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At the end of the Second World War some of the highest ranking members of the Nazi party escaped from justice. Guy Walters has travelled the world in pursuit of the real account of how the Nazis escaped at the end of the war, the attempts, sometimes successful, to bring them to justice, and what really happened to those that got away.
 
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CalleFriden | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Mar 3, 2023 |
Reality is sometimes more incredible and implausible than fiction. Some of history’s biggest absurdities and most unlikely events are undeniably actual things that have happened.
The Traitor: A Novel by Guy Walters presents one such incredible story: too hard to really believe, yet based on an actual situation in WW II.
In WW II, the Nazi's assembled a unit of soldiers and others to be used as a force against the allies. This unit consisted not of Germans, but of British citizens who favored the Nazi cause or who were easily co-oped due to their low intellectual capabilities. At it height, this unit actually consisted of 50 such men.
Their role was to serve in undercover activities such as sabotage where their native English speaking skills could facilitate their undercover functions.
Walters' novel imagines the creation of this unit, creates characters to populate the fictional unit, and involves the unit in a fictional, suspenseful tale of intrigue and double dealings.
The work of actual undercover agents and spies often goes entirely undetected and such agents often die with no credit, recognition, or even acknowledgement of who they were, even when their accomplishments were important and memorable events. They leave reputations as being "traitors" in their wakes.
Within the story of this particular special force comes the story of one of its members' daughters seeking to find out about his work and to clear his name. This part of the story intrudes into the primary text only in short and infrequent passages and seems more of an interruption to the main story than a necessary part of telling it. Moreover, this intrusive text detracts from the ending of the greater tale of the last maneuver Walters imagines for this group of agents, giving the novel a predictable rather than a realistic conclusion.
The story tells of recruiting a leader for this group who has been captured in a failed undercover assignment for the British army. John Lockhart becomes the British agent recruited to be the commander, under his Nazi overseer, Major Carl Strasser of the SS, agreeing to the position because he is convinced he will save the life of his wife who has been arrested in the German invasion of the Netherlands. Besides working to free his wife, he believes he can double cross his captors and be a valuable service to the nation to which he truly loyal, the UK.
Is Lockhart naive or is he just as simple minded as were the real-life members of this unit? The reader will have to come to his own conclusions about this. In either case, it is difficult to believe that anyone who had seen what the Nazis had done could imagine that they could be trusted.
The story casts Lockhart as coming across plans for an intensely powerful chemical agent, sarin--the very real and highly lethal nerve gas, and figuring out how to destroy the stockpile of it the Germans have created and planned to send to London on their new, secret rockets.
Walters makes the story both exciting and almost-plausible, making The Traitor a worthwhile novel.
… (mehr)
 
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PaulLoesch | 1 weitere Rezension | Apr 2, 2022 |
Excellent source de la traque des SS dans le monde après la guerre 1940-45
½
 
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guilmom | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Mar 17, 2022 |
This is an impeccably researched and written history of the so-called "Great Escape" made famous by the 1960s film of the same name. Not being British I saw the movie once a long time ago but it holds a certain mythological reverence in England where it is patriotically broadcast on TV each Christmas season. Over time the facts of what happened have been distorted by the film and other books. Thus Walters sets out to carefully dissect the primary sources and bring an objective view of what actually occurred. His argument, convincing in my opinion, is that the escape was a reckless, needless waste of life and unjustified. He blames one man, the leader, whose personality played a big part in the disaster. I was surprised to learn that German Luftwaffe officer camps were controlled as much by the prisoners as the guards, since the prisoners had so much material wealth from the Red Cross packages compared to the poor and underfed German guards. It was also fascinating to watch the German SS bureaucracy in action as the orders moved down the ranks and officials had to choose what to do. This is an extremely detailed account so be prepared for some long stretches of repetitive material as Walters go through exactly what happened to each of the 70+ escapees, few of which end well. For what this book is - an historical revisionism of a mythological event - it does a great job, and I think portrays the people and times with a clear eye. I don't know if it's the best first book on the topic since it strips away the adventure, but in light of 50 some dead guys, less adventure and more sober reflection is the right thing, what can be learned from their mistake so it was not in vain.… (mehr)
 
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Stbalbach | Feb 28, 2014 |

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Werke
12
Mitglieder
537
Beliebtheit
#46,380
Bewertung
½ 3.6
Rezensionen
11
ISBNs
62
Sprachen
6

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