Story Behind The Story

“Blood of the Reich” is a thriller that evolved in the telling. It’s a comment not just on the Nazi past, but our own present, inspired by my own experiences.

Some novelists start with theme, others with character. I tend to start with plot - I want a good yarn, above all - and then learn more about who the characters are, and what they stand for, as I work on the book. For this newest one, that was particularly true. What made my characters tick?

Like many people I’ve long been fascinated by the evil of the Third Reich, and somewhat mystified. The usual explanation is that Germany was taken over by a band of hypnotic criminals, the Nazis, who put the country under their spell for 12 terrible years. With their annihilation, Germany became good again.

I’ve always felt this ‘Hitler made us do it’ explanation to be inadequate. What’s baffling to an American used to charming politicians is how uncharismatic the Nazi leadership seems in newsreels: unattractive, bombastic, and creepy. Hitler himself remains almost inexplicable (despite the effort of biographers), a terrifying fanatic who deliberately erased almost all traces of his past to make himself an icon. Yet the Nazis had the enthusiastic support of a majority of Germans in the early years, and implemented racial and eugenic policies (weeding out “undesirables”) from their earliest days in power with relatively little protest. The same theories had considerable support in democracies such as the United States and Britain in the 1930s.

What was Hitler’s appeal? In part, he succeeded because he told a defeated nation it was not just the equal of other countries, but the master. Hitler told the Germans they were special, and they followed him into the abyss because of the psychological need we all have for that reassurance.

We all want to be special. As a journalist, I visited many “subcultures” or political or social groups that hold this view of themselves. Examples included Congress (yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but those folks have high self-esteem), the military, scientific research camps, fundamentalist religious groups, New Agers, and even Indian tribes who used the sense of tribal identify and special history to unite and inspire young members. This is natural.

I saw the power of this played out in the religious commune of Rajneeshpuram in central Oregon in the 1980s. Ordinary middle-class Americans signed over all their belongings, adopted funny clothes, lived in isolation on a vegetarian diet, and worked 12 hour days for an Indian guru. The payoff was a sense of community and specialness, until the entire experiment exploded.

The Rajneeshees in turn called visiting journalists “the blue cult.” We all wore blue jeans, they explained, all came with the same assumptions, asked the same questions, and wrote the same stories. And yes, we felt WE were special.

I saw it when covering self-help and self-love gurus who could charge thousands of dollars in return for telling participants that they were good people, deserving of love: special.

With their rallies, medieval symbolism, and xenophobic view of the world, I think the Nazis offered much of the same to Germany’s Depression-ridden lower classes.

Another insight came when I was researching “The Rosetta Key.” I visited Jaffa, now a Tel Aviv suburb in Israel, which Napoleon assaulted in 1799. It’s a historic neighborhood, very helpful for my Napoleonic research, and at the end I chatted with an Israeli tour guide. Why (I asked as an American) is peace for Israel so elusive after so many decades? Why not compromise?

You don’t understand, she said. This is not the American melting pot. This is tribal, a rivalry for the Holy Land dating back three thousand years.

Okay, tribal. But you still cut a deal, right?

No, she replied. You still don’t get it. We’re Chosen by God. The Jews are the Chosen People. The Palestinians are not, the Christians are not, you Americans are not. YOU are not, Mr. Dietrich. And you don’t compromise with God.

Well. As a white American male, I grew up sort of assuming I was one of the chosen. (Yes, we Yanks can be annoying.) So it was startling to have someone else claim the mantle, and thought-provoking as well.

I went from there to Megiddo, an Israeli archeological site and the supposed future place of the Battle of Armageddon marking the end of our world. A large group of fundamentalist Christians were praying fervently in a grove of trees at the monument’s base, and the message wasn’t much different. THEY were the ones who were special, the sermon of their leader made clear, and they were the ones who would be lifted into Heaven by the Rapture. Everyone else who did not believe as they did would be left behind.

Seductive stuff. Unless you’re the one who’s going to be left behind.

Fast-forward several years to “Blood of the Reich.” In trying to humanize my villains, the Nazis take social Darwinism - the idea our species could be improved by selective sterilization and breeding - and wrap it up in self-esteem, of one chosen people, or master race, exterminating another. While primarily a page-turner, I wanted the book to provoke thought not just about the 1930s, but about our 21st Century trend toward tribalism.

The more crowded the planet becomes, the more we want to divide into smaller groups that give us some sense of still being special. I think we’re seeing that in the United States and it is making our politics more difficult than it was in, say, the 1970s and 1980s, with less room for compromise. Carried too far, I think this leads to conflict, a lack of empathy (which I think today’s rich people increasingly demonstrate toward today’s poor) and disaster.

How seductive is today’s message that the successful are deserving, that failures must blame themselves, and that the answer to our problems is to reward the winners even more extravagantly, to inspire or lift the losers!

So “Blood of the Reich” has a wild conspiracy, but a conspiracy grounded in what I see as an instinct constantly at work in the world.

In a big, impersonal planet, how can we find both individuality -’ I’m not like everyone else’ - and community? How can I be special and give my life meaning?

Adolf Hitler provided his followers with one answer: a crackpot Aryan mythology, membership (after proper screening) in a master race, and a mission to civilize by force. Many nations have had the same instinct in their histories: Spanish Catholic conquistadors, Americans with Manifest Destiny, Britain’s Empire and the White Man’s Burden. The Nazis carried a common instinct to its illogical extreme. So do the bad guys in “Blood of the Reich,” but hopefully the reader also recognizes the lure of their message.

Nazism will always fascinate because it illustrated the capacity of even the most advanced nations for systemic evil. Hitler’s rise is like a mirror of our darkest instincts. And a lot of smart people followed him, which is scary.

For a novelist, that lurid chapter makes believable what otherwise would never be believed: that in trying to be the best, we always flirt with the danger of becoming the worst. In “Blood of the Reich,” Rominy Pickett is hurled into the middle of this dilemma - and ultimately is called on to save the world