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Lanny Budd #6
Dragon Harvest
Lanny Budd infiltrates the Nazi high command in the riveting sixth chapter of Upton Sinclair’s Pulitzer Prize–winning series of historical novels
Dashing and well-connected, Lanny Budd has earned the trust of the Nazi high command. To Adolf Hitler and his inner circle, the American art dealer is a “true believer” committed to their Fascist cause. But Lanny is actually a secret agent serving as President Franklin Roosevelt’s eyes and ears in Germany.
When he learns of the Führer’s plans for conquest, Lanny’s dire warnings to Neville Chamberlain and other reluctant European leaders fall on deaf ears. The bitter seeds sown decades earlier with the Treaty of Versailles are now bearing fruit, and there will be no stopping the Nazi war machine as it rolls relentlessly on toward Paris.
Dragon Harvest captures the dramatic moment when world leaders realized that in trying to appease Hitler, they made a grave mistake. An astonishing mix of history, adventure, and romance, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of Upton Sinclair’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.
Dashing and well-connected, Lanny Budd has earned the trust of the Nazi high command. To Adolf Hitler and his inner circle, the American art dealer is a “true believer” committed to their Fascist cause. But Lanny is actually a secret agent serving as President Franklin Roosevelt’s eyes and ears in Germany.
When he learns of the Führer’s plans for conquest, Lanny’s dire warnings to Neville Chamberlain and other reluctant European leaders fall on deaf ears. The bitter seeds sown decades earlier with the Treaty of Versailles are now bearing fruit, and there will be no stopping the Nazi war machine as it rolls relentlessly on toward Paris.
Dragon Harvest captures the dramatic moment when world leaders realized that in trying to appease Hitler, they made a grave mistake. An astonishing mix of history, adventure, and romance, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of Upton Sinclair’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.
1073 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1945
237 people are currently reading
566 people want to read
About the author
Upton Sinclair
712 books1,181 followersUpton Beall Sinclair, Jr. was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). To gather information for the novel, Sinclair spent seven weeks undercover working in the meat packing plants of Chicago. These direct experiences exposed the horrific conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The Jungle has remained continuously in print since its initial publication. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence." In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.
Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 29, 2025
Lanny continues to shuttle between France and England and Germany. But in this sixth book in the series, he also spends time in the United States. He continues to gather information which he provides directly to the president of the United States. His travel in the US includes going to Michigan, where he visits with Henry Ford, as well as visiting my future hometown of Royal Oak, Michigan, and father Coughlin at the shrine of the little flower Catholic Church. The book concludes in Paris as the German army takes over France.
February 21, 2018
These Lanny Budd books are flat-out addictive; reading them means living in that time and place. Though I have read a number of book series (Ross Poldark by Winston Graham, Richard Sharp by Bernard Cornwell, etc.), this one has consumed me more than most. Perhaps it is the 20th century time frame in that its history is more familiar to me, though it is set before I was born (not by much!) Will I be able to resist jumping right into the next one without taking a breath? Hard to say...
not-for-me
October 16, 2023******************
*The Jungle 3 stars
the Lanny Budd Series:
1. World's End 4 stars
2.Between Two Worlds 4 stars
3.Dragon's Teeth 4 stars
4.Wide Is the Gate 3 stars
5,Presidential Agent TBR
6Dragon Harvest TBR
7.A World to Win TBR
8.Presidential Mission TBR
9.One Clear Call TBR
10.O Shepherd, Speak! TBR
11.The Return of Lanny Budd TBR
*The Jungle 3 stars
the Lanny Budd Series:
1. World's End 4 stars
2.Between Two Worlds 4 stars
3.Dragon's Teeth 4 stars
4.Wide Is the Gate 3 stars
5,Presidential Agent TBR
6Dragon Harvest TBR
7.A World to Win TBR
8.Presidential Mission TBR
9.One Clear Call TBR
10.O Shepherd, Speak! TBR
11.The Return of Lanny Budd TBR
June 21, 2019
Sixth volume of the World's End series takes off running at beginning of 1939 with Monck calling Lanny at Bienvenu and the two talking about the situation sitting on rocks on the cliffs, with the high tide making it impossible for anyone hearing them from below. Monck is just out of Spain, rescued by the League Commission.
""Franco is the most efficient little murderer that any devil could have invented; he doesn’t know the meaning of mercy, or even of statesmanship, and his one idea is to slaughter every man, woman, and child who has opposed him. The safest way, he figures, is to kill all who did not actively support him. He has a whole hierarchy of priests to tell him that this is God’s will, and to absolve him every night for mistakes he may have made during the day. After all, if they were good people, he has sent them to heaven, and they won’t complain when they arrive.” ... “If the League Commission had known how near to collapse we were, they would surely not have urged our removal!” There was acid in his tone."
Monck had walked across from Barcelona and it had taken over two days, with roads thronged with poor refugees fleeing, without food, and Franco's forces bombing them for fun.
Lanny asked about his plans. Monck's family was in Paris, but he planned to travel to Berlin and lanny didn't ask for details, only offering funds. He chose a new name, Braun. Lanny explained he couldn't invite him home, since that would blow his cover, his life of partying with the glitterati on Riviera - European kings and Aga Khan, Duchess of Windsor, and similar sort.
The author mentions Lanny meeting various people at “Château de l’Horizon”, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and too Winston Churchill, who was yet to be catapulted out of his enforced retirement. Presumably the author is correct about the ex royal couple and Churchill both having been guests of Maxine Elliott, and one wonders how they reconciled to presence of one another. They were familiar, back in England, before he abdicated and was almost forever in enforced exile, but was he aware Churchill wasn't quite sympathetic, or would he have cared if he were?
Presumably the following is historical:-
"There were seldom fewer than thirty persons sitting down to lunch, and often twice that many gathered round the pool; when Churchill denounced Nazism the hostess would look up from her backgammon—or maybe six-pack bézique—and exclaim: “Winston, you are a social menace!” The guest would reply, most amiably: “Don’t worry, my dear Maxine, there isn’t a single person here who knows what I am talking about.”"
Churchill was interested when he heard who Lanny had met, and sent for him to hear his tales. He remarked that FDR seemed to be correctly and well informed about them.
..........................................
Lanny attempted seance, but Trudi wouldn't appear. Tecumseh said Lanny's fate was approaching. Parsifal had been experimenting with a crystal ball, and Lanny tried. First, he saw a crowded city with Chinese people, and then a yacht in clear blue water. He went out, and he saw the same yacht. He looked through binoculars and it was the Oriole. Beauty said it was Holdenhurst family from Baltimore whom he had met. He didnt remember except vaguely, with good reason.
Beauty arranged with her friend Emily Chattersworth to have Lanny meet the young daughter, and Emily invited Reverdy Johnston Holdenhurst to dinner with his beautiful daughter Lizbeth, and Lanny found himself later talking to her alone after dinner. Beauty asked him, and he told her it was no use, however beautiful the young girl, because it would be not so different from his marriage with Irma. Beauty asked if he was still involved with the German woman, and he wasn't free to say she was dead, so he simply said he wasn't free to tell things about others.
Beauty and her friends lay siege, and Sophie gave a grand party that really was Lizbeth's European debut, with musical where she showcased Lanny as art expert and music player, while Beauty invited the Holdenhurst family to an intimate dinner with Emily, Sophie and her husband; Reverdy invited them all for a day trip to Monte Carlo on the yacht, culminating with an invitation to Lanny to accompany them on their yacht to U.S. via coast of Africa and Brazil.
Lanny understood it was a first choice given him, and Reverdy had talked to Emily about Lanny, having seen his daughter around him, but Lanny excused himself from accepting it, telling him Robbie was coming to Paris and needed Lanny to accompany him to Germany for business. They spoke of public affairs, and Reverdy said he'd like to meet Robbie, and perhaps invest. Robbie was doing very well now that war seemed looming on the horizon, and was busy, but would welcome such an interest.
The Oriole was sailing the next day, but the women got busy, Emily Chattersworth called the Duchess of Windsor who was born a Warfield, named Bessie Wallis, not society, but had a mother who was a Montague, an F.F.V., "First Families Of Virginia", and the Duchess was happy to have her hometown high society see her at tea.
But Lanny refused Emily Chattersworth for the first time in his life, and said he had another appointment, and wasn't in love and didn't want to encourage the girl to think so. He met Charles Bedoux at Château de l’Horizon, which was important for the President's agent. Bedoux spoke about the difference in Belgium in a couple of years to come.
Before the Oriole sailed, Lanny accompanied his mother and her friends to see them off, and drink a toast on the yacht. Reverdy said he'd like to visit Newcastle to see Robbie, and perhaps might see Lanny. Lanny agreed politely about seeing them if possible in Newcastle, and grew alarmed after they departed, wondering if Lizbeth had fallen so much in love and asked her father to plan the Newcastle visit before returning home.
.........................................
Lanny was packed to drive to Paris when he got a note in code from Raoul Palma who was back, and used a maneuver to meet him. Raoul told about how he managed to leave at last moment, and hoped Madrid would hold out, but Lanny told him Spain couldn't be saved, and they had to now try to save France.
"The Cagoulards, or “Hooded Men,” had been exposed, but nobody had been seriously punished, and the authors of the conspiracy were so highly placed that they had not even been named. The heads of the “two hundred families” which ruled France had made up their minds that their interests required the overthrow of the Third Republic, and the establishment of some sort of dictatorship which would break the power of the labor unions, as had been so efficiently done in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain. The conspirators had retired “underground” for the moment, but they were as strong as ever, and as determined: great industrialists and bankers, cabinet members and other officials, and the heads of army and navy—such men as Admiral Darlan, General Weygand, and Marshal Pétain, the most honored names in France.
"The director had been at home only a few hours, but already had heard the situation in the school explained by his wife. It was a miniature of what existed throughout the whole country. The working-class world was split into factions, which spent the greater part of their energies in fighting one another instead of concentrating upon the common enemy. The Communists, by far the most active group, insisted upon following in the footsteps of Russia; they went to such an extreme as to argue that from the point of view of the workers there was no difference between a bourgeois republic and a Fascist dictatorship. Therefore, why fight for France? All wars were capitalist wars, and the workers could never win one.
"“We have been teaching the workers pacifism for a century,” explained Raoul, “and it is almost impossible to unteach them, even after what they have seen in Spain. Some of our best lads have gone over to the Communists, because Julie kept insisting that France has to be armed now.”
"Said the son of Budd-Erling: “It is hard for a man to practice pacifism while his neighbor is planting dynamite under his house.”"
Lanny joined his father in Paris. Their relationship had gone through various turns from Lanny's perspective, from a boyhood adoration to an ideological opposition, and while he still loved Robbie, there was a critical questioning that he no longer voiced.
"If Lanny had mentioned the fact that the Cagoulards had taken the Rosselli brothers, editors of an Italian anti-Fascist newspaper of Paris, out into the woods and beaten them to death, Robbie would have answered coldly: “Well, they asked for it.”"
Robbie's deal with Göring was being cheated on by Göring, and Robbie wasn't happy. They discussed the European situation in context of Robbie's business, and also of the British fleet being what stood to protect U.S. in case of war. They met Schneider, who was bitterly contesting in court the nationalisation of Le Creusot by the Blum government.
"France had one age-old trouble, which had been summed up in a sentence by the shrewd old Clemenceau: there were too many Germans. Forty million Frenchmen, facing eighty millions of the hereditary foe, if you included those which Hitler had taken or was clamoring to take under his dominion. France had Britain for an ally, but Britain was a sea power, and could not put on the Continent an army large enough to even the balance. France had been saved last time by her ally on the east, but now that ally had been ruined by the cancer of Bolshevism. The struggle inside France was between the Left, which had made an alliance with the Reds, and the Right, headed by the Comité des Forges, which wanted to break up this alliance, make friends with Germany, and join her in putting the Reds down for good.
"Such was the situation. But now the most awful doubt had assailed the soul of Europe’s uncrowned munitions king. Suppose he had been making a mistake! Suppose Hitler refused to be a friend of the French steelmasters! Suppose he was worse than the Bolsheviks, and refused to fight them! Here he was, chewing up Czechoslovakia, and apparently planning to chew up Poland; and suppose he came to some sort of understanding with the Bolsheviks—where would Britain and France be then?
"Labor was in revolt against the increase in the cost of living, and the abolition of the forty-hour work week; there had been desperate strikes in the airplane industry, where France most needed loyalty and efficiency. The Baron and his friends had been clamoring for a “strong” government, which would tolerate no nonsense, and Premier Daladier had got from the Chamber the right to govern “by decree.” He had crushed the strikes by the method of mobilizing the strikers, with the result that labor had been driven to fury and was practicing sabotage, a sort of dull, slow civil war going all the time. Internal enemies were eating out the heart of France, at the very time that her external foes were menacing her life.
"Mussolini was demanding portions of French North Africa—actually meaning it, apparently, and threatening to seize them."
They talked of business directly, about what France needed in terms of number of planes, and Robbie told Schneider that Göring planned to produce nine hundred to a thousand planes every month, which wasn't a secret - Göring preferred to terrify his opponents, as did his boss. Schneider invited them for an important meeting.
"There was to be a dinner in this palace, three days hence, a stag dinner, much like that which Schneider had given for Lanny a year ago. The same men would come, to meet both father and son: François de Wendel, senator of France and head of the great mining trust; Max David-Weill, representing the most powerful banking group in France; René Duchemin, of the chemical trust; Ernest Mercier, the electrical magnate; and so on.
"It might mean not merely a big order for planes; it might mean new expansion, fresh capital—for these men had gold, all the gold of the Banque de France, hidden in the most marvelous vaults in the world, underneath the sidewalks of Paris."
Schneider invited Robbie to speak to others after dinner.
"Germany was overwhelmingly strong in the air. He was at liberty to talk about it, by Göring’s express authorization. Germany had no secrets, so the Reichsmarschall had declared.
"Robbie smiled slightly as he said this last, and his hearers smiled even more openly. “Germany wants peace,” he added; “at any rate, that is what the Marshal assures me. He wants other nations to respect Germany’s strength and concede to her what she considers her just dues.”"
They asked about the said just dues, and whether Germany would limit to demands made so far. Robbie said his son knew the German leader personally, Robbie hadn't met him. They asked Lanny about him, and Lanny replied that he meant it when he said it but was a man of temperament - he had to be cautious about what he said, for it would get back to Germany soon enough.
"“It appears certain that we must have planes.” So Schneider summed up the discussion. “We cannot be sure whether we shall use them against Germany or against Russia—but in either case, it is advisable to have them.”"
As a result of this Robbie got meetings with the government and with the air force, and the U.S. ambassador to France who also wanted the deal to happen.
"Robbie had the tireless help of his son. Lanny didn’t seem to have anything else to do, and was so useful that Robbie insisted on paying his bills and charging it against the company. Lanny knew most of the personalities involved, and when he didn’t, he knew how to find out. He listened attentively to everything that was said, and if he asked questions, it was to help Robbie in getting to the bottom of some important matter. Only now and then, when the father was absorbed in technical matters, plans and specifications and prices, Lanny would shut himself up in his own room and say nothing about what he was doing. One more report would be typed and sent off to the Big Boss in Washington."
Paris was crawling with Nazi agents at every level, and Robbie and Lanny met Kurt at an event. Kurt knew Marceline was dancing in Paris, but hadn't met her. Lanny met uncle Jesse Blackless secretly.
"Lanny and his father had been to see Marceline dancing; but her Red uncle said he wouldn’t go—it would cost him a lot of votes to be seen in a night club. When Jesse said such things, you had to watch him and catch the twinkle in his eye.
"Jesse told a curious anecdote of the struggle over the Soviet alliance, which had been the crux of French political life for the past two or three years. The treaty still stood, on paper, but the French generals—most of them in their seventies, several in their eighties, and all reactionary to their swords’ points—wouldn’t let the government implement the bargain by an exchange of plans and information. Schneider-Creusot had been under contract to manufacture big guns for Soviet fortifications, but these guns had not been forthcoming; the Soviet embassy in Paris had pleaded and argued, but without results. This had been a couple of years ago, when the Blum government was in process of nationalizing munitions plants, and Schneider had been fighting it tooth and toenail. One day a director in Le Creusot and member of the Baron’s family had called upon the Soviet ambassador and tactfully suggested a way by which the delivery of the guns might be speeded up—if the Soviet government would intimate to the French government that it did not wish to have Le Creusot nationalized!
"Lanny had heard rumors of this episode, and said: “Do you really know that, Uncle Jesse?”
"The other replied: “I was told it by the man to whom the proposal was made.”
"Now that Spain was gone, it represented the last contact of Russia with the western world, her last hope of a friendship in Europe. The Soviets wanted protection against Hitlerism, and were willing to promise protection in return; they had been willing to help Czechoslovakia, but the British Tories and the French Rightists had sold that small republic down the river. Now it was going to be a question of Poland; and what could Russia do for Poland when the Poles wouldn’t let them? Poland, in the view of the Red deputy, was not much more enlightened than Franco Spain; the country was governed by a clique of great landowners and military men. They wouldn’t admit Russian armies to Polish soil even to defend Poland against Germany, and France wouldn’t demand that they alter this policy; so what was the Soviet Union to do?"
Lanny asked if Soviet Russia would make a treaty with Germany, and uncle Jesse thought it was out of the question, since that would free Germany to attack West and control Europe right to Gibraltar, control Mediterranean and Caucasus, which would cause Soviet Union to wither away like a fruit on a tree.
"“I can tell you, Uncle Jesse, the Führer has some sort of proposal up his sleeve. He has just made a long speech, and for the first time he failed to denounce the Soviet Union."
"Herr von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the German Reich, ... had left behind him a staff of busy intriguers, supplied with unlimited funds. They whispered doubts concerning the good faith of Britain, the ex-salesman’s especial bête noir; Britain had always been ready to fight to the last Frenchman, and now she had made a deal with Mussolini, one of the implications of which was that Italy was to expand at the expense of France. Nobody was ever to expand at the expense of Britain! Otto Abetz, handsome and genial intellectual, friend of all the intellectuals of Paris, was tireless in his search for talent, and any writer who could be persuaded to realize the dangers which British intrigue offered to the French people could be certain of selling his writings—and certain of a publisher, too, for Abetz had a string of papers on his list, and paid them even more generously.
"Graf Herzenberg, ... explained the passionate interest which all Nazis took in the freedom of the Ukrainian people. In the process of splitting up the Czechoslovakian republic the Nazis had taken to calling the province of Ruthenia a new name; it was the Carpatho-Ukraine—and what an advancement toward European welfare it would be if these Ukrainians could be united to the rest of their brethren, now groaning in the chains of Bolshevism!
"That would be at the expense of Russia, of course; and the elegant ladies and gentlemen who danced in the ballroom of the Duc de Belleaumont guzzled his elaborate buffet supper, washed it down with Pommery-Greno, and listened with delight to the idea that France should break off with the hated Reds and give her assent to the Nazis’ setting up an “independent” Ukraine, under Nazi protection. It would probably not require a war, the Graf suavely explained, for the Bolsheviks knew well the German strength and their own impotence. All it needed was the friendly neutrality of France, and afterwards the two great peoples might divide the hegemony of the Continent, Germany taking the east as its sphere of influence and France the west—of course in a benevolent and constructive way. Britain had so much land overseas—surely Britain did not have to meddle in Europe!"
Lanny said he wished to return the hospitality of Graf Herzenberg and would like to invite Lili and him to see Marceline perform; they accepted and said they would bring Oskar, the son of Graf Herzenberg, an SS leutenant, who had recently become a member of the legation.
""Franco is the most efficient little murderer that any devil could have invented; he doesn’t know the meaning of mercy, or even of statesmanship, and his one idea is to slaughter every man, woman, and child who has opposed him. The safest way, he figures, is to kill all who did not actively support him. He has a whole hierarchy of priests to tell him that this is God’s will, and to absolve him every night for mistakes he may have made during the day. After all, if they were good people, he has sent them to heaven, and they won’t complain when they arrive.” ... “If the League Commission had known how near to collapse we were, they would surely not have urged our removal!” There was acid in his tone."
Monck had walked across from Barcelona and it had taken over two days, with roads thronged with poor refugees fleeing, without food, and Franco's forces bombing them for fun.
Lanny asked about his plans. Monck's family was in Paris, but he planned to travel to Berlin and lanny didn't ask for details, only offering funds. He chose a new name, Braun. Lanny explained he couldn't invite him home, since that would blow his cover, his life of partying with the glitterati on Riviera - European kings and Aga Khan, Duchess of Windsor, and similar sort.
The author mentions Lanny meeting various people at “Château de l’Horizon”, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and too Winston Churchill, who was yet to be catapulted out of his enforced retirement. Presumably the author is correct about the ex royal couple and Churchill both having been guests of Maxine Elliott, and one wonders how they reconciled to presence of one another. They were familiar, back in England, before he abdicated and was almost forever in enforced exile, but was he aware Churchill wasn't quite sympathetic, or would he have cared if he were?
Presumably the following is historical:-
"There were seldom fewer than thirty persons sitting down to lunch, and often twice that many gathered round the pool; when Churchill denounced Nazism the hostess would look up from her backgammon—or maybe six-pack bézique—and exclaim: “Winston, you are a social menace!” The guest would reply, most amiably: “Don’t worry, my dear Maxine, there isn’t a single person here who knows what I am talking about.”"
Churchill was interested when he heard who Lanny had met, and sent for him to hear his tales. He remarked that FDR seemed to be correctly and well informed about them.
..........................................
Lanny attempted seance, but Trudi wouldn't appear. Tecumseh said Lanny's fate was approaching. Parsifal had been experimenting with a crystal ball, and Lanny tried. First, he saw a crowded city with Chinese people, and then a yacht in clear blue water. He went out, and he saw the same yacht. He looked through binoculars and it was the Oriole. Beauty said it was Holdenhurst family from Baltimore whom he had met. He didnt remember except vaguely, with good reason.
Beauty arranged with her friend Emily Chattersworth to have Lanny meet the young daughter, and Emily invited Reverdy Johnston Holdenhurst to dinner with his beautiful daughter Lizbeth, and Lanny found himself later talking to her alone after dinner. Beauty asked him, and he told her it was no use, however beautiful the young girl, because it would be not so different from his marriage with Irma. Beauty asked if he was still involved with the German woman, and he wasn't free to say she was dead, so he simply said he wasn't free to tell things about others.
Beauty and her friends lay siege, and Sophie gave a grand party that really was Lizbeth's European debut, with musical where she showcased Lanny as art expert and music player, while Beauty invited the Holdenhurst family to an intimate dinner with Emily, Sophie and her husband; Reverdy invited them all for a day trip to Monte Carlo on the yacht, culminating with an invitation to Lanny to accompany them on their yacht to U.S. via coast of Africa and Brazil.
Lanny understood it was a first choice given him, and Reverdy had talked to Emily about Lanny, having seen his daughter around him, but Lanny excused himself from accepting it, telling him Robbie was coming to Paris and needed Lanny to accompany him to Germany for business. They spoke of public affairs, and Reverdy said he'd like to meet Robbie, and perhaps invest. Robbie was doing very well now that war seemed looming on the horizon, and was busy, but would welcome such an interest.
The Oriole was sailing the next day, but the women got busy, Emily Chattersworth called the Duchess of Windsor who was born a Warfield, named Bessie Wallis, not society, but had a mother who was a Montague, an F.F.V., "First Families Of Virginia", and the Duchess was happy to have her hometown high society see her at tea.
But Lanny refused Emily Chattersworth for the first time in his life, and said he had another appointment, and wasn't in love and didn't want to encourage the girl to think so. He met Charles Bedoux at Château de l’Horizon, which was important for the President's agent. Bedoux spoke about the difference in Belgium in a couple of years to come.
Before the Oriole sailed, Lanny accompanied his mother and her friends to see them off, and drink a toast on the yacht. Reverdy said he'd like to visit Newcastle to see Robbie, and perhaps might see Lanny. Lanny agreed politely about seeing them if possible in Newcastle, and grew alarmed after they departed, wondering if Lizbeth had fallen so much in love and asked her father to plan the Newcastle visit before returning home.
.........................................
Lanny was packed to drive to Paris when he got a note in code from Raoul Palma who was back, and used a maneuver to meet him. Raoul told about how he managed to leave at last moment, and hoped Madrid would hold out, but Lanny told him Spain couldn't be saved, and they had to now try to save France.
"The Cagoulards, or “Hooded Men,” had been exposed, but nobody had been seriously punished, and the authors of the conspiracy were so highly placed that they had not even been named. The heads of the “two hundred families” which ruled France had made up their minds that their interests required the overthrow of the Third Republic, and the establishment of some sort of dictatorship which would break the power of the labor unions, as had been so efficiently done in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain. The conspirators had retired “underground” for the moment, but they were as strong as ever, and as determined: great industrialists and bankers, cabinet members and other officials, and the heads of army and navy—such men as Admiral Darlan, General Weygand, and Marshal Pétain, the most honored names in France.
"The director had been at home only a few hours, but already had heard the situation in the school explained by his wife. It was a miniature of what existed throughout the whole country. The working-class world was split into factions, which spent the greater part of their energies in fighting one another instead of concentrating upon the common enemy. The Communists, by far the most active group, insisted upon following in the footsteps of Russia; they went to such an extreme as to argue that from the point of view of the workers there was no difference between a bourgeois republic and a Fascist dictatorship. Therefore, why fight for France? All wars were capitalist wars, and the workers could never win one.
"“We have been teaching the workers pacifism for a century,” explained Raoul, “and it is almost impossible to unteach them, even after what they have seen in Spain. Some of our best lads have gone over to the Communists, because Julie kept insisting that France has to be armed now.”
"Said the son of Budd-Erling: “It is hard for a man to practice pacifism while his neighbor is planting dynamite under his house.”"
Lanny joined his father in Paris. Their relationship had gone through various turns from Lanny's perspective, from a boyhood adoration to an ideological opposition, and while he still loved Robbie, there was a critical questioning that he no longer voiced.
"If Lanny had mentioned the fact that the Cagoulards had taken the Rosselli brothers, editors of an Italian anti-Fascist newspaper of Paris, out into the woods and beaten them to death, Robbie would have answered coldly: “Well, they asked for it.”"
Robbie's deal with Göring was being cheated on by Göring, and Robbie wasn't happy. They discussed the European situation in context of Robbie's business, and also of the British fleet being what stood to protect U.S. in case of war. They met Schneider, who was bitterly contesting in court the nationalisation of Le Creusot by the Blum government.
"France had one age-old trouble, which had been summed up in a sentence by the shrewd old Clemenceau: there were too many Germans. Forty million Frenchmen, facing eighty millions of the hereditary foe, if you included those which Hitler had taken or was clamoring to take under his dominion. France had Britain for an ally, but Britain was a sea power, and could not put on the Continent an army large enough to even the balance. France had been saved last time by her ally on the east, but now that ally had been ruined by the cancer of Bolshevism. The struggle inside France was between the Left, which had made an alliance with the Reds, and the Right, headed by the Comité des Forges, which wanted to break up this alliance, make friends with Germany, and join her in putting the Reds down for good.
"Such was the situation. But now the most awful doubt had assailed the soul of Europe’s uncrowned munitions king. Suppose he had been making a mistake! Suppose Hitler refused to be a friend of the French steelmasters! Suppose he was worse than the Bolsheviks, and refused to fight them! Here he was, chewing up Czechoslovakia, and apparently planning to chew up Poland; and suppose he came to some sort of understanding with the Bolsheviks—where would Britain and France be then?
"Labor was in revolt against the increase in the cost of living, and the abolition of the forty-hour work week; there had been desperate strikes in the airplane industry, where France most needed loyalty and efficiency. The Baron and his friends had been clamoring for a “strong” government, which would tolerate no nonsense, and Premier Daladier had got from the Chamber the right to govern “by decree.” He had crushed the strikes by the method of mobilizing the strikers, with the result that labor had been driven to fury and was practicing sabotage, a sort of dull, slow civil war going all the time. Internal enemies were eating out the heart of France, at the very time that her external foes were menacing her life.
"Mussolini was demanding portions of French North Africa—actually meaning it, apparently, and threatening to seize them."
They talked of business directly, about what France needed in terms of number of planes, and Robbie told Schneider that Göring planned to produce nine hundred to a thousand planes every month, which wasn't a secret - Göring preferred to terrify his opponents, as did his boss. Schneider invited them for an important meeting.
"There was to be a dinner in this palace, three days hence, a stag dinner, much like that which Schneider had given for Lanny a year ago. The same men would come, to meet both father and son: François de Wendel, senator of France and head of the great mining trust; Max David-Weill, representing the most powerful banking group in France; René Duchemin, of the chemical trust; Ernest Mercier, the electrical magnate; and so on.
"It might mean not merely a big order for planes; it might mean new expansion, fresh capital—for these men had gold, all the gold of the Banque de France, hidden in the most marvelous vaults in the world, underneath the sidewalks of Paris."
Schneider invited Robbie to speak to others after dinner.
"Germany was overwhelmingly strong in the air. He was at liberty to talk about it, by Göring’s express authorization. Germany had no secrets, so the Reichsmarschall had declared.
"Robbie smiled slightly as he said this last, and his hearers smiled even more openly. “Germany wants peace,” he added; “at any rate, that is what the Marshal assures me. He wants other nations to respect Germany’s strength and concede to her what she considers her just dues.”"
They asked about the said just dues, and whether Germany would limit to demands made so far. Robbie said his son knew the German leader personally, Robbie hadn't met him. They asked Lanny about him, and Lanny replied that he meant it when he said it but was a man of temperament - he had to be cautious about what he said, for it would get back to Germany soon enough.
"“It appears certain that we must have planes.” So Schneider summed up the discussion. “We cannot be sure whether we shall use them against Germany or against Russia—but in either case, it is advisable to have them.”"
As a result of this Robbie got meetings with the government and with the air force, and the U.S. ambassador to France who also wanted the deal to happen.
"Robbie had the tireless help of his son. Lanny didn’t seem to have anything else to do, and was so useful that Robbie insisted on paying his bills and charging it against the company. Lanny knew most of the personalities involved, and when he didn’t, he knew how to find out. He listened attentively to everything that was said, and if he asked questions, it was to help Robbie in getting to the bottom of some important matter. Only now and then, when the father was absorbed in technical matters, plans and specifications and prices, Lanny would shut himself up in his own room and say nothing about what he was doing. One more report would be typed and sent off to the Big Boss in Washington."
Paris was crawling with Nazi agents at every level, and Robbie and Lanny met Kurt at an event. Kurt knew Marceline was dancing in Paris, but hadn't met her. Lanny met uncle Jesse Blackless secretly.
"Lanny and his father had been to see Marceline dancing; but her Red uncle said he wouldn’t go—it would cost him a lot of votes to be seen in a night club. When Jesse said such things, you had to watch him and catch the twinkle in his eye.
"Jesse told a curious anecdote of the struggle over the Soviet alliance, which had been the crux of French political life for the past two or three years. The treaty still stood, on paper, but the French generals—most of them in their seventies, several in their eighties, and all reactionary to their swords’ points—wouldn’t let the government implement the bargain by an exchange of plans and information. Schneider-Creusot had been under contract to manufacture big guns for Soviet fortifications, but these guns had not been forthcoming; the Soviet embassy in Paris had pleaded and argued, but without results. This had been a couple of years ago, when the Blum government was in process of nationalizing munitions plants, and Schneider had been fighting it tooth and toenail. One day a director in Le Creusot and member of the Baron’s family had called upon the Soviet ambassador and tactfully suggested a way by which the delivery of the guns might be speeded up—if the Soviet government would intimate to the French government that it did not wish to have Le Creusot nationalized!
"Lanny had heard rumors of this episode, and said: “Do you really know that, Uncle Jesse?”
"The other replied: “I was told it by the man to whom the proposal was made.”
"Now that Spain was gone, it represented the last contact of Russia with the western world, her last hope of a friendship in Europe. The Soviets wanted protection against Hitlerism, and were willing to promise protection in return; they had been willing to help Czechoslovakia, but the British Tories and the French Rightists had sold that small republic down the river. Now it was going to be a question of Poland; and what could Russia do for Poland when the Poles wouldn’t let them? Poland, in the view of the Red deputy, was not much more enlightened than Franco Spain; the country was governed by a clique of great landowners and military men. They wouldn’t admit Russian armies to Polish soil even to defend Poland against Germany, and France wouldn’t demand that they alter this policy; so what was the Soviet Union to do?"
Lanny asked if Soviet Russia would make a treaty with Germany, and uncle Jesse thought it was out of the question, since that would free Germany to attack West and control Europe right to Gibraltar, control Mediterranean and Caucasus, which would cause Soviet Union to wither away like a fruit on a tree.
"“I can tell you, Uncle Jesse, the Führer has some sort of proposal up his sleeve. He has just made a long speech, and for the first time he failed to denounce the Soviet Union."
"Herr von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the German Reich, ... had left behind him a staff of busy intriguers, supplied with unlimited funds. They whispered doubts concerning the good faith of Britain, the ex-salesman’s especial bête noir; Britain had always been ready to fight to the last Frenchman, and now she had made a deal with Mussolini, one of the implications of which was that Italy was to expand at the expense of France. Nobody was ever to expand at the expense of Britain! Otto Abetz, handsome and genial intellectual, friend of all the intellectuals of Paris, was tireless in his search for talent, and any writer who could be persuaded to realize the dangers which British intrigue offered to the French people could be certain of selling his writings—and certain of a publisher, too, for Abetz had a string of papers on his list, and paid them even more generously.
"Graf Herzenberg, ... explained the passionate interest which all Nazis took in the freedom of the Ukrainian people. In the process of splitting up the Czechoslovakian republic the Nazis had taken to calling the province of Ruthenia a new name; it was the Carpatho-Ukraine—and what an advancement toward European welfare it would be if these Ukrainians could be united to the rest of their brethren, now groaning in the chains of Bolshevism!
"That would be at the expense of Russia, of course; and the elegant ladies and gentlemen who danced in the ballroom of the Duc de Belleaumont guzzled his elaborate buffet supper, washed it down with Pommery-Greno, and listened with delight to the idea that France should break off with the hated Reds and give her assent to the Nazis’ setting up an “independent” Ukraine, under Nazi protection. It would probably not require a war, the Graf suavely explained, for the Bolsheviks knew well the German strength and their own impotence. All it needed was the friendly neutrality of France, and afterwards the two great peoples might divide the hegemony of the Continent, Germany taking the east as its sphere of influence and France the west—of course in a benevolent and constructive way. Britain had so much land overseas—surely Britain did not have to meddle in Europe!"
Lanny said he wished to return the hospitality of Graf Herzenberg and would like to invite Lili and him to see Marceline perform; they accepted and said they would bring Oskar, the son of Graf Herzenberg, an SS leutenant, who had recently become a member of the legation.
July 26, 2011
Dragon’s Harvest is the sixth book in the epic World’s End series written by Upton Sinclair and first published in 1945. The protagonist is the dashing and charming Lanny Budd. All eleven books in this sweeping historical narrative were best sellers when published by Viking Press in the 1940’s and the early 1950’s. They were sold in over 20 countries. Dragon’s Harvest covers the period between 1938 and 1940.
For those fortunate readers who began with the first book, World’s End, and have followed the exciting life of Lanny Budd recognize him as the world renowned art expert and ultra secret presidential agent for FDR. Lanny travels throughout Europe and Washington D.C. meeting with the powerful political figures and financial titans who shape the events that lead to World War Two. In the previous book, Presidential Agent, Lanny is introduced by his former boss at the Versailles Treaty, “The Fixer”, to President Roosevelt, Professor Charlie Alston. Acting on behalf of FDR, Lanny continues his intrigues with the German Nazi’s as a “faithful believer” while reporting secretly to FDR the coming storm in Europe. Lanny is able to accomplish this double life as a result of his relationship with Kurt Meissner, a boyhood chum, recognized throughout Germany as a great composer, and close friend of Hitler, as well as the business relationship between Lanny’s father, Robbie, and Hermann Goring. Robbie, unsuccessful in selling his new airplanes to the British and the French is forced to sell thousands of airplanes to the German Nazi’s to keep his plant operating. When at last the United States begins to recognize that the German Juggernaut will eventually involve the United States, Robbie is prohibited from selling to the Nazi’s and his business is virtually overwhelmed with orders from the United States military.
Dragon’s Harvest begins after the treacherous Munich accord on the Rivera where Lanny meets with a “shelved” Tory, Winston Churchill, Lanny, is ostensibly an art expert, meeting with the famous and infamous throughout Europe, buying old European masterpieces and selling them to rich Americans. He acts as a liaison with French and English diplomats and military appeasers. He uses all of his determination to warn them that war with Germany is inevitable. He tells them that Germany has been preparing for over a period of ten plus years for the wholesale takeover of Europe, despite what Hitler promises. Lanny has a private meeting with Neville Chamberlain. Lanny is with Hitler and Goring as they plan the seizure of Poland. He warns Belgium, Holland and Norway of their approaching fate. Lanny becomes involved and with great danger in a risky rescue of British sailors at Dunkirk.
After the heroic rescue at Dunkirk Lanny rejoins Hitler in an effort to determine when the Nazi’s intend to invade England and as Dragon’s Harvest ends, Hitler and the Nazi’s occupy Paris and install the Vichy Government.
In this book Lanny once again utilizes all of his intellectual and creative skills to outwit the Gestapo who are the trail of a naive young anti Nazi woman writer living in Germany. Her name is Laurel Creston and she is a significant character throughout the remaining books and a tremendous source of influence and support to Lanny. The scheme Lanny utilizes to outwit the Nazi’s is one the reader will not want to miss. And for all of the fans of Lanny Budd you are about to meet the future Mrs. Lanny Budd. Their relationship is painstakingly developed and is one the reader will love.
If the reader wishes to appreciate this great historical narrative I strongly encourage the reader to begin with World’s End and read the series in the order in which Upton painstakingly and meticulously wrote the eleven books.
Please visit our web site at www.uptonsinclairinstitute.com for reviews of the entire serie and much much more about Upton and his life and works. You may also purchase the entire series at up to 30% off the retail price and receive free shipping. You may also contact the publisher at frederick659@yahoo.com or myself at jsc12109@hotmail.com.
Stephen Courts
July 26, 2011
Columbus, Ohio
For those fortunate readers who began with the first book, World’s End, and have followed the exciting life of Lanny Budd recognize him as the world renowned art expert and ultra secret presidential agent for FDR. Lanny travels throughout Europe and Washington D.C. meeting with the powerful political figures and financial titans who shape the events that lead to World War Two. In the previous book, Presidential Agent, Lanny is introduced by his former boss at the Versailles Treaty, “The Fixer”, to President Roosevelt, Professor Charlie Alston. Acting on behalf of FDR, Lanny continues his intrigues with the German Nazi’s as a “faithful believer” while reporting secretly to FDR the coming storm in Europe. Lanny is able to accomplish this double life as a result of his relationship with Kurt Meissner, a boyhood chum, recognized throughout Germany as a great composer, and close friend of Hitler, as well as the business relationship between Lanny’s father, Robbie, and Hermann Goring. Robbie, unsuccessful in selling his new airplanes to the British and the French is forced to sell thousands of airplanes to the German Nazi’s to keep his plant operating. When at last the United States begins to recognize that the German Juggernaut will eventually involve the United States, Robbie is prohibited from selling to the Nazi’s and his business is virtually overwhelmed with orders from the United States military.
Dragon’s Harvest begins after the treacherous Munich accord on the Rivera where Lanny meets with a “shelved” Tory, Winston Churchill, Lanny, is ostensibly an art expert, meeting with the famous and infamous throughout Europe, buying old European masterpieces and selling them to rich Americans. He acts as a liaison with French and English diplomats and military appeasers. He uses all of his determination to warn them that war with Germany is inevitable. He tells them that Germany has been preparing for over a period of ten plus years for the wholesale takeover of Europe, despite what Hitler promises. Lanny has a private meeting with Neville Chamberlain. Lanny is with Hitler and Goring as they plan the seizure of Poland. He warns Belgium, Holland and Norway of their approaching fate. Lanny becomes involved and with great danger in a risky rescue of British sailors at Dunkirk.
After the heroic rescue at Dunkirk Lanny rejoins Hitler in an effort to determine when the Nazi’s intend to invade England and as Dragon’s Harvest ends, Hitler and the Nazi’s occupy Paris and install the Vichy Government.
In this book Lanny once again utilizes all of his intellectual and creative skills to outwit the Gestapo who are the trail of a naive young anti Nazi woman writer living in Germany. Her name is Laurel Creston and she is a significant character throughout the remaining books and a tremendous source of influence and support to Lanny. The scheme Lanny utilizes to outwit the Nazi’s is one the reader will not want to miss. And for all of the fans of Lanny Budd you are about to meet the future Mrs. Lanny Budd. Their relationship is painstakingly developed and is one the reader will love.
If the reader wishes to appreciate this great historical narrative I strongly encourage the reader to begin with World’s End and read the series in the order in which Upton painstakingly and meticulously wrote the eleven books.
Please visit our web site at www.uptonsinclairinstitute.com for reviews of the entire serie and much much more about Upton and his life and works. You may also purchase the entire series at up to 30% off the retail price and receive free shipping. You may also contact the publisher at frederick659@yahoo.com or myself at jsc12109@hotmail.com.
Stephen Courts
July 26, 2011
Columbus, Ohio
June 21, 2019
Sixth volume of the World's End series takes off running at beginning of 1939 with Monck calling Lanny at Bienvenu and the two talking about the situation sitting on rocks on the cliffs, with the high tide making it impossible for anyone hearing them from below. Monck is just out of Spain, rescued by the League Commission.
""Franco is the most efficient little murderer that any devil could have invented; he doesn’t know the meaning of mercy, or even of statesmanship, and his one idea is to slaughter every man, woman, and child who has opposed him. The safest way, he figures, is to kill all who did not actively support him. He has a whole hierarchy of priests to tell him that this is God’s will, and to absolve him every night for mistakes he may have made during the day. After all, if they were good people, he has sent them to heaven, and they won’t complain when they arrive.” ... “If the League Commission had known how near to collapse we were, they would surely not have urged our removal!” There was acid in his tone."
Monck had walked across from Barcelona and it had taken over two days, with roads thronged with poor refugees fleeing, without food, and Franco's forces bombing them for fun.
Lanny asked about his plans. Monck's family was in Paris, but he planned to travel to Berlin and lanny didn't ask for details, only offering funds. He chose a new name, Braun. Lanny explained he couldn't invite him home, since that would blow his cover, his life of partying with the glitterati on Riviera - European kings and Aga Khan, Duchess of Windsor, and similar sort.
The author mentions Lanny meeting various people at “Château de l’Horizon”, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and too Winston Churchill, who was yet to be catapulted out of his enforced retirement. Presumably the author is correct about the ex royal couple and Churchill both having been guests of Maxine Elliott, and one wonders how they reconciled to presence of one another. They were familiar, back in England, before he abdicated and was almost forever in enforced exile, but was he aware Churchill wasn't quite sympathetic, or would he have cared if he were?
Presumably the following is historical:-
"There were seldom fewer than thirty persons sitting down to lunch, and often twice that many gathered round the pool; when Churchill denounced Nazism the hostess would look up from her backgammon—or maybe six-pack bézique—and exclaim: “Winston, you are a social menace!” The guest would reply, most amiably: “Don’t worry, my dear Maxine, there isn’t a single person here who knows what I am talking about.”"
Churchill was interested when he heard who Lanny had met, and sent for him to hear his tales. He remarked that FDR seemed to be correctly and well informed about them.
..........................................
Lanny attempted seance, but Trudi wouldn't appear. Tecumseh said Lanny's fate was approaching. Parsifal had been experimenting with a crystal ball, and Lanny tried. First, he saw a crowded city with Chinese people, and then a yacht in clear blue water. He went out, and he saw the same yacht. He looked through binoculars and it was the Oriole. Beauty said it was Holdenhurst family from Baltimore whom he had met. He didnt remember except vaguely, with good reason.
Beauty arranged with her friend Emily Chattersworth to have Lanny meet the young daughter, and Emily invited Reverdy Johnston Holdenhurst to dinner with his beautiful daughter Lizbeth, and Lanny found himself later talking to her alone after dinner. Beauty asked him, and he told her it was no use, however beautiful the young girl, because it would be not so different from his marriage with Irma. Beauty asked if he was still involved with the German woman, and he wasn't free to say she was dead, so he simply said he wasn't free to tell things about others.
Beauty and her friends lay siege, and Sophie gave a grand party that really was Lizbeth's European debut, with musical where she showcased Lanny as art expert and music player, while Beauty invited the Holdenhurst family to an intimate dinner with Emily, Sophie and her husband; Reverdy invited them all for a day trip to Monte Carlo on the yacht, culminating with an invitation to Lanny to accompany them on their yacht to U.S. via coast of Africa and Brazil.
Lanny understood it was a first choice given him, and Reverdy had talked to Emily about Lanny, having seen his daughter around him, but Lanny excused himself from accepting it, telling him Robbie was coming to Paris and needed Lanny to accompany him to Germany for business. They spoke of public affairs, and Reverdy said he'd like to meet Robbie, and perhaps invest. Robbie was doing very well now that war seemed looming on the horizon, and was busy, but would welcome such an interest.
The Oriole was sailing the next day, but the women got busy, Emily Chattersworth called the Duchess of Windsor who was born a Warfield, named Bessie Wallis, not society, but had a mother who was a Montague, an F.F.V., "First Families Of Virginia", and the Duchess was happy to have her hometown high society see her at tea.
But Lanny refused Emily Chattersworth for the first time in his life, and said he had another appointment, and wasn't in love and didn't want to encourage the girl to think so. He met Charles Bedoux at Château de l’Horizon, which was important for the President's agent. Bedoux spoke about the difference in Belgium in a couple of years to come.
Before the Oriole sailed, Lanny accompanied his mother and her friends to see them off, and drink a toast on the yacht. Reverdy said he'd like to visit Newcastle to see Robbie, and perhaps might see Lanny. Lanny agreed politely about seeing them if possible in Newcastle, and grew alarmed after they departed, wondering if Lizbeth had fallen so much in love and asked her father to plan the Newcastle visit before returning home.
.........................................
Lanny was packed to drive to Paris when he got a note in code from Raoul Palma who was back, and used a maneuver to meet him. Raoul told about how he managed to leave at last moment, and hoped Madrid would hold out, but Lanny told him Spain couldn't be saved, and they had to now try to save France.
"The Cagoulards, or “Hooded Men,” had been exposed, but nobody had been seriously punished, and the authors of the conspiracy were so highly placed that they had not even been named. The heads of the “two hundred families” which ruled France had made up their minds that their interests required the overthrow of the Third Republic, and the establishment of some sort of dictatorship which would break the power of the labor unions, as had been so efficiently done in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain. The conspirators had retired “underground” for the moment, but they were as strong as ever, and as determined: great industrialists and bankers, cabinet members and other officials, and the heads of army and navy—such men as Admiral Darlan, General Weygand, and Marshal Pétain, the most honored names in France.
"The director had been at home only a few hours, but already had heard the situation in the school explained by his wife. It was a miniature of what existed throughout the whole country. The working-class world was split into factions, which spent the greater part of their energies in fighting one another instead of concentrating upon the common enemy. The Communists, by far the most active group, insisted upon following in the footsteps of Russia; they went to such an extreme as to argue that from the point of view of the workers there was no difference between a bourgeois republic and a Fascist dictatorship. Therefore, why fight for France? All wars were capitalist wars, and the workers could never win one.
"“We have been teaching the workers pacifism for a century,” explained Raoul, “and it is almost impossible to unteach them, even after what they have seen in Spain. Some of our best lads have gone over to the Communists, because Julie kept insisting that France has to be armed now.”
"Said the son of Budd-Erling: “It is hard for a man to practice pacifism while his neighbor is planting dynamite under his house.”"
Lanny joined his father in Paris. Their relationship had gone through various turns from Lanny's perspective, from a boyhood adoration to an ideological opposition, and while he still loved Robbie, there was a critical questioning that he no longer voiced.
"If Lanny had mentioned the fact that the Cagoulards had taken the Rosselli brothers, editors of an Italian anti-Fascist newspaper of Paris, out into the woods and beaten them to death, Robbie would have answered coldly: “Well, they asked for it.”"
Robbie's deal with Göring was being cheated on by Göring, and Robbie wasn't happy. They discussed the European situation in context of Robbie's business, and also of the British fleet being what stood to protect U.S. in case of war. They met Schneider, who was bitterly contesting in court the nationalisation of Le Creusot by the Blum government.
"France had one age-old trouble, which had been summed up in a sentence by the shrewd old Clemenceau: there were too many Germans. Forty million Frenchmen, facing eighty millions of the hereditary foe, if you included those which Hitler had taken or was clamoring to take under his dominion. France had Britain for an ally, but Britain was a sea power, and could not put on the Continent an army large enough to even the balance. France had been saved last time by her ally on the east, but now that ally had been ruined by the cancer of Bolshevism. The struggle inside France was between the Left, which had made an alliance with the Reds, and the Right, headed by the Comité des Forges, which wanted to break up this alliance, make friends with Germany, and join her in putting the Reds down for good.
"Such was the situation. But now the most awful doubt had assailed the soul of Europe’s uncrowned munitions king. Suppose he had been making a mistake! Suppose Hitler refused to be a friend of the French steelmasters! Suppose he was worse than the Bolsheviks, and refused to fight them! Here he was, chewing up Czechoslovakia, and apparently planning to chew up Poland; and suppose he came to some sort of understanding with the Bolsheviks—where would Britain and France be then?
"Labor was in revolt against the increase in the cost of living, and the abolition of the forty-hour work week; there had been desperate strikes in the airplane industry, where France most needed loyalty and efficiency. The Baron and his friends had been clamoring for a “strong” government, which would tolerate no nonsense, and Premier Daladier had got from the Chamber the right to govern “by decree.” He had crushed the strikes by the method of mobilizing the strikers, with the result that labor had been driven to fury and was practicing sabotage, a sort of dull, slow civil war going all the time. Internal enemies were eating out the heart of France, at the very time that her external foes were menacing her life.
"Mussolini was demanding portions of French North Africa—actually meaning it, apparently, and threatening to seize them."
They talked of business directly, about what France needed in terms of number of planes, and Robbie told Schneider that Göring planned to produce nine hundred to a thousand planes every month, which wasn't a secret - Göring preferred to terrify his opponents, as did his boss. Schneider invited them for an important meeting.
"There was to be a dinner in this palace, three days hence, a stag dinner, much like that which Schneider had given for Lanny a year ago. The same men would come, to meet both father and son: François de Wendel, senator of France and head of the great mining trust; Max David-Weill, representing the most powerful banking group in France; René Duchemin, of the chemical trust; Ernest Mercier, the electrical magnate; and so on.
"It might mean not merely a big order for planes; it might mean new expansion, fresh capital—for these men had gold, all the gold of the Banque de France, hidden in the most marvelous vaults in the world, underneath the sidewalks of Paris."
Schneider invited Robbie to speak to others after dinner.
"Germany was overwhelmingly strong in the air. He was at liberty to talk about it, by Göring’s express authorization. Germany had no secrets, so the Reichsmarschall had declared.
"Robbie smiled slightly as he said this last, and his hearers smiled even more openly. “Germany wants peace,” he added; “at any rate, that is what the Marshal assures me. He wants other nations to respect Germany’s strength and concede to her what she considers her just dues.”"
They asked about the said just dues, and whether Germany would limit to demands made so far. Robbie said his son knew the German leader personally, Robbie hadn't met him. They asked Lanny about him, and Lanny replied that he meant it when he said it but was a man of temperament - he had to be cautious about what he said, for it would get back to Germany soon enough.
"“It appears certain that we must have planes.” So Schneider summed up the discussion. “We cannot be sure whether we shall use them against Germany or against Russia—but in either case, it is advisable to have them.”"
As a result of this Robbie got meetings with the government and with the air force, and the U.S. ambassador to France who also wanted the deal to happen.
"Robbie had the tireless help of his son. Lanny didn’t seem to have anything else to do, and was so useful that Robbie insisted on paying his bills and charging it against the company. Lanny knew most of the personalities involved, and when he didn’t, he knew how to find out. He listened attentively to everything that was said, and if he asked questions, it was to help Robbie in getting to the bottom of some important matter. Only now and then, when the father was absorbed in technical matters, plans and specifications and prices, Lanny would shut himself up in his own room and say nothing about what he was doing. One more report would be typed and sent off to the Big Boss in Washington."
Paris was crawling with Nazi agents at every level, and Robbie and Lanny met Kurt at an event. Kurt knew Marceline was dancing in Paris, but hadn't met her. Lanny met uncle Jesse Blackless secretly.
"Lanny and his father had been to see Marceline dancing; but her Red uncle said he wouldn’t go—it would cost him a lot of votes to be seen in a night club. When Jesse said such things, you had to watch him and catch the twinkle in his eye.
"Jesse told a curious anecdote of the struggle over the Soviet alliance, which had been the crux of French political life for the past two or three years. The treaty still stood, on paper, but the French generals—most of them in their seventies, several in their eighties, and all reactionary to their swords’ points—wouldn’t let the government implement the bargain by an exchange of plans and information. Schneider-Creusot had been under contract to manufacture big guns for Soviet fortifications, but these guns had not been forthcoming; the Soviet embassy in Paris had pleaded and argued, but without results. This had been a couple of years ago, when the Blum government was in process of nationalizing munitions plants, and Schneider had been fighting it tooth and toenail. One day a director in Le Creusot and member of the Baron’s family had called upon the Soviet ambassador and tactfully suggested a way by which the delivery of the guns might be speeded up—if the Soviet government would intimate to the French government that it did not wish to have Le Creusot nationalized!
"Lanny had heard rumors of this episode, and said: “Do you really know that, Uncle Jesse?”
"The other replied: “I was told it by the man to whom the proposal was made.”
"Now that Spain was gone, it represented the last contact of Russia with the western world, her last hope of a friendship in Europe. The Soviets wanted protection against Hitlerism, and were willing to promise protection in return; they had been willing to help Czechoslovakia, but the British Tories and the French Rightists had sold that small republic down the river. Now it was going to be a question of Poland; and what could Russia do for Poland when the Poles wouldn’t let them? Poland, in the view of the Red deputy, was not much more enlightened than Franco Spain; the country was governed by a clique of great landowners and military men. They wouldn’t admit Russian armies to Polish soil even to defend Poland against Germany, and France wouldn’t demand that they alter this policy; so what was the Soviet Union to do?"
Lanny asked if Soviet Russia would make a treaty with Germany, and uncle Jesse thought it was out of the question, since that would free Germany to attack West and control Europe right to Gibraltar, control Mediterranean and Caucasus, which would cause Soviet Union to wither away like a fruit on a tree.
"“I can tell you, Uncle Jesse, the Führer has some sort of proposal up his sleeve. He has just made a long speech, and for the first time he failed to denounce the Soviet Union."
"Herr von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the German Reich, ... had left behind him a staff of busy intriguers, supplied with unlimited funds. They whispered doubts concerning the good faith of Britain, the ex-salesman’s especial bête noir; Britain had always been ready to fight to the last Frenchman, and now she had made a deal with Mussolini, one of the implications of which was that Italy was to expand at the expense of France. Nobody was ever to expand at the expense of Britain! Otto Abetz, handsome and genial intellectual, friend of all the intellectuals of Paris, was tireless in his search for talent, and any writer who could be persuaded to realize the dangers which British intrigue offered to the French people could be certain of selling his writings—and certain of a publisher, too, for Abetz had a string of papers on his list, and paid them even more generously.
"Graf Herzenberg, ... explained the passionate interest which all Nazis took in the freedom of the Ukrainian people. In the process of splitting up the Czechoslovakian republic the Nazis had taken to calling the province of Ruthenia a new name; it was the Carpatho-Ukraine—and what an advancement toward European welfare it would be if these Ukrainians could be united to the rest of their brethren, now groaning in the chains of Bolshevism!
"That would be at the expense of Russia, of course; and the elegant ladies and gentlemen who danced in the ballroom of the Duc de Belleaumont guzzled his elaborate buffet supper, washed it down with Pommery-Greno, and listened with delight to the idea that France should break off with the hated Reds and give her assent to the Nazis’ setting up an “independent” Ukraine, under Nazi protection. It would probably not require a war, the Graf suavely explained, for the Bolsheviks knew well the German strength and their own impotence. All it needed was the friendly neutrality of France, and afterwards the two great peoples might divide the hegemony of the Continent, Germany taking the east as its sphere of influence and France the west—of course in a benevolent and constructive way. Britain had so much land overseas—surely Britain did not have to meddle in Europe!"
Lanny said he wished to return the hospitality of Graf Herzenberg and would like to invite Lili and him to see Marceline perform; they accepted and said they would bring Oskar, the son of Graf Herzenberg, an SS leutenant, who had recently become a member of the legation.
""Franco is the most efficient little murderer that any devil could have invented; he doesn’t know the meaning of mercy, or even of statesmanship, and his one idea is to slaughter every man, woman, and child who has opposed him. The safest way, he figures, is to kill all who did not actively support him. He has a whole hierarchy of priests to tell him that this is God’s will, and to absolve him every night for mistakes he may have made during the day. After all, if they were good people, he has sent them to heaven, and they won’t complain when they arrive.” ... “If the League Commission had known how near to collapse we were, they would surely not have urged our removal!” There was acid in his tone."
Monck had walked across from Barcelona and it had taken over two days, with roads thronged with poor refugees fleeing, without food, and Franco's forces bombing them for fun.
Lanny asked about his plans. Monck's family was in Paris, but he planned to travel to Berlin and lanny didn't ask for details, only offering funds. He chose a new name, Braun. Lanny explained he couldn't invite him home, since that would blow his cover, his life of partying with the glitterati on Riviera - European kings and Aga Khan, Duchess of Windsor, and similar sort.
The author mentions Lanny meeting various people at “Château de l’Horizon”, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and too Winston Churchill, who was yet to be catapulted out of his enforced retirement. Presumably the author is correct about the ex royal couple and Churchill both having been guests of Maxine Elliott, and one wonders how they reconciled to presence of one another. They were familiar, back in England, before he abdicated and was almost forever in enforced exile, but was he aware Churchill wasn't quite sympathetic, or would he have cared if he were?
Presumably the following is historical:-
"There were seldom fewer than thirty persons sitting down to lunch, and often twice that many gathered round the pool; when Churchill denounced Nazism the hostess would look up from her backgammon—or maybe six-pack bézique—and exclaim: “Winston, you are a social menace!” The guest would reply, most amiably: “Don’t worry, my dear Maxine, there isn’t a single person here who knows what I am talking about.”"
Churchill was interested when he heard who Lanny had met, and sent for him to hear his tales. He remarked that FDR seemed to be correctly and well informed about them.
..........................................
Lanny attempted seance, but Trudi wouldn't appear. Tecumseh said Lanny's fate was approaching. Parsifal had been experimenting with a crystal ball, and Lanny tried. First, he saw a crowded city with Chinese people, and then a yacht in clear blue water. He went out, and he saw the same yacht. He looked through binoculars and it was the Oriole. Beauty said it was Holdenhurst family from Baltimore whom he had met. He didnt remember except vaguely, with good reason.
Beauty arranged with her friend Emily Chattersworth to have Lanny meet the young daughter, and Emily invited Reverdy Johnston Holdenhurst to dinner with his beautiful daughter Lizbeth, and Lanny found himself later talking to her alone after dinner. Beauty asked him, and he told her it was no use, however beautiful the young girl, because it would be not so different from his marriage with Irma. Beauty asked if he was still involved with the German woman, and he wasn't free to say she was dead, so he simply said he wasn't free to tell things about others.
Beauty and her friends lay siege, and Sophie gave a grand party that really was Lizbeth's European debut, with musical where she showcased Lanny as art expert and music player, while Beauty invited the Holdenhurst family to an intimate dinner with Emily, Sophie and her husband; Reverdy invited them all for a day trip to Monte Carlo on the yacht, culminating with an invitation to Lanny to accompany them on their yacht to U.S. via coast of Africa and Brazil.
Lanny understood it was a first choice given him, and Reverdy had talked to Emily about Lanny, having seen his daughter around him, but Lanny excused himself from accepting it, telling him Robbie was coming to Paris and needed Lanny to accompany him to Germany for business. They spoke of public affairs, and Reverdy said he'd like to meet Robbie, and perhaps invest. Robbie was doing very well now that war seemed looming on the horizon, and was busy, but would welcome such an interest.
The Oriole was sailing the next day, but the women got busy, Emily Chattersworth called the Duchess of Windsor who was born a Warfield, named Bessie Wallis, not society, but had a mother who was a Montague, an F.F.V., "First Families Of Virginia", and the Duchess was happy to have her hometown high society see her at tea.
But Lanny refused Emily Chattersworth for the first time in his life, and said he had another appointment, and wasn't in love and didn't want to encourage the girl to think so. He met Charles Bedoux at Château de l’Horizon, which was important for the President's agent. Bedoux spoke about the difference in Belgium in a couple of years to come.
Before the Oriole sailed, Lanny accompanied his mother and her friends to see them off, and drink a toast on the yacht. Reverdy said he'd like to visit Newcastle to see Robbie, and perhaps might see Lanny. Lanny agreed politely about seeing them if possible in Newcastle, and grew alarmed after they departed, wondering if Lizbeth had fallen so much in love and asked her father to plan the Newcastle visit before returning home.
.........................................
Lanny was packed to drive to Paris when he got a note in code from Raoul Palma who was back, and used a maneuver to meet him. Raoul told about how he managed to leave at last moment, and hoped Madrid would hold out, but Lanny told him Spain couldn't be saved, and they had to now try to save France.
"The Cagoulards, or “Hooded Men,” had been exposed, but nobody had been seriously punished, and the authors of the conspiracy were so highly placed that they had not even been named. The heads of the “two hundred families” which ruled France had made up their minds that their interests required the overthrow of the Third Republic, and the establishment of some sort of dictatorship which would break the power of the labor unions, as had been so efficiently done in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain. The conspirators had retired “underground” for the moment, but they were as strong as ever, and as determined: great industrialists and bankers, cabinet members and other officials, and the heads of army and navy—such men as Admiral Darlan, General Weygand, and Marshal Pétain, the most honored names in France.
"The director had been at home only a few hours, but already had heard the situation in the school explained by his wife. It was a miniature of what existed throughout the whole country. The working-class world was split into factions, which spent the greater part of their energies in fighting one another instead of concentrating upon the common enemy. The Communists, by far the most active group, insisted upon following in the footsteps of Russia; they went to such an extreme as to argue that from the point of view of the workers there was no difference between a bourgeois republic and a Fascist dictatorship. Therefore, why fight for France? All wars were capitalist wars, and the workers could never win one.
"“We have been teaching the workers pacifism for a century,” explained Raoul, “and it is almost impossible to unteach them, even after what they have seen in Spain. Some of our best lads have gone over to the Communists, because Julie kept insisting that France has to be armed now.”
"Said the son of Budd-Erling: “It is hard for a man to practice pacifism while his neighbor is planting dynamite under his house.”"
Lanny joined his father in Paris. Their relationship had gone through various turns from Lanny's perspective, from a boyhood adoration to an ideological opposition, and while he still loved Robbie, there was a critical questioning that he no longer voiced.
"If Lanny had mentioned the fact that the Cagoulards had taken the Rosselli brothers, editors of an Italian anti-Fascist newspaper of Paris, out into the woods and beaten them to death, Robbie would have answered coldly: “Well, they asked for it.”"
Robbie's deal with Göring was being cheated on by Göring, and Robbie wasn't happy. They discussed the European situation in context of Robbie's business, and also of the British fleet being what stood to protect U.S. in case of war. They met Schneider, who was bitterly contesting in court the nationalisation of Le Creusot by the Blum government.
"France had one age-old trouble, which had been summed up in a sentence by the shrewd old Clemenceau: there were too many Germans. Forty million Frenchmen, facing eighty millions of the hereditary foe, if you included those which Hitler had taken or was clamoring to take under his dominion. France had Britain for an ally, but Britain was a sea power, and could not put on the Continent an army large enough to even the balance. France had been saved last time by her ally on the east, but now that ally had been ruined by the cancer of Bolshevism. The struggle inside France was between the Left, which had made an alliance with the Reds, and the Right, headed by the Comité des Forges, which wanted to break up this alliance, make friends with Germany, and join her in putting the Reds down for good.
"Such was the situation. But now the most awful doubt had assailed the soul of Europe’s uncrowned munitions king. Suppose he had been making a mistake! Suppose Hitler refused to be a friend of the French steelmasters! Suppose he was worse than the Bolsheviks, and refused to fight them! Here he was, chewing up Czechoslovakia, and apparently planning to chew up Poland; and suppose he came to some sort of understanding with the Bolsheviks—where would Britain and France be then?
"Labor was in revolt against the increase in the cost of living, and the abolition of the forty-hour work week; there had been desperate strikes in the airplane industry, where France most needed loyalty and efficiency. The Baron and his friends had been clamoring for a “strong” government, which would tolerate no nonsense, and Premier Daladier had got from the Chamber the right to govern “by decree.” He had crushed the strikes by the method of mobilizing the strikers, with the result that labor had been driven to fury and was practicing sabotage, a sort of dull, slow civil war going all the time. Internal enemies were eating out the heart of France, at the very time that her external foes were menacing her life.
"Mussolini was demanding portions of French North Africa—actually meaning it, apparently, and threatening to seize them."
They talked of business directly, about what France needed in terms of number of planes, and Robbie told Schneider that Göring planned to produce nine hundred to a thousand planes every month, which wasn't a secret - Göring preferred to terrify his opponents, as did his boss. Schneider invited them for an important meeting.
"There was to be a dinner in this palace, three days hence, a stag dinner, much like that which Schneider had given for Lanny a year ago. The same men would come, to meet both father and son: François de Wendel, senator of France and head of the great mining trust; Max David-Weill, representing the most powerful banking group in France; René Duchemin, of the chemical trust; Ernest Mercier, the electrical magnate; and so on.
"It might mean not merely a big order for planes; it might mean new expansion, fresh capital—for these men had gold, all the gold of the Banque de France, hidden in the most marvelous vaults in the world, underneath the sidewalks of Paris."
Schneider invited Robbie to speak to others after dinner.
"Germany was overwhelmingly strong in the air. He was at liberty to talk about it, by Göring’s express authorization. Germany had no secrets, so the Reichsmarschall had declared.
"Robbie smiled slightly as he said this last, and his hearers smiled even more openly. “Germany wants peace,” he added; “at any rate, that is what the Marshal assures me. He wants other nations to respect Germany’s strength and concede to her what she considers her just dues.”"
They asked about the said just dues, and whether Germany would limit to demands made so far. Robbie said his son knew the German leader personally, Robbie hadn't met him. They asked Lanny about him, and Lanny replied that he meant it when he said it but was a man of temperament - he had to be cautious about what he said, for it would get back to Germany soon enough.
"“It appears certain that we must have planes.” So Schneider summed up the discussion. “We cannot be sure whether we shall use them against Germany or against Russia—but in either case, it is advisable to have them.”"
As a result of this Robbie got meetings with the government and with the air force, and the U.S. ambassador to France who also wanted the deal to happen.
"Robbie had the tireless help of his son. Lanny didn’t seem to have anything else to do, and was so useful that Robbie insisted on paying his bills and charging it against the company. Lanny knew most of the personalities involved, and when he didn’t, he knew how to find out. He listened attentively to everything that was said, and if he asked questions, it was to help Robbie in getting to the bottom of some important matter. Only now and then, when the father was absorbed in technical matters, plans and specifications and prices, Lanny would shut himself up in his own room and say nothing about what he was doing. One more report would be typed and sent off to the Big Boss in Washington."
Paris was crawling with Nazi agents at every level, and Robbie and Lanny met Kurt at an event. Kurt knew Marceline was dancing in Paris, but hadn't met her. Lanny met uncle Jesse Blackless secretly.
"Lanny and his father had been to see Marceline dancing; but her Red uncle said he wouldn’t go—it would cost him a lot of votes to be seen in a night club. When Jesse said such things, you had to watch him and catch the twinkle in his eye.
"Jesse told a curious anecdote of the struggle over the Soviet alliance, which had been the crux of French political life for the past two or three years. The treaty still stood, on paper, but the French generals—most of them in their seventies, several in their eighties, and all reactionary to their swords’ points—wouldn’t let the government implement the bargain by an exchange of plans and information. Schneider-Creusot had been under contract to manufacture big guns for Soviet fortifications, but these guns had not been forthcoming; the Soviet embassy in Paris had pleaded and argued, but without results. This had been a couple of years ago, when the Blum government was in process of nationalizing munitions plants, and Schneider had been fighting it tooth and toenail. One day a director in Le Creusot and member of the Baron’s family had called upon the Soviet ambassador and tactfully suggested a way by which the delivery of the guns might be speeded up—if the Soviet government would intimate to the French government that it did not wish to have Le Creusot nationalized!
"Lanny had heard rumors of this episode, and said: “Do you really know that, Uncle Jesse?”
"The other replied: “I was told it by the man to whom the proposal was made.”
"Now that Spain was gone, it represented the last contact of Russia with the western world, her last hope of a friendship in Europe. The Soviets wanted protection against Hitlerism, and were willing to promise protection in return; they had been willing to help Czechoslovakia, but the British Tories and the French Rightists had sold that small republic down the river. Now it was going to be a question of Poland; and what could Russia do for Poland when the Poles wouldn’t let them? Poland, in the view of the Red deputy, was not much more enlightened than Franco Spain; the country was governed by a clique of great landowners and military men. They wouldn’t admit Russian armies to Polish soil even to defend Poland against Germany, and France wouldn’t demand that they alter this policy; so what was the Soviet Union to do?"
Lanny asked if Soviet Russia would make a treaty with Germany, and uncle Jesse thought it was out of the question, since that would free Germany to attack West and control Europe right to Gibraltar, control Mediterranean and Caucasus, which would cause Soviet Union to wither away like a fruit on a tree.
"“I can tell you, Uncle Jesse, the Führer has some sort of proposal up his sleeve. He has just made a long speech, and for the first time he failed to denounce the Soviet Union."
"Herr von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the German Reich, ... had left behind him a staff of busy intriguers, supplied with unlimited funds. They whispered doubts concerning the good faith of Britain, the ex-salesman’s especial bête noir; Britain had always been ready to fight to the last Frenchman, and now she had made a deal with Mussolini, one of the implications of which was that Italy was to expand at the expense of France. Nobody was ever to expand at the expense of Britain! Otto Abetz, handsome and genial intellectual, friend of all the intellectuals of Paris, was tireless in his search for talent, and any writer who could be persuaded to realize the dangers which British intrigue offered to the French people could be certain of selling his writings—and certain of a publisher, too, for Abetz had a string of papers on his list, and paid them even more generously.
"Graf Herzenberg, ... explained the passionate interest which all Nazis took in the freedom of the Ukrainian people. In the process of splitting up the Czechoslovakian republic the Nazis had taken to calling the province of Ruthenia a new name; it was the Carpatho-Ukraine—and what an advancement toward European welfare it would be if these Ukrainians could be united to the rest of their brethren, now groaning in the chains of Bolshevism!
"That would be at the expense of Russia, of course; and the elegant ladies and gentlemen who danced in the ballroom of the Duc de Belleaumont guzzled his elaborate buffet supper, washed it down with Pommery-Greno, and listened with delight to the idea that France should break off with the hated Reds and give her assent to the Nazis’ setting up an “independent” Ukraine, under Nazi protection. It would probably not require a war, the Graf suavely explained, for the Bolsheviks knew well the German strength and their own impotence. All it needed was the friendly neutrality of France, and afterwards the two great peoples might divide the hegemony of the Continent, Germany taking the east as its sphere of influence and France the west—of course in a benevolent and constructive way. Britain had so much land overseas—surely Britain did not have to meddle in Europe!"
Lanny said he wished to return the hospitality of Graf Herzenberg and would like to invite Lili and him to see Marceline perform; they accepted and said they would bring Oskar, the son of Graf Herzenberg, an SS leutenant, who had recently become a member of the legation.
December 18, 2018
Another Novel In This Epoch Series
Lanny Budd continues his journey in this novel which ends with the defeat of France. This series is amazing. I just finished book 6 and can't wait to read book 7. Although this series was written almost 70 years ago, it shows again that history repeats itself.
Lanny Budd continues his journey in this novel which ends with the defeat of France. This series is amazing. I just finished book 6 and can't wait to read book 7. Although this series was written almost 70 years ago, it shows again that history repeats itself.
March 18, 2014
Great series. My book was printed in 1946 or so but had never read it until about 3 years ago.
April 8, 2018
There may be some spoilers for earlier books.
Lanny Budd number six continues the curious mixture of adventure, suspense, history, and romance of this series. It picks up right where book five left off. (You can read these books stand-alone, but they are much better read in sequence.) Lanny Budd continues his dual life, using his cover as a world-beating art expert to disguise his activities as a secret agent (presidential agent) working directly for FDR.
The action takes place mostly during 1939. We get the German invasion of Poland, followed by the phony war. Then come the invasions of Norway, the Low Countries, and France. All the time Lanny is shuttling around between Germany, France, England, and the USA doing his presidential agent thing. He has adventures.
There is an incredible amount of detail in all these books. Sometimes it seems to me to be a little too much, actually getting in the way of the story. I have to remember that such detail was perhaps needed because at the time of publication the details depicted weren't history; they were recent events and would have been expected by knowledgeable readers.
Pretty good story. 3.5 stars rounded up.
Lanny Budd number six continues the curious mixture of adventure, suspense, history, and romance of this series. It picks up right where book five left off. (You can read these books stand-alone, but they are much better read in sequence.) Lanny Budd continues his dual life, using his cover as a world-beating art expert to disguise his activities as a secret agent (presidential agent) working directly for FDR.
The action takes place mostly during 1939. We get the German invasion of Poland, followed by the phony war. Then come the invasions of Norway, the Low Countries, and France. All the time Lanny is shuttling around between Germany, France, England, and the USA doing his presidential agent thing. He has adventures.
There is an incredible amount of detail in all these books. Sometimes it seems to me to be a little too much, actually getting in the way of the story. I have to remember that such detail was perhaps needed because at the time of publication the details depicted weren't history; they were recent events and would have been expected by knowledgeable readers.
Pretty good story. 3.5 stars rounded up.
October 4, 2020
Magnificent
Though the volume is long, the author keeps are interest alive by his unique art of telling stories. I am amazed , how the author obtained the inside information of the foreign governments during the conduct of the war
Though the volume is long, the author keeps are interest alive by his unique art of telling stories. I am amazed , how the author obtained the inside information of the foreign governments during the conduct of the war
July 10, 2020
Dragon Harvest (Book 6) is a historical fiction that fills in the who, what, and where backstories leading up to World War 2. By the time the reader gets to Dragon Harvest, Upton Sinclair has introduced numerous characters and the readers have an interest in their well being. The readers know the world is going to be engulfed in another horrific world war; yet there are those who are oblivious or in denial. Lanny Budd knows what’s coming, but can he saves his friends and family who are in harm’s way or is there no hope?
As with the other Lanny Budd books, world events primarily drive the storyline of Dragon Harvest. Sometimes the storyline seems implausible, but when you think of Hitler and the Nazi regime, its ruthless rise to power, the death of millions of people, and the start of a world war, the words “implausible” and “impossible” can’t be used. During this time, good men and women were forced to do the “impossible” to fight Nazism and Fascism.
Dragon Harvest (Book 6) is pretty much the same storyline as Presidential Agent (Book 5). Since this is a serial, that’s to be expected but Upton Sinclair goes even deeper into mysticism. Some readers might get bored with it.
Although this is a historical fiction during a very dark time, Upton Sinclair does include a bit of lightheartedness involving Lanny Budd’s romantic life. As with the other storylines, it has twists and turns that you don’t expect; and the romantic plight of a playboy (Lanny Budd) adds a bit of humor to a grim backdrop of a pending war.
As with the other Lanny Budd books, world events primarily drive the storyline of Dragon Harvest. Sometimes the storyline seems implausible, but when you think of Hitler and the Nazi regime, its ruthless rise to power, the death of millions of people, and the start of a world war, the words “implausible” and “impossible” can’t be used. During this time, good men and women were forced to do the “impossible” to fight Nazism and Fascism.
Dragon Harvest (Book 6) is pretty much the same storyline as Presidential Agent (Book 5). Since this is a serial, that’s to be expected but Upton Sinclair goes even deeper into mysticism. Some readers might get bored with it.
Although this is a historical fiction during a very dark time, Upton Sinclair does include a bit of lightheartedness involving Lanny Budd’s romantic life. As with the other storylines, it has twists and turns that you don’t expect; and the romantic plight of a playboy (Lanny Budd) adds a bit of humor to a grim backdrop of a pending war.
November 10, 2021
I started the Lanny Budd series in early February and have now finished the sixth book - so he has been a daily traveling partner. This continuation of the saga was one where Sinclair went off harder than before (or so it seemed to me) against capitalists - his socialistic leanings might b well known.
And also with his few travels to Europe one can question how he had all the information he had but I read a biography of him which indicated that he had a photographic memory and he was pretty smart so I will accept much of the accuracy - especially in these later books written after the time in question has ended.
I felt in this book he went overboard in a negative aspect of Hitler (not to be revealed here) and was too committed to the psychic elements - but I started accepting that in the first book I think.
I will continue and I guess he will be my companion into next year. I sometimes feel like goggling items or people or places that he refers to but haven't gotten to that point yer.
And also with his few travels to Europe one can question how he had all the information he had but I read a biography of him which indicated that he had a photographic memory and he was pretty smart so I will accept much of the accuracy - especially in these later books written after the time in question has ended.
I felt in this book he went overboard in a negative aspect of Hitler (not to be revealed here) and was too committed to the psychic elements - but I started accepting that in the first book I think.
I will continue and I guess he will be my companion into next year. I sometimes feel like goggling items or people or places that he refers to but haven't gotten to that point yer.
November 6, 2019
It is an excellent discussion of the French appeasers and their total despair when Hitler took over France and the weird reactions of the English who joined and fought and still had to struggle with appeasers among the wealthy . The descriptions of time spent in Germany right before Poland, Finland, Belgium, Holland and the way they moved right through the countries is good and the description of the saving of English and French fighters at Dunkirk was even better then the movie that came out a year or so ago. If you love history, read this book.
November 26, 2024
Another enjoyable entry in the Lanny Budd series of novels. Published in 1945, this book covers the events in 1939 including the start of the war. It remains quite interesting to see how the war was viewed contemporaneously, though in this case, by the time the book was finished, it had become clear that the Nazis were headed to total defeat, unlike in the previous books where the ultimate outcome of the war was still in doubt. Still burdened with extraneous psychic and paranormal happenings, it's easy enough to skim through those and continue with the story.
August 3, 2022
an eye opener
An amazing undertaking that resonates with the sheer audacity of the Natzi regime in the run up to WWII and the ensuing blitzkreig across Europe. So beautifully written that I felt I was present throughout it all. So now I shall read the next book in his phenomenal series about the battle with Briton. And for me, that means several more late nights of pleasurable reading.
An amazing undertaking that resonates with the sheer audacity of the Natzi regime in the run up to WWII and the ensuing blitzkreig across Europe. So beautifully written that I felt I was present throughout it all. So now I shall read the next book in his phenomenal series about the battle with Briton. And for me, that means several more late nights of pleasurable reading.
December 10, 2024
Another installment in the series with a similar plot. Only the history moves on, the situations stay the same. Still, the prose rolls smoothly. The Nazis are given a chance to have their say, and two characters who come out the best for it are Neville Chamberlain and Rudolph Hess. The supernatural plot points are getting tiresome, though.
November 21, 2022
Invasion of Norway, then Francs
WWII is spreading all over Europe. Lanny Budd is taking more and mote risks a a Presiidential Agent. The details are impressive. I keep thinking of the commitment of Sinclsir to document all these years.
WWII is spreading all over Europe. Lanny Budd is taking more and mote risks a a Presiidential Agent. The details are impressive. I keep thinking of the commitment of Sinclsir to document all these years.
May 1, 2025
This series has had some really good moments. This one is just too long. This fifth in the eleven book series. My version is over 1,000 pages. I bought the entire set, used, so I will eventually get to them all.
July 23, 2025
Het was weer een lange zit. Soms werd het interessant en kon ik pagina’s na elkaar verslijten. Vaak ook waren het gewoon veel gesprekken. Je merkt dan dat het een ouder boek is, met een trager ritme. Al met al net voldoende.
July 21, 2017
Fiction
Read
July 25, 2019No review, I did not like the book.
April 30, 2024
reminded me a lot of the last one....
quite a bit of rehashing, and the pace seems to have slowed a bit...
i'm ready to get out of hitlerland.. and keep the story moving.
quite a bit of rehashing, and the pace seems to have slowed a bit...
i'm ready to get out of hitlerland.. and keep the story moving.
August 18, 2024
Another great addition to the Lanny Budd series. I'm enjoying these books a lot more than I thought I would.
December 12, 2025
Este hombre escribe titanes...
January 8, 2026
Great historical fiction about the beginning of WW2
February 1, 2021
Long read. Fascinating. So many historical personages and events. Again can't get past at how many of these murderous, dishonest fascists are around again today. Will humans ever change? Ends with Hitler taking Paris.
October 31, 2016
This series keeps getting better and better. It's like European history told as a novel.
Read
August 14, 2017Started 8/6. Quite readable. Striking: a handful of super-rich determine war or peace, and other politics. Perhaps overdone. Yet similar to US today. WW2 era, reminds me of the NL book De Stamhouder. Which led me to read the book on the House of Morgan.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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