Based on a true story, The Spy-Woman from Charité - read in the original German language Die Spionin der Charité - by Christian Hardinghaus is focused on a resistance group against the Nazi establishment around the famous surgeon Ernest Ferdinand Sauerbruch who operated at the Charité between 1929 and 1949.
The role of German physicians, especially from the famous Charité hospital, is highly controversial and a fiction book does not bring clarity in their role of the eugenics and other controversial Nazi-led medical politics. Sauerbruch himself was a main personality of the Nazi medical establishment, with positions in various academic and medical comissions and being awarded numerous medals. Professionally he was considered a main personality and the official post-war narrative was that he played a role in countering the eugenics programs within the hospital as well as for treating and saving Jewish patients and operating various resistance circles.
The book by Christian Hardinghaus follows this narrative, fictionalizing the story of Sauerbruch personal secretary that, among others, seduces and recruits for his boss an important German diplomat, Franz Kolbe that further communicated with the future CIA director, Allan Dulles, during the war operating from Switzerland. Sauerbruch wanted to take ´his country back´ and was able to smoothly move between various Nazi centers of command to hide his traces.
In the book, the details of the center of resistance from the Charité was kept secret for 30 year and revealed for an American journalist. There are no shadows and everything seems to be clear for the author. The story is interesting, with some suspenseful episodes, with clear distinctions between the good and the bad, but the historian in me was maybe expecting more sophistication. Probably the said historian should rather read more history and less fiction when it comes to such complicated encounters.
Rating: 3 stars
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