A butterfly flaps its wings in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, and a typically salacious reporter in Hamburg, Germany decides to go Nazi-hunting. Such is the way of things in Frederick Forsyth’s 1972 novel, The ODESSA File. That reporter, 29-year-old Peter Miller, is of the first generation of Germans who ought to reckon with what the prior generations did during WWII and in perpetrating the Holocaust. Instead, Miller and his ilk, are apathetic: that was years ago; it’s in the past. As mentioned, the book is set-off by Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 — that causes Miller to break on the side of the road to hear the radio announcement, and then, as an ambulance-chaser, he chases an ambulance to a suicide by a Jewish survivor of the Riga Ghetto, who left behind a diary of his experience and the main SS perpetrator, Eduard Roschmann, known as the “Butcher of Riga” — or in other words, the atrocities of the Holocaust occurred just under 19 years ago! And the Germans are already apathetic about it, not wanting to relive or relitigate that period, and certainly, they don’t want to round up old members of the Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary organization under the Nazi Party and Adolph Hitler, often known by SS, who perpetrated the Holocaust because many of them were ingratiated back into West German society. That’s like if the Holocaust happened in 2005, and in the present day, I was like, “Meh, that was before my time.” The hell?!
Anyhow, to Miller’s credit, he’s all in on tracking down Roschmann, who is being shielded by ODESSA, an underground neo-SS organization tasked with protecting their kind and forging (literally) new identities for them, often in Argentina or Cairo. To the latter, German scientists, in league with the Egyptians and of course, the former SS members, are trying to build plague-laced missiles to attack Israel with, and finish off the Jews for good. Within Germany to oppose ODESSA, or rather, to at least attempt to crack down on fugitive SS members, are the Z Commission, a group of lawyers and detectives overworked and underbudgeted. Then, there’s a group of Jewish Holocaust survivors, who don’t want to bring the SS men to trial, but seek revenge, i.e., assassination. Individually fighting the SS fugitives, Forsyth name drops the legendary Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish man who survived the camps and spent his life hunting Nazis; his most famous “catch” was Adolf Eichmann, one of the principle architects of the Holocaust. Finally, there are the Israelis, of course, who are walking a tight rope between not wanting to alienate the German government who is giving them tanks and weaponry, but also, they seek to monitor the activities of the ODESSA.
It’s maddening to think about how in the chaos of 1945 Germany, many of the perpetrators of atrocities were able to escape — maddening in the sense of their escape, and also maddening in the sense that they presented themselves as patriotic Germans, who were instead cowards — and in the book, Roschmann escapes numerous times and is living high on the hog within Germany under a new name. He’s also a vital cog in the wheel to ensuring the missiles get their guidance systems in order to reach Israel. Thus, Miller on the hunt for him, is setting off all kinds of warning bells within the ODESSA.
Forsyth’s cat-and-mouse, and shoe-leather reporting writing is quite well done, which makes sense given Forsyth’s previous career in journalism. And it’s not just the cat-and-mouse game of Miller trying to find Roschmann, but of the ODESSA sending their own assassin to take care of Miller. By luck and happenstance, Miller keeps averting certain death, like when the assassin places a bomb under the Jaguar. It all makes for good reading how Miller is able to amass clue-by-clue as to the whereabouts of Roschmann, and eventually, the wider ODESSA operation, while also inadvertently dodging the assassin. Miller, with the help of the aforementioned Jewish organization, even attempts to go undercover and infiltrate the ODESSA, but he errs rather stupidly in insisting on driving his fancy Jaguar around, thus easily blowing his cover. Nonetheless, at every turn, people who are helping him are surprised Miller, as a German, is so interested in tracking down Roschmann. That tease eventually paid off when Miller finally tracks down Roschmann to his private estate for a confrontation and we learn that in his bid for escape, Roschmann killed a German Army man — Miller’s father. Roschmann is able to escape again and flee the country after the assassin shows up, who is then thwarted by an Israeli soldier alerted to the peril Miller was in by his fiancé.
That kind of bummed me out, I have to say! Miller didn’t suddenly take interest in the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust after reading the diary about the atrocities. He didn’t gain empathy. Instead, it was through the diary he put two and two together to realize it was Roschmann who killed his father. It was a personal vendetta and nothing about loftier, bigger-than-self goals of justice and such. But humans are flawed and all of that, and to be fair to Miller, he does deliver a nice monologue to Roschmann about his kind have sullied Germany and are pigs.
I recently finished reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, and I made note of a theme Robinson introduced that also applies to the German people in Forsyth’s book (and in real life): “structured forgetting.” Even, though, of course, the mantra with the Holocaust was to “never forget and never again.” Remembering the atrocities is not enough to ensure “never forget and never again.” Bringing those who perpetrated it to some semblance of justice imbues “never forget and never again” with heft. You can see how it happens, though. In fact, in an illuminating exchange with Wiesenthal, Miller hears how the idea of “collective-guilt” helps the SS members in the ODESSA. That is, the idea that the 60 million contemporary Germans, many of whom had nothing to do with the Holocaust, are all guilty of it. Wiesenthal explains, “… that so long as the collective-guilt theory remains unquestioned nobody will start to look for specific murderers — at least, look hard enough. The specific murderers of the SS therefore hide even today behind the collective-guilt theory.”
Forsyth’s novel is also fascinating because, obviously, a lot of it is permeated with true facts. Roschmann really was an SS man, and really did disguise himself as a normal prisoner-of-war and then escaped British custody (the bastard lived until 1977). Wiesenthal really did hunt Nazis. Historical fiction is such an interesting playground to weave a thriller story around, and in Forsyth’s hands, I read it as fast as Miller’s Jaguar could go.
This was my first Forsyth novel, but it won’t be my last. If you like historical fiction, especially hunting Nazis, then you need to add this one to your list.
Milam's Musings 