A novelist’s Nazi Germany

Press, 29 December 1979, Page 13

A novelist’s Nazi Germany

Twilight of the Generals. By H. H. Kirst, Collins. 252 pp. $14.95.

The subject is new. but the message and the technique are not; if this was the author's first book it would be greeted with acclaim, but because it is his umpteenth novel it is disappointing for a Kirst enthusiast Kirst is a German novelist who writes mainly about the ghastliness that was Nazi Germany. There is a lot of Isherwood in him. His Germany is seedy, filled with rhetoric and rampant homosexuality. Society is divided into the holders of power, the technocrats (who are so much cleverer than those who hold power — why don’t they overthrow them?), the sick and seedy elements of society on whom both the

powerful and the technocrats batten, and the great masss of ignorant society.

Kirst plucks individuals from each of these groups in his novels to tell a tale and preach a moral. The settings change, but the character remains. In this novel the setting is the disgrace of the Minister of War and the Chief of General Staff by Hitler and his minions because of their alleged sexual depravity. Like many Kirst novels, this is rooted solidly in fact. Perhaps the fact is not quite as solid as the author implies, but this factual background and Kirst’s police-file style of writing do give a sense of immediacy. It is a good, but not exceptional, example of Kirst’s work; it is also a readable and thrilling piece of fiction — Oliver Riddell.