Post WWI thriller
World War I was curious in more ways than one. The powers entering it didn’t think there would be a war. And when it stopped four years and tens of millions of dead later, it wasn’t with a surrender but a ceasefire: an armistice. The spark that set it off was the assassination of the Austrian Archduke and his consort in Serbia by a Bosnian teenager in June 1914.
For a month, European monarchs and ministers sympathised and agreed that it wasn’t their affair. Yet they mobilised, meant as a show of force, with Vienna’s humiliating demands to Belgrade, war was inevitable. Russia supporting Serbia, Germany supporting Austria-Hungary didn’t begin it.
In 1918, Germany, still occupying much of the lands east and west, saw the writing on the wall, when the US joined the fray on the side of the Allies. It asked for a halt in the fighting on the basis of American President Wilson’s 14 Points. This was accepted. It was not yet blamed for starting the war.
That came when the bean counters estimated how much the war had cost. All but the US were bankrupt. Debts had to be paid. Where was the money to come from. Germany was fingered, though it was no better off. Never-the-less, the Versailles Treaty threw the book at them. An Austrian corporal begged to differ.
The First World War, a century past, long playing second fiddle to World War II, is being brought to mind again by contemporary novelists. Ken Follett and Jeffrey Archer have penned trilogies set in the period between the 20th century’s two great conflicts. Not to mention a number of other writers.
Among them is British scrivener Robert Goddard. He has kicked off his The Wide World trilogy with The Ways Of The World, set in 1919. Though the Kaiser is gone and the High Seas Fleet is in British hands, more than a few “former” high-ranking Germans refuse to acknowledge that they were defeated.
One, Lemper, an outstanding German military strategist, takes it personally that there are foreign diplomats on his country’s sacred soil. He has drawn up a list of those to be assassinated. Vowing to avenge the murder of his father, Royal Flying Corps air ace James “Max” Maxtel, is two steps ahead of the British authorities with the same mission.
The author devotes over 500 pages on the continental chase, the fox outwitting the hounds and killing several. If you expect the climax in the usual penultimate chapter, you’d be wrong. Wait for The Corners Of The Globe.