A Man Without Breath: A Bernie Gunther Novel [Anglais] [Broché]

This is the ninth Bernie Gunther novel and, I am pleased to report, it is a fantastic addition to a series which just continues to get better and better. The events in this novel have been mentioned in passing in previous books, in a series which goes backwards and forwards in Gunther's lifetime, from the early 1930's to the years of the Cold War. I was pleased that this was set within WWII - although I have enjoyed all the books, those set before and during the war are, in my opinion, the most enjoyable.

It is 1943 and the Battle of Stalingrad is over, leaving Germany shocked at the defeat. Bernie Gunther has joined the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, thanks to his old boss Arther Nebe. Back in Berlin, Gunther is working with Judge Johannes Goldsche, an old type Prussian judge, with one eye on the end of the war and restoring Germany's reputation with an investigation into a possible mass grave of Polish officers, killed by the Soviets in Smolensk. With that in mind, Gunther is sent to investigate that the grave is indeed that of Polish officers and not a mass grave of Jews, killed by the SS. The possibility that Germans killed the officers is disregarded by those in charge - "the German army does not murder prisoners of war" Gunther is told by an outraged aristocrat.

What makes this book interesting is the irony that Bernie Gunther is investigating a possible war crime, alongside a region where crimes are being perpetrated on a daily basis by the SS and where mass murder has become commonplace. Sent to investigate, Gunther finds a German unit responsible for communications, hoping to sit out the war in comfort and not at all amused at his uncovering old wounds. Add to this the fact that German soldiers have been viciously killed in the area, a group of aristocrats who have idealistic plans to kill the Fuhrer, Gunther's own brand of dark humour and the personal interest of Joseph Goebbels in events and you have an exciting, intelligent and realistic mystery. Not many authors can use real life characters, but Gunther's meeting with Goebbels is extremely creepy. Philip Kerr has created a realistic scenario and well imagined characters and I hope that Bernie Gunther has many more adventures to come. A new Bernie Gunther is a real event and I have been reading, and loving, them since the publication of "March Violets". However, I wish that Kerr's stand alone novels, many of which I really loved and are now no longer in print, were also released on kindle for a new audience, as they are also well worth exploring. Although the books are best read in order, you could read this as a stand alone thriller.

It's 1943, and Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide cop, is now an investigator for the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. Yep, you read those last four words right. During World War II, there actually was a German organization for investigating war crimes. Bernie, however, with all the cynicism and black humor of a Berliner, is keenly aware of the absurdity of the Bureau's practice of turning a blind eye to the systematic torture and murder of Jews, Gypsies, communists, Slavs, homosexuals and other designated enemies of the Reich. Instead, the Bureau focuses on investigating war crimes by the Allies and, occasionally, one-off criminal acts by German soldiers--like rape, murder and torture committed without benefit of an officer's order.

Bernie is sent to Smolensk, precariously held by the Germans, when corpses are discovered buried in the nearby Katyń Forest. Those bodies turn out to be Polish army officers, executed by a shot to the back of the head, and the more the German troops dig in the forest, the more bodies they find.

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (whom Bernie likes to call "Mahatma Propagandhi") spots a potential publicity coup: show the world that this massacre was perpetrated by the Soviets and drive a wedge between the democratic Allies and the USSR. Goebbels orders Bernie to coordinate an international commission's visit to Smolensk to witness the digging and autopsies and, of course, to help the publicity along.

Bernie's workload becomes heavier when two German soldiers are brutally murdered late one night after a visit to the local brothel in Smolensk, and other murders follow. Bernie's various investigations force him into contact with a number of Wehrmacht officers, nearly all of whom are aristocrats and seem to be related by blood, marriage or social connection. This is a double whammy for Bernie, who dislikes both military authority and class superiority. Naturally, he refuses to show any deference to the officers, even including those whom he figures out are part of the various plots to assassinate Hitler.

Bernie's insubordination and wisecracks have a tendency to make the local command less than cooperative with his investigations; not that this is a new phenomenon for Bernie. After knowing him only a couple of days, one member of the visiting committee says: "Trouble is what defines you, Gunther. Without trouble you have no meaning." True, but I like Gunther's own view of himself: "[F]or the last ten years[,] [t]here's hardly been a day when I haven't asked myself if I could live under a regime I neither understood nor desired. . . . For now, being a policeman seems like the only right thing I can do."

This is what the Bernie Gunther series is all about. Philip Kerr is a master at portraying the flawed hero doing the best he can in a corrupt and perverted time and place. As Bernie recognizes, you sure can't get much more corrupt and perverted than Nazi Germany and World War II. The only hope is, as Bernie tells himself, as long as you can draw breath, you have a chance of turning around whatever nastiness you've been involved in. So who is the Man Without Breath; the man who has lost that chance?

During this now nine-volume series, Kerr puts Bernie at ground zero at some of the notorious landmarks of the time. In this book, there are several, including the discovery of the Katyń Forest Massacre, a real event in which the Soviet NKVD killed over 14,000 Polish military officers as part of its "decapitation" policy, which systematically obliterated those who might lead resistance against them, including aristocrats, intellectuals and military elites. Kerr also includes references to the Gleiwitz Incident, the faked Polish attack on a German radio station, which the Nazis devised to justify their 1939 invasion of Poland; the Rosenstrasse protest, which I describe in a historical note below; some of the previously-mentioned officer class's attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler; and the horrific medical experiments on communists carried out by fascist doctors in Civil War-era Spain.

I read a lot of World War II fiction, and a common mistake is for the author to put every bit of his or her research on the page, which often kills the pace and flavor of the story. Having read all of the Bernie Gunther series, I can say that Philip Kerr never makes that mistake. His knowledge of World War II history is prodigious, and he works it seamlessly into his compelling fictional stories. Just read the Author's Note at the end of the book and marvel at all the real events and characters he's blended into this story without the least scent of a musty textbook creeping in.

I recommend A Man Without Breath to anyone who enjoys World War II fiction or books about characters trapped in morally compromising circumstances. I'd give it 4.5 stars; there is some very occasional clunky writing.

Historical Note: An intriguing event Kerr describes is the Rosenstrasse protest. In March, 1943, the Nazis rounded up the last 10,000 Jews left in Berlin (at least those not in hiding), with the intent to transport them and declare Berlin judenfrei. About 1700 of these, the ones who were married to Aryans, were separated and placed in temporary holding in the Jewish community center building on Rosenstrasse. For a week, the wives and families of the Rosenstrasse prisoners demonstrated outside, loudly demanding the release of their loved ones, despite SS soldiers' threats to arrest and even shoot the demonstrators. Amazingly, at the end of the week, the prisoners were released, by Goebbels' order, and nearly all of them survived the war.

This event shows the sensitivity of the regime to bad publicity and forces us to ask what horrors might have been avoided if only the German people had risen up against Nazi actions earlier. For a thorough and fascinating history of the Rosenstrasse protest, I recommend Nathan Stoltzfus's Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany.

That ever yet this land was guilty of."
King Richard the III, Act IV, Scene 3.

The massacre of over 14,000 Polish officers by the Red Army in the Katyn Forest outside of Smolensk in the early days of WWII was an arch deed of piteous massacre even if it was far from the most arch deed ever committed in Eastern Europe during those dark years. But it was arch enough in its own right and serves as the setting for Philip Kerr's latest Bernie Gunther story, "A Man Without Breath."

A Man Without Breath is a worthy addition to the Detective Gunther series. For those new to the series, Bernie Gunther is a cop, a detective. But he isn't just any detective. He's a Berliner and he has been working the streets from the days of the Weimar Republic on through to the regime of Adolf Hitler. Like most `hard-boiled' detectives, Gunther likes to toe his own line and has a fierce independent streak. Of course independence is not a prized attribute in Nazi Germany if you want to make it until your next birthday. As a result, he has made his own compromises, compromises that render him at time close to suicidally depressed. His time on the eastern front took its toll.

The plot is rather straightforward. It is March 1943 and word has reached Berlin from its Army group in Smolensk that some remains have been found in it what may be a mass grave in the Katyn Forest. Gunther is dispatched to Smolensk with strict instructions: find out if it is a mass grave and, if so, who is the responsible party. If it is the Germans, stop digging and get out of town as fast as possible. If it appears to be the work of the Red Army or the NKVD, keep digging and get as much proof as possible. Sub-plots abound and are worked seamlessly into the story.

Although the book is very well-plotted and suspenseful, I think Kerr's strength lies in both his attention to historical detail and in his characterization of Gunther and the other players in these dramas. As a piece of historical fiction it is clear that Kerr has done a tremendous amount of background research such that the atmospherics and the real-life figures that play roles have a ring of authenticity to them. As to Gunther, Kerr has Gunther acknowleding complicity in the system but manages to leave the reader with no small amount of sympathy for the choices Gunther has had to make. Clearly one could argue that Gunther suffers from the guilt of surviving and Kerr makes good use of it. Gunther would have been a far less compelling figure if he did not know and accept guilt for the choices he has made to stay alive. The bottom line is that the reader (or at least this reader) feels that Gunther is a better person than he gives himself credit for.

A Man Without Breath is well-worth reading.

L. Fleisig