The Odessa File - Frederick Forsyth

    1972; 329 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Suspense-Thriller; Intrigue; Holocaust; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    I learned it in high school History class, so it has to be true.  With the exception of a few Nazi officials who knew they would be executed as war criminals, almost all of the German civilians welcomed the liberating Allied armies.  Well, maybe not the Russian army so much, since they had some atrocities to avenge, but at least the American, British, and French soldiers.

 

    The problem is, if that’s so, how do we explain why so many Nazi war criminals managed to avoid being found, arrested, and tried?  Yeah, a few were caught and put on trial, including Hermann Goring and Adolf Eichmann.

 

    Some others fled to foreign countries, mainly to South America.  But most simply blended into the German populace with forged identities, and lived out their lives to a quiet and peaceful end.  How could that happen?

 

    Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File presents a plausible explanation for such a travesty of justice.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Odessa File is a best-selling 1972 thriller/historical fiction novel where we follow Peter Miller, a German freelance reporter as he investigates the whereabouts of SS Captain Eduard Roschmann, aka “The Butcher of Riga”, the maniacal and savage commandant of a concentration camp located there.  The story takes place in 1963-64, primarily in places all over Germany, especially the Hamburg area, with occasional quick detours to places like Egypt and Israel.

 

    The book does a fantastic job of chronicling the post-World War 2 sentiments of the German people.  Not every German rejoiced that the Nazi personnel, particularly those that had been in the infamous SS Division, were now hiding out and posing as German civilians.  The titular “ODESSA” is an acronym for “Organisation der ehemaligan SS-Angehorigen”, which translates to “Organization of Former Members of the SS”, a (fictional) clandestine group that gives huge amounts of money, muscle, and resources to any former SS person who needs to become “invidible”.

 

    I liked that lots of real-world figures have parts in the story, including Simon Weisenthal (Nazi hunter), Anwar Sadat, General Meir Amit (Mossad), Reinhard Heydrich (Nazi), Bishop Alois Hudal (Nazi sympathizer), Bruno Streckenbach (SS general), and Peter Miller’s target, Eduard Roschmann.  You’ll also pick up a few basic German phrases along the way; chuckle at ancient (1970s) things like Telex, pensions, photostats and public telephones; and ;earn how to make a car bomb out of common household materials.

 

    The overall plot of the book is fairly straightforward.  Our protagonist sets out on his search for Roschmann, gets stonewalled by all sorts of German bureaucratic agencies, doggedly keeps at it, and gradually becomes a threat to Eduard Roschmann’s well-being, which calls for the Butcher of Riga to take appropriate countermeasures.

 

    It all builds to an exciting, twisty, and suspenseful climax.  Peter Miller survives and fulfills his mission, but not in the way you’d expect.  Not all the baddies die, but those that don’t, have to flee for their lives.  Things close with a “where are they now” epilogue that includes both fictional and real-world characters.

 

Ratings…
    Goodreads:  4.13/5 based on 58,363 ratings and 910 reviews.

    Amazon: 4.6/5 based on 508 ratings and 147 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “The trouble with you, pal,” he told his reflection in one of Sigi’s brilliantly polished saucepans as he rinsed out the cup with his forefinger, “is that you are lazy.”

    He had been asked by a civilian-careers officer, at the end of his military service ten years earlier, what he wanted to be in life.  He had replied, “An idle rich man,” and at twenty-nine although he had not achieved it and probably never would, he still thought it a perfectly reasonable ambition.  (loc. 395)

 

    “He was killed, you know, shortly after that.  He returned to his native Austria and was killed fighting against the Americans in early nineteen forty-five.  His body was identified by several people who had known him in life.”

    “He must have been a remarkable man,” said Miller.

    Dr. Schmidt nodded in agreement.  “Well, yes, some thought so.  Yes, indeed, some of us thought so.”

    “I mean,” continued Miller as if the interruption had not occurred, “he must have been remarkable to be the first man since Jesus Christ to have risen from the dead.  He was captured alive by the British on December twentieth, nineteen forty-seven, at Graz in Austria.”  (loc. 2085)

 

Kindle Details…

    Presently, The Odessa File sells for $6.99 at Amazon.  Frederick Forsyth has more than a dozen other novels in e-book format, including the highly-acclaimed thriller, The Day of the Jackal.  The prices for those range from $6.99 to $13.99.

 

“It’s a question of election mathematics.  Six million dead Jews don’t vote.  Five million former Nazis can and do, at every election.”  (loc. 2445)

    There’s little to quibble about in The Odessa File.  Cusswords are sparse, only six instances in the first 25% of the book.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay and two allusions to male excitement.

 

    I caught a couple of typos: Kaposs/Kapos, hose/those, rights/right, By-By/Bye-Bye, but those might have occurred when the book version was converted into e-book format.  And although the book is mostly written in "American" English, a couple of “British” spellings show up, including: disk jockey, whisky, and “waked up”.

 

    It should be noted that this is more of a Suspense/Intrigue tale, not an Action-Adventure.  Thrills-&-spills do show up, but not until the second half of the book, when Peter Miller has morphed from a nuisance into a threat to Roschmann.

 

    For those who are cinephiles, a movie version came out in 1974 starring Jon Voight and Maximilian Schell, although Wikipedia implies that its adherence to the book’s plotline is rather “loose”.

 

    That’s about it.  I found The Odessa File to be a great read, both as a work of historical fiction focusing on post-WW2 Germany and a page-turner.  This was my first book by Frederick Forsyth, who rarely discounts the e-book versions of his novels, but I will now be on the lookout for other works by him, including his equally famous thriller, The Day of the Jackal.

 

    9 Stars.  For those who wonder whether books and movies really have any significant impact in the real world, Wikipedia has this note about the 1974 film adaptation of The Odessa File: “After the film was released to the public, he [Eduard Roschmann] was arrested by the Argentinian police, skipped bail, and fled to Asuncion, Paraguay, where he died on 10 August 1977.”  All because of the movie.  Awesome!