Killing Churchill
Seven decades gone, the swastika back to being a benign Eastern symbol, the European cities rebuilt, the current generation has no memory of how close a thing the Nazi New Order was. Particularly in 1940 when France had fallen, Berlin and Moscow were allies, Washington was neutral, and London stood alone.
The question wasn’t whether but when the Fuhrer would order Operation Sea Lion, the invasion across the English Channel. There are a lot of ifs, ands and buts as to how it might have succeeded. In the event, it didn’t. Turning against Russia was the fatal mistake.
Apart from battles on land, sea and air, the war was fought in intelligence centres. It only gets a footnote in histories that German boffins cracked the British code, much as the British boffins had cracked the German code.
And both sides made elaborate plans to assassinate one another’s leaders.
Novelists have turned these plots, real and imaginative, into grist for thrillers. The intended victims usually survived the dangers to their lives at the last minutes, however. In Jack Higgins’ The Eagle Has Landed, it was a double for Prime Minister Winston Churchill who the SS killer lined up in his sights.
In Orders From Berlin by Simon Tolkien (grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien) Churchill is yet again the intended target of Hitler and Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich. The story is built around a high ranking British MI6 agent who has been carrying a grudge against Churchill since World War I.
The protagonist is London police detective Trave, to whose warnings Scotland Yard chief inspector Quaid is too blockheaded to listen. Suffice to say that Churchill is saved with seconds to spare. Trave gets a promotion, Quaid his just desserts.
The author does a good job of re-creating the era — windows blown out at 10 Downing Street, Hitler immersed in Wagner’s music at the Burghof.
The point is made that had the effects of shell shock (PTSD) been recognised and treated for what it was during World War I — not cowardice — the events in this book would have taken a different course. General Patton was mistaken about it. This reviewer trusts that it is known for what it is now.