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Back with Bernie again, however this time it is in Berlin of 1938 and the business end of the NAZI tyranny take over of the Police.
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Bernie had left the Murder Commission four years or so earlier (resigned before being pushed) due to the demand to follow the political line – Join the Party or become redundant – permanently!
Bernie, being a social democrat, took the second path and went private. – Not married, no kids, no mortgage, no debt of any appreciable size; but was any of that really the reason underlying his choice?
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Although the author Philip Kerr doesn’t explicitly state it, Bernie hadn’t lost his humanity and more importantly his moral structure. Albeit, the need for justified killing (well staying alive) was not far from his capacity.
If we remember from our modern history classes, Germany from the early 1930’s had fallen into a state of mass psychosis where it became in effect a follow the leader dictatorship.
The problem was, that with the expulsion of those police who did not follow the party line, the ranks were filled with second rate performers and thugs and as a result actual crime increased while reported crime decreased. The new police got in on the crime act as well. Trouble was, when a politically embarrassing series of horrific crimes erupted, there were no officers of the highest calibre left who were needed to solve the cases.
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Bernie gets a Gestapo invitation to visit General Reinhardt Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office and off to the races we go. Trying to solve the crime, while himself staying one step ahead of the moral monsters and their preferred method of crime control – a bullet in the head, or having it chopped off, or having a visit to a concentration camp, – is the caper. His trouble of course was, how could he trust leaders like that and similarly, how could he trust the people he had been given to work with and for him. And of course, they seemed to hate his guts as well.
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I think that today he would be called ‘not a team player’ or ‘herd adverse’, or … , or something. – Oh! The Jews had already been eliminated from the serve / game by then as well.
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This book was one of the first that introduced Bernie and his travails with mid 20th century German fascist tyranny, to his many dedicated readers. This is little wonder as it sits so easily into recent Western life experience, triggering strong emotional understanding and connection.
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For pew sitters, it is a view into a further nail in the coffin of European Christianity.
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The Fuhrer leader, through the agency of his propaganda minister Reichsführer Joseph Goebbels, set out to destroy the Roman control over the German Church, not by overt murder or physical suppression, but he intuited that when push came to shove, the prestige, pay and perks of the religious community leaders and their followers would be enough to run them to ground.
This little book is a real corker and for anyone who hasn’t met Bernie yet, starting off with the Berlin Noir trilogy (of which this is the second) is a great way to commence. Be warned though, you may finish up becoming a fanatical follower.
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Oh I forgot to mention, you even get to meet Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler in his guise as a patron of a satanic cult within the senior SS hierarchy. What a ride! – Well before its time, or perhaps Kerr had a bit of the second sight himself. One wonders what he might be thinking of the last two years from the vantage point of his grave?
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Opening quote in the book:
“Much about your good people moves me to disgust, and it is not their evil I mean. How I wish they possessed a madness through which they could perish, like this pale criminal. Truly I wish their madness were called truth or loyalty or justice: but they possess their virtue in order to live long and in a miserable ease. – Nietzsche”
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