Research notes for A Death in Berlin By Simon Scarrow

A Death in Berlin is the sequel to Dead of Night and Blackout, the first two books in a series of crime novels set against the backdrop of Berlin during the Second World War.

One of my key convictions as an historical novelist is that it is important to travel to where a novel is set to get some sense of the atmosphere and the feel of a place. So I packed my bags for the first of my research trips to the German capital and began to explore the city. I arrived in the Autumn, just as the cold and damp weather starts to enfold Berlin. Despite this, it quickly became apparent from the museums and landmarks that I visited that the Germans take a very different view of history than many tend to in the UK. Rather than seeing history as a celebration of our past, the Germans regard history as more of a warning we would be wise to learn from. This is the thinking that underpins such museums as ‘The Topography or Terror’ constructed over the ruins of the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS where the remains of the cells where prisoners were held, tortured and died still stretch for some distance outside the museum.

Figure The remains of the Gestapo cells

E lsewhere the same sombre tone hung about the huge sprawl of concrete blocks that form the Holocaust memorial and the sparse Jewish museum. The appalling atrocities of the Nazi era will serve as a stark warning of what extreme nationalism and populist politics can lead to for generations to come.

Figure The Holocaust memorial

Figure The war damage is still clearly visible

here are many ways in which the history of that era persists in Berlin. Quite often, I would come across buildings still scarred by the bullets and shells from the battle fought in the capital as the Russians closed in on the remnants of the fascist regime.

By contrast, some of the more sinister buildings seem to have escaped largely undamaged. The vast office complex built for Herman Goering’s Air Ministry seems to be untouched. It is an ugly structure that was the largest office building of its time and I could not help wishing that it had not survived the conflict.

Figure Goering's Air Ministry

Figure 5. The courtyard of the Wehrmacht Headquarters

Elsewhere the headquarters of the German army still stands, serving as a museum dedicated to the struggle against the Nazi regime by Germans. There is a memorial in the courtyard outside the remembers the ill-fated conspirators behind the July plot in 1944 to assassinate the Fuhrer. The leading figures of the plot were dragged out of the building and shot in the courtyard. It made flesh creep a little to stand where they had died.

Fig 6: All that remains of the Fuhrer bunker…

It is perhaps fitting, and satisfying, that the final refuge of Hitler and his entourage is today covered over with a slightly scruffy car park nestled between some apartment blocks.

THE KRIPO

Having captured some of the ambience of the German capital and a sense of how it might have felt during the war years I began to read into the background as much as possible on my return to the UK. In particular, I was interested in the organisation and activities of the Kripo and how their elite officers fitted in within the wider apparatus of the German police force and their new political masters once the police had been taken over by Himmler and his icy henchman, Heydrich. What was of particular interest to me was the way in which many Kripo officers had professional contempt for the parvenus of the SS and the Gestapo and did their best to keep themselves at a distance. Many refused to join the party or accept a rank within the SS. More surprisingly, this was tolerated to a degree by the Nazi party who obviously valued the skills of the Kripo officers.

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATOR HORST SCHENKE

This gave me a useful steer in the creation of my hero, Criminal Investigator Horst Schenke. In fleshing out his character I gave him a racing career past that resulted in a severe car crash that would leave him sufficiently disabled to prevent him being sent on active service during the war. His able-bodied peers were amongst the first to be called up and during the course of the war those who remained in the police force were increasingly the old and incapable, the kind of people it would be hard for the reader to identify with.

While the broad outlines of the Holocaust and the other victims of the concentration camps are familiar to many what is seldom considered is the origins of the means by which the Nazis came to dispose of so many of their victims on an industrial scale. The gas chambers and crematoria were the result of experiments carried out on mentally and physically disabled adults and children – those the Nazis referred to as ‘useless feeders’ and who had ‘lives not worth living’. What particularly stands out is the way those who contributed to the exterminations perpetrated by the Nazis attempted to absolve themselves from the moral burden of their actions. They managed to live with the excuse that they only contributed to a small part of a system, or professed ignorance of the purpose to which their skills were harnessed. Many of those who made the Holocaust possible not only survived the war but went on to have successful business careers. The industrial scale murder of millions was made possible by the dilution of individual responsibility across the bureaucracy that inaugurated it and then left the quotidian outrages to thuggish brutes who were held primarily accountable by the victors at the end of the war.

RUTH

Ruth is a composite of many accounts of Jewish women surviving in Berlin through the war years. In nearly all the cases I researched such women had to be incredibly tough and focused on day to day survival, no matter the cost to the values they embraced before the Nazi era. In a few cases (no doubt because of what it entailed, which few would ever own up to in later life) they were prepared to do anything, betray anyone, in order to survive. Either way, survival comes at a price and I cannot help admiring those women determined enough to live through it (retaining as much integrity as possible in doing so), while at the same time shuddering at the sacrifices they had to make in order to do so.

watching for the performance of the always-excellent Richard Boone as the charismatic baddie.

A DEATH IN BERLIN