Wurtenbaugh's account is stunningly original, and he plausibly conjures a remarkably full vision of alternative history. . . [T]his is an impressive work, as bold as it is meticulous.
A masterful exercise in historical hypothesis. - Kirkus Reviews (recommended)
I liked that review, but I didn't like 'alternative history'. I didn't write 'A Prophet Without Honor' to create some alternative fantasy universe. You can read Harry Turtledove for that. What it is is a celebration of the unknown heroes of history, the men and women who make the small, everyday moral choices that keep the world turning on its axis. These acts are invisible precisely because they are so heroic - the world never learns of horrors that never came to pass. There were no such people at the time when it was still possible to confront Adolf Hitler and end the madness. So that became my subject.
But you do not create the hero without first creating the environment that produced him. So the book actually begins in 1910, with the birth of Karl von Haydenreich, and the circumstances of his upbringing. This disappoints readers who are expecting instant Nazi, as you can see from a couple of negative reviews. But it gives the story a resonance and reality that to me is essential. I may be writing contrafactual history, but I am NOT writing fantasy. Also, the characters that populate Karl's childhood - father, stepmother, uncle, grandfather, etc. - are vivid and interesting, with personal stories of their own. I will give one final hint. There is more than one 'prophet without honor' in the narrative, more than one hero unrecognized in his or her own land. Perhaps the most heroic is also the most unappreciated.
But what of Hitler, which is the reason you are reading the post and maybe later the book? You'll find a Hitler in the book who is also vivid and based entirely on known sources - but a long way from the traditional one. There's a story there, too.
For several decades now, I had been annoyed by the notion of Hitler as some sort of supervillain, some monstrous evildoer larger than life. I practiced criminal law for several decades (both as public defender and prosecutor). Hitler seemed to me to be not that much different than the ordinary narcissists that I encountered routinely in county jail or court - self-obsessed, rationalizing, unsuccessful, enraged at the failure of the world to grant them the success and recognition that they insist they deserve, but none else sees. The only difference is that he lucked his way onto a larger stage, by virtue of the one gift (for oratory) that he undeniably possessed.
This was frustrating. Adolf Hitler was a failure. He was a COLOSSAL failure. Hitler failed at everything. He never graduated from high school, he never found even an ordinary job, he had (of course) no sweetheart. There are no scholarly accomplishments, no artistic accomplishments, no athletic accomplishments. (Hitler was a physical weakling - the reason he was a dispatch runner in World War I rather than in the front lines is that he could not meet the physical requirements of the German Army. And so on, and on, and on.
(This actually leads to some perverse amusement for Hitler biography readers. Sir Ian Kershaw's monumental biography of the man was a major resource for me in writing the novel. But you don't have to read more than the first few pages to realize that Kershaw loathes his subject. But, conscientious historian that he is, he has to do his best to be objective - and he still has 600 plus pages to go. Going forward must have required clenched teeth and the stiffest of upper lips. But Sir Ian was up to the task, which is how an academic gets knighted.)
Thus I did not want to characterize Hitler as a monster of evil. There is more respect in that than I wanted to grant the man, too much morbid fascination, even a perverse sort of grandeur. Also, prosaically, I didn't think it was true - once a nebbish, always a nebbish. This opinion of mine was fortified by some of the research on Hitler done in the last 20 years. One book in particular stood out. In Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War, which appeared in 2011, Thomas Weber took a hard look at almost every document available on the subject, including a deep dive into the official history of the List Regiment, in which Hitler served . The result was a debunking of nearly every factual claim that Hitler made in Mein Kampf concerning his service and his comrades in those years. Among other things, his service as a regimental dispatch runner kept him well behind the trenches for most of the war. While it was not without risk, it was far less harrowing than trench warfare. His accounts of the morale of the List Regiment at the end of the war, the basis for the Big Lie of 'stab in the back', are complete fiction. He did not actually observe that much of the final, demoralizing moments of the war, since he was on leave in Berlin at the time. He never realized (or, more likely, blinded himself to the fact) that the demoralization he observed at the rear was a reflection of attitudes at the front. His basic account of his war experience, as might be expected, a tissue of lies.
One episode in particular stood out and seemed to me of the essence. According to Hitler, he and several of his comrades experienced a gassing so severe that they were blinded, and had to link arms to find their way back to the regiment. He was then transported to the hospital, where he learned of the War's end and collapsed in tears.
But that's almost complete fiction. The gas to which Hitler was exposed was mustard gas, the effect of which is not instantaneous, but which builds over hours. Hitler could not have been blinded instantaneously. Moreover, the amount of gas was small. it was not sufficient to produce the drastic effect that Hitler claimed it did. Most dramatically of all, Hitler was not treated in a hospital ward for his injuries. He was treated in a psychiatric hospital. His blindness was psychosomatic. His nerves had collapsed. The great Adolf Hitler was a frail little man who had a nervous breakdown at the end of the war.
That to me was key. That insight became the basis for the Hitler I present in 'A Prophet Without Honor'. He was no monster. He lacked even normal strength of character. He was a weak man, a deeply disordered personality (duh) prone to hysteria and constantly on the verge of disintegration. I believe that he succeeded as an orator to the fabulous degree he did, because he learned to utilize that hysterical streak, bring it forth in a theatrical, even operatic manner, that touched similar chords and frustrations in his listening audience. In the same way that a tuning fork will cause every object around it to resonate on the same frequency, he managed to generate an almost manic intensity at the key moments in his speeches.
But he WAS a deeply disordered personality. These oratorical successes were theatrical, not substantive. The luck of the devil arranged matters so that he did not face a genuine, challenging personal crisis from 1924 until late in World War II (after 1943). So what would have happened if he had faced an actual embarrassment, a political setback of the type that real leaders have to confront and surmount?
That's what happens in the novel, in March of 1936. The Hitler you'll encounter is the fragile hysteric of Hitler's First War. Pressed to a degree he never was in actual history, he disintegrates in a way that will be appreciated by anyone who has ever been frustrated and infuriated by the ease with which Adolf Hitler escaped the consequences of his monstrous acts. But even here the novel does not retreat into fantasy and barely into fiction. EVERY behavior described occurred at sometime during Hitler's career, when he came under stress (unfortunately, too late to unseat hum). That's why I did all the annoying research into this utterly worthless nonentity.
In short, 'A Prophet Without Honor' may be 'contrafactual history', but it is also a serious, deeply researched novel, if I may say so, scrupulously historical for the most part. It is also a hugely entertaining story, with a lot of action, romance (!), espionage, suspense, and of course violence - this is a book about Nazi Germany. I hope I've intrigued your curiosity enough to take a look at it. You'll find yourself engaged in one of the most satisfying reads you're ever going to have.
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