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Lanny Budd #11
The Return of Lanny Budd
Presidential secret agent Lanny Budd is called back into action in post-war Germany as the Cold War begins
Since the age of thirteen, Lanny Budd has been more than an eyewitness to history. From the Paris Peace Conference to the Battle of the Bulge, he has played key roles in the extraordinary events of his age. Now, forty years later, Presidential Agent 103 is coming out of retirement to serve his country—and the free world—once more.
A counterfeiting conspiracy hatched by unrepentant neo-Nazis threatens to gravely damage America’s efforts to rebuild and stabilize a divided Germany. Lanny’s previous experience, as well as his unexpected connection to one of the chief conspirators, makes him the ideal operative to foil the sinister plot. But when he infiltrates the Russian-controlled sector, what Lanny sees makes his blood run cold. Communist leader and former US ally Joseph Stalin has twisted the socialist ideals he holds dear into weapons of tyranny, oppression, and terror. With the onset of a shadow war between two world superpowers, Lanny realizes that his mission is far from over.
The Return of Lanny Budd is the final volume of Upton Sinclair’s Pulitzer Prize–winning dramatization of twentieth-century world history. A thrilling mix of adventure, romance, and political intrigue, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of the author’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.
Since the age of thirteen, Lanny Budd has been more than an eyewitness to history. From the Paris Peace Conference to the Battle of the Bulge, he has played key roles in the extraordinary events of his age. Now, forty years later, Presidential Agent 103 is coming out of retirement to serve his country—and the free world—once more.
A counterfeiting conspiracy hatched by unrepentant neo-Nazis threatens to gravely damage America’s efforts to rebuild and stabilize a divided Germany. Lanny’s previous experience, as well as his unexpected connection to one of the chief conspirators, makes him the ideal operative to foil the sinister plot. But when he infiltrates the Russian-controlled sector, what Lanny sees makes his blood run cold. Communist leader and former US ally Joseph Stalin has twisted the socialist ideals he holds dear into weapons of tyranny, oppression, and terror. With the onset of a shadow war between two world superpowers, Lanny realizes that his mission is far from over.
The Return of Lanny Budd is the final volume of Upton Sinclair’s Pulitzer Prize–winning dramatization of twentieth-century world history. A thrilling mix of adventure, romance, and political intrigue, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of the author’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.
733 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1953
123 people are currently reading
434 people want to read
About the author
Upton Sinclair
703 books1,177 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 - 25 of 25 reviews
June 24, 2017
Bottom Line First: As a series, the Lanny Budd books by Upton Sinclair are a grand scale view of the first half of the 20th century. Each of the books has a “you are there” quality. In The Return of Lanny Budd, the last and to me the least of the series you get something more like a propaganda piece. Much of this book is valuable in demonstrating that the political left is and was not a single ideological entity and that its members were not to last Stalinist stooges. Meantime the plotting is weak, narrative themes are endlessly repeated and in general the high drama tends to be predictable and not that dramatic.
In the previous ten novels Upton Sinclair produces consistent you are there experiences. You get to meet little remembered figures like Basil Zaharof the real and original arms merchant of death and the towering world figures Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill and so forth. The central character, Lanning Prescott Budd is credible as is his emergence from the love child of an American arms manufacturer to a world traveling art dealer, who uses that cover as his status as a presidential appointed secret operative. The American James Bond only with easier access into the highest political circles.
By this, book 11, World War II is over. America is just coming to realize that our recent ally, Soviet Russia has plans and methods that cannot be tolerated or ignored. Stalin has announced in his writings that his goal was world domination and the proof of his free use of ruthless and bloody technique was fast becoming obvious.
Sinclair is writing about 10 years after the events of this book and there was little surprise in this recitation. What would have surprised many in the US of the mid 1950’s was that there were divisions among the political left. Former communist were sincerely opposed to the way Stalin had corrupted the optimistic possibilities of communism. Left leaning people existed who had never bought into communism and everyone needed to be clear that what the Soviet Union was doing was barely more subtle that the recently vanquished Hitler.
So our recently retired Lanny Budd is brought back into the secret agent business by President Truman and charged with little more than the task of going into Europe and see what you see. The execution of this assignment will bring him into contact with individuals who will document the scope of the various individual opinions and experiences of a cross section of people.
About every three pages we will be reminded that the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor morals nor limits. This point is made in several plot based demonstrations. His own sister’s total conversion to the communist cause, the torture of good people and so forth. All played out with an introduction and conclusion and some argument in between that the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor morals nor limits. In case you missed it, Sinclair will tell you that the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor moral nor limits. And if you think I am repeating, good luck finding 5 random pages in 500 that do not in some way say the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor moral nor limits.
I am a great admirer of this series. I had had to look for this volume for years and had owned two prior copies before I got to finish. My emotional investment in the series meant that I had to take it to its completions. The Return of Lanny Budd is not a rewarding ending to what is a good series.
In the previous ten novels Upton Sinclair produces consistent you are there experiences. You get to meet little remembered figures like Basil Zaharof the real and original arms merchant of death and the towering world figures Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill and so forth. The central character, Lanning Prescott Budd is credible as is his emergence from the love child of an American arms manufacturer to a world traveling art dealer, who uses that cover as his status as a presidential appointed secret operative. The American James Bond only with easier access into the highest political circles.
By this, book 11, World War II is over. America is just coming to realize that our recent ally, Soviet Russia has plans and methods that cannot be tolerated or ignored. Stalin has announced in his writings that his goal was world domination and the proof of his free use of ruthless and bloody technique was fast becoming obvious.
Sinclair is writing about 10 years after the events of this book and there was little surprise in this recitation. What would have surprised many in the US of the mid 1950’s was that there were divisions among the political left. Former communist were sincerely opposed to the way Stalin had corrupted the optimistic possibilities of communism. Left leaning people existed who had never bought into communism and everyone needed to be clear that what the Soviet Union was doing was barely more subtle that the recently vanquished Hitler.
So our recently retired Lanny Budd is brought back into the secret agent business by President Truman and charged with little more than the task of going into Europe and see what you see. The execution of this assignment will bring him into contact with individuals who will document the scope of the various individual opinions and experiences of a cross section of people.
About every three pages we will be reminded that the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor morals nor limits. This point is made in several plot based demonstrations. His own sister’s total conversion to the communist cause, the torture of good people and so forth. All played out with an introduction and conclusion and some argument in between that the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor morals nor limits. In case you missed it, Sinclair will tell you that the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor moral nor limits. And if you think I am repeating, good luck finding 5 random pages in 500 that do not in some way say the Russians were violent thugs with neither manners nor moral nor limits.
I am a great admirer of this series. I had had to look for this volume for years and had owned two prior copies before I got to finish. My emotional investment in the series meant that I had to take it to its completions. The Return of Lanny Budd is not a rewarding ending to what is a good series.
December 2, 2017
The Return of Upton Sinclair
The 11-volume Lanny Budd series is a masterpiece worthy of every accolade. It is epic in scope yet intimate in the storytelling. Every American should read it. Sinclair is arguably the best chronicler of world events this country has or will ever produce. Readers can't help but love Lanny and Laurel, Robbie, Esther and of course Beauty. The HansiBesses perhaps most of all. This is a mural in words carefully and lovingly rendered of our faltering yet fantastic world, which is a better place because of dear Upton.
The 11-volume Lanny Budd series is a masterpiece worthy of every accolade. It is epic in scope yet intimate in the storytelling. Every American should read it. Sinclair is arguably the best chronicler of world events this country has or will ever produce. Readers can't help but love Lanny and Laurel, Robbie, Esther and of course Beauty. The HansiBesses perhaps most of all. This is a mural in words carefully and lovingly rendered of our faltering yet fantastic world, which is a better place because of dear Upton.
September 18, 2023
I was introduced to Lanny Budd on October 21, 2022 when I started reading the first of Upton Sinclair's ten (later eleven) books known as the Lanny Budd Series, entitled WORLD'S END.
This is a valuable series, one which can teach the volatile history of the first half of the Twentieth Century to the newest generations of Americans. It was written as the events unfolded, bringing to light the tyranny generated not only by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler but also by Josef Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union.
The conflict highlighted in this book is ideological between capitalism and communism. Sinclair created Budd as a socialist who did not oppose communism as an economic system but vehemently spoke out against the actions of the Soviet government. Budd eventually became a target of that regime.
It should be noted that the Soviet Union has not been in existence for more than thirty years. The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was the pivotal moment that defined the collapse of Soviet Communism. However, Communism continues to flourish in China and North Korea. Indeed, on the day this review was written, the leaders of these countries were meeting to discuss arms control.
One of the delights of this book for me personally has been a focus on radio, especially concerning Lanny's Peace Programme. I have worked in radio, off and on, for more than fifty years. It is one of the loves of my life and it added great enjoyment to my reading.
I can well understand why Sinclair decided to end the Budd series, but I would have loved to read one more book. Budd's back would certainly have displayed another bull's eye from Joseph McCarthy.
As is often said, "all good things must come to an end", and so I must say good-bye to Robbie, Beauty, Laurel, Irma and Ceddy, Rick and Nina, Hansi and Rose, Bess, and last but not least, Lanny Budd.
Postscript
Coincidentally, the next book I read on Kindle was ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14 by Blaine Harden. The focus of the book is the oppressive Communist system in North Korea and one man's escape from the country, but not entirely from the tyranny. What I read in ESCAPE... illustrates much written by Upton Sinclair.
Four stars waxing
This is a valuable series, one which can teach the volatile history of the first half of the Twentieth Century to the newest generations of Americans. It was written as the events unfolded, bringing to light the tyranny generated not only by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler but also by Josef Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union.
The conflict highlighted in this book is ideological between capitalism and communism. Sinclair created Budd as a socialist who did not oppose communism as an economic system but vehemently spoke out against the actions of the Soviet government. Budd eventually became a target of that regime.
It should be noted that the Soviet Union has not been in existence for more than thirty years. The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was the pivotal moment that defined the collapse of Soviet Communism. However, Communism continues to flourish in China and North Korea. Indeed, on the day this review was written, the leaders of these countries were meeting to discuss arms control.
One of the delights of this book for me personally has been a focus on radio, especially concerning Lanny's Peace Programme. I have worked in radio, off and on, for more than fifty years. It is one of the loves of my life and it added great enjoyment to my reading.
I can well understand why Sinclair decided to end the Budd series, but I would have loved to read one more book. Budd's back would certainly have displayed another bull's eye from Joseph McCarthy.
As is often said, "all good things must come to an end", and so I must say good-bye to Robbie, Beauty, Laurel, Irma and Ceddy, Rick and Nina, Hansi and Rose, Bess, and last but not least, Lanny Budd.
Postscript
Coincidentally, the next book I read on Kindle was ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14 by Blaine Harden. The focus of the book is the oppressive Communist system in North Korea and one man's escape from the country, but not entirely from the tyranny. What I read in ESCAPE... illustrates much written by Upton Sinclair.
Four stars waxing
December 27, 2020
In 1953, in the midst of the Cold War, this follow-up to the immensely successful and highly addictive Lanny Budd WWII series came out. I freely admit that I was not very much interested in this one, although I devoured the others. Not sure why. However, the isolation of the pandemic, plus the offering on BookBub, changed my mind; and I gave it a try. So glad that I did! I almost rated it a “5”—would have but for a too-long insider’s view of an East Berlin interrogation facility. Very rough, even if genuine.
On a brighter note, I was absorbed by (1) Sinclair’s wonderful descriptions of the topography on Lanny’s cross-country drives from NJ to FL and then across TX and on to CA and (2) Lanny’s reflections (as an art expert/connoisseur) on paintings that he was either advising clients to purchase/pass up or owners to price for sale.
Upton Sinclair joined the ranks of my favorite authors a few years back when I read my first Lanny Budd book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Dragon’s Teeth”. Nothing in this book changed that.
On a brighter note, I was absorbed by (1) Sinclair’s wonderful descriptions of the topography on Lanny’s cross-country drives from NJ to FL and then across TX and on to CA and (2) Lanny’s reflections (as an art expert/connoisseur) on paintings that he was either advising clients to purchase/pass up or owners to price for sale.
Upton Sinclair joined the ranks of my favorite authors a few years back when I read my first Lanny Budd book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Dragon’s Teeth”. Nothing in this book changed that.
August 24, 2019
This volume perhaps was an afterthought, since at the end of volume 10 the author includes his thoughts about how he came to write the first book, which wrote itself and he thought that was all; and then he mentions how, even though he'd only thought of that one book, the further ones came as well. And this 11th volume being an afterthought is inherent in the title as we..; unlike the other ten titles with their literary references, this is a self explanatory prosaic one, an almost tongue in cheek variation on return of, say, a Sherlock Holmes or a James Bond.
It's set in the aftermath of the WWII taking the reader to Cold War, as far as memory serves, having read it in late 1970s, and beginning it now, after four decades, it's a slight surprise that it takes off with such a flying start. One didn't expect it while giving a day off between finishing the tenth and beginning it now, since after all, WWII is well and over, Nürnberg trials are done with, and Frances is with her father too; and the Cold War, after all, was just that. A slow freeze with never quite off threat of an eruption of a volcano that could wipe out the civilisation.
But take off to a flying start this one does, and how! There is Bertrand Russell on the Peace program to begin with, and promptly a call from Washington asking if Lanny knew Braun, which was one of the aliases for Bernhardt Monck. So Lanny and Laurel drive to Washington and Lanny met the government official, who informed him what the problem was.
To begin with, UNO had problems with Soviets.
"The Kremlin had vetoed three of its proposals in one afternoon, and the Soviet delegate had walked out from the meeting of the Security Council in New York."
And as the Budds had been aware of,
"The most alarming development of all had been in the far South Sea island of Bikini, where the United States had given the world a demonstration of what the new atomic power could do. Eleven old war vessels had been destroyed and twenty-five more crippled. A second explosion, this time under water, had sunk a battleship, an aircraft carrier, and eight other vessels of war. The United States had proposed to the United Nations a plan to ban the manufacture of such weapons and provide that all nations should permit inspection to make sure of the keeping of the agreement. But Russia had announced that she would never accept such a plan; ...."
And now the official told Lanny what Monck had asked them to get him to help with.
"‘Adolf Hitler had all his plans made for the invasion of Britain, and a part of this was the printing of great quantities of English money, so that he could take possession of everything in the country without plain outright confiscation. I was told that he had set up a regular engraving establishment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp’.
"‘Our information is that at one time he had as prisoners there more than a hundred and forty expert engravers as well as convicted forgers from several countries; they were set to making plates for reproducing the currency of the Allied countries. The neutral nations were refusing to accept Hitler’s marks, they demanded sterling or American dollars. And if these dollars were successfully counterfeited the market would be flooded and prices would be forced up for the Allies. The enemy would get the goods and we would be driven into bankruptcy. The forgeries were so good that they went undetected for some time’.
"‘Our information is that they printed some two hundred million British pounds, nearly a billion dollars. When the invading armies neared Sachsenhausen the Nazis transferred their machinery and slave labour to the Mauthausen concentration camp, on the Danube. When the final collapse came the stuff was scattered over the German-speaking lands. We have recently found a stock of it in a factory at Freising, and another lot sealed up in metal containers and sunk in a lake near Bad Ischl in Austria. What we want most of all is to find the plates. So long as they exist the floods of phoney money may be continuous."
Turner wanted to know if Monck was to be trusted, and Lanny having voucher for him, asked about Stubendorf; it transpired that the forgery plates might be there, and Kurt was there after having been interred during allied occupation of Germany. Turner wanted Lanny to go talk to Kurt, and Lanny warned him about the last time he'd seen Kurt. They talked about Graf Stubendorf too, as a possible source of information. Turner briefed Lanny about Poland being evasive, delays keeping the matter on hold while forged notes entered via Berlin into West, and they weren't sure if it was nazis, communists, or gangsters, although the three 'shaded into one another'.
"Turner took him to a microscope near the window and told him what minute errors to look for; even then it was not easy to find them.
"Men had died for the commission of those small mistakes. Turner told him how a group of three or four of these engraver-slaves had conspired to hide minute marks in the plates, whereby the notes could subsequently be identified. This was discovered, and the conspirators were sent to the gas chamber—that is, they were poisoned by cyanogen, their bodies burned in the furnace, and their bones ground up for fertiliser. All the engraver-slaves at Sachsenhausen had worked with this menace hanging over them; if they made a mistake it would be taken for granted that they had done it on purpose; mistakes were simply not permitted."
Lanny was provided with an identification card as a U.S. agent, and they'd provide passport and tickets. Meanwhile Lanny thought of the President telling him to let him know if he was going yo Europe, and called White House to leave a message; he met Truman that evrning, and he didn't ask Lanny about the mission but spoke about Soviet behaviour in bad faith, breaking various agreements and calling U.S. warmonger if U.S. helped governments in countries where Soviets were foaming trouble, not allowing free elections in East Europe and not vacating the ports in Northeast Asian peninsula, Port Arthur and Dairen. Lanny reminded him about the similar situation a decade ago with Hitler, and Lanny had told the baffled people to read his book but no one did; Stalin had written too, Lanny said, and set down his program exactly, only no one outside his domain was reading it.
They discussed the Peace program in light of the communist problematic behaviour and Truman asked Lanny to see him when he was back from Europe, and Lanny returned to Shoreham Hotel. He told her what he could, and they discussed Lanny's trip and other matters with the 'Peace family' when they returned to Edgemere.
..........................
Here the author makes yet another mistake, that of saying that Rick and Nina had their eldest son, Scrubbie, in Edgemere with them; the eldest is actually Alfy, who was born close to when Lanny's half sister Marceline was, and she's ten to twelve years older to Frances, Lanny's own first child from his first wife Irma; Scrubbie might not be the youngest of Rick and Nina, but eldest he certainly is not. This is probably fourth or fifth such mistake by the author, after Lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex wife was still with her second husband who was working at a desk job due to war, when in a previous volume of the series he'd mentioned that Edna was helping Margy at Marceline's debut and was herself in impecunious circumstances due to death of Fitz-Laing. In between the author has changed the name of son of the victim of nazis. Freddi Robin, from Johannes as he was mentioned in the third volume and further, to Freddi as he's reintroduced as a youngster joining the U.S. armed forces. There's probably at least one more such mistake.
..........................
The author gives here a brief introduction of the Budd family of Lanny, the other side being that of his mother Beauty who brought him up in Juan Les-Pins on French Riviera. Funny how easily Lanny has given up not just that home, Bienvenu, but the larger one, France! That was his home not just of childhood and boyhood and years before marriage, but long after, until he married the third wife Laurel. True, he couldn't take Trudi, his second wife, there, but the whole marriage and her identity was a secret not known to even his parents, only to those few whom he told for a reason, until his testimony at Nürnberg. But Bienvenu remained his home until he bought an apartment in NYC where Laurel lived with Agnes Drury, her roommate of years who was a nurse, and the three shared it until the move to Edgemere.
And yet, he isn't divided in his heart at all, seemingly, much less in his loyalty, between the only home he knew growing up and the only home he could call home until he was in his forties, France, and the nation of his ancestors where his father's family and clan lives, U.S.! Even during the years when his now elderly mother was living with her third or second husband who's no spring chicken and taking care of her little grandson Marcel Detaze, named after his grandfather who was her second or first husband, when Lanny could have been more help to her especially during the years when Marceline wasn't known to be alive and war was over, Lanny merely visits Bienvenu when suitable but doesn't consider his childhood - and until as recent as six years ago - home as home at all!
One has to wonder, isn't the author confusing Lanny with himself?
Upton Sinclair lived in Europe in 1911, 1912, 1913, as he mentions in the addendum to the first volume, and moved back when he expected a war. But Upton Sinclair was born and brought up in U.S., not Europe! Lanny was not only born in Switzerland and brought up on Cote d'Azur, he chose to return after WWI which was only natural, choosing France and Beauty over security of Budds and New England. Surely he isn't so heartless as to have forgotten it!
..........................................................................
The author gives a nice but brief description of Andrew Carnegie, occasion being Lanny went to Carnegie Hall to hear Hansi Robin play; and perhaps there is another mistake here. He describes Hansi as German born Jew. But if one read the first volume, the family lived in Holland, were wealthy enough, and only moved to Berlin because the boys, especially Hansi, deserved the best music teacher and training possible, and that was arranged in Berlin. There certainly was never any mention of the family having lived in Germany before, else it would have not been moving but returning to what was once home.
Hansi is depressed after the concert, and he told the family about Bess being too busy. The author discussing communists and Soviets of that era brings very vividly to mind jihadists and other invaders bent on convert-or-kill sprees with an aim of conquering the world and destroying every civilisation, and that's as true today as it has been for well over a millennium and half.
Here is another summing up by the author, in one page, of the conflict in the Hansi and Bess marriage that is a succinct capture of the conflict within left, set in the Hitler and Stalin era but valid on a far more general scale.
.........................
Lanny flew via Newfoundland and Prestwick to Croydon and met Alfy. Here the author as usual describes him as the future baronet, which is clearly only because he's the eldest, not Scrubbie.
In Berlin he was met by an American officer, and Lanny identified himself. The officer spoke on the way about various stories. Lanny had come to expect nazis as criminals. He met the U.S. agents and heard them, and discussed the situation, suggesting it might be Vlasovites who were carrying out the false currency pushing.
"‘Vlasovite is the name for a Russian or Pole who went over to the Nazis and entered their military service. Some did it because they were reactionary; most of them I suppose were just mercenaries. There was a whole division or more of them, commanded by a General Vlasov. Needless to say, to the Reds they are the devil incarnate. Some might have been at Sachsenhausen, as guards or interpreters, even as prisoners if they were engravers or had committed crimes. They might have got away with bales of the money, and the Poles might have fled to Poland; they might have had to change their names and conceal their past, or they might be living as outlaws, hiding in the forest, working as an underground against the Reds."
They told him of Poland circumstances.
"Soviet artillery had blasted towns and villages to pieces, and in many of the towns the streets were not yet cleared of rubble sufficiently to drive a vehicle through them. There were unbelievable shifts of population going on. More than eight million Germans had fled from Poland into Germany; to take their places a million and a half Poles had fled from the provinces which the Kremlin had taken over in the East; they had come into the new lands evacuated by the Germans. In addition nearly a million Poles who had fled from the Russians into Germany and Austria and Western Europe were now coming back to their homeland. The population of Warsaw had diminished from a million and a quarter to half a million. All this meant swarms of half-starved people on the roads, riding in oxcarts or trundling handcarts, or plodding along with their few possessions in bundles on their heads or their backs. It was very depressing, and also very insanitary."
They told him that he was to manage himself hence, since his being an agent wasn't established, not for public consumption. Lanny asked about graft, and was told he'd have to be cautious against hurting pride, but they'd be open to it; Lanny asked about Emil and they said they'd found out he was in Bavarian Alps. He was to have an expense account. He met Monck, who was with CIC, and working for AMG now, investigating persons claiming to have been anti nazi for truth of their claims.
"Monck would go to work and learn that some man had been an active Nazi, and then he would discover that the man was being employed anyhow—the reason being that he was the one who knew the most about how to run that industry. ... If he presumed to criticise the decisions of his superiors they would decide that he was a Red—and that was worse than a Nazi. ... Monck could speak for the masses of Europe. He knew that they would not consent to go back to the old system; they would no longer be content with poverty and insecurity. To attempt to force them back would mean simply to drive them into the arms of the Communists. There would be either a Socialist Europe or a Communist Europe—and it was America that would have to make the choice.
"Monck had seen one nation after another blundering stupidly and bringing about the opposite result to what it wanted."
It's set in the aftermath of the WWII taking the reader to Cold War, as far as memory serves, having read it in late 1970s, and beginning it now, after four decades, it's a slight surprise that it takes off with such a flying start. One didn't expect it while giving a day off between finishing the tenth and beginning it now, since after all, WWII is well and over, Nürnberg trials are done with, and Frances is with her father too; and the Cold War, after all, was just that. A slow freeze with never quite off threat of an eruption of a volcano that could wipe out the civilisation.
But take off to a flying start this one does, and how! There is Bertrand Russell on the Peace program to begin with, and promptly a call from Washington asking if Lanny knew Braun, which was one of the aliases for Bernhardt Monck. So Lanny and Laurel drive to Washington and Lanny met the government official, who informed him what the problem was.
To begin with, UNO had problems with Soviets.
"The Kremlin had vetoed three of its proposals in one afternoon, and the Soviet delegate had walked out from the meeting of the Security Council in New York."
And as the Budds had been aware of,
"The most alarming development of all had been in the far South Sea island of Bikini, where the United States had given the world a demonstration of what the new atomic power could do. Eleven old war vessels had been destroyed and twenty-five more crippled. A second explosion, this time under water, had sunk a battleship, an aircraft carrier, and eight other vessels of war. The United States had proposed to the United Nations a plan to ban the manufacture of such weapons and provide that all nations should permit inspection to make sure of the keeping of the agreement. But Russia had announced that she would never accept such a plan; ...."
And now the official told Lanny what Monck had asked them to get him to help with.
"‘Adolf Hitler had all his plans made for the invasion of Britain, and a part of this was the printing of great quantities of English money, so that he could take possession of everything in the country without plain outright confiscation. I was told that he had set up a regular engraving establishment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp’.
"‘Our information is that at one time he had as prisoners there more than a hundred and forty expert engravers as well as convicted forgers from several countries; they were set to making plates for reproducing the currency of the Allied countries. The neutral nations were refusing to accept Hitler’s marks, they demanded sterling or American dollars. And if these dollars were successfully counterfeited the market would be flooded and prices would be forced up for the Allies. The enemy would get the goods and we would be driven into bankruptcy. The forgeries were so good that they went undetected for some time’.
"‘Our information is that they printed some two hundred million British pounds, nearly a billion dollars. When the invading armies neared Sachsenhausen the Nazis transferred their machinery and slave labour to the Mauthausen concentration camp, on the Danube. When the final collapse came the stuff was scattered over the German-speaking lands. We have recently found a stock of it in a factory at Freising, and another lot sealed up in metal containers and sunk in a lake near Bad Ischl in Austria. What we want most of all is to find the plates. So long as they exist the floods of phoney money may be continuous."
Turner wanted to know if Monck was to be trusted, and Lanny having voucher for him, asked about Stubendorf; it transpired that the forgery plates might be there, and Kurt was there after having been interred during allied occupation of Germany. Turner wanted Lanny to go talk to Kurt, and Lanny warned him about the last time he'd seen Kurt. They talked about Graf Stubendorf too, as a possible source of information. Turner briefed Lanny about Poland being evasive, delays keeping the matter on hold while forged notes entered via Berlin into West, and they weren't sure if it was nazis, communists, or gangsters, although the three 'shaded into one another'.
"Turner took him to a microscope near the window and told him what minute errors to look for; even then it was not easy to find them.
"Men had died for the commission of those small mistakes. Turner told him how a group of three or four of these engraver-slaves had conspired to hide minute marks in the plates, whereby the notes could subsequently be identified. This was discovered, and the conspirators were sent to the gas chamber—that is, they were poisoned by cyanogen, their bodies burned in the furnace, and their bones ground up for fertiliser. All the engraver-slaves at Sachsenhausen had worked with this menace hanging over them; if they made a mistake it would be taken for granted that they had done it on purpose; mistakes were simply not permitted."
Lanny was provided with an identification card as a U.S. agent, and they'd provide passport and tickets. Meanwhile Lanny thought of the President telling him to let him know if he was going yo Europe, and called White House to leave a message; he met Truman that evrning, and he didn't ask Lanny about the mission but spoke about Soviet behaviour in bad faith, breaking various agreements and calling U.S. warmonger if U.S. helped governments in countries where Soviets were foaming trouble, not allowing free elections in East Europe and not vacating the ports in Northeast Asian peninsula, Port Arthur and Dairen. Lanny reminded him about the similar situation a decade ago with Hitler, and Lanny had told the baffled people to read his book but no one did; Stalin had written too, Lanny said, and set down his program exactly, only no one outside his domain was reading it.
They discussed the Peace program in light of the communist problematic behaviour and Truman asked Lanny to see him when he was back from Europe, and Lanny returned to Shoreham Hotel. He told her what he could, and they discussed Lanny's trip and other matters with the 'Peace family' when they returned to Edgemere.
..........................
Here the author makes yet another mistake, that of saying that Rick and Nina had their eldest son, Scrubbie, in Edgemere with them; the eldest is actually Alfy, who was born close to when Lanny's half sister Marceline was, and she's ten to twelve years older to Frances, Lanny's own first child from his first wife Irma; Scrubbie might not be the youngest of Rick and Nina, but eldest he certainly is not. This is probably fourth or fifth such mistake by the author, after Lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex wife was still with her second husband who was working at a desk job due to war, when in a previous volume of the series he'd mentioned that Edna was helping Margy at Marceline's debut and was herself in impecunious circumstances due to death of Fitz-Laing. In between the author has changed the name of son of the victim of nazis. Freddi Robin, from Johannes as he was mentioned in the third volume and further, to Freddi as he's reintroduced as a youngster joining the U.S. armed forces. There's probably at least one more such mistake.
..........................
The author gives here a brief introduction of the Budd family of Lanny, the other side being that of his mother Beauty who brought him up in Juan Les-Pins on French Riviera. Funny how easily Lanny has given up not just that home, Bienvenu, but the larger one, France! That was his home not just of childhood and boyhood and years before marriage, but long after, until he married the third wife Laurel. True, he couldn't take Trudi, his second wife, there, but the whole marriage and her identity was a secret not known to even his parents, only to those few whom he told for a reason, until his testimony at Nürnberg. But Bienvenu remained his home until he bought an apartment in NYC where Laurel lived with Agnes Drury, her roommate of years who was a nurse, and the three shared it until the move to Edgemere.
And yet, he isn't divided in his heart at all, seemingly, much less in his loyalty, between the only home he knew growing up and the only home he could call home until he was in his forties, France, and the nation of his ancestors where his father's family and clan lives, U.S.! Even during the years when his now elderly mother was living with her third or second husband who's no spring chicken and taking care of her little grandson Marcel Detaze, named after his grandfather who was her second or first husband, when Lanny could have been more help to her especially during the years when Marceline wasn't known to be alive and war was over, Lanny merely visits Bienvenu when suitable but doesn't consider his childhood - and until as recent as six years ago - home as home at all!
One has to wonder, isn't the author confusing Lanny with himself?
Upton Sinclair lived in Europe in 1911, 1912, 1913, as he mentions in the addendum to the first volume, and moved back when he expected a war. But Upton Sinclair was born and brought up in U.S., not Europe! Lanny was not only born in Switzerland and brought up on Cote d'Azur, he chose to return after WWI which was only natural, choosing France and Beauty over security of Budds and New England. Surely he isn't so heartless as to have forgotten it!
..........................................................................
The author gives a nice but brief description of Andrew Carnegie, occasion being Lanny went to Carnegie Hall to hear Hansi Robin play; and perhaps there is another mistake here. He describes Hansi as German born Jew. But if one read the first volume, the family lived in Holland, were wealthy enough, and only moved to Berlin because the boys, especially Hansi, deserved the best music teacher and training possible, and that was arranged in Berlin. There certainly was never any mention of the family having lived in Germany before, else it would have not been moving but returning to what was once home.
Hansi is depressed after the concert, and he told the family about Bess being too busy. The author discussing communists and Soviets of that era brings very vividly to mind jihadists and other invaders bent on convert-or-kill sprees with an aim of conquering the world and destroying every civilisation, and that's as true today as it has been for well over a millennium and half.
Here is another summing up by the author, in one page, of the conflict in the Hansi and Bess marriage that is a succinct capture of the conflict within left, set in the Hitler and Stalin era but valid on a far more general scale.
.........................
Lanny flew via Newfoundland and Prestwick to Croydon and met Alfy. Here the author as usual describes him as the future baronet, which is clearly only because he's the eldest, not Scrubbie.
In Berlin he was met by an American officer, and Lanny identified himself. The officer spoke on the way about various stories. Lanny had come to expect nazis as criminals. He met the U.S. agents and heard them, and discussed the situation, suggesting it might be Vlasovites who were carrying out the false currency pushing.
"‘Vlasovite is the name for a Russian or Pole who went over to the Nazis and entered their military service. Some did it because they were reactionary; most of them I suppose were just mercenaries. There was a whole division or more of them, commanded by a General Vlasov. Needless to say, to the Reds they are the devil incarnate. Some might have been at Sachsenhausen, as guards or interpreters, even as prisoners if they were engravers or had committed crimes. They might have got away with bales of the money, and the Poles might have fled to Poland; they might have had to change their names and conceal their past, or they might be living as outlaws, hiding in the forest, working as an underground against the Reds."
They told him of Poland circumstances.
"Soviet artillery had blasted towns and villages to pieces, and in many of the towns the streets were not yet cleared of rubble sufficiently to drive a vehicle through them. There were unbelievable shifts of population going on. More than eight million Germans had fled from Poland into Germany; to take their places a million and a half Poles had fled from the provinces which the Kremlin had taken over in the East; they had come into the new lands evacuated by the Germans. In addition nearly a million Poles who had fled from the Russians into Germany and Austria and Western Europe were now coming back to their homeland. The population of Warsaw had diminished from a million and a quarter to half a million. All this meant swarms of half-starved people on the roads, riding in oxcarts or trundling handcarts, or plodding along with their few possessions in bundles on their heads or their backs. It was very depressing, and also very insanitary."
They told him that he was to manage himself hence, since his being an agent wasn't established, not for public consumption. Lanny asked about graft, and was told he'd have to be cautious against hurting pride, but they'd be open to it; Lanny asked about Emil and they said they'd found out he was in Bavarian Alps. He was to have an expense account. He met Monck, who was with CIC, and working for AMG now, investigating persons claiming to have been anti nazi for truth of their claims.
"Monck would go to work and learn that some man had been an active Nazi, and then he would discover that the man was being employed anyhow—the reason being that he was the one who knew the most about how to run that industry. ... If he presumed to criticise the decisions of his superiors they would decide that he was a Red—and that was worse than a Nazi. ... Monck could speak for the masses of Europe. He knew that they would not consent to go back to the old system; they would no longer be content with poverty and insecurity. To attempt to force them back would mean simply to drive them into the arms of the Communists. There would be either a Socialist Europe or a Communist Europe—and it was America that would have to make the choice.
"Monck had seen one nation after another blundering stupidly and bringing about the opposite result to what it wanted."
August 24, 2019
This volume perhaps was an afterthought, since at the end of volume 10 the author includes his thoughts about how he came to write the first book, which wrote itself and he thought that was all; and then he mentions how, even though he'd only thought of that one book, the further ones came as well. And this 11th volume being an afterthought is inherent in the title as we..; unlike the other ten titles with their literary references, this is a self explanatory prosaic one, an almost tongue in cheek variation on return of, say, a Sherlock Holmes or a James Bond.
It's set in the aftermath of the WWII taking the reader to Cold War, as far as memory serves, having read it in late 1970s, and beginning it now, after four decades, it's a slight surprise that it takes off with such a flying start. One didn't expect it while giving a day off between finishing the tenth and beginning it now, since after all, WWII is well and over, Nürnberg trials are done with, and Frances is with her father too; and the Cold War, after all, was just that. A slow freeze with never quite off threat of an eruption of a volcano that could wipe out the civilisation.
But take off to a flying start this one does, and how! There is Bertrand Russell on the Peace program to begin with, and promptly a call from Washington asking if Lanny knew Braun, which was one of the aliases for Bernhardt Monck. So Lanny and Laurel drive to Washington and Lanny met the government official, who informed him what the problem was.
To begin with, UNO had problems with Soviets.
"The Kremlin had vetoed three of its proposals in one afternoon, and the Soviet delegate had walked out from the meeting of the Security Council in New York."
And as the Budds had been aware of,
"The most alarming development of all had been in the far South Sea island of Bikini, where the United States had given the world a demonstration of what the new atomic power could do. Eleven old war vessels had been destroyed and twenty-five more crippled. A second explosion, this time under water, had sunk a battleship, an aircraft carrier, and eight other vessels of war. The United States had proposed to the United Nations a plan to ban the manufacture of such weapons and provide that all nations should permit inspection to make sure of the keeping of the agreement. But Russia had announced that she would never accept such a plan; ...."
And now the official told Lanny what Monck had asked them to get him to help with.
"‘Adolf Hitler had all his plans made for the invasion of Britain, and a part of this was the printing of great quantities of English money, so that he could take possession of everything in the country without plain outright confiscation. I was told that he had set up a regular engraving establishment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp’.
"‘Our information is that at one time he had as prisoners there more than a hundred and forty expert engravers as well as convicted forgers from several countries; they were set to making plates for reproducing the currency of the Allied countries. The neutral nations were refusing to accept Hitler’s marks, they demanded sterling or American dollars. And if these dollars were successfully counterfeited the market would be flooded and prices would be forced up for the Allies. The enemy would get the goods and we would be driven into bankruptcy. The forgeries were so good that they went undetected for some time’.
"‘Our information is that they printed some two hundred million British pounds, nearly a billion dollars. When the invading armies neared Sachsenhausen the Nazis transferred their machinery and slave labour to the Mauthausen concentration camp, on the Danube. When the final collapse came the stuff was scattered over the German-speaking lands. We have recently found a stock of it in a factory at Freising, and another lot sealed up in metal containers and sunk in a lake near Bad Ischl in Austria. What we want most of all is to find the plates. So long as they exist the floods of phoney money may be continuous."
Turner wanted to know if Monck was to be trusted, and Lanny having voucher for him, asked about Stubendorf; it transpired that the forgery plates might be there, and Kurt was there after having been interred during allied occupation of Germany. Turner wanted Lanny to go talk to Kurt, and Lanny warned him about the last time he'd seen Kurt. They talked about Graf Stubendorf too, as a possible source of information. Turner briefed Lanny about Poland being evasive, delays keeping the matter on hold while forged notes entered via Berlin into West, and they weren't sure if it was nazis, communists, or gangsters, although the three 'shaded into one another'.
"Turner took him to a microscope near the window and told him what minute errors to look for; even then it was not easy to find them.
"Men had died for the commission of those small mistakes. Turner told him how a group of three or four of these engraver-slaves had conspired to hide minute marks in the plates, whereby the notes could subsequently be identified. This was discovered, and the conspirators were sent to the gas chamber—that is, they were poisoned by cyanogen, their bodies burned in the furnace, and their bones ground up for fertiliser. All the engraver-slaves at Sachsenhausen had worked with this menace hanging over them; if they made a mistake it would be taken for granted that they had done it on purpose; mistakes were simply not permitted."
Lanny was provided with an identification card as a U.S. agent, and they'd provide passport and tickets. Meanwhile Lanny thought of the President telling him to let him know if he was going yo Europe, and called White House to leave a message; he met Truman that evrning, and he didn't ask Lanny about the mission but spoke about Soviet behaviour in bad faith, breaking various agreements and calling U.S. warmonger if U.S. helped governments in countries where Soviets were foaming trouble, not allowing free elections in East Europe and not vacating the ports in Northeast Asian peninsula, Port Arthur and Dairen. Lanny reminded him about the similar situation a decade ago with Hitler, and Lanny had told the baffled people to read his book but no one did; Stalin had written too, Lanny said, and set down his program exactly, only no one outside his domain was reading it.
They discussed the Peace program in light of the communist problematic behaviour and Truman asked Lanny to see him when he was back from Europe, and Lanny returned to Shoreham Hotel. He told her what he could, and they discussed Lanny's trip and other matters with the 'Peace family' when they returned to Edgemere.
..........................
Here the author makes yet another mistake, that of saying that Rick and Nina had their eldest son, Scrubbie, in Edgemere with them; the eldest is actually Alfy, who was born close to when Lanny's half sister Marceline was, and she's ten to twelve years older to Frances, Lanny's own first child from his first wife Irma; Scrubbie might not be the youngest of Rick and Nina, but eldest he certainly is not. This is probably fourth or fifth such mistake by the author, after Lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex wife was still with her second husband who was working at a desk job due to war, when in a previous volume of the series he'd mentioned that Edna was helping Margy at Marceline's debut and was herself in impecunious circumstances due to death of Fitz-Laing. In between the author has changed the name of son of the victim of nazis. Freddi Robin, from Johannes as he was mentioned in the third volume and further, to Freddi as he's reintroduced as a youngster joining the U.S. armed forces. There's probably at least one more such mistake.
..........................
The author gives here a brief introduction of the Budd family of Lanny, the other side being that of his mother Beauty who brought him up in Juan Les-Pins on French Riviera. Funny how easily Lanny has given up not just that home, Bienvenu, but the larger one, France! That was his home not just of childhood and boyhood and years before marriage, but long after, until he married the third wife Laurel. True, he couldn't take Trudi, his second wife, there, but the whole marriage and her identity was a secret not known to even his parents, only to those few whom he told for a reason, until his testimony at Nürnberg. But Bienvenu remained his home until he bought an apartment in NYC where Laurel lived with Agnes Drury, her roommate of years who was a nurse, and the three shared it until the move to Edgemere.
And yet, he isn't divided in his heart at all, seemingly, much less in his loyalty, between the only home he knew growing up and the only home he could call home until he was in his forties, France, and the nation of his ancestors where his father's family and clan lives, U.S.! Even during the years when his now elderly mother was living with her third or second husband who's no spring chicken and taking care of her little grandson Marcel Detaze, named after his grandfather who was her second or first husband, when Lanny could have been more help to her especially during the years when Marceline wasn't known to be alive and war was over, Lanny merely visits Bienvenu when suitable but doesn't consider his childhood - and until as recent as six years ago - home as home at all!
One has to wonder, isn't the author confusing Lanny with himself?
Upton Sinclair lived in Europe in 1911, 1912, 1913, as he mentions in the addendum to the first volume, and moved back when he expected a war. But Upton Sinclair was born and brought up in U.S., not Europe! Lanny was not only born in Switzerland and brought up on Cote d'Azur, he chose to return after WWI which was only natural, choosing France and Beauty over security of Budds and New England. Surely he isn't so heartless as to have forgotten it!
..........................................................................
The author gives a nice but brief description of Andrew Carnegie, occasion being Lanny went to Carnegie Hall to hear Hansi Robin play; and perhaps there is another mistake here. He describes Hansi as German born Jew. But if one read the first volume, the family lived in Holland, were wealthy enough, and only moved to Berlin because the boys, especially Hansi, deserved the best music teacher and training possible, and that was arranged in Berlin. There certainly was never any mention of the family having lived in Germany before, else it would have not been moving but returning to what was once home.
Hansi is depressed after the concert, and he told the family about Bess being too busy. The author discussing communists and Soviets of that era brings very vividly to mind jihadists and other invaders bent on convert-or-kill sprees with an aim of conquering the world and destroying every civilisation, and that's as true today as it has been for well over a millennium and half.
Here is another summing up by the author, in one page, of the conflict in the Hansi and Bess marriage that is a succinct capture of the conflict within left, set in the Hitler and Stalin era but valid on a far more general scale.
.........................
Lanny flew via Newfoundland and Prestwick to Croydon and met Alfy. Here the author as usual describes him as the future baronet, which is clearly only because he's the eldest, not Scrubbie.
In Berlin he was met by an American officer, and Lanny identified himself. The officer spoke on the way about various stories. Lanny had come to expect nazis as criminals. He met the U.S. agents and heard them, and discussed the situation, suggesting it might be Vlasovites who were carrying out the false currency pushing.
"‘Vlasovite is the name for a Russian or Pole who went over to the Nazis and entered their military service. Some did it because they were reactionary; most of them I suppose were just mercenaries. There was a whole division or more of them, commanded by a General Vlasov. Needless to say, to the Reds they are the devil incarnate. Some might have been at Sachsenhausen, as guards or interpreters, even as prisoners if they were engravers or had committed crimes. They might have got away with bales of the money, and the Poles might have fled to Poland; they might have had to change their names and conceal their past, or they might be living as outlaws, hiding in the forest, working as an underground against the Reds."
They told him of Poland circumstances.
"Soviet artillery had blasted towns and villages to pieces, and in many of the towns the streets were not yet cleared of rubble sufficiently to drive a vehicle through them. There were unbelievable shifts of population going on. More than eight million Germans had fled from Poland into Germany; to take their places a million and a half Poles had fled from the provinces which the Kremlin had taken over in the East; they had come into the new lands evacuated by the Germans. In addition nearly a million Poles who had fled from the Russians into Germany and Austria and Western Europe were now coming back to their homeland. The population of Warsaw had diminished from a million and a quarter to half a million. All this meant swarms of half-starved people on the roads, riding in oxcarts or trundling handcarts, or plodding along with their few possessions in bundles on their heads or their backs. It was very depressing, and also very insanitary."
They told him that he was to manage himself hence, since his being an agent wasn't established, not for public consumption. Lanny asked about graft, and was told he'd have to be cautious against hurting pride, but they'd be open to it; Lanny asked about Emil and they said they'd found out he was in Bavarian Alps. He was to have an expense account. He met Monck, who was with CIC, and working for AMG now, investigating persons claiming to have been anti nazi for truth of their claims.
"Monck would go to work and learn that some man had been an active Nazi, and then he would discover that the man was being employed anyhow—the reason being that he was the one who knew the most about how to run that industry. ... If he presumed to criticise the decisions of his superiors they would decide that he was a Red—and that was worse than a Nazi. ... Monck could speak for the masses of Europe. He knew that they would not consent to go back to the old system; they would no longer be content with poverty and insecurity. To attempt to force them back would mean simply to drive them into the arms of the Communists. There would be either a Socialist Europe or a Communist Europe—and it was America that would have to make the choice.
"Monck had seen one nation after another blundering stupidly and bringing about the opposite result to what it wanted."
It's set in the aftermath of the WWII taking the reader to Cold War, as far as memory serves, having read it in late 1970s, and beginning it now, after four decades, it's a slight surprise that it takes off with such a flying start. One didn't expect it while giving a day off between finishing the tenth and beginning it now, since after all, WWII is well and over, Nürnberg trials are done with, and Frances is with her father too; and the Cold War, after all, was just that. A slow freeze with never quite off threat of an eruption of a volcano that could wipe out the civilisation.
But take off to a flying start this one does, and how! There is Bertrand Russell on the Peace program to begin with, and promptly a call from Washington asking if Lanny knew Braun, which was one of the aliases for Bernhardt Monck. So Lanny and Laurel drive to Washington and Lanny met the government official, who informed him what the problem was.
To begin with, UNO had problems with Soviets.
"The Kremlin had vetoed three of its proposals in one afternoon, and the Soviet delegate had walked out from the meeting of the Security Council in New York."
And as the Budds had been aware of,
"The most alarming development of all had been in the far South Sea island of Bikini, where the United States had given the world a demonstration of what the new atomic power could do. Eleven old war vessels had been destroyed and twenty-five more crippled. A second explosion, this time under water, had sunk a battleship, an aircraft carrier, and eight other vessels of war. The United States had proposed to the United Nations a plan to ban the manufacture of such weapons and provide that all nations should permit inspection to make sure of the keeping of the agreement. But Russia had announced that she would never accept such a plan; ...."
And now the official told Lanny what Monck had asked them to get him to help with.
"‘Adolf Hitler had all his plans made for the invasion of Britain, and a part of this was the printing of great quantities of English money, so that he could take possession of everything in the country without plain outright confiscation. I was told that he had set up a regular engraving establishment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp’.
"‘Our information is that at one time he had as prisoners there more than a hundred and forty expert engravers as well as convicted forgers from several countries; they were set to making plates for reproducing the currency of the Allied countries. The neutral nations were refusing to accept Hitler’s marks, they demanded sterling or American dollars. And if these dollars were successfully counterfeited the market would be flooded and prices would be forced up for the Allies. The enemy would get the goods and we would be driven into bankruptcy. The forgeries were so good that they went undetected for some time’.
"‘Our information is that they printed some two hundred million British pounds, nearly a billion dollars. When the invading armies neared Sachsenhausen the Nazis transferred their machinery and slave labour to the Mauthausen concentration camp, on the Danube. When the final collapse came the stuff was scattered over the German-speaking lands. We have recently found a stock of it in a factory at Freising, and another lot sealed up in metal containers and sunk in a lake near Bad Ischl in Austria. What we want most of all is to find the plates. So long as they exist the floods of phoney money may be continuous."
Turner wanted to know if Monck was to be trusted, and Lanny having voucher for him, asked about Stubendorf; it transpired that the forgery plates might be there, and Kurt was there after having been interred during allied occupation of Germany. Turner wanted Lanny to go talk to Kurt, and Lanny warned him about the last time he'd seen Kurt. They talked about Graf Stubendorf too, as a possible source of information. Turner briefed Lanny about Poland being evasive, delays keeping the matter on hold while forged notes entered via Berlin into West, and they weren't sure if it was nazis, communists, or gangsters, although the three 'shaded into one another'.
"Turner took him to a microscope near the window and told him what minute errors to look for; even then it was not easy to find them.
"Men had died for the commission of those small mistakes. Turner told him how a group of three or four of these engraver-slaves had conspired to hide minute marks in the plates, whereby the notes could subsequently be identified. This was discovered, and the conspirators were sent to the gas chamber—that is, they were poisoned by cyanogen, their bodies burned in the furnace, and their bones ground up for fertiliser. All the engraver-slaves at Sachsenhausen had worked with this menace hanging over them; if they made a mistake it would be taken for granted that they had done it on purpose; mistakes were simply not permitted."
Lanny was provided with an identification card as a U.S. agent, and they'd provide passport and tickets. Meanwhile Lanny thought of the President telling him to let him know if he was going yo Europe, and called White House to leave a message; he met Truman that evrning, and he didn't ask Lanny about the mission but spoke about Soviet behaviour in bad faith, breaking various agreements and calling U.S. warmonger if U.S. helped governments in countries where Soviets were foaming trouble, not allowing free elections in East Europe and not vacating the ports in Northeast Asian peninsula, Port Arthur and Dairen. Lanny reminded him about the similar situation a decade ago with Hitler, and Lanny had told the baffled people to read his book but no one did; Stalin had written too, Lanny said, and set down his program exactly, only no one outside his domain was reading it.
They discussed the Peace program in light of the communist problematic behaviour and Truman asked Lanny to see him when he was back from Europe, and Lanny returned to Shoreham Hotel. He told her what he could, and they discussed Lanny's trip and other matters with the 'Peace family' when they returned to Edgemere.
..........................
Here the author makes yet another mistake, that of saying that Rick and Nina had their eldest son, Scrubbie, in Edgemere with them; the eldest is actually Alfy, who was born close to when Lanny's half sister Marceline was, and she's ten to twelve years older to Frances, Lanny's own first child from his first wife Irma; Scrubbie might not be the youngest of Rick and Nina, but eldest he certainly is not. This is probably fourth or fifth such mistake by the author, after Lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex wife was still with her second husband who was working at a desk job due to war, when in a previous volume of the series he'd mentioned that Edna was helping Margy at Marceline's debut and was herself in impecunious circumstances due to death of Fitz-Laing. In between the author has changed the name of son of the victim of nazis. Freddi Robin, from Johannes as he was mentioned in the third volume and further, to Freddi as he's reintroduced as a youngster joining the U.S. armed forces. There's probably at least one more such mistake.
..........................
The author gives here a brief introduction of the Budd family of Lanny, the other side being that of his mother Beauty who brought him up in Juan Les-Pins on French Riviera. Funny how easily Lanny has given up not just that home, Bienvenu, but the larger one, France! That was his home not just of childhood and boyhood and years before marriage, but long after, until he married the third wife Laurel. True, he couldn't take Trudi, his second wife, there, but the whole marriage and her identity was a secret not known to even his parents, only to those few whom he told for a reason, until his testimony at Nürnberg. But Bienvenu remained his home until he bought an apartment in NYC where Laurel lived with Agnes Drury, her roommate of years who was a nurse, and the three shared it until the move to Edgemere.
And yet, he isn't divided in his heart at all, seemingly, much less in his loyalty, between the only home he knew growing up and the only home he could call home until he was in his forties, France, and the nation of his ancestors where his father's family and clan lives, U.S.! Even during the years when his now elderly mother was living with her third or second husband who's no spring chicken and taking care of her little grandson Marcel Detaze, named after his grandfather who was her second or first husband, when Lanny could have been more help to her especially during the years when Marceline wasn't known to be alive and war was over, Lanny merely visits Bienvenu when suitable but doesn't consider his childhood - and until as recent as six years ago - home as home at all!
One has to wonder, isn't the author confusing Lanny with himself?
Upton Sinclair lived in Europe in 1911, 1912, 1913, as he mentions in the addendum to the first volume, and moved back when he expected a war. But Upton Sinclair was born and brought up in U.S., not Europe! Lanny was not only born in Switzerland and brought up on Cote d'Azur, he chose to return after WWI which was only natural, choosing France and Beauty over security of Budds and New England. Surely he isn't so heartless as to have forgotten it!
..........................................................................
The author gives a nice but brief description of Andrew Carnegie, occasion being Lanny went to Carnegie Hall to hear Hansi Robin play; and perhaps there is another mistake here. He describes Hansi as German born Jew. But if one read the first volume, the family lived in Holland, were wealthy enough, and only moved to Berlin because the boys, especially Hansi, deserved the best music teacher and training possible, and that was arranged in Berlin. There certainly was never any mention of the family having lived in Germany before, else it would have not been moving but returning to what was once home.
Hansi is depressed after the concert, and he told the family about Bess being too busy. The author discussing communists and Soviets of that era brings very vividly to mind jihadists and other invaders bent on convert-or-kill sprees with an aim of conquering the world and destroying every civilisation, and that's as true today as it has been for well over a millennium and half.
Here is another summing up by the author, in one page, of the conflict in the Hansi and Bess marriage that is a succinct capture of the conflict within left, set in the Hitler and Stalin era but valid on a far more general scale.
.........................
Lanny flew via Newfoundland and Prestwick to Croydon and met Alfy. Here the author as usual describes him as the future baronet, which is clearly only because he's the eldest, not Scrubbie.
In Berlin he was met by an American officer, and Lanny identified himself. The officer spoke on the way about various stories. Lanny had come to expect nazis as criminals. He met the U.S. agents and heard them, and discussed the situation, suggesting it might be Vlasovites who were carrying out the false currency pushing.
"‘Vlasovite is the name for a Russian or Pole who went over to the Nazis and entered their military service. Some did it because they were reactionary; most of them I suppose were just mercenaries. There was a whole division or more of them, commanded by a General Vlasov. Needless to say, to the Reds they are the devil incarnate. Some might have been at Sachsenhausen, as guards or interpreters, even as prisoners if they were engravers or had committed crimes. They might have got away with bales of the money, and the Poles might have fled to Poland; they might have had to change their names and conceal their past, or they might be living as outlaws, hiding in the forest, working as an underground against the Reds."
They told him of Poland circumstances.
"Soviet artillery had blasted towns and villages to pieces, and in many of the towns the streets were not yet cleared of rubble sufficiently to drive a vehicle through them. There were unbelievable shifts of population going on. More than eight million Germans had fled from Poland into Germany; to take their places a million and a half Poles had fled from the provinces which the Kremlin had taken over in the East; they had come into the new lands evacuated by the Germans. In addition nearly a million Poles who had fled from the Russians into Germany and Austria and Western Europe were now coming back to their homeland. The population of Warsaw had diminished from a million and a quarter to half a million. All this meant swarms of half-starved people on the roads, riding in oxcarts or trundling handcarts, or plodding along with their few possessions in bundles on their heads or their backs. It was very depressing, and also very insanitary."
They told him that he was to manage himself hence, since his being an agent wasn't established, not for public consumption. Lanny asked about graft, and was told he'd have to be cautious against hurting pride, but they'd be open to it; Lanny asked about Emil and they said they'd found out he was in Bavarian Alps. He was to have an expense account. He met Monck, who was with CIC, and working for AMG now, investigating persons claiming to have been anti nazi for truth of their claims.
"Monck would go to work and learn that some man had been an active Nazi, and then he would discover that the man was being employed anyhow—the reason being that he was the one who knew the most about how to run that industry. ... If he presumed to criticise the decisions of his superiors they would decide that he was a Red—and that was worse than a Nazi. ... Monck could speak for the masses of Europe. He knew that they would not consent to go back to the old system; they would no longer be content with poverty and insecurity. To attempt to force them back would mean simply to drive them into the arms of the Communists. There would be either a Socialist Europe or a Communist Europe—and it was America that would have to make the choice.
"Monck had seen one nation after another blundering stupidly and bringing about the opposite result to what it wanted."
August 24, 2019
This volume perhaps was an afterthought, since at the end of volume 10 the author includes his thoughts about how he came to write the first book, which wrote itself and he thought that was all; and then he mentions how, even though he'd only thought of that one book, the further ones came as well. And this 11th volume being an afterthought is inherent in the title as we..; unlike the other ten titles with their literary references, this is a self explanatory prosaic one, an almost tongue in cheek variation on return of, say, a Sherlock Holmes or a James Bond.
It's set in the aftermath of the WWII taking the reader to Cold War, as far as memory serves, having read it in late 1970s, and beginning it now, after four decades, it's a slight surprise that it takes off with such a flying start. One didn't expect it while giving a day off between finishing the tenth and beginning it now, since after all, WWII is well and over, Nürnberg trials are done with, and Frances is with her father too; and the Cold War, after all, was just that. A slow freeze with never quite off threat of an eruption of a volcano that could wipe out the civilisation.
But take off to a flying start this one does, and how! There is Bertrand Russell on the Peace program to begin with, and promptly a call from Washington asking if Lanny knew Braun, which was one of the aliases for Bernhardt Monck. So Lanny and Laurel drive to Washington and Lanny met the government official, who informed him what the problem was.
To begin with, UNO had problems with Soviets.
"The Kremlin had vetoed three of its proposals in one afternoon, and the Soviet delegate had walked out from the meeting of the Security Council in New York."
And as the Budds had been aware of,
"The most alarming development of all had been in the far South Sea island of Bikini, where the United States had given the world a demonstration of what the new atomic power could do. Eleven old war vessels had been destroyed and twenty-five more crippled. A second explosion, this time under water, had sunk a battleship, an aircraft carrier, and eight other vessels of war. The United States had proposed to the United Nations a plan to ban the manufacture of such weapons and provide that all nations should permit inspection to make sure of the keeping of the agreement. But Russia had announced that she would never accept such a plan; ...."
And now the official told Lanny what Monck had asked them to get him to help with.
"‘Adolf Hitler had all his plans made for the invasion of Britain, and a part of this was the printing of great quantities of English money, so that he could take possession of everything in the country without plain outright confiscation. I was told that he had set up a regular engraving establishment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp’.
"‘Our information is that at one time he had as prisoners there more than a hundred and forty expert engravers as well as convicted forgers from several countries; they were set to making plates for reproducing the currency of the Allied countries. The neutral nations were refusing to accept Hitler’s marks, they demanded sterling or American dollars. And if these dollars were successfully counterfeited the market would be flooded and prices would be forced up for the Allies. The enemy would get the goods and we would be driven into bankruptcy. The forgeries were so good that they went undetected for some time’.
"‘Our information is that they printed some two hundred million British pounds, nearly a billion dollars. When the invading armies neared Sachsenhausen the Nazis transferred their machinery and slave labour to the Mauthausen concentration camp, on the Danube. When the final collapse came the stuff was scattered over the German-speaking lands. We have recently found a stock of it in a factory at Freising, and another lot sealed up in metal containers and sunk in a lake near Bad Ischl in Austria. What we want most of all is to find the plates. So long as they exist the floods of phoney money may be continuous."
Turner wanted to know if Monck was to be trusted, and Lanny having voucher for him, asked about Stubendorf; it transpired that the forgery plates might be there, and Kurt was there after having been interred during allied occupation of Germany. Turner wanted Lanny to go talk to Kurt, and Lanny warned him about the last time he'd seen Kurt. They talked about Graf Stubendorf too, as a possible source of information. Turner briefed Lanny about Poland being evasive, delays keeping the matter on hold while forged notes entered via Berlin into West, and they weren't sure if it was nazis, communists, or gangsters, although the three 'shaded into one another'.
"Turner took him to a microscope near the window and told him what minute errors to look for; even then it was not easy to find them.
"Men had died for the commission of those small mistakes. Turner told him how a group of three or four of these engraver-slaves had conspired to hide minute marks in the plates, whereby the notes could subsequently be identified. This was discovered, and the conspirators were sent to the gas chamber—that is, they were poisoned by cyanogen, their bodies burned in the furnace, and their bones ground up for fertiliser. All the engraver-slaves at Sachsenhausen had worked with this menace hanging over them; if they made a mistake it would be taken for granted that they had done it on purpose; mistakes were simply not permitted."
Lanny was provided with an identification card as a U.S. agent, and they'd provide passport and tickets. Meanwhile Lanny thought of the President telling him to let him know if he was going yo Europe, and called White House to leave a message; he met Truman that evrning, and he didn't ask Lanny about the mission but spoke about Soviet behaviour in bad faith, breaking various agreements and calling U.S. warmonger if U.S. helped governments in countries where Soviets were foaming trouble, not allowing free elections in East Europe and not vacating the ports in Northeast Asian peninsula, Port Arthur and Dairen. Lanny reminded him about the similar situation a decade ago with Hitler, and Lanny had told the baffled people to read his book but no one did; Stalin had written too, Lanny said, and set down his program exactly, only no one outside his domain was reading it.
They discussed the Peace program in light of the communist problematic behaviour and Truman asked Lanny to see him when he was back from Europe, and Lanny returned to Shoreham Hotel. He told her what he could, and they discussed Lanny's trip and other matters with the 'Peace family' when they returned to Edgemere.
..........................
Here the author makes yet another mistake, that of saying that Rick and Nina had their eldest son, Scrubbie, in Edgemere with them; the eldest is actually Alfy, who was born close to when Lanny's half sister Marceline was, and she's ten to twelve years older to Frances, Lanny's own first child from his first wife Irma; Scrubbie might not be the youngest of Rick and Nina, but eldest he certainly is not. This is probably fourth or fifth such mistake by the author, after Lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex wife was still with her second husband who was working at a desk job due to war, when in a previous volume of the series he'd mentioned that Edna was helping Margy at Marceline's debut and was herself in impecunious circumstances due to death of Fitz-Laing. In between the author has changed the name of son of the victim of nazis. Freddi Robin, from Johannes as he was mentioned in the third volume and further, to Freddi as he's reintroduced as a youngster joining the U.S. armed forces. There's probably at least one more such mistake.
..........................
The author gives here a brief introduction of the Budd family of Lanny, the other side being that of his mother Beauty who brought him up in Juan Les-Pins on French Riviera. Funny how easily Lanny has given up not just that home, Bienvenu, but the larger one, France! That was his home not just of childhood and boyhood and years before marriage, but long after, until he married the third wife Laurel. True, he couldn't take Trudi, his second wife, there, but the whole marriage and her identity was a secret not known to even his parents, only to those few whom he told for a reason, until his testimony at Nürnberg. But Bienvenu remained his home until he bought an apartment in NYC where Laurel lived with Agnes Drury, her roommate of years who was a nurse, and the three shared it until the move to Edgemere.
And yet, he isn't divided in his heart at all, seemingly, much less in his loyalty, between the only home he knew growing up and the only home he could call home until he was in his forties, France, and the nation of his ancestors where his father's family and clan lives, U.S.! Even during the years when his now elderly mother was living with her third or second husband who's no spring chicken and taking care of her little grandson Marcel Detaze, named after his grandfather who was her second or first husband, when Lanny could have been more help to her especially during the years when Marceline wasn't known to be alive and war was over, Lanny merely visits Bienvenu when suitable but doesn't consider his childhood - and until as recent as six years ago - home as home at all!
One has to wonder, isn't the author confusing Lanny with himself?
Upton Sinclair lived in Europe in 1911, 1912, 1913, as he mentions in the addendum to the first volume, and moved back when he expected a war. But Upton Sinclair was born and brought up in U.S., not Europe! Lanny was not only born in Switzerland and brought up on Cote d'Azur, he chose to return after WWI which was only natural, choosing France and Beauty over security of Budds and New England. Surely he isn't so heartless as to have forgotten it!
..........................................................................
The author gives a nice but brief description of Andrew Carnegie, occasion being Lanny went to Carnegie Hall to hear Hansi Robin play; and perhaps there is another mistake here. He describes Hansi as German born Jew. But if one read the first volume, the family lived in Holland, were wealthy enough, and only moved to Berlin because the boys, especially Hansi, deserved the best music teacher and training possible, and that was arranged in Berlin. There certainly was never any mention of the family having lived in Germany before, else it would have not been moving but returning to what was once home.
Hansi is depressed after the concert, and he told the family about Bess being too busy. The author discussing communists and Soviets of that era brings very vividly to mind jihadists and other invaders bent on convert-or-kill sprees with an aim of conquering the world and destroying every civilisation, and that's as true today as it has been for well over a millennium and half.
Here is another summing up by the author, in one page, of the conflict in the Hansi and Bess marriage that is a succinct capture of the conflict within left, set in the Hitler and Stalin era but valid on a far more general scale.
.........................
Lanny flew via Newfoundland and Prestwick to Croydon and met Alfy. Here the author as usual describes him as the future baronet, which is clearly only because he's the eldest, not Scrubbie.
In Berlin he was met by an American officer, and Lanny identified himself. The officer spoke on the way about various stories. Lanny had come to expect nazis as criminals. He met the U.S. agents and heard them, and discussed the situation, suggesting it might be Vlasovites who were carrying out the false currency pushing.
"‘Vlasovite is the name for a Russian or Pole who went over to the Nazis and entered their military service. Some did it because they were reactionary; most of them I suppose were just mercenaries. There was a whole division or more of them, commanded by a General Vlasov. Needless to say, to the Reds they are the devil incarnate. Some might have been at Sachsenhausen, as guards or interpreters, even as prisoners if they were engravers or had committed crimes. They might have got away with bales of the money, and the Poles might have fled to Poland; they might have had to change their names and conceal their past, or they might be living as outlaws, hiding in the forest, working as an underground against the Reds."
They told him of Poland circumstances.
"Soviet artillery had blasted towns and villages to pieces, and in many of the towns the streets were not yet cleared of rubble sufficiently to drive a vehicle through them. There were unbelievable shifts of population going on. More than eight million Germans had fled from Poland into Germany; to take their places a million and a half Poles had fled from the provinces which the Kremlin had taken over in the East; they had come into the new lands evacuated by the Germans. In addition nearly a million Poles who had fled from the Russians into Germany and Austria and Western Europe were now coming back to their homeland. The population of Warsaw had diminished from a million and a quarter to half a million. All this meant swarms of half-starved people on the roads, riding in oxcarts or trundling handcarts, or plodding along with their few possessions in bundles on their heads or their backs. It was very depressing, and also very insanitary."
They told him that he was to manage himself hence, since his being an agent wasn't established, not for public consumption. Lanny asked about graft, and was told he'd have to be cautious against hurting pride, but they'd be open to it; Lanny asked about Emil and they said they'd found out he was in Bavarian Alps. He was to have an expense account. He met Monck, who was with CIC, and working for AMG now, investigating persons claiming to have been anti nazi for truth of their claims.
"Monck would go to work and learn that some man had been an active Nazi, and then he would discover that the man was being employed anyhow—the reason being that he was the one who knew the most about how to run that industry. ... If he presumed to criticise the decisions of his superiors they would decide that he was a Red—and that was worse than a Nazi. ... Monck could speak for the masses of Europe. He knew that they would not consent to go back to the old system; they would no longer be content with poverty and insecurity. To attempt to force them back would mean simply to drive them into the arms of the Communists. There would be either a Socialist Europe or a Communist Europe—and it was America that would have to make the choice.
"Monck had seen one nation after another blundering stupidly and bringing about the opposite result to what it wanted."
It's set in the aftermath of the WWII taking the reader to Cold War, as far as memory serves, having read it in late 1970s, and beginning it now, after four decades, it's a slight surprise that it takes off with such a flying start. One didn't expect it while giving a day off between finishing the tenth and beginning it now, since after all, WWII is well and over, Nürnberg trials are done with, and Frances is with her father too; and the Cold War, after all, was just that. A slow freeze with never quite off threat of an eruption of a volcano that could wipe out the civilisation.
But take off to a flying start this one does, and how! There is Bertrand Russell on the Peace program to begin with, and promptly a call from Washington asking if Lanny knew Braun, which was one of the aliases for Bernhardt Monck. So Lanny and Laurel drive to Washington and Lanny met the government official, who informed him what the problem was.
To begin with, UNO had problems with Soviets.
"The Kremlin had vetoed three of its proposals in one afternoon, and the Soviet delegate had walked out from the meeting of the Security Council in New York."
And as the Budds had been aware of,
"The most alarming development of all had been in the far South Sea island of Bikini, where the United States had given the world a demonstration of what the new atomic power could do. Eleven old war vessels had been destroyed and twenty-five more crippled. A second explosion, this time under water, had sunk a battleship, an aircraft carrier, and eight other vessels of war. The United States had proposed to the United Nations a plan to ban the manufacture of such weapons and provide that all nations should permit inspection to make sure of the keeping of the agreement. But Russia had announced that she would never accept such a plan; ...."
And now the official told Lanny what Monck had asked them to get him to help with.
"‘Adolf Hitler had all his plans made for the invasion of Britain, and a part of this was the printing of great quantities of English money, so that he could take possession of everything in the country without plain outright confiscation. I was told that he had set up a regular engraving establishment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp’.
"‘Our information is that at one time he had as prisoners there more than a hundred and forty expert engravers as well as convicted forgers from several countries; they were set to making plates for reproducing the currency of the Allied countries. The neutral nations were refusing to accept Hitler’s marks, they demanded sterling or American dollars. And if these dollars were successfully counterfeited the market would be flooded and prices would be forced up for the Allies. The enemy would get the goods and we would be driven into bankruptcy. The forgeries were so good that they went undetected for some time’.
"‘Our information is that they printed some two hundred million British pounds, nearly a billion dollars. When the invading armies neared Sachsenhausen the Nazis transferred their machinery and slave labour to the Mauthausen concentration camp, on the Danube. When the final collapse came the stuff was scattered over the German-speaking lands. We have recently found a stock of it in a factory at Freising, and another lot sealed up in metal containers and sunk in a lake near Bad Ischl in Austria. What we want most of all is to find the plates. So long as they exist the floods of phoney money may be continuous."
Turner wanted to know if Monck was to be trusted, and Lanny having voucher for him, asked about Stubendorf; it transpired that the forgery plates might be there, and Kurt was there after having been interred during allied occupation of Germany. Turner wanted Lanny to go talk to Kurt, and Lanny warned him about the last time he'd seen Kurt. They talked about Graf Stubendorf too, as a possible source of information. Turner briefed Lanny about Poland being evasive, delays keeping the matter on hold while forged notes entered via Berlin into West, and they weren't sure if it was nazis, communists, or gangsters, although the three 'shaded into one another'.
"Turner took him to a microscope near the window and told him what minute errors to look for; even then it was not easy to find them.
"Men had died for the commission of those small mistakes. Turner told him how a group of three or four of these engraver-slaves had conspired to hide minute marks in the plates, whereby the notes could subsequently be identified. This was discovered, and the conspirators were sent to the gas chamber—that is, they were poisoned by cyanogen, their bodies burned in the furnace, and their bones ground up for fertiliser. All the engraver-slaves at Sachsenhausen had worked with this menace hanging over them; if they made a mistake it would be taken for granted that they had done it on purpose; mistakes were simply not permitted."
Lanny was provided with an identification card as a U.S. agent, and they'd provide passport and tickets. Meanwhile Lanny thought of the President telling him to let him know if he was going yo Europe, and called White House to leave a message; he met Truman that evrning, and he didn't ask Lanny about the mission but spoke about Soviet behaviour in bad faith, breaking various agreements and calling U.S. warmonger if U.S. helped governments in countries where Soviets were foaming trouble, not allowing free elections in East Europe and not vacating the ports in Northeast Asian peninsula, Port Arthur and Dairen. Lanny reminded him about the similar situation a decade ago with Hitler, and Lanny had told the baffled people to read his book but no one did; Stalin had written too, Lanny said, and set down his program exactly, only no one outside his domain was reading it.
They discussed the Peace program in light of the communist problematic behaviour and Truman asked Lanny to see him when he was back from Europe, and Lanny returned to Shoreham Hotel. He told her what he could, and they discussed Lanny's trip and other matters with the 'Peace family' when they returned to Edgemere.
..........................
Here the author makes yet another mistake, that of saying that Rick and Nina had their eldest son, Scrubbie, in Edgemere with them; the eldest is actually Alfy, who was born close to when Lanny's half sister Marceline was, and she's ten to twelve years older to Frances, Lanny's own first child from his first wife Irma; Scrubbie might not be the youngest of Rick and Nina, but eldest he certainly is not. This is probably fourth or fifth such mistake by the author, after Lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex wife was still with her second husband who was working at a desk job due to war, when in a previous volume of the series he'd mentioned that Edna was helping Margy at Marceline's debut and was herself in impecunious circumstances due to death of Fitz-Laing. In between the author has changed the name of son of the victim of nazis. Freddi Robin, from Johannes as he was mentioned in the third volume and further, to Freddi as he's reintroduced as a youngster joining the U.S. armed forces. There's probably at least one more such mistake.
..........................
The author gives here a brief introduction of the Budd family of Lanny, the other side being that of his mother Beauty who brought him up in Juan Les-Pins on French Riviera. Funny how easily Lanny has given up not just that home, Bienvenu, but the larger one, France! That was his home not just of childhood and boyhood and years before marriage, but long after, until he married the third wife Laurel. True, he couldn't take Trudi, his second wife, there, but the whole marriage and her identity was a secret not known to even his parents, only to those few whom he told for a reason, until his testimony at Nürnberg. But Bienvenu remained his home until he bought an apartment in NYC where Laurel lived with Agnes Drury, her roommate of years who was a nurse, and the three shared it until the move to Edgemere.
And yet, he isn't divided in his heart at all, seemingly, much less in his loyalty, between the only home he knew growing up and the only home he could call home until he was in his forties, France, and the nation of his ancestors where his father's family and clan lives, U.S.! Even during the years when his now elderly mother was living with her third or second husband who's no spring chicken and taking care of her little grandson Marcel Detaze, named after his grandfather who was her second or first husband, when Lanny could have been more help to her especially during the years when Marceline wasn't known to be alive and war was over, Lanny merely visits Bienvenu when suitable but doesn't consider his childhood - and until as recent as six years ago - home as home at all!
One has to wonder, isn't the author confusing Lanny with himself?
Upton Sinclair lived in Europe in 1911, 1912, 1913, as he mentions in the addendum to the first volume, and moved back when he expected a war. But Upton Sinclair was born and brought up in U.S., not Europe! Lanny was not only born in Switzerland and brought up on Cote d'Azur, he chose to return after WWI which was only natural, choosing France and Beauty over security of Budds and New England. Surely he isn't so heartless as to have forgotten it!
..........................................................................
The author gives a nice but brief description of Andrew Carnegie, occasion being Lanny went to Carnegie Hall to hear Hansi Robin play; and perhaps there is another mistake here. He describes Hansi as German born Jew. But if one read the first volume, the family lived in Holland, were wealthy enough, and only moved to Berlin because the boys, especially Hansi, deserved the best music teacher and training possible, and that was arranged in Berlin. There certainly was never any mention of the family having lived in Germany before, else it would have not been moving but returning to what was once home.
Hansi is depressed after the concert, and he told the family about Bess being too busy. The author discussing communists and Soviets of that era brings very vividly to mind jihadists and other invaders bent on convert-or-kill sprees with an aim of conquering the world and destroying every civilisation, and that's as true today as it has been for well over a millennium and half.
Here is another summing up by the author, in one page, of the conflict in the Hansi and Bess marriage that is a succinct capture of the conflict within left, set in the Hitler and Stalin era but valid on a far more general scale.
.........................
Lanny flew via Newfoundland and Prestwick to Croydon and met Alfy. Here the author as usual describes him as the future baronet, which is clearly only because he's the eldest, not Scrubbie.
In Berlin he was met by an American officer, and Lanny identified himself. The officer spoke on the way about various stories. Lanny had come to expect nazis as criminals. He met the U.S. agents and heard them, and discussed the situation, suggesting it might be Vlasovites who were carrying out the false currency pushing.
"‘Vlasovite is the name for a Russian or Pole who went over to the Nazis and entered their military service. Some did it because they were reactionary; most of them I suppose were just mercenaries. There was a whole division or more of them, commanded by a General Vlasov. Needless to say, to the Reds they are the devil incarnate. Some might have been at Sachsenhausen, as guards or interpreters, even as prisoners if they were engravers or had committed crimes. They might have got away with bales of the money, and the Poles might have fled to Poland; they might have had to change their names and conceal their past, or they might be living as outlaws, hiding in the forest, working as an underground against the Reds."
They told him of Poland circumstances.
"Soviet artillery had blasted towns and villages to pieces, and in many of the towns the streets were not yet cleared of rubble sufficiently to drive a vehicle through them. There were unbelievable shifts of population going on. More than eight million Germans had fled from Poland into Germany; to take their places a million and a half Poles had fled from the provinces which the Kremlin had taken over in the East; they had come into the new lands evacuated by the Germans. In addition nearly a million Poles who had fled from the Russians into Germany and Austria and Western Europe were now coming back to their homeland. The population of Warsaw had diminished from a million and a quarter to half a million. All this meant swarms of half-starved people on the roads, riding in oxcarts or trundling handcarts, or plodding along with their few possessions in bundles on their heads or their backs. It was very depressing, and also very insanitary."
They told him that he was to manage himself hence, since his being an agent wasn't established, not for public consumption. Lanny asked about graft, and was told he'd have to be cautious against hurting pride, but they'd be open to it; Lanny asked about Emil and they said they'd found out he was in Bavarian Alps. He was to have an expense account. He met Monck, who was with CIC, and working for AMG now, investigating persons claiming to have been anti nazi for truth of their claims.
"Monck would go to work and learn that some man had been an active Nazi, and then he would discover that the man was being employed anyhow—the reason being that he was the one who knew the most about how to run that industry. ... If he presumed to criticise the decisions of his superiors they would decide that he was a Red—and that was worse than a Nazi. ... Monck could speak for the masses of Europe. He knew that they would not consent to go back to the old system; they would no longer be content with poverty and insecurity. To attempt to force them back would mean simply to drive them into the arms of the Communists. There would be either a Socialist Europe or a Communist Europe—and it was America that would have to make the choice.
"Monck had seen one nation after another blundering stupidly and bringing about the opposite result to what it wanted."
September 3, 2018
I can't believe I've don't have any more Lanny Budd novels to read. This whole series had been a fascinating history lesson that we all should read so as to not repeat it.
August 24, 2020
O Shepherd, Speak! (The Lanny Budd Novels Book 10) was supposed to be the last novel in the series. In the prefix of The Return of Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair writes that his readers urged him to write one more Lanny Budd novel so he complied.
After reading The Return of Lanny Budd, I think Upton Sinclair wrote this “extra” last novel because the series gave readers the favorable impression that Communism is somewhat benign and good for certain countries, e.g., Russia and China. Upton Sinclair corrected that favorable impression by giving his readers reasons and examples to fear Communism based upon their words, deeds, and actions.
World events after writing O Shepherd, Speak! made it obvious to Lanny Budd (Upton Sinclair) that Communism is an existential threat to world peace and democracy. In The Return of Lanny Budd, Lanny Budd (Upton Sinclair) makes the case that Stalin and Communism are as bad as Hitler and Nazism . . . and like Hitler, Stalin means war.
I was a little hesitant to read a book that might have been an afterthought, but I had already read the first 10 books so NOT reading The Return of Lanny Budd would have gnawed on me. Some reviewers have opined that this “extra” last novel was not necessary. I disagree. I thought The Return of Lanny Budd was a worthy book to be included in the long series and it helped bring closure to the series.
Lanny Budd is given a new government mission that requires him to return to Germany. He is recruited by the US Secret Service to help investigate and stop the circulation and production of Nazi counterfeited US and British currency.
The Return of Lanny Budd is also about post-war Germany being pulled between a resurgent Nazism, Capitalism, Socialism and Communism. Lanny Budd (Upton Sinclair) explores the differences between Socialism and Communism; and why the Communist fear Socialist more than they do Capitalist. It is also a battle for the “hearts and minds” of the German people and their future. The historical accuracy of this cold war conflict is brilliantly presented in this novel, e.g., the Berlin airlift.
Lanny Budd is forced to change course as a peace advocate to one who advocates an increased US military budget, rearmament, increased US military presence in Europe, no unilateral disarmament, the military draft, and the establishment of US government anti-Communist propaganda news outlets. Lanny Budd evolves from a peace dove to a hawk. The fact that his peace loving wife Laurel Creston has to carry an automatic handgun as protection from the Russians is a reminder that being peaceful doesn’t mean being defenseless.
What I found most alarming is the Communists systematic silencing of critics, dissenters, and defectors that occurred in The Return of Lanny Budd are still occurring today, e.g., poisoning, kidnapping, tortured confessions, mysterious fatal falls out of windows and other suspicious “accidental” deaths.
After reading The Return of Lanny Budd, I think Upton Sinclair wrote this “extra” last novel because the series gave readers the favorable impression that Communism is somewhat benign and good for certain countries, e.g., Russia and China. Upton Sinclair corrected that favorable impression by giving his readers reasons and examples to fear Communism based upon their words, deeds, and actions.
World events after writing O Shepherd, Speak! made it obvious to Lanny Budd (Upton Sinclair) that Communism is an existential threat to world peace and democracy. In The Return of Lanny Budd, Lanny Budd (Upton Sinclair) makes the case that Stalin and Communism are as bad as Hitler and Nazism . . . and like Hitler, Stalin means war.
I was a little hesitant to read a book that might have been an afterthought, but I had already read the first 10 books so NOT reading The Return of Lanny Budd would have gnawed on me. Some reviewers have opined that this “extra” last novel was not necessary. I disagree. I thought The Return of Lanny Budd was a worthy book to be included in the long series and it helped bring closure to the series.
Lanny Budd is given a new government mission that requires him to return to Germany. He is recruited by the US Secret Service to help investigate and stop the circulation and production of Nazi counterfeited US and British currency.
The Return of Lanny Budd is also about post-war Germany being pulled between a resurgent Nazism, Capitalism, Socialism and Communism. Lanny Budd (Upton Sinclair) explores the differences between Socialism and Communism; and why the Communist fear Socialist more than they do Capitalist. It is also a battle for the “hearts and minds” of the German people and their future. The historical accuracy of this cold war conflict is brilliantly presented in this novel, e.g., the Berlin airlift.
Lanny Budd is forced to change course as a peace advocate to one who advocates an increased US military budget, rearmament, increased US military presence in Europe, no unilateral disarmament, the military draft, and the establishment of US government anti-Communist propaganda news outlets. Lanny Budd evolves from a peace dove to a hawk. The fact that his peace loving wife Laurel Creston has to carry an automatic handgun as protection from the Russians is a reminder that being peaceful doesn’t mean being defenseless.
What I found most alarming is the Communists systematic silencing of critics, dissenters, and defectors that occurred in The Return of Lanny Budd are still occurring today, e.g., poisoning, kidnapping, tortured confessions, mysterious fatal falls out of windows and other suspicious “accidental” deaths.
November 11, 2022
why this book rates four stars is maybe partly because it is in the series of Lanny Budd novels by Upton Sinclair - they follow history thru the life of this fellow from WWI thru 1950 about - looking at the dates of publication 1940 - 49 - first ten books - then 1953 - final book - assuming all were written the year before - remembering the writer was a sincere socialist but that is not so noticeable until we were winning, the axis was losing WWII, he really had quite an amazing vision of the progress and reality of the Nazis years before they became apparent to the rest of the world (I think - I was born in 44) and after the outcome was apparent the books more and more stressed the importance of the reduction of capitalism - or anyway increase of socialism - to improve the lot of mankind - to be fair etc. - Sometimes to my mind much much too strongly and naively - but I am no scholar.
By the time the final book was written it was quite apparent to much of the world that the Soviets were not our friends but rather aggressive and showing tyrannical actions. - And although Lanny Budd was in many difficult spots in all of the books - knowing there were 11 of them this is really the first one in which he could die - and I won't reveal that eventual possible outcome. In this book Sinclair rails against the Russians and how they were treating the inhabitants of their dominated Eastern Europe. About their perceived wishes of forceful expansion of communism. However I also wonder, written in 1952, if this book might have been a ploy or a move to avoid being attacked or being a target of the House Committee of Unamerican Affairs and Joseph McCarthy - though such a thought or situation was not mentioned, as I recall, in a biography of Sinclair which I read.
The whole series is interesting reading - especially the first books, the third won a Pulitzer, showing the emergence of the Nazis and their methods and goals before most of the world recognized and accepted them.
Reading the whole series took, while I read other books too, doubt 18 months - the chapters are short permitting pursuing in waiting rooms on trains or buses etc.
If one is interested in WWII I would suggest reading the series and to try to be aware of Sinclair's philosophies - an easy and fast overview is in the Wikipedia entry about him (likely trustworthy as it is not an active contemporary issue - where Wiki often has false info as entries are not fact checked)
By the time the final book was written it was quite apparent to much of the world that the Soviets were not our friends but rather aggressive and showing tyrannical actions. - And although Lanny Budd was in many difficult spots in all of the books - knowing there were 11 of them this is really the first one in which he could die - and I won't reveal that eventual possible outcome. In this book Sinclair rails against the Russians and how they were treating the inhabitants of their dominated Eastern Europe. About their perceived wishes of forceful expansion of communism. However I also wonder, written in 1952, if this book might have been a ploy or a move to avoid being attacked or being a target of the House Committee of Unamerican Affairs and Joseph McCarthy - though such a thought or situation was not mentioned, as I recall, in a biography of Sinclair which I read.
The whole series is interesting reading - especially the first books, the third won a Pulitzer, showing the emergence of the Nazis and their methods and goals before most of the world recognized and accepted them.
Reading the whole series took, while I read other books too, doubt 18 months - the chapters are short permitting pursuing in waiting rooms on trains or buses etc.
If one is interested in WWII I would suggest reading the series and to try to be aware of Sinclair's philosophies - an easy and fast overview is in the Wikipedia entry about him (likely trustworthy as it is not an active contemporary issue - where Wiki often has false info as entries are not fact checked)
May 8, 2025
The final Lanny Budd novel closed this historical and political series with many of the same themes that have been covered in the previous stories. It shows how Sinclair's views on communism have changed over the decade plus that took Lanny from just before World War I up to the Cold War. Now he is a committed cold war warrior who opposes the Soviets yet still yearns for what he considers the attractions of socialism. Written in 1953, Sinclair doesn't see the gains to be made in a Europe devastated by the second world war and fears a new depression is coming with what look to be inevitable gains for the Soviets. Thus the theme of this book is fear for what looks to be a Red tide rolling over the world and crushing everything in its path. Looking back from 2025, the incredible economic gains of the US and western Europe in the 1950s seem inevitable, but not having lived through those times, I'm not sure to what extent Sinclair's fears for the future mirrored that of most Americans. Overall a very interesting historical series that concludes with no ultimate resolution or even much hope for the future. Definitely worth a read especially today.
September 9, 2020
Lanny Budd has been my blessed diversion from the pandemic for three? four? months. Eleven books. All at least 600 pages each. Any fan of historical fiction should give this monument a try. It is thoughtful and entertaining, a carefully woven cross of fiction and fact. There are better writers and better books, but Sinclair's credibility as a voice of social conscience is impeccable, and the Lanny Budd series is an exceptional display of that quality.
Unfortunately, having had one foot in Lanny Budd's world for so long, I don't quite know what to do with myself now that it's over...
Unfortunately, having had one foot in Lanny Budd's world for so long, I don't quite know what to do with myself now that it's over...
January 18, 2023
it’s real.
A fascinating read that has the power to keep the reader (me) up far past midnight. I learned much and reflected on much, especially the latter part of the book focusing on Berlin….
Sinclair’s ability to get readers to become one with the characters is amazing. And his integration of historical fact, actual people and vividly accurate scenarios with his fictional characters creates a truly spellbinding wonder. It’s an incredible read.
A fascinating read that has the power to keep the reader (me) up far past midnight. I learned much and reflected on much, especially the latter part of the book focusing on Berlin….
Sinclair’s ability to get readers to become one with the characters is amazing. And his integration of historical fact, actual people and vividly accurate scenarios with his fictional characters creates a truly spellbinding wonder. It’s an incredible read.
April 6, 2024
Good ending to Danny Budd's story
I have read every Lanny Budd book. They are fascinating and the main character wonderfully smart and interesting. He starts as an adolescent and this last book he is a 50 years old man. Lanny has changed and matured. But he remains a unique person. I gave it four stars because there is a lot of preaching about uncovering communists everywhere.
I have read every Lanny Budd book. They are fascinating and the main character wonderfully smart and interesting. He starts as an adolescent and this last book he is a 50 years old man. Lanny has changed and matured. But he remains a unique person. I gave it four stars because there is a lot of preaching about uncovering communists everywhere.
July 29, 2019
I have now finished the entire Manny Budd series after several years of on and off reading. I have been immersed in the history described and have learned so much. Sinclair was a master storyteller and reporter of his times.
November 24, 2020
Excellent history
The start of Cold War is beautifully portrayed. The author should have been more vocal in bringing out the hypocrisy of the Communist Regime. It was a good read and most edifying
The start of Cold War is beautifully portrayed. The author should have been more vocal in bringing out the hypocrisy of the Communist Regime. It was a good read and most edifying
February 4, 2023
Finished with the eleven books of series
What an education: history, philosophy, economics, diplomacy, espionage, and adventure. This was a wonderful story and I wish everyone would read it. The same forces are battling today.
What an education: history, philosophy, economics, diplomacy, espionage, and adventure. This was a wonderful story and I wish everyone would read it. The same forces are battling today.
May 15, 2023
The last in the exceptional series
I have found a great many historical insights and completely forgotten characters in history. Each volume is a treasure house of forgotten people and events.
I have found a great many historical insights and completely forgotten characters in history. Each volume is a treasure house of forgotten people and events.
November 6, 2025
The books opened my eyes to the real history of WWII & WWI. I have gained such a depth of understanding re
The real goings on. The lack of morals & integrity is astounding & allows me to more fully understand today’s politics
Thank Upton Sinclair for this expose
The real goings on. The lack of morals & integrity is astounding & allows me to more fully understand today’s politics
Thank Upton Sinclair for this expose
March 27, 2021
So interesting. Thrilling, breathless finale to the 11 book Lanny Budd series. What a wonderful TV series these books would make. I learnt so much history of the first 50 years of the 20th Century.
December 18, 2023
Breathtaking!!
There are no words that can fully pay homage to this brilliant and powerful series!! The breath and depth is astounding.
There are no words that can fully pay homage to this brilliant and powerful series!! The breath and depth is astounding.
Read
May 21, 2025Loved this book. I need to read it again
July 28, 2011
The Return of Lanny Budd is the eleventh and final book in the enormous epic Lanny Budd World’s End series written by Pulitzer Prize Winner and legend, Upton Sinclair. Written in 1953 at the pinnacle of the Cold War, this story covers the period between 1946 and 1949. Post World War Two, Lanny comes out of retirement as a Presidential Agent to assist the United States as the Russian menace grows.
For all readers who have reviled in Lanny’s numerous adventures, travels and conversations with the leading politicians, industrialists, financial powers and military leaders you will surely enjoy this, the final book, in Upton’s great historical narrative that began when Lanny was 13 years old and just prior to the beginning of World War One.
As the story begins, Lanny is running his Radio Peace Program with his wife Laurel Creston, Rick, Nina, Lanny’s daughter Frances and Rick and Nina’s son Scrubbie with the help of thousands of volunteers, all from an old abandoned refurbished factory in New Jersey.
Lanny is recruited into the Secret Service, which has responsibility for the Treasury Department, to help end Nazi gangs who are counterfeiting Allied currency in Germany. Remnants of the Nazi regime have stolen plates to print US and other Allied currency and have hidden millions of dollars in gold whisked away prior to the end of the War. Lanny’s boyhood friend and the famous German Komponist, Kurt Meissner is one of the ring leaders in this conspiracy. He is eventually taken prisoner by the Allies controlling the Western Sector of Berlin. He promises to cooperate and end his participation in the conspiracy headed by Neo-Nazi’s to protect his family and return to his music endeavors. The suspense builds as Lanny leads a group trying to capture the printing plates and discover where the gold is hidden. The ending will surprise even the most intuitive reader.
While on this mission Lanny is shocked by what he sees in Russian controlled parts of Europe. He questions his own ideas as to the preaching of peace vis-à-vis arming against yet another tyranny already on the march towards world domination. In Stalin, Lanny sees a tyrant much like Hitler, Goring and the other Nazi’s. Selling the socialism Lanny believes in, while building a military juggernaut and murdering and imprisoning all opposition.
Lanny brings his Radio Peace effort to Germany and works with the forerunner to the Voice of America Radio program. His radio work is an effort to promote peace and understanding for the German people whom Lanny has loved since boyhood. He is finally recognized and then targeted by the Russian KGB and is kidnapped and taken to East Berlin. Lanny is subjected to torture for purporting a conspiring to assassinate Marshall Stalin. The week of the torture is suspenseful and the efforts to find and liberate him are as exciting as any previous adventure.
Lanny is horrified to learn that his half sister, Bess, a lifelong Communist, is being watched by the FBI, suspected of transmitting secret material to Russians agents. Hansi, agonized by this development, decides to finally break with Bess, but cooperates with the FBI by pretending to be a communist himself. This part of the story by itself would be worthy of a full book but the espionage and counterespionage in the Hansibess family is supplementary tot the larger story of events in Europe. In an extraordinary story, Lanny is able to foil his interrogators by suggesting that Bess is in fact a counterespionage agent for the United States. The reader will appreciate the ingenuity Lanny uses to persuade Bess of the evils of communism after his escape.
Please visit our website at: www.uptonsinclairinstitute.com. Here you can read reviews of all 11 book in the series and learn much much more about Upton and his life and works. You may also contact the publisher, Frederick Ellis at frederick659@yahoo.com, or me at jsc12109@hotmail.com.
Stephen Courts
July 28, 2011
Columbus, Ohio
For all readers who have reviled in Lanny’s numerous adventures, travels and conversations with the leading politicians, industrialists, financial powers and military leaders you will surely enjoy this, the final book, in Upton’s great historical narrative that began when Lanny was 13 years old and just prior to the beginning of World War One.
As the story begins, Lanny is running his Radio Peace Program with his wife Laurel Creston, Rick, Nina, Lanny’s daughter Frances and Rick and Nina’s son Scrubbie with the help of thousands of volunteers, all from an old abandoned refurbished factory in New Jersey.
Lanny is recruited into the Secret Service, which has responsibility for the Treasury Department, to help end Nazi gangs who are counterfeiting Allied currency in Germany. Remnants of the Nazi regime have stolen plates to print US and other Allied currency and have hidden millions of dollars in gold whisked away prior to the end of the War. Lanny’s boyhood friend and the famous German Komponist, Kurt Meissner is one of the ring leaders in this conspiracy. He is eventually taken prisoner by the Allies controlling the Western Sector of Berlin. He promises to cooperate and end his participation in the conspiracy headed by Neo-Nazi’s to protect his family and return to his music endeavors. The suspense builds as Lanny leads a group trying to capture the printing plates and discover where the gold is hidden. The ending will surprise even the most intuitive reader.
While on this mission Lanny is shocked by what he sees in Russian controlled parts of Europe. He questions his own ideas as to the preaching of peace vis-à-vis arming against yet another tyranny already on the march towards world domination. In Stalin, Lanny sees a tyrant much like Hitler, Goring and the other Nazi’s. Selling the socialism Lanny believes in, while building a military juggernaut and murdering and imprisoning all opposition.
Lanny brings his Radio Peace effort to Germany and works with the forerunner to the Voice of America Radio program. His radio work is an effort to promote peace and understanding for the German people whom Lanny has loved since boyhood. He is finally recognized and then targeted by the Russian KGB and is kidnapped and taken to East Berlin. Lanny is subjected to torture for purporting a conspiring to assassinate Marshall Stalin. The week of the torture is suspenseful and the efforts to find and liberate him are as exciting as any previous adventure.
Lanny is horrified to learn that his half sister, Bess, a lifelong Communist, is being watched by the FBI, suspected of transmitting secret material to Russians agents. Hansi, agonized by this development, decides to finally break with Bess, but cooperates with the FBI by pretending to be a communist himself. This part of the story by itself would be worthy of a full book but the espionage and counterespionage in the Hansibess family is supplementary tot the larger story of events in Europe. In an extraordinary story, Lanny is able to foil his interrogators by suggesting that Bess is in fact a counterespionage agent for the United States. The reader will appreciate the ingenuity Lanny uses to persuade Bess of the evils of communism after his escape.
Please visit our website at: www.uptonsinclairinstitute.com. Here you can read reviews of all 11 book in the series and learn much much more about Upton and his life and works. You may also contact the publisher, Frederick Ellis at frederick659@yahoo.com, or me at jsc12109@hotmail.com.
Stephen Courts
July 28, 2011
Columbus, Ohio
May 13, 2021
Great!
August 20, 2013
The End of a great series
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