The largest geopolitical project in living memory

Over the past year I've read a number of novels set either just before or during the second world war including books by Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, John Lawton, Marek Krajewski, Hans Fallada, Carlo Lucarelli and others, along with some straight history books, but I haven't been keeping track of history itself. Today marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and Germany's invasion of Poland (The Polish Officer by Furst does a good job of capturing the first few days as Poland desperately tries to put in place the basis for resistance knowing that it is being over-run).

Of course, I haven't pre-prepared a post, but I have been thinking about doing one based on a conversation I had with Martin Dodge last week, so I'm hastily moving it forward. At his Mapping Manchester exhibition we were talking about whether the John Ryland's library had survived the blitz intact and that led onto a discussion about bomb census maps. Martin kindly sent me on a link to a story that discussed them. I'd be really interested to take a look at them in more detail. I always remember the two old ladies who lived next door when I was growing up who used to describe going up Caldy Hill to watch Liverpool and Birkenhead docks being bombed. They were great story-tellers - you felt like you were there watching the cities burn.

The tracing below is from the Christmas raids of Dec 20-22, 1940 on the Merseyside area when 365 people died. It is designed to be overlain on a base map, hence why there are so few roads, etc. shown (much cheaper to keep a clean map and have lots of tracings). A daily tracing would be taken so that the pattern of bombing could be tracked over time.


The tracing shows the area between Bootle and Walton and plots 26 separate incidents in quite a confined area. Each incident is given a number, followed by the size and type of bomb, and the location of any unexploded ordnance. Collectively the maps reveal that by the end of the war Liverpool was the second most bombed UK city after London.

These other maps are of Brighton and Bristol.

I've been fascinated by the Second World War for a while now given it was the largest and most complex geopolitical event in modern history with many civil wars operating inside transnational wars, and political ideology explicitly reshaping territory and lives through violence. I've been trying to collect books that explains what went on different parts of the world, including some that traditionally get looked over (e.g. Aleutian Islands [the only bit of the USA occupied by the Japanese], Malta, Isle of Man, Ireland, etc) so I can have a go at mentally stitching the whole lot together.

I'll perhaps try to do something on Irish neutrality tomorrow. Ireland declared its neutrality on the 2nd Sept, the day before Britain and France declared war. It was a policy that was rigidly maintained right to the end of the war.

Lest we forget ...

Review of Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski, translated by Danusia Stok, Maclehose Press (2008, in Polish 2006)

1933 and the Nazis have recently taken power and are in the process of infiltrating and re-organising the institutions of the Weimer Republic. In Breslau, Criminal Counsellor, Eberhard Mock, Deputy Head of the Criminal Department of Police Praesidium, is not only trying to maintain his authority and power base, but make sure that when the political axe falls on his boss he's promoted into his position. Mock is entirely capable of achieving such an end because he’s an arch-player of the political game, happy to double deal, blackmail and coerce. When 17 year old Marietta von der Malten, the daughter of a Baron, is found murdered in a railway carriage, along with her governess and a railway worker, Mock takes charge. The three victims have been killed by scorpion stings, the daughter’s stomach also slashed open, and strange writing is scrawled on the wall. Mock is well aware of the stakes and sets to work to find the killer knowing that the Gestapo also has an interest in the case. Through some string pulling by Mock’s boss, a young policemen from Berlin, Herbert Anwaldt, is foisted upon him. Mock and Anwaldt form a close 'father-son' partnership during the course of the sweltering summer as they are drawn into a dark world of torture, false confessions, school girl prostitution, and secret sects, as they seek to uncover a dark secret that has serious consequences for both of their futures.

This book should have been right up my street – strong characters, historical pre-World War II setting, interesting plot – but it just never clicked for me. I did enjoy it, but I felt I should have loved it. Somehow it fell a little flat. I’ve been trying to work out why. I think part of the problem is that every character in the book is highly flawed and criminally inclined. All the female characters are prostitutes or madams, all the male characters are police or Gestapo or aristocracy, all highly corrupt. There were no ‘good guys’ only those that weren’t Nazis. I read somewhere that Death in Breslau was Chanderesque. I’ll go along with the idea that Krajewski’s writing is noir, but its doesn’t have the first person narrative of Chandler, nor his craft at creating a way of seeing the world – Chandler always had very rich descriptions of place that didn’t just put you in the landscape but made sure you were seeing it through his lenses (see this post for more on this). And Eberhard Mock is not an anti-hero in the Philip Marlowe mould, he has institutional power and he uses it, even torturing and disposing of people to get the information he needs. I’m starting to think that the book had no heros or anti-heros, just villains. As a reader I was left with little vested interest in any character. As the plot unfolded it became a little fantastic, with the connections to The Crusades and some of the coincidences stretching the story to almost breaking point. Given all that was happening during this period there was really no need for this kind of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' kind of angle.

I wasn’t quite sure where Breslau was, so once I’d finished the book I decided to google it. It’s the German name for Wroclaw in what is now Lower Silesia is South West Poland. Prior to the First World War Breslau was in Prussia and was the sixth largest city in the German Empire. By 1932, just prior to the novel’s setting, the Nazis gained their third highest vote in Breslau, making it one of their strongholds, and from 1933 onwards they started to persecute their political enemies, constructing a series of concentration camps in the region. The novel gave me the impression that Breslau was a small, provincial town. Clearly the book didn’t manage to get this broader contextual history across and the pictures I found show a very ornate medieval city, which never formed in my mind’s eye for some reason.

Death in Breslau passed a few hours, but something just didn’t click for me in the way that I hoped it would. That said, I’d be prepared to give the other books a second chance. Thanks to Uriah at Crime Scraps for the recommendation. Other reviews can be found at:

Eurocrime 1
Eurocrime 2
Reviewing the Evidence
You've Got to Read This!