Like most authors, I suspect, I get questions on a pretty frequent basis about where my ideas come from. I don't have a wise-ass answer to that yet, so I generally opt for the truth which is that I read a lot and try to remember the interesting stuff.

For The Vaults, in particular, there was a New Yorker article that I'd read six or seven years before I started writing, but that stuck with me and if you read the article and The Vaults, you will see that they share a number of themes. The article, "Secrets of the Files" by Gerald Posner, was published in 1994 and can be found here if you have a subscription.

The article concerns the Berlin Document Center, which was the repository for Nazi files captured by the Allies at the end of World War II. In 1994, the Americans, who had controlled the Center since its creation, were about to relinquish control of the original documents to the German government. Before handing over the documents, however, the Americans made microfilm copies of all of the archival materials. Much of the article is given over to the implications of the German control of the files and the concerns surrounding the efficacy of microfilm as the most easily accessible form of these documents going forward. More on this in the next post.

What was in the Berlin Document Center? Among other things, according to wikipedia: 10.7 milllion Nazi Party membership cards (90% of the total); about 600,ooo SS personnel files (60% of the total); 1.5 million pieces of Nazi Party correspondance; and so on. Posner says that the Center contained approximately 75 million pages of files, the largest collection of its kind. It is so large, that Posner describes one hall in the archive, nearly the length of a football field, thus: "The breadth and magnitude of the paper stored in this hall and the surrounding tunnels is physically overwhelming."

More on the Berlin Document Center in the next post.

Originally posted on June 4, 2010