Kirjailijakuva

David Thomas (3) (1959–)

Teoksen Ostland tekijä

Katso täsmennyssivulta muut tekijät, joiden nimi on David Thomas.

David Thomas (3) has been aliased into Tom Cain.

15 teosta 311 jäsentä 7 arvostelua

Tekijän teokset

Works have been aliased into Tom Cain.

Ostland (2013) 124 kappaletta
Girl (1995) 24 kappaletta
Pick of Punch 1989 (1989) 24 kappaletta
Blood Relative (2011) 22 kappaletta
"Punch" Book of Utterly British Humour (1980) — Johdanto — 18 kappaletta
Pick of Punch 1990 (1990) 17 kappaletta
Pick of Punch 1991 (1991) 17 kappaletta
Bilko: The Fort Baxter Story (1985) 14 kappaletta
Pick of Punch 1992 (1992) 9 kappaletta
Sex and Shopping (1988) 3 kappaletta
Foul Play (2003) 3 kappaletta
Great Sporting Moments (1989) 3 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Virallinen nimi
Thomas, David William Penrose
Muut nimet
Cain, Tom (pseudonym)
Syntymäaika
1959-01-17
Sukupuoli
male
Kansalaisuus
UK
Ammatit
journalist

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

What if the detective hero wasn’t.such a hero? What if he was a war criminal and a nasty one at that?

This book flips between the history of Heuser, the detective, his history as such, and then his later work as a SS officer in Russia. Also included is the search for him twenty years later and his trial as a war criminal. The parts with Heuser are decently written and you see the toll of war and what he had to do. The parts that deal with his war crimes trial is jarring and almost unnecessary. Honestly, it would have been better to keep it all from Heuser’s point of view rather than the flipping back and forth.

A recommend
… (lisätietoja)
 
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pacbox | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jul 9, 2022 |
This book is based on actual events.
The action is initially split between the wartime activity of Georg Heuser, who is new murder detective in Berlin assigned to assist the lead detective investigating the serial killer known as the S-Bahn murderer. He is a diligent worker, who plays things by the book, and wants to advance his career. Also, in the early 1960's he is the subject of a war crimes investigation and prosecution for his activities “processing” Jews in the Nazi-controlled East. The book shows the human cost on those who participated in the wartime atrocities and how they tried to cope with what they felt they had to do.… (lisätietoja)
 
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BillPilgrim | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | May 18, 2016 |
A chilling book in every possible way. Based on real people and events, it left me very disturbed.
Set in Nazi Germany during WWll, the protagonist is a young German who has just graduated from Berlin's police academy where he was top student and gained all the honours.
He is sent to work with the Berlin Murder Squad which is led by a very famous detective. The squad are in the thick of a complex situation as they try to track down a serial killer. Heuser, a rather earnest young man but with his heart in the right place, is determined to make his mark, he is a stickler for being loyal and obedient and for following the rules. Thanks to hard work, and some luck the Kripo get their man.

Thus far the book is an interesting but traditional police crime novel. Then the focus suddenly shifts and darkens when thanks to having helped catch the killer he is given promotion and sent to work in 'Ostland' a huge area of Russia which Germany has conquered, and which the German leadership intend to be populated with good German volk once it has been cleared. Heuser assumes he will be helping to set up a police system there.

However, when he arrives it is quickly made clear to him that what is actually going on there is the killing of Jews in large numbers. Because Russia had far more Jews in their population than Germany or Austria ever did, the numbers to be 'dealt' with are huge. He is horrified and unsure as to how he should proceed, but little by little his humanity is stripped away from him as it is with all the other German officers and men sent to the area.
It is as though this evil is a deadly virus which overcomes them all.
This is not the 'Final Solution' of the big industrial scale Concentration camps such as Austwizch or Bergen-Belsen, they have no gas chambers to speed the hideous demands of their superiors to kill all the Jews delivered to them.
The killing is close up and personal, every Jew has to be shot. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Heuser becomes almost inured to what he is doing, and the reader watches aghast as a decent young man slides inexorably into becoming a monster in what is a relatively short time.
There is a parallel story running through the book, that of a young German lawyer who, in the 1960s is set to gathering evidence for the criminal prosecution of Heuser and the other surviving officers who were at Minsk. Heuser has led a blameless life since the war, and she is finding it hard to get any evidence to bring him to trial. Finally he is tried and the outcome is surprising.
All through these sections of the book, which are nothing like as dramatic or gripping like Heuser's tale of his time in Ostland, I was asking myself - what would I have done? could I be sure I would not sink into the pit of hell that the Nazi regime created? could it happen in Britain, or the USA? Big questions.
What I had to keep reminding myself was that all the situations - and indiviuals - in this book really did exist and they really did do these frightful things
This book is very strong meat, and some readers would undoubtedly find it upsetting.
… (lisätietoja)
½
 
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herschelian | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | May 28, 2015 |
Any book that discusses the Holocaust and those who implemented it invariably touches on the question of how good people could end up acting in such a cold-blooded manner. The answers are as varied as the number of books that exist about this topic, but the search for an understandable answer does not cease. Ostland is one more exploration of this topic as it discusses the background of one Georg Heuser and his rise from up-and-coming police detective to mass murderer on the Eastern Front.

Told in the guise of trial preparations, the story flips back and forth between Georg’s first-person narrative and the efforts of lawyer Paula Siebert to amass evidence against Georg for his trial twenty years later. As is often the case, the two stories are unequal. Paula’s discoveries and frustrations are not nearly as absorbing as Georg’s experiences. Readers will find themselves speeding through those short chapters of Paula’s in order to get back to Georg’s more disturbing ones. This does not mean that those scenes involving Paula’s efforts are less important than those told by Georg. In fact, there is an interesting message that arises from the court case itself – one that Paula and the readers are slow to discover. However, it is Georg’s experiences in Minsk that will draw a reader’s attention.

The idea of guilt for Nazi war criminals is always a tricky one. Does following orders automatically excuse one’s behavior or is there a fundamentally human requirement to challenge orders that are so basically wrong? Ostland does not attempt to answer such questions but lays out Georg’s case methodically and unemotionally in an effort for readers to draw their own conclusions. It starts with his rise to detective and his introduction to real-world police procedures and culminates in his Minsk leadership. Throughout his story, readers get the full gamut of Nazi atrocities as seen through the eyes and experienced through the mind of an ambitious young man anxious to make a name for himself and conditioned to follow orders to the letter without question and without fail.

Ostland, in spite of using as much real-life evidence as possible, never sets out to indict Heuser for his crimes nor to critique Siebert on her preparations. Instead, it forces readers to evaluate each piece of evidence on their own, to judge based on Georg’s state of mind, as presented in the novel with fictional license, as well as on the facts. It also requires readers to extrapolate their deductions based on Georg’s story and apply them to the entire German populace. That Heuser epitomizes the quintessential Nazi soldier is neither here nor there as his attitude towards leadership and rules is as much cultural as it is personal, thereby further complicating the issue of guilt.

As horrific as one imagines it will be given its subject matter, Ostland is still a compelling read for the picture it paints of a world gone mad by war and hate. It makes no excuses for what happened but serves to offer up a warning that it is easy to fall into the trap of following orders. It raises questions about individual responsibility versus the collective good and does so in a way that requires readers to stop and reflect. In such a mad world in which the rules plainly flout common sense, there are no easy answers, nor can there be. However, taking the time to think and assess is one step towards avoiding future atrocities because it forces readers to answer the tough questions before they become reality. To that end, Ostland provides a chilling reminder of not only what occurred during the Nazi regime but also that guilt, in such instances, is never as black and white as one likes to think it will be.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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jmchshannon | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 6, 2015 |

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Associated Authors

Tilastot

Teokset
15
Jäseniä
311
Suosituimmuussija
#75,820
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 3.7
Kirja-arvosteluja
7
ISBN:t
353
Kielet
13

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