On Being Empirical
Written: Mar 26 '07
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Excellent prose with an engaging lead character, believable scenes, historical fidelity and a credible plot.
Cons: Attempting a grand epic sweep, Kerr balances between his narrative tale and history.
The Bottom Line: Highly recommend as a readable perspective for reconsidering and reevaluating history.
|
|
|
| wickengel's Full Review: Philip Kerr - Hitler's Peace: A Novel Of The Secon... |
Hitler's Peace is an entirely different work from Philip Kerr's celebrated Berlin Noir Tetralogy featuring Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther(please see my epinions on March Violets, A Pale Criminal, A Requiem for a German and The One from the Other).
Kerr tells this story through the character of Professor Willard Mayer, an OSS man who works directly for President F. D. Roosevelt. The plot turns on the Big Three Conference in Teheran of 1943 during which--and this is a fiction!--Adolf Hitler, knowing that Germany cannot win the war, puts out feelers for peace. Mayer holds documentary proofs of the Katyn Forest Massacre (see wikipedia)as a bargaining chip.
As a character in the proceedings Mayer plays the role of "odd man out." His own opinion as to why he was included was that the President needed a man who understood German and would keep his mouth shut for the greater good. But Mayer is not just an innocent fly on the wall. He can say and do things the major players cannot say or do.
Mayer comes from the American upper class but has German blood on one side. He thinks for himself, and he is very well connected internationally. In fact, Mayer plays an active role in the story, becoming a suspect in the murder of his friend and German spy Elena Pontiatowska and interdicting an assassination attempt on Hitler by American Agent Pawlikowski.
Kerr attempts to gain epic scope through a very large cast of characters, who are a Who's Who of familiar names from Germany, Russia, Britain and the United States. Background intrigues in Germany are played out against the foreground intrigues at the summit. Focus is kept through Mayer.
You have to trust Kerr for his fidelity to the historical record. Kerr, as always, is acutely aware of the importance of history. You will want to consult his Author's Note at the end of the book where he documents for the reader's amusement critical historical facts that he wove into his story. Of course, peace initiatives occurred during the war. You don't fight a war without channels open for resolving war. Trying to peek through the veil of secrecy at Teheran--which veil is still largely intact, Kerr weaves one possible scenario out of many.
Throughout Kerr's prose is clear, his incidents are credible and his overall narrative is linear relative to the complex entanglements of the real motives that surround the conference. He brings to the historical record, which was formed at a time when information was very tightly controlled, a degree of fresh nuance--and this is fair.
By emphasizing the Katyn Forest Massacre, for which the Russians were responsible, Kerr gives himself license to mention that the incident was not mentioned at Teheran and that the Russians were responsible for other atrocities that far exceeded that one.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
wickengel
|
|
Member: Wilson F. Engel III Ph.D.
Location: Nashua, NH
Reviews written: 260
Trusted by: 30 members
About Me:
Thinker, Writer, Editor, Inventor, Novelist: The Virtue of Baseball (www.puff-adder.com), Poet
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.