trenches were brutal, but he survived and he is resilient. The cynicism? If new-born babies feel anything other than hungry or full, cold or warm, wet or dry, then perhaps the infant Bernhard ruefully first opened his blue eyes and gazed on a world which he already knew was full of imperfections and disappointment. But let Bernie have the final word. The entrancing Brigitte ends their relationship, unable to become close to a man who has seen – and will continue to see – so much horror and blood:

“I burned her letter. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had one before, and I suppose that before my time is up, I’ll have others. Never forget, always replace. That’s the first rule of human relationships. Moving on: this is the important part.”

Metropolis is published by Quercus, and is out on 4^th April.

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