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Back The One from the Other Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Praise
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. THIRTY-NINE
  45. FORTY
  46. FORTY-ONE
  47. FORTY-TWO
  48. EPILOGUE
  49. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  50. Teaser chapter

During the war, Haj Amin lived in Berlin, was a friend of Hitler’s, and personally raised an SS Moslem Division of 20,000 men in Bosnia, which murdered Jews and partisans. He tried to persuade the Luftwaffe to bomb Tel Aviv. It seems quite probable that his ideas had a profound influence on the course of Eichmann’s thinking. Numerous Jewish organizations tried to have Haj Amin prosecuted as a war criminal after the war, but they were unsuccessful, despite the fact that arguably he was as culpable as Heydrich, Himmler, and Eichmann in the extermination of the Jews. Haj Amin was a close relative of Yasser Arafat’s. It is believed that Arafat changed his name in order to obscure his relationship with a notorious war criminal. To this day, many Arab political parties, most notably Hezbollah, have identified with Nazis and adopted symbols from Nazi propaganda.

In 1945, the American Office of Scientific Research and Development conducted medical experiments on prisoners in state penitentiaries in an effort to develop a vaccine for malaria. See Life, June 4, 1945, pages 43-46.

Teaser chapter

Philip Kerr’s next novel featuring

Bernie Gunther will be available from Putnam
in hardcover in March 2009

Read on for the first chapter of

002

ISBN 978-0-399-15530-7

ONE

Buenos Aires 1950

The boat was the SS Giovanni, which seemed only appropriate given the fact that at least three of its passengers, including me, had been in the SS. It was a medium-sized boat with two funnels, a view of the sea, a well-stocked bar, and an Italian restaurant. This was fine if you liked Italian food, but after four weeks at sea at eight knots, all the way from Genoa, I didn’t like it and I wasn’t sad to get off. Either I’m not much of a sailor or there was something else wrong with me other than the company I was keeping these days.

We steamed into the port of Buenos Aires along the gray River Plate and this gave me and my two fellow travelers a chance to reflect upon the proud history of our invincible German Navy. Somewhere at the bottom of the river, near Montevideo, lay the wreck of the Graf Spee, a pocket battleship that had been invincibly scuttled by its commander in December 1939, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the British. As far as I knew, this was as near as the war ever came to Argentina.