Hitler’s Peace/Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr died a few years ago. So I was both surprised and grateful for this posthumous publication.

The story is that the Nazis realised that by 1943 they could not win WW2 and devised a plot to assassinate the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) at the Tehran Conference.

At the same time Hitler was working on a peace initiative. Both are distinctly implausible.

The central character is Willard Mayer, he is a Jewish philosopher professor who is part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inner circle and a OSS operative.

He follows Roosevelt by boat and plane to Tehran. Aside from him most of the characters actually existed: Roosevelt, Himmler, Hitler, Bormann, Stalin, Beria, Enoch Powell in Egypt, and Kim Philby make an appearance.

In his Bernie Gunther novels Kerr adopts a Chandleresque wise-cracking style. This is used here but does not work with the main character.

Despite this plot implausibility it’s a cracking read that holds the reader till the last sentence.