Derrick intended to protect Victoria Grayson. He liked Americans. He liked the United States. Some of his fondest memories had been made and friendships formed on its shores, and he regretted that Hitler, typically, had seen fit to declare war against the only world power that did not sign the Treaty of Versailles because its leaders recognized the severity of its unfair terms. Without the treaty that had been designed to punish and cripple Germany for the First World War, the second war would never have come. The Third Reich would never have risen from the ashes incurred by the document’s penalties. Mein Kampf and Adolf Hitler and his common herd would be names lost to history had the signers been more gracious in victory. Denying Germany a voice in the negotiations, the victors had drafted a document that had destroyed its economy and starved its people, allocated land to France and Britain for their own empire building, reduced its army to a size that left it defenseless and vulnerable for takeover, and then added insult to injury by not allowing Germany to join the League of Nations. As a result, Adolf Hitler, Austrian born, school dropout, failed watercolor painter, a nobody, was now Führer of the Nazi Party and chancellor of Germany, and the country once exalted for its culture, literature, music, and art was now the most feared and despised nation on earth.

“The car is here, Mein Herr.”

“Danke, Eduard,” Derrick said. “Go enjoy the rest of your Sunday. A new film is showing at the corner cinema. I won’t need you tonight.”

The old retainer bowed away. “Yes, Mein Herr.”