Word: lessner
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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PHANTOM VICTORY-Erwin Lessner-Putnam ($2.50). "The curtain falls," said the German chief of staff to the assembled generals, "but the play is not over. . . . The National Socialist era ... was just an episode in the life of our nation. . . . You will discard your uniforms, [but] may I add that politics is a continuation of war by other means...
...Wehrmacht continued World War II by other means is the theme of this novel by Austrian-born Erwin Lessner. Author Lessner, 46, is an anti-Nazi from way back. For years he kept a jump ahead of the Gestapo in Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Denmark. Trapped in Norway in 1940, he was "questioned" by the Gestapo for 35 days; it was seven months before he was able to walk again. In 1941 he managed to reach the U.S. Phantom Victory is partly ferocious satire, partly deadly earnest foreboding, but throughout it proclaims Author Lessner's ruthlessly simple conviction...
...Lessner tells it, defeated Germany's main weapon was confusion. Overnight the Wehrmacht was dissolved ; not a single officer remained to offer Germany's "unconditional surrender." But veterans popped up again in strange places, such as the Brandenburg Canoe Club and the Association of Prussian Stamp Collectors. Nazi leaders vanished. The result of the long-awaited trial of German war criminals was: five Germans convicted of rape, four of cruelty to animals, five of reckless driving in congested areas. Countries ravaged by Hitler demanded the return of their looted property. They got it promptly: Austria received...