'A Prophet Without Honor', 'Thursday's Child' and Other Writings of Joseph Wurtenbaugh

Unknown Heroes - 'A Prophet Without Honor' as a Political Parable

Two years after the publication of 'A Prophet Without Honor', it might be safe to risk a little controversy and discuss the political parable I had in mind in writing the novel. 

Back in 2003, during the buildup to the Iraq War, I happened to be reading a collection of pieces of journalism published in the magazine The New Yorker, during the Second World War, extended essays from this city or that. The 'Letter from Paris' and 'Letter from London' written in May of 1940 were particularly striking. The authors were genuinely afraid, terrified, and the emotion seeps through the elegant prose. Hitler and the Nazis seemed unstoppable. (Churchill was not yet Prime Minister and there was a real possibility the British would seek a negotiated peace and abandon the Continent.) There was an agony of recrimination. How had they let the monster grow to this degree of power? What had they been thinking? You can't buy this kind of genuine emotion in any history. It's priceless.

But these were the very same people who would have been most opposed to action against Germany when it was actually practical, 1938 or particularly 1936. They would have opposed it in the snarky manner characteristic of urban intellectuals, with that maddening complacency that sneers away any contrary point of view. (I have my prejudices).

The Iraq War began, which I did not support for my own reasons. But it wasn't long before the predictable narrowing of thought commenced. The Iraq War Was The Greatest Mistake In The History Of American Foreign Policy (an absurd exaggeration on its own terms), and no two ways of thinking about it. It has been thus for the last few centuries, since the salons of Paris in the French Revolution - urbane, cynical, and short-sighted, the same as it always is, except for the powdered wigs. 

Well . . . . I am allergic to complacent, narrow thought by nature, and philosophically trained in the bargain - meaning I am more interested in the the questions posed on a subject than the answers given to them. Pertaining to Iraq, the salonists weren't even asking the right question. You don't evaluate a given course of action as large and multifaceted as Iraq simply by describing the negative consequences that have ensued. You have somehow to compare the world that arose as a result, with the world that would have arisen had the course of action not taken place. That comparison has of necessity to be intuitive, so moral certainty is impossible. This frustrates salonists, whose complacency is based on the illusion of certainty. Since there is no rational rejoinder, they respond with ridicule and exclusion. I thought of those old New Yorker pieces. Had the Iraq invasion never happened, had Hussein remained in power, it is easy to envision any number of time streams in which our contemporary intellectuals ended up as scared and regretful as the ones in 1940. But no one will ever, can ever, know.

Years passed, and in 2012 I had considerable success in the Kindle Selects program, selling over 30,000 copies of three novellas I had written long before there was a market for them. (They're still there, by the way - pleasant, easy reads at $0.99 each - https://amzn.to/2KgfnBr - this is a promotional page, after all.) This encouraged me, and I looked around for a subject for a novel. I thought of my decade long frustration and decided to write it up. 'A Prophet Without Honor' was the result. 

That was not to say the novel wrote itself. There was an enormous amount of research, including a trip to Munich in 2013, during which I walked over the route of the Beer Hall Putsch (1923) and visited the site of the Night of the Long Knives (1934). (Those two scenes in the novel are written from life, and I am quite pleased with them.) I chose the epistolary form because I had always admired it, and wanted to try my hand. My hope is that the result is an engrossing yarn, with considerable suspense, romance, and the requisite quantum of violence appropriate to a novel about Nazis. I believe it is a hugely entertaining read. 

But in the larger sense, the book is about the the 'little, nameless, unremembered'^* acts of moral decency that might have saved the world, or even created the world, unknown and unknowable, forever lost in the might-have-been, and the unknown heroes who are prophets without honor in this, the land that has come to be. It's about the fragility of historical processes, how little certainty there can ever be about the actions and forces that have produced the world as it is. In the universe of the novel, Karl von Haydenreich is not celebrated as the man who saved the world, because no one ever finds out that the world needed saving. Instead, he becomes controversial, disputed - and his young wife mourns his sacrifice in sorrow and anger as completely unnecessary. There is no way she could know better. 

This, then, is the parable, a caution against judgment and complacency - a rebuttal to salonism, if you will. As to history, and even more current events, we see through a mirror darkly - a crazyhouse mirror, at that. A little recognition of the essential fragility and fallibility of the process goes a long way. 

 

* Quoting from Wordsworth's 'Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey' - a marvellous poem that has been with me my entire adult life. The full text is here - http://bit.ly/332K1XO

The Heroes of 'A Prophet Without Honor' . . . And, By The Way, Adolf Hitler

 

 

 

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.

For a Limited time Only! Reduced to $2.99! 

 

 

 

 

 

'A Prophet Without Honor'

  

A Prophet Without Honor

 

    It has become a cliche of modern history that the best chance the West had to resist the onslaught of Nazi aggression was in March 1936, when Hitler ordered the reoccupation and remilitarization of the Rhineland in direct violation of two major international treaties. But no such resistance occurred. After the fact, Hitler boasted that the German Army 'would have scurried back to Germany with its tail between its legs' had any active French or British force taken the field but none did.  If events had turned in that direction, Hitler would be barely remembered. From such small causes do large effects spring.

    A Prophet Without Honor is an epistolary novel that explores this alternative path of history with a depth and rigor seldom encountered in novels in this genre. The story spans 26 years, from 1910 to 1936 and chronicles the life of the hero, Karl von Haydenreich, who provides the English and French with 'the Order' - the direction to the German Army to retreat if opposed. He does this at enormous personal cost, but the Nazi regime collapses as a result of the battlefield humiliation. However, he magnitude of his accomplishment, so obvious in our timeline, is largely unappreciated in the world that comes to be as a result of his actions. Hence, the title 'A Prophet Without Honor' - in his own land, i.e., the history he has created, his achievement is unrecognized.

    The narrative has considerable scope, from the Bavarian Alps to post-war Paris, public schools in England, the beer halls of Munich, the night life of 'Cabaret' Berlin, and the dungeons of the Nazi S.S. The epistolary form of the book permits the dramatic events of the those decades to be recounted in vivid, first person voices. The story is populated by strong, dramatic characters, most of them fictional, but a few actual historical personages whose careers have been appropriately reimagined - most notably and colorfully, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who plays a central role in the key events of the story. (The one character whose portrayal is in no way fictional is Adolph Hitler. No matter how outlandish the antics of the Fuhrer may appear in the narrative, they are all drawn from perceived behavior at various points in his career). 

    This is not a 'fantasy' novel. It reads as an actual history, albeit one that never came to be. Fact and fiction are blended seamlessly, so much so that my circle of friendly readers were unanimously insistent that I provide an Author's Note indicating the points of departure into fiction. This I have done. One of my readers commented that it took an effort of will at the end of the book to remind himself that this was not real history, that the alternative history presented was fiction. That is precisely the effect I hoped to achieve.

Thursday's Child 

    'Thursday's Child' is what the subtitle indicates it is - an epic romance.This is a fairly unexpected outcome for a book that began life as an attempt to write a little pastiche on a Harlequin romance, with pretty much the same appeal as those bon-bons possess, but with just a tad more substance.  In no time, however, the project took on a life of its own - and then it exploded on me, to put it mildly. As it did, some other ambitions joined the first modest one -(1) to write a really exciting, but completely non-violent, melodrama; (2) to create a heroine truly strong in the way I have known strong women to be, not some ersatz faux masculinity, but genuine, altogether different than male, feminine in its essence; (3) to discuss some of the life problems that really gifted young women do encounter; (4) to draw in subtle and indirect ways from the considerable body of myth and folklore/fairy tale that treat of romantic love; and (5) to garnish all the various ingredients of the salad with a light sprinkling of some of the philosophical, moral, and life insights I have acquired during my own stay on this planet. I use the term 'light sprinkling' because, above all, I wanted the book to be fun, and lively. It is my hope (and belief) that I succeeded in all of this. But of course I cannot be the judge of that.

    So 'Thursday' became a book with all the trappings of a five-buck paperback romance, and with the same entertainment value multiplied several fold - but also a fairly serious (though lively) novel of ideas. Above all, in its largest scale, it is a parable about the uses and misuses of power. The journey implied in the title ("Thursday's child has far to go") is actually an exploration of these modes, and an education of the heroine to her own responsibility to her vast human potential.

    This blog is open to comment on all these themes and topics, or any thing related, or books or other works related to them, or really anything at all. I hope the blog encourages anyone who visits to read the book, which does repay the effort. But, more than that, I hope it encourages that person to think and comment, and share those thoughts and comments here.

    Thanks for visiting, and come again soon.

 

 

'The Old Soul'

Hello.

If you are reading this, it is likely because you read a story of mine called 'The Old Soul', recently published as a Kindle Single. I actually wrote the story nearly 20 years ago, while I was trying to promote the publication of 'Thursday's Child', the novel described on this blog. The concept goes back even further than that. The notion that recovered memories of past lives, deja vu, and so on might have some actual biological basis occurred to me in my 20's. From that thought developed the little story, which I hope you liked.

Technically, I'd call it 'preternatural fiction', rather than science fiction. (I like science fiction a lot, thoiugh I don't write it.) The story offers an explanation for the deja vu phenomenon we all experience that lies a little beyond contemporary scientific boundaries, but is not completely implausible. Though I am not a biologist, the microworld biology is entirely accurate, to the best of my knowledge. It took quite a while to research and I am a bit proud of it. You may have noticed a resemblance to Aasimov's Fantastic Voyage. I had that in mind during the the story's composition.  

I do hope that some of the readers who have enjoyed this story will take a chance on 'Thursday's Child', the novel that is the subject of this blog. That book has been snakebit since the the day I finished it. Not that the book is bad - quite the contrary. As paradoxical as this may seem, it's alost too good for it's own good. It was represented, by the only agent who read it,  and was in fact accepted editorially at a major publishing house. But the marketing experts at the house eventually turned it down. The reason was that 'Thursday's Child' is a conscious attempt to overlay a conventional Harlequin-type romance with a novel of ideas. The result was an exuberant, adventurous read, with an epic feel, made out of the ordinary materials of urban life, brimming with inteesting characters and sexy as hell. Part of the fun is it does touch all of the bases of those silly, but rather entertaining, conventional romances. Throughout, it all, you'll find the same constant play of ideas and factual nuance that you enjoyed in the short story - and you'll find a far more serious subtext in play than in the regular form. 'Thursday's Child' has a sweep and an epic scope that the books on the paperback rack completely lack. It's a huge, major novel. 

Which is exactly why the book is in a way too good for its own good. It falls into multiple genres - elements of business thriller, ordinary mystery, more than a hint of gothic romance, and tinged throughout with the Shakesperean mysticism to the effect that there may be more to this existence than philosophers can say, The marketing committee that ultimately rejected it felt that the complexities of the book were much more than the average romance reader wanted or would accept. In retrospect, I'm not so sure the marketeers weren't right - as to that market. But both my agent and I felt they ignored the much larger market, of people who are drawn to an dense intricate plot with a love relationship at the center. It's a formula that has been working pretty well for a millenium or so. The soup does overflow the bowl to some extent - but the result is what I think is a very good read, 'a sprawling, yet tightly organized' narrative that invites you into its own world. (I am loosely quoting the unsolicited letter I received from the copyrighter, set forth elsewhere on this blog. He found an entirely different book than the slight thing he expected, far more interesting and impressive, and was kind enough to write me and say so.)

Success in the form of fame or money doesn't mean much to me these days. But I always thought that 'Thursday's Child' deserved a decent audience. That audience is likely made up of readers who liked 'The Old Soul', which certainly isn't a romance, but similar in the lively play of ideas. So I hope you'll give the novel a chance. You may make a discovery - a book you can lose yourself in, which is a rare thing these days.

Thanks for visiting.