This beautifully characterised short historical novel depicts a fascinating clash between the elderly Kaiser Wilhelm and the spreading tide of Nazism.
Alan Judd is now best known for writing Cold War spy thrillers, but back in 2003 he produced The Kaiser’s Last Kiss, a gem of a novel set in the early days of World War II when the Nazis were in their pomp.
The plot takes place in 1940. The British have been driven from continental Europe at Dunkirk, and the Americans and the Soviets are yet to take up arms against Hitler. The Wehrmacht has invaded Holland, where the Kaiser has been living in exile since 1918, and a detachment under the command of a young SS officer is sent to secure him at his manor house at Huis Doorn. The officer, Martin Krebbs, is under orders to assess the Kaiser’s attitude towards the Third Reich, and is then given an additional mission – to apprehend a British spy in the area who is believed to be trying to persuade the Kaiser to defect.
Krebbs is a loyal, efficient and patriotic Nazi. We see that he believes in the superiority of the German state, and sees the necessity of military expansionism and of a strong hand at the tiller, particularly after the ruin of Germany in the wake of the First World War. He has distinguished himself in combat, but is privately horrified by a massacre of British soldiers that he witnessed in France. He is an unthinkingly obedient tool of the regime but is not an inherently evil man. The ‘good Nazi’ trope has been done before, but is handled here in a believable and nuanced way that shows how horribly easy it can be for certain types of people to become complicit in awful things.
The Kaiser himself is also intriguingly drawn. He comes across as an erratic man of conflicting views, who proclaims certain beliefs and desires regarding Jews and the British, while in fact underneath it all he does have a moral compass. There are shades of grey to him, but you get the sense that his rational and humane side would ultimately come out on top.
Over the course of the novel Krebbs falls for Akki, a beautiful Dutch maid at Huis Doorn. This gradually humanises him and, for several complex reasons, undermines his rigidly held beliefs. The outlooks of both Krebbs and the Kaiser are then further challenged by the arrival of Heinrich Himmler on an official visit, an event that reveals the appalling reality behind the Nazi dogma, and gives a chilling glimpse of ‘the banality of evil’.
The Kaiser’s Last Kiss is a brief novel, but a great deal of sophisticated subtlety and complexity is packed into it. There is a hugely gripping climax and some surprisingly moving moments, but it really stands out for the depth of its characterisations. Its treatment of fascist ideology, and those who propagate it, those who go along with it, and those who defy it, is thought-provoking and nuanced, and the juxtaposition of the outdated imperialism of the Kaiser with the brutality of the ‘shirted gangsters’ of the Nazi Party is a compelling one. It’s well worth a read.
Edition:
Harper Perennial | 2010 | 208p | Paperback | Buy here
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