A truly terrifying short little novel.
Told through a series of vignettes involving some transcript, authorial interpolation, and an element of fictive fabrication, this novel is about the build to and eventual annexation of Austria in 1938. To understand the smallness of the scope of this novel, I think it’s about focusing in sharp detail on the event itself, a bloodless (kind of) coup against Austria, and one that had overwhelming support of many Austrians, less the Austrians denied the right to vote, murdered, excluded, persecuted or coerced otherwise. It’s also one, the novel argues, built on a bluff. Blitzkrieg is a fancy descriptive of the German war machine, and while it might have been an accurate one for the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland in the next year, here it was merely a flashy descriptive of an army not yet up to snuff.
That wouldn’t stop the titans of capital who help to architect the invasion, and who would profit off of it and the further annihilation of the Jews, of the countries of central Europe, and of the world in years to come.
What’s so terrifying about this novel is how a) matter of fact it is, and b) how recognizable it is. Hitler was an idiot exploited political agents and capital leaders, and this led to the deaths of tens of millions while all the way to the very end his rhetoric and his actions were waved and explained away.
Did you even know that Neville Chamberlain was Von Ribbentropp’s landlord?
Anyway. Gah!
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590519698?pf_rd_p=183f5289-9dc0-416f-942e-e8f213ef368b&pf_rd_r=BFFJ318T253H65WYWEFH)