Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin

Starred review from October 12, 2020
What would it be like for a Jewish detective to work for the Nazis on a serial killer case? That’s the intriguing premise of Gilbers’s stellar debut, which won the Glauser Prize for the best German crime novel. Before Jews were forbidden from working for the police, Richard Oppenheimer was one of Berlin’s best criminal investigators. Late one night in May 1944, SS Hauptsturmführer Vogler
summons Oppenheimer to a crime scene. Arrayed before a WWI memorial is the body of a young woman with nails driven into her ears; her pelvic area is a “single massive wound.” Vogler reveals that two other women were slaughtered in the same way over the preceding nine months, and in desperation the SS has turned to Oppenheimer, who once apprehended another serial murderer who mutilated women. Despite his new role, Oppenheimer is still at risk in a city filled with anti-Semites. When evidence surfaces that one of the victims was connected with Lebensborn, Himmler’s program to produce children with as pure blood as possible, the investigation becomes even more delicate. Gilbers makes Oppenheimer’s fears, and the moral compromises he makes, palpable. Philip Kerr fans will want to check this out. Agent: Kerstin Schuster, Droemer Knaur (Germany).

November 1, 2020
Richard Oppenheimer was a Berlin detective before the Nazis ousted Jews from the police force; now, in spring 1944, he's still in Berlin, having avoided the concentration camps, thanks to his Aryan wife, and is working in a factory. His situation changes dramatically, however, when a serial killer in the bomb-ravaged city begins preying on women with ties to the Nazi Party. Oppenheimer, who once solved a similar case, is summoned back to the police, freed by Goebbels ""from affiliation to the Jewish people until the end of the investigation,"" when, he will likely be killed or finally sent to the camps. As is the case with much WWII noir, atmosphere is the real draw here, and the novel splendidly evokes Berlin in ruins and the fall of the Nazis. Gilbers' hero emerges less forcefully as a fully fleshed character than we might wish, especially in comparison to Bernie Gunther in Philip Kerr's seminal series about the quintessential Nazi-defying German copper and PI, but the tantalizingly open-ended finale suggests that Oppenheimer will have more opportunity to grow in later volumes.

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