Last Stop Vienna - Hardcover

Nagorski, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786254890 ISBN 13: 9780786254897

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2003

Synopsis

Germany in the 1920s, in the early days of Hitler and the Nazi party, was a country plunging into darkness and violence. Andrew Nagorski has written the story of a doomed generation, of evil, hopelessness, sexual perversion and murder that set the stage for the ultimate destruction of a society. But in a stunning denouement, a young Nazi brownshirt, acting out of passion and revenge, changes the course of history.

Karl Naumann, a German teenager who has lost his father and brother in World War I, has tried to find a place in a defeated, demoralized and anarchic Berlin. Impressed by the returning veterans who refuse to lay down their arms and fight running battles with communist revolutionaries, and alone and adrift on the streets, he is recruited to their cause and camaraderie. He is sent to Munich, where he works his way up the ranks to become one of Adolf Hitler's bodyguards, a storm trooper.

The new movement is increasingly split between Hitler and rival leaders, including Karl's mentor, Otto Strasser, a real-life Nazi activist. As the schism within the party widens, the battles intensify and Hitler asserts his dominance, Karl must determine where his loyalty lies. He has fallen in love with a nurse, Sabine, whom he marries, but he is infatuated with Hitler's young niece, Geli Raubal, who is caught up in a deeply disturbing sexual relationship with her uncle.

Obsessed by the seductive and elusive Geli, Karl is startled by what he sees through her of the dark core of Hitler's personality. When Geli finally summons up the courage to leave her uncle, it is too late. Soon after, she is found dead in their apartment, a gun in her hand, allegedly a suicide. Karl believes that Hitler has murdered her. He follows him to Geli's grave in Vienna where their final confrontation takes place. Last Stop Vienna presents a chilling and suspenseful look at what might have been.

About this title

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0786254890
• ISBN 13: 9780786254897
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 440