Amerikan Eagle

Even though refugees and escapees told of the true nature of the holocaust during the 1940s, their stories were not believed by government officials and the media until the Allied victory in 1945 and the subsequent liberation of the Nazi death camps. One of the little-known stories about the holocaust was the Madagascar Plan, a proposal by the Nazis to deport the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. In May 1940, in his book Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East, SS head Heinrich Himmler declared: “I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony.” The Madagascar Plan was abandoned after 1940, since Great Britain remained undefeated and its navy was still a formidable foe to German shipping.

The mostly unsuccessful attempts by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to convince the government to admit more Jewish refugees to the United States is a matter of historical record. So, too, is the bloody Memorial Day massacre of the Republic Steel strikers in 1937.

The city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is real, as are the naval shipyard and its vital role in the peace treaty signed by Japan and Russia in 1905 that led to President Theodore Roosevelt receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. However, certain geographical and historical aspects of Portsmouth and its police department have been changed for the purpose of this novel. Any errors of geography or history are the author’s.

This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear… is fear itself… nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address,

March 4, 1933

People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address to Congress,

January 11, 1944

Copyright

Amerikan Eagle is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Bantam Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2011 by Alan Glenn

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52760-8

Cover deign: Carlos Beltran

Cover photo: Jack Delano / Library of Congress

www.bantamdell.com

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