Last Stop Vienna: A Novel - Hardcover

Nagorski, Andrew

3.31

35 ratings by Goodreads

9780743237505: Last Stop Vienna: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743237501 ISBN 13: 9780743237505

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2002

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Recruited by communist revolutionaries and spirited off to Munich, Karl Naumann becomes one of Hitler's stormtroopers, and as the new Nazi movement takes shape, Karl is torn between two women, his wife Sabine and Hitler's neice, Geli Raubal, a quandry that leads to tragedy and the discovery of Hitler's true nature. 25,000 first printing.

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About the Author:

Andrew Nagorski is a senior editor at Newsweek International. He was Berlin bureau chief from 1996 to 1999, and Bonn bureau chief from 1985 to 1988. The winner of two Overseas Press Club awards, he has also reported from Moscow, Warsaw, Rome and Hong Kong. He is the author of Reluctant Farewell and The Birth of Freedom, and lives in Pelham Manor, New York. This is his first novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

Nagorski imagines a fascinating alternate ending to Adolf Hitler's ill-fated affair with his niece, Geli, in this fast-moving, riveting debut novel about a naive young stormtrooper who inadvertently becomes the fuhrer's romantic rival. After losing his brother in WWI, Karl Naumann joins the fledgling vigilante group that eventually becomes Hitler's notorious brownshirts. Despite his delicate appearance, Naumann instantly takes to the violence of the job. Working with Hitler's pamphlet publisher, Otto Strasser, Naumann rises through the ranks, and shortly after meeting Hitler, finds himself chaperoning Hitler's precocious teenage niece during a couple of brief outings. Naumann responds to Geli's playful flirtation; before long he finds himself infatuated, despite his recent marriage. The affair seems innocuous, but when Hitler begins to monopolize his young niece's attention with his twisted erotic demands, Naumann realizes that his life and Geli's are in danger. Naumann's interior monologues can be stiff ("my return to Berlin was not at all as I had envisaged it"), but Nagorski paints a complex portrait of a vengeful young man incapable of resisting his own base impulses, yet ultimately guided by a strong sense of compassion and justice. A former Berlin bureau chief for Newsweek, Nagorski captures the city faithfully, convincingly imagining the to and fro of everyday life in the 1920s. The book offers a fascinating account of the power struggles between Hitler and rival Nazi leaders, but focuses primarily on the small events and individual actions that lay the foundation for Nazi rule.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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