Hitlers Peace [Hardcover]

Fans of Kerr's brilliant Berlin Noir trilogy (such as myself), will likely be dismayed by his new this WWII thriller. The brooding mood and fine detail that made that series so memorable is almost entirely absent in this high-level espionage escapade. Which is not to say it isn't entertaining, because it is a reasonable beach/airplane page-turner. But at the heart, it's just a run of the mill 450 page potboiler.

The basic idea is that in 1943, the outcome of the European theater was more or less a foregone conclusion. The Allies would win, and the only questions was how long it would take and at what cost. What Kerr is most interested in is showing all the jostling for position both between the Allies (eg. how much territory is Stalin going to get), and the various factions within Germany, as all parties engage in separate secret peace talks. Amidst this frantic backdoor maneuvering, the Nazi high command comes across less as fearsome masterminds of war and terror than a particularly cunning and nasty group of teenage girls, each attempting to sow dissention, backstab, and rise to the top of postwar Germany. Readers without a fairly good background in the German side of the war (such as myself) will need a scorecard to keep track of who hates who, why, and which people are plotting against each other. It gets so mind-boggling that one half-suspects that if all that energy had only been directed at defeating the Allies we might all be speaking German now.

In any event, the book's protagonist is Prof. Willard Mayer, an American professor of empirical philosophy now employed as an analyst for the OSS due to his pre-war German background and language skills. He is asked by President Roosevelt to evaluate a report on the Katyn Forest Massacre, in which thousands of Polish officers were killed by the Soviets (remember, the Polish were Allied forces). Later, the President asks him to be part of his staff heading to the Tehran Conference where the "Big Three" (Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill) would meet to strategize about the war and bargain about what would happen afterward. En route, Mayer slowly starts to believe he has uncovered some kind of plot to kill one of the Big Three, and most of the middle of the book has him poking around trying to prove this in the face of much skepticism. Meanwhile, we get a lot of stuff from the German side, including Gen. Schellenberg's audacious plot to kill the Big Three, and thus with a single stroke, change the entire complexion of the war. Here, there is a lot of stuff involving long-range bombers, paratroopers and the like (in a historical at the end of the book one learns that paratroopers were inserted to Iran for just such a purpose!).

Other, less important historical tidbits are plastered all over the place, few of which add to the story. More problematic is Mayer, a protagonist bordering on anti-hero who is entirely self-centered, pretentious, and irritating. On the one hand, it's nice to come across a thriller protagonist who isn't a superhero, but did he have to be that annoying? His major transformation near the end feels totally unconvincing and ends the book on a particularly flat note. His presence also gives Kerr an excuse to inject a tiresome running debate concerning moral tradeoffs and realpolitik that reads high-school stuff -- on the level of "If you could go back in time and shoot Hitler, would you? Would that be a moral act?" Schellenberg is a much more interesting character, and the sections set in Germany tend to be the stronger ones. The entire book is populated by historical figures, who tend to overshadow everything else when they are on stage. All the usual suspects are there, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Himmler, Borman, Goering, et al, but we also get a surprisingly indiscreet Kim Philby, as well as Lord Rothschild , and even Evelyn Waugh makes a rather silly cameo.

Definitely not what fans of the Berlin Noir trilogy would have hoped for. Those who enjoy WWII thrillers will probably be a lot more forgiving -- after all, it is a pretty good read when compared with most of the genre. And to Kerr's credit, he does manage to unveil one big whammy of a twist and his fictionalization of famous historical figures rises well above caricature.

The title of Phillip Kerr's latest work, "Hitler's Peace", certainly has an Orwellian ring to it and the very provocative (though counterfactual) thought of a proposed secret peace agreement between the Allies and Hitler's Nazis in 1944 forms the basis of this fast paced thriller.

Kerr wraps his plot around a series of real events from the Second World War, specifically, a series of conferences attended by the leaders of the Allied forces: the Cairo Conference of November 22-26, 1943 (attended by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek) and the Tehran Conference of November 28-December 1, 1943 (at which Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin).

As the book opens, Kerr wraps these conferences around top-secret peace feelers between the Nazi leadership and the various Allied nations. The powers that be in Nazi Germany (and the question of who amongst these powers are involved is a key element of the book) have decided that a two-front war cannot be won. They believe that a general peace agreement may save the day. Failing that, these unspecified highly placed Nazi officials think that making a separate peace with the U.S. and Britain before the expected Allied invasion of France in the summer of 1944 will allow Hitler to turn all his guns against `the Bolsheviks.'

The story is driven by the key protagonist, Willard Mayer. Mayer is an Ivy-League philosopher, fluent in German and currently an analyst with the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. Mayer lived in Germany before the war and also had some connection to the USSR's secret police, the NKVD. Mayer is asked to assist Franklin Roosevelt in formulating a response to Hitler's proposed peace. "Hitler's Peace" is filled with twists and it is impossible to reveal more about the plot without spoiling the plot.

Although "Hitler's Peace" was a fun, easy read it was far from perfect. An author faces a very difficult task when he/she incorporates real people into a work of fiction. This is particularly difficult when those real people are famous enough for the reader to have a sense of how a Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, or Roosevelt would have acted in real life. If there is too big a gap between our sense of the person and the book's plot then the natural ability to suspend disbelief for purposes of a piece of fiction gets more difficult. That was the case for me with "Hitler's Peace". Churchill's actions seemed in character as did Stalin's (to a lesser extent). However, and even though I know this is fiction, Hitler and Roosevelt's actions just didn't fall within a `zone of reasonableness' for me.

Kerr was more successful in the cameo appearances made by real life but less famous figures. During the course of the book Mayer runs into characters such as Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, members of the British intelligence elite who later turned out to be Soviet double agents. Mayer also runs into a British officer named Enoch Powell. Powell served in the British and was a Greek scholar of great renown. He later became a Member of Parliament known mostly for his virulently anti-immigration views toward non-Caucasian immigrants to Britain. These walk-on appearances were well done and added a bit of fun to the book.

All in all I liked Hitler's Peace despite the reservations expressed above. The book is fast-paced and each chapter leaves you wanting to find out a bit more before you close the book for the night. I'd say this is a good book to take along for a summer weekend at the beech or a fall evening. I'd rate this at 3 and 1/2 stars.

I suspect I am not alone in being frustrated at the number of so-so books Philip Kerr has done since his early days with Berlin Noir and A Philosophical Investigation. If you found The Grid, Esau, A Five Year Plan, or The Second Angel to be sub-par, you owe Philip Kerr one more chance.

It's not fair to say too much about what transpires in Hitler's Peace without ruining the story. Suffice to say that he has captured the "you are here" feeling he had in Berlin Noir not only with the Nazi's again, but also with the Americans, and to a lesser degree with the Russians.

And he has a very clever idea at the heart of the book. As usual, the history of ideas, and particularly the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (not attributed here as it was in A Philosophical Investigation) abound throughout the plot.

Although the historical characters are reasonably well detailed and realistic, some of the ones created by Kerr are a bit thin. There are a few subplots which don't seem to have much bearing on the story and don't seem to resolve themselves. However, this book is quite worthwhile for 1) The main plot idea; 2) The realism of characters you have read about in history but don't really 'know'; and 3) The way Kerr weaves philosophy into the plot without over doing it.

Welcome back, Mr. Kerr, to a literary genre in which you do very well. Please leave the pot-boilers to Michael Crichton.

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