Autumn 1943. Since Stalingrad, Hitler has known that Germany cannot win the war. The upcoming Allied conference in Teheran will set the ground rules for their second front-and for the peace to come. Realizing that the unconditional surrender FDR has demanded will leave Germany in ruins, Hitler has put out peace feelers. (Unbeknownst to him, so has Himmler, who is ready to stage a coup in order to reach an accord.) FDR and Stalin are willing to negotiate. Only Churchill refuses to listen.
At the center of this high-stakes game of deals and doubledealing is Willard Mayer, an OSS operative who has been chosen by FDR to serve as his envoy. He is the perfect foil for the steamy world of deception, betrayals, and assassinations that make up the moral universe of realpolitik. A cool, self-absorbed, emotionally distant womanizer with a questionable past, Mayer has embraced the stylish philosophy of the day, in which no values are fixed. In the course of the novel, his beliefs will be put to the ultimate test.
But as compelling as Mayer is, the key players in this drama-FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Hitler, as well as Himmler, Bormann, Molotov, and Schellenberg (with marvelous walk-ons by Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and Evelyn Waugh)-are astonishingly true-to-life.
Hitler's Peace is Philip Kerr in top form. With his sure hand for pacing, his firm grasp of historical detail, and his explosively creative imagination about what might have been, he has fashioned a totally convincing thinking man's thriller in the great tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.
From Publishers Weekly
Fans of Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy will prize this briskly paced WWII-era spy thriller, which boasts plot twists that will keep readers' heads spinning even after they've put it down. For Willard Mayer, a 35-year-old Harvard-educated empirical philosopher, the roots of pro-Communist realpolitiking run deep. A former Princeton professor who was also a member of the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence service, and an informer for Russia's notorious Internal Affairs Commissariat, the NKVD, Mayer during the war works as an intelligence analyst for the Office of Strategic Services in Washingtonβwhich remains unaware of his past. En route to Tehran, at Roosevelt's insistence, for the Big Three conference in November 1943 aboard the USS Iowa , Mayer believes he's uncovered a plot to assassinate Joseph Stalin. Meanwhile, Hitler and Himmler, eager to avoid engaging the U.S. in a second European front, are trying to figure out how to get around Roosevelt's demand for an unconditional surrender. The ethically compromised Mayer finds himself in the thick of the negotiations even as larger plots are afoot, including one by an SS general to bomb Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill in Tehran. Kerr is as interested in backdoor diplomatic efforts as he is in espionage and assassination, and this highly entertaining spy fiction also explores the moral quandaries of war and realpolitik.
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From Booklist
It's always a treat to see what fresh intrigue has aroused this versatile British author's interests. Here Kerr fleshes out one of history's great might-have-beens. During the crucial autumn of 1943, when, after the crushing defeat of Germany on the Eastern Front, it became clear to leaders on all sides that Hitler would lose, the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) headed to a secret summit in Tehran to discuss strategy. Our windows onto these vertiginous dealings are the German intelligence officer Walter Schellenberger, obliged to play the great game of espionage in a schoolyard increasingly crowded with homicidal bullies, and American philosophy professor Willard Mayer, recruited by his president to help parse whether Hitler or Stalin is the lesser evil and who winds up playing a role in world events that is anything but academic. Occasional flashes of action and a few jaw-dropping twists notwithstanding, Kerr's leisurely narrative stays fairly close to real events, larded with credible details and curious true incidents--such as the near-sinking of FDR's battleship by friendly fire. This is an excellent crossover suggestion for history buffs and a fine choice for those who enjoy the informative thrillers of Robert Harris or Robert Littell. David Wright
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