While Mortals Sleep

Rating:
Summary: Good effort but sadly flawed by poor research
Review: While Mortals Sleep is a good effort to step inside Nazi Germany and show things from the perspective of fictional but believable opponents of the regime. It is, however, sadly flawed by shabby or inadequate research and an obvious lack of familiarity with German culture. The most serious errors are such things as ignoring the fact that all German youth, male and female, were required to serve in the Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) for one full year after finishing school. In addition, compulsory military service of two years duration was introduced for boys in 1935 - long before the start of the novel. Furthermore, after the start of the war, military service lasted for the duration of the war. Thus, at the time described in the novel, German youths were not deciding to go to University or anywhere else! They had NO CHOICE. They were all conscripted into a system that did not release them to pursue their own interests until the end of a war that had barely begun. As the entire novel is about German youth in their last year of school, the complete lack of reference to impending wartime military service facing all the boys in the novel seriously undermines the authenticity of the novel and damages its entire impact. There are then other unnecessary errors - like using a patently Jewish name (Reichmann) for the most fanatical of the Nazi families, or misusing the name of one of the leading members of the real German Resistance (a man who was involved in attempts to kill and overthrow Hitler from 1938 onwards) for a man who supports child-murder! The description of a crime-invested Kreuzberg in which burgleries are commonplace is ridiculous in a police state - which is, after all, what Nazi Germany was. Kreuzberg is now a rough part of Berlin, but during the Nazi period it was inhabited predominantly by civil servants and officers, and, in any case, the pervasive presence of police in Nazi Gemany virtually eliminated the kind of crime described in the novel. In general, the houses and life-style described in the novel sound like America not Berlin: villas with gardens rather than 5-story apartment blocks, eggs for breakfast rather than cold-cuts and rolls etc. etc. Given the good characters and insightful handling of many of the issues involved in opposing the Nazis for moral reasons, it is a pity that Mr. Cavanaugh did not bother to do a little more research or make a greater effort at authenticity.