Gilbey nodded.

‘Well those two do, Tom. They understand.’

Author’s Note

End of Spies is a work of fiction, so any similarities between characters in the book and real people are unintended and should be regarded as purely coincidental.

There are of course references to obviously non-fictional characters such as Winston Churchill and Hitler, along with others such as prominent Austrian Nazis Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Odilo Globocnik and Adolf Eichmann. Other real people mentioned include John Winant, the US Ambassador to London, Heinrich Müller, the head of the Gestapo, Field Marshal Alexander, and Fritz Suhren, the camp commandant at Ravensbrück.

I’ve tried to stick as closely as possible to what was known at the time about the fate of another non-fictional character – Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy. It was known he escaped from the bunker on 1 May and was seen later that day nearer Lehrter station. Over the years the hunt for Bormann continued and there were reported sightings of him around the world, with some people believing he’d escaped to South America, and others convinced he was a Soviet spy in Moscow. In 1972, what were thought to be Bormann’s remains were discovered near Lehrter station, and this was confirmed in 1998 as a result of DNA testing.

The fate of Max Stein in Chapter 15 is based on an actual deportation of Jews from Berlin. Osttransport 33 left Hamburger Strasse on 3 March 1943, and all sixteen hundred people on board are believed to have been murdered at Auschwitz.

The book is set in Europe in 1945 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and is factually based in many respects: a lot of the locations and events featured are genuine. This is the case with, for example, the Gestapo headquarters in Dijon, Paris, Amsterdam and Maribor, and with the US Army headquarters in Frankfurt and Munich. The Red Cross Club for US Army officers in Munich was indeed located on Neuhauser Strasse. Many of the Berlin locations actually existed, including Hohenschönhausen prison and the Allied Kommandatura on Kaiserswerther Strasse.

Trieste suffered badly in the war under first the Fascists and then the Nazis, with the city’s Slovenian and Jewish populations being especially badly treated. The concentration camp referred to in the book – Risiera di San Sabba – did exist. Thousands of prisoners were murdered there, and many more were sent from there to Nazi death camps.

At the core of the plot is a plan for Nazis to escape from Europe from Trieste. It’s very well documented that the Italian ports (especially Genoa) were used as part of the various Nazi escape lines. Italy was the destination for many fleeing Nazis, and there is no doubt that their escape was often facilitated by the Roman Catholic Church.

In Chapter 2, reference is made to the particular problems the Special Operations Executive had with the Netherlands, and this is also based on fact. The Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands managed to penetrate the SOE N Section agents to such an extent that British undercover operations there were suspended for a while.