Official Review: The Reich Device by Richard D. Handy

[Rebeccaej]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Reich Device" by Richard D. Handy.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Gustav Mayer, a theoretical physicist, has made a stunning breakthrough. He has calculated a new way of arranging carbon atoms to produce a superconducting material with properties never before seen in the scientific world. The downside is that Professor Mayer is working in Leipzig, Germany, in May of 1933. Hitler became Chancellor only a few months earlier, and Mayer fears what the Nazi party will do with his discovery. What follows is an elaborate cat-and-mouse game through several parts of the world. German agents attempt to uncover Mayer’s secrets, and simultaneously develop their own rocket program, while Mayer and his allies attempt to thwart them through espionage and military action.

The Reich Device, by Richard D. Handy, is labeled “historical fiction,” but I don’t think it fits the category well. Handy clearly cared more about the “thriller” elements of the story than about the history or setting, which is inaccurate on a few different levels. As a thriller, it’s not bad. Authors tend to be overprotective of their main characters, but Handy lets them fall into real peril. Some plans fail spectacularly, and after it happens once, it raises the tension of every scene that follows.

That is an exhaustive list of things I liked about this book.

The writing is intermediate: not terrible, but not professional quality. The beginning is especially choppy—there are a few paragraphs of plot, then a few of character development, stitched together like a patchwork instead of weaving together smoothly. The romantic subplot is forced and affects nothing.

The major problem is that only the science is treated as valuable. Handy takes care to specify the model of a sniper rifle and the reasons for using it. He accurately describes the composition of rocket fuel and the structure of nanocarbon. The characters and setting are two-dimensional, though, and often rely on stereotypes. Americans are greedy and unwashed, Germans are either evil or naïve, and countries that don’t have a white majority are sprinkled with random “exotic” details like Gurkha knives, cheroots, and the title Sahib—all things associated with India, not the countries he was actually describing. Then he gets the prime minister of the UK wrong.

How much does that actually matter? Not a lot, I suppose, if you’re only reading for the action and don’t care who is doing that action. At least, it wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t trying to represent well-known historical figures and some of the most sensitive aspects of modern history.

There are two issues that I think pushed this book from amateurish to downright offensive: the portrayal of Albert Einstein, and the portrayal of anti-Semitic violence.

Einstein is introduced in the first few chapters as a friend of Gustav Mayer. Mayer shows him his discovery and shares his worry that it may fall into Nazi hands. Einstein responds, “No, people are inherently good. Gustav, trust me on this, it cannot be as bad as you imagine.”

When Mayer is concerned that his assistant may have been killed by the SS, Einstein says, “No, I just don’t believe one human being could do that to another.”

Here’s the problem: This is supposed to be May of 1933. Once Hitler rose to power, the real Einstein knew that he, being Jewish, would never be safe in Germany again. He left for America in December, 1932, more than a month before Hitler was appointed Chancellor. In March, 1933, he renounced his German citizenship.

Albert Einstein saw what was happening. This oblivious fool is an insult to the real man.

This kind of flippant disregard for real people, and real truth, poisoned the book for me.

A fictional SS member, Commandant Kessler, is a bigger problem. Kessler is the only character we see committing oppressive violence. We see other military violence, but Kessler is the only one to sneer at a prisoner for being an “intellectual Jew” before torturing him. When a military base uses prisoners as slave labor, Kessler and his subordinates are in charge of managing them (which includes executing an unknown number). He’s the book’s only in-depth representation of a Nazi, and he’s a point-of-view character, so we get a good look into his psyche.

Why does Kessler do what he does? He lacks human emotion. That’s it. He’s just a deeply depraved person who tortures and murders for the fun of it.

Why did real Nazis do what they did? There are an enormous number of reasons, and there were some like Kessler, but they certainly weren’t the norm. If they were, the Holocaust could never have reached the scale that it did. An SS full of sadists wouldn't care about being efficient.

The first attempts at gas chambers were designed specifically to relieve soldiers from the strain of killing. Until 1942, Holocaust victims were rounded up and shot by units called the Einsatzgruppen, who found the task horrific. They began drinking and mentally breaking down.

The gas vans—trucks designed to fill the cargo area with carbon monoxide—separated the victims from the executioner. Of course, driving a van full of people pounding on the walls until they died was its own kind of stressful. The mechanism had to be adjusted to account for the driver’s rush to get it over with. In 1942, August Becker, an SS member who trained others in how to use the vans, wrote this in a letter to his superior officer, Walter Rauff:

“The application of gas usually is not undertaken correctly. In order to come to an end as fast as possible, the driver presses the accelerator to the fullest extent. By doing that the persons to be executed suffer death from suffocation and not death by dozing off as was planned. My directions now have proved that by correct adjustment of the levers death comes faster and the prisoners fall asleep peacefully.”

https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/DocGasVn.htm

The SS switched from carbon monoxide to cyanide gas for the same reason: it caused a quicker, more peaceful death. Finally, the prisoners themselves were put in charge of both the executions and the disposal of the bodies. The Nazis didn’t even have to look.

Why did they do it, then? How did they accept the idea that widespread murder was necessary, even morally good, if so many were disgusted by it? That’s the meat of a Nazi character. There are a thousand different blends of bigotry, patriotism, moral sensibility, and lust for power that are worth exploring in a character like this.

Commandant Kessler represents the most milk-toast, cowardly approach imaginable. He doesn’t exist to portray a Nazi. He exists to be easily digestible. He’s unrecognizable as a human, which allows the readers to be entertained by violence without facing uncomfortable questions about themselves or anybody around them. “Don’t worry,” Handy says through Kessler. “People are inherently good. These acts are committed by aliens.”

Overall, I found this book an insult to its subject matter. Handy took one of the most atrocious chapters of the last century and used it as a plaything with little concern for humanity or truth. I have no idea what to rate it. So far, the only book I’ve rated one star was utterly terrible. The Reich Device is better on a technical level. The only book I’ve given two stars was enjoyable despite its flaws. The Reich Device enraged me. I’ll go with two out of four stars, if only to balance my instinct to be uncharitable. Some parts might be enjoyable to somebody else, but the parts that are bad poisoned the rest for me.

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The Reich Device
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Like Rebeccaej's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Chrys Brobbey]

Yes, I agree that misrepresenting the great Einstein poisoned the book. Authors must be careful the way they portray historical figures in novels. This is a good review.

[kandscreeley]

It does sound like there are problems with this book. However, you don't think there were Nazis out there that did enjoy killing and torturing just for the fun of it? I can imagine the Nazi party did attract some of those people. Thanks for the review though.

[Rebeccaej]

Thank you! One idea I kept coming back to as I read was that this was an incredibly ambitious project. He portrays multiple real historic figures alongside events that rocked the 20th century and changed how the Western world thinks about humanity.

To do it well would have taken a staggering amount of research and more writing ability than anybody has on their first novel.

Handy bit off more than he could chew, and I'm not sure he ever realized it.

Edit regarding Nazis: There definitely were, but they didn't hit critical mass. I mean, there weren't enough that they became the dominant force in the culture. Not if the machinery being used had to be designed to accommodate the driver's squeamishness. If sadists were the norm, they could have just found people who enjoyed killing and let them handle it.

[Jaime Lync]

Wow, this review is deep. Book sounds like it had potential but it was poorly researched. Sigh.

[Azeline Arcenal]

I like how you did a thorough review on this book. Based on your opinions of the book, I don't think I'll be reading this book. You made several clear points on why you didn't like this book and even included outside knowledge in your review. I appreciate an honest, but detailed review so great job on the review!