Book
The Good German
First published 2001
Berlin, 1945. American correspondent Jake Geismar returns to the ruined city to cover the Potsdam Conference, where Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin are deciding the terms of the post-war settlement. Jake also hopes to find Lena, the married German Jewish woman he loved before the war. When an American soldier is found murdered in the Soviet sector, his search for Lena becomes entangled with a crime the occupation authorities would prefer to keep quiet.
The investigation leads through black markets, denazification offices and the Allied competition to secure German scientific expertise before the Soviet Union can claim it. Lena’s husband is connected to the wartime rocket programme, making the question of who deserves punishment inseparable from the strategic value of former Nazis. Kanon uses the occupied city and the Potsdam moment to examine Holocaust survival, complicity and the compromises made as the alliance that defeated Hitler begins to fracture into the Cold War.
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