And when the truth did emerge, I was impressed with the genius of the author’s explanation. All I knew for the longest time was that it must have been one heck of a reason for his superiors to have approved his actions. The gradual reveal of what happened between the two men and the truth about Johann was masterfully done and kept me on the edge of my seat.įrank is under enormous pressure – he can’t tell the truth about why he abandoned his original mission of assassinating Johann and any other Nazi officials he could find at the time. And while the story takes place at the trial in 1946, there are flashbacks to 1943 as Frank remembers meeting Johann for the first time and falling in love. His hands are pretty much tied as to what he can say, but he has to try to save the life of the man he fell in love with. The story is told by Frank, an American Army captain who has returned to Germany as a witness in the trial – against orders and risking punishment himself if things get out of hand. It certainly didn’t look like it for the longest time, and the author made me bite my nails and sweat proverbial bullets as the story progressed, but I was hopeful. With three of the twenty-four defendants of the Trial of Major War Criminals in 1946 found not guilty, I had reason to hope that Johann von Biehn, the second main character in ‘Lovers in Arms’, might be one of them. Of course a lot of the events in this book are fictional, as are the main characters, but when I checked I found enough basis in fact for this story to be possible. But Frank Hawthorne has good reason to speak up as a witness for the defense, even though he can’t give any details since they are all classified. To find a US Army captain defending an alleged Nazi German war criminal at the Nuremberg trials in 1946 is pretty extraordinary.

Lovers in Arms by Osiris Brackhaus