SILESIAN STATION: DAVID DOWNING

This is the second in a series of Downing's five books, set in Nazi Germany.  This one takes places during the summer of 1939, just before WW II begins with Hitler's invasion of Poland.  John Russell, a British citizen with, however, an American passport has been living in Germany for eighteen years, fathered a son, Paul with Ilsa but is now divorced though he sees his son each weekend, part of his reason for remaining Berlin.  Like most the the books in the series, at least one of the subplots involves the Jews, in this case a young sixteen year old Jew named Marian Rosenfeld, sent to Berlin to live with her uncle.  Unfortunately, her uncle is arrested and she is never heard from again.  Russell finds out about her being missing from his brother in law, who employed the uncle.  Russell takes it upon himself to visit her villages in Silesian, then part of Poland. He finds that  the family has heard nothing from her and on his return, he is mistaken for a Jew lover and beaten up by local toughs.  So begins the novel, as Russell seeks to find out what happened to Marian (she's been kidnapped by the SS, used as a prostitute) and he manages towards the end of the novel to save her life and those of the other girls by pretending to be an ambulance driver during an Air Raid drill.  They take the girls away in an ambulance, supposedly from a bombed building, and end up fooling the SS with the plot.  This takes place towards the end of the novel.

Most of the book, however, charts his double or triple life as a spy for the Americans, Germans and Russians, supposedly giving false Germany information to the Russians.  Russell, however, has told the Russians its false, setting himself up as a double agent.  Because he is a journalist, he travels extensively during this novel, as the world waits with bated breath for Hitler to make his move and invade Poland. We are with Russell and all the Germans as well as Poles, week by week, until Ribbentrop finally ends up in Moscow,  signing the non aggression pact which virtually starts the war.

The novel ends in late September, 1939, as Russell returns to where Marian's family farm once stood.  Now its in ruins,  burned to the ground, and Poland is about to fall finally to the Nazis, as France and Great Britain do little to avoid their defeat.  Russell has played his cards well, playing one group against the other, and he has saved the life of German woman, Sarah Grostein, by asking the communists to smuggle her out of the country.  This along with his saving the lives of Marian and her fellow sex slaves, allows him to live with himself in this vile country, along with his son Paul and lover, Effi, who also aids in the defense of the Jews.  I am looking forward to the next book, STETTIN STATION, set in 1941, as the Nazis are fighting the Russians on the eastern front, just before the United States is brought into the war by Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.