World War II has ended six months ago in this, Downing's fifth Berlin series, and John Russell and Effi find themselves back Berlin, or what remains of it after the Allied bombings, the destruction by the Russians. The city is divided into four sections, American, British, French, and Russian but their are only two players, the Russians and the Americans. And we think we are civilized!
Like the other novels, Russell is caught between pleasing both the Russians and Americans. The Russians come off as brutal and practical, the Americans as naive, ignorant, and arrogant, as if they had won the war single handedly, never really understanding the Russians' who have suffered unimaginable losses, of up to forty to sixty million during the war.
Both John and Effi return to Berlin, Effi to continue making motion pictures, John because of the pressures from the Russians and United States. He also continues his interest in the displaced Jews, in their attempts to assimilate back in to society, most that would prefer to see them disappear. As a result, most Jews hope to emigrate to Palestine or the US. There are covert groups that set up secret paths from Europe to Palestine though neither the Russians or Americans nor British are comfortable with it, as they are worried about its effects on the Arabs in the Middle East.
John gets mixed up with a group of former Nazis who run the local cabaret called The Honey Pot. With the acquiescence of the American government, the nouveau riche Nazis smuggle goods in and out of Berlin and run a black market in drugs, alcohol, and women. John is warned off pursuing this story by his American spy masters and only does so after having his life threatened by the Nazis, as well as well as the Americans. He solves the problem by turning his info on the Nazis over to a Jewish terrorist group called the Ghosts of Treblinka. Within a week, the Nazis are found murdered and John can live with himself.
He also seems to have compromised his position with his Russian spy master. He is asked to take some compromising documents to a drop and realizes he is be followed by the master, and most likely will be caught with compromising information and killed. He hides in an alley and for the second time, he kills a man, this time to save his life. He's not happy about it but finds that he's not as troubled by it as he thought. After all, he's still alive, with Effi, has a son doing well in England, and no one has connected him with the murders of the Nazis or of his Russian spymaster.
We get a vivid picture of life in Berlin, with shortages of food, water, medicine, almost everything as more and more homeless Germans pour into the city and surrounding areas. Most have been displaced by the Poles and Russians, sent back to Germany. Scholars estimate the total number of displaced Germans at six or seven million, with hundreds of thousands having died during the displacement.
One of the most troubling aspects of the novel is the often barbaric treatment of the citizens, especially women, of occupied Germany by the Russian and Allied forces. It made me want to do some research about post WWII Europe. For example, rape was rampant in last few weeks of the war and its aftermath. Sources indicate over 30% of Berlin's women were raped, between 95,000 and 130,000, mostly be the Russians but also by the British, French and Americans. Overall, according to one source 1.9 million rapes resulted from the Russian take over of Germany. This is not an isolated problem but one present with us today. The US Department of Defense estimates there are 19,000 sexual assaults in the military per year.
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