Upcoming Release of PDW Part 3
I am delighted to announce the upcoming release of the third and final installment of Particularly Dangerous Work: Part 3, Reflection on the Water. Its release is set for Friday, 25 October 2024. This volume completes the story of the Vizconde Rodrigo Manuel de Mendoza y de la Cerda, a diplomat with the Spanish Foreign Service and an Olympic champion. Part 1 of this series was published in 2017. In that initial part of this trilogy readers met Rodrigo Mendoza in 1939, just before the beginning of World War II, and began the long journey of following him through the months leading up to the outbreak of the war, the early part of the war, and the uncertainties the world faced at the beginning of 1941. The second part continued his story through the difficult years the British and their allies faced through the middle of 1941, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and the entry of the United States into the war. This third and final part starts in early 1943. It follows the decline and demise of the Nazi regime in Germany and the end of the war.
Rodrigo’s journey from 1943 through 1945 takes him from a Berlin crumbling under the weight of a collapsing Nazi regime and the barrage of Allied bombing to a journey through Nazi occupied territory. As an Allied spy, Rodrigo is hunted by the Gestapo, and his fate is constantly in peril. Rodrigo’s journey, as in the first two volumes, is packed with action, adventure, romance, and intrigue. His story is artfully woven into the historical realities of the World War II era. Readers will find themselves on edge following the march of the Red Army through Eastern Europe, the British and American pursuit of the Desert Fox across North Africa, and the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Readers will be elated at the liberation of Paris and its sudden rebirth as the cultural capital of the world and will grieve the loss of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the eve of victory in Europe.
The timeline of Rodrigo’s story runs from 1939 through early 1945, a period of six years. In that relatively short period of time, the world that emerged from war in 1945 was hardly recognizable as the world that had existed in 1939. Most of the world knew, in 1939, that the Nazi regime in Germany was morally bankrupt and was an international menace. Despite the blatant anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, no one was prepared for level of depravity that became known as the Nazi Holocaust.
The concepts of holocaust and genocide were not new to humanity in 1945. Spaniards and Russians had committed their own anti-Semitic atrocities in times past. Turks had victimized Kurdish and Armenian communities. Americans had systematically reduced Native American populations to a fragment of their former populations. Medieval and ancient civilizations had brutally wiped out entire populations. However, nothing in human atrocities of times past compared to the Nazi’s “Final Solution.”
To the twentieth century mind, it was one thing for a primitive or ancient culture to commit acts of barbarity, but for an advanced, highly industrialized, highly educated culture, like Germany’s, to behave like ancient Huns was unthinkable. What was most shocking was the application of an industrial scale to the concept of genocide. The German rail network, one of the best built and modern in the world, was commandeered to transport victims of the Holocaust to their demise. German industrial capacity, which should have been focused on building tanks, shells, and guns, took time and resources to build state-of-the-art gas chambers and crematoria. German bureaucrats meticulously catalogued and recorded their gruesome work as though they were managing a library’s card catalogue. This cold, calculating, methodical destruction of millions of human lives was a level of depravity humans had never seen before. It was as though an entire nation had become serial killers.
In drafting PDW, I struggled with how to handle the Holocaust. Jews, communists, homosexuals, Roma, and other communities had been targeted by the Nazi regime long before the start of the war. Obviously, that aspect of the brutality of the regime played heavily in Rodrigo’s mind and motivation. However, it wasn’t until 1941, after the invasion of the Soviet Union, that the “Final Solution” was made policy and implemented. In his capacity as a diplomat, Rodrigo had no way of knowing anything about the details of the unfolding holocaust. In his capacity as an Allied spy, Rodrigo picked up on certain troubling details, but still was not in a position to understand the scale of what was happening. Rodrigo struggled with what he had seen and the casual reports he received that alluded to genocidal activity. He knew something was happening, but was unable to put it into perspective.
Had the British and American governments taken seriously the reports of the holocaust from Polish refugees that news might have filtered down to someone like Rodrigo. The Allied governments had treated such reports with a measure of skepticism. Allied military establishments feared that concern over the unfolding tragedy might divert precious resources from military objectives. Historians can look back at World War II and make critical judgments about what Allied governments knew and how they could have reacted differently, but in the midst of the war, it was difficult to comprehend what was happening. This was ultimately the position in which I found Rodrigo. He knew something was happening, but wasn’t able to understand its significance until it was too late. Rodrigo, as a character, did not have the luxury of hindsight.
Rodrigo’s journey from 1943 through 1945 takes him from a Berlin crumbling under the weight of a collapsing Nazi regime and the barrage of Allied bombing to a journey through Nazi occupied territory. As an Allied spy, Rodrigo is hunted by the Gestapo, and his fate is constantly in peril. Rodrigo’s journey, as in the first two volumes, is packed with action, adventure, romance, and intrigue. His story is artfully woven into the historical realities of the World War II era. Readers will find themselves on edge following the march of the Red Army through Eastern Europe, the British and American pursuit of the Desert Fox across North Africa, and the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Readers will be elated at the liberation of Paris and its sudden rebirth as the cultural capital of the world and will grieve the loss of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the eve of victory in Europe.
The timeline of Rodrigo’s story runs from 1939 through early 1945, a period of six years. In that relatively short period of time, the world that emerged from war in 1945 was hardly recognizable as the world that had existed in 1939. Most of the world knew, in 1939, that the Nazi regime in Germany was morally bankrupt and was an international menace. Despite the blatant anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, no one was prepared for level of depravity that became known as the Nazi Holocaust.
The concepts of holocaust and genocide were not new to humanity in 1945. Spaniards and Russians had committed their own anti-Semitic atrocities in times past. Turks had victimized Kurdish and Armenian communities. Americans had systematically reduced Native American populations to a fragment of their former populations. Medieval and ancient civilizations had brutally wiped out entire populations. However, nothing in human atrocities of times past compared to the Nazi’s “Final Solution.”
To the twentieth century mind, it was one thing for a primitive or ancient culture to commit acts of barbarity, but for an advanced, highly industrialized, highly educated culture, like Germany’s, to behave like ancient Huns was unthinkable. What was most shocking was the application of an industrial scale to the concept of genocide. The German rail network, one of the best built and modern in the world, was commandeered to transport victims of the Holocaust to their demise. German industrial capacity, which should have been focused on building tanks, shells, and guns, took time and resources to build state-of-the-art gas chambers and crematoria. German bureaucrats meticulously catalogued and recorded their gruesome work as though they were managing a library’s card catalogue. This cold, calculating, methodical destruction of millions of human lives was a level of depravity humans had never seen before. It was as though an entire nation had become serial killers.
In drafting PDW, I struggled with how to handle the Holocaust. Jews, communists, homosexuals, Roma, and other communities had been targeted by the Nazi regime long before the start of the war. Obviously, that aspect of the brutality of the regime played heavily in Rodrigo’s mind and motivation. However, it wasn’t until 1941, after the invasion of the Soviet Union, that the “Final Solution” was made policy and implemented. In his capacity as a diplomat, Rodrigo had no way of knowing anything about the details of the unfolding holocaust. In his capacity as an Allied spy, Rodrigo picked up on certain troubling details, but still was not in a position to understand the scale of what was happening. Rodrigo struggled with what he had seen and the casual reports he received that alluded to genocidal activity. He knew something was happening, but was unable to put it into perspective.
Had the British and American governments taken seriously the reports of the holocaust from Polish refugees that news might have filtered down to someone like Rodrigo. The Allied governments had treated such reports with a measure of skepticism. Allied military establishments feared that concern over the unfolding tragedy might divert precious resources from military objectives. Historians can look back at World War II and make critical judgments about what Allied governments knew and how they could have reacted differently, but in the midst of the war, it was difficult to comprehend what was happening. This was ultimately the position in which I found Rodrigo. He knew something was happening, but wasn’t able to understand its significance until it was too late. Rodrigo, as a character, did not have the luxury of hindsight.
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