05/05/2014
Carroll, who explored the history of Catholic anti-Semitism in the nonfiction account Constantine’s Sword, returns to this theme with a suspenseful historical drama set in Rome at the end of WWII and centering on Vatican complicity in the flight of Nazi fugitives to Argentina. David Warburg, a U.S. Treasury Department lawyer, is sent to the city to organize the War Refugee Board, a front for aiding Jewish refugees and helping to create their hoped-for homeland in Palestine. While in Rome, Warburg meets ruthless OSS counterintelligence head Col. Peter Mates, who is opposing Soviet domination of Central Europe through covert means. Warburg and Mates draw Father Kevin Deane, an American priest, and Marguerite d’Erasmo, a French-Italian Red Cross worker, into their plans, not realizing that both have hidden allegiances and motives. As Carroll cleverly weaves these characters among an assortment of liars, schemers, and charlatans, one character sums it all up: “None of us here is innocent.” While high-placed Catholic officials aid escaped war criminals, other factions seek revenge for wartime brutality, and still others begin the bloody struggle for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. And at the heart of all the treachery, murder, and tragedy is the Eternal City. Agent: Don Cutler, Bookmark Literary Agency. (July)
Warburg in Rome
Narrated by David Doersch
James CarrollUnabridged — 12 hours, 28 minutes
Warburg in Rome
Narrated by David Doersch
James CarrollUnabridged — 12 hours, 28 minutes
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Editorial Reviews
"Carroll, winner of the National Book Award for An American Requiem (1996) and the PEN/Galbraith Award for House of War (2006), both nonfiction, has also written numerous novels in multiple genres. Here he combines fact and fiction in a historical thriller. Carroll makes clear in an author’s note that, while the “main characters and their story” are fictional, everything else in the book, centering on the treatment of Italian Jews during and after WWII, and including a Vatican plot called the “ratline,” which secretly relocated Nazi war criminals to Argentina, is based on fact. This author’s note, which appears at the end of the novel, might have been better placed at the beginning, since what Carroll describes is so horrifying (as in details on a children’s concentration camp) as to seem fictional. The man who encounters this tangle of evil is David Warburg, sent to Rome by the U.S. War Refugee Board at the end of WWII to help bring aid to the European Jews arriving in Rome. Warburg has two guides to the inferno of postwar Rome: a woman Red Cross worker and a young American priest. Their efforts are met, first with bureaucratic roadblocks, and later with full-out betrayal. Carroll’s depictions of the chaos in Rome, along with his insights into the Vatican ratline, are unforgettable. Recommend this utterly engaging thriller to fans of Joseph Kanon’s The Good German (2001) and James R. Benn’s Death’s Door (2012)."--Booklist, STARRED review
"James Carroll has written a novel with the breathtaking pace of a thriller and the gravitas of a genuine moral center--as if John LeCarre and Graham Greene collaborated to produce Warburg in Rome"—Mary Gordon, author of Pearl and The Love of My Youth
"A well-paced thriller from longtime Vatican watcher Carroll (Crusade, 2004, etc.) set in post–World War II Rome, with the Catholic Church athwart a tangle of scandalous politics and incriminating deeds.
"Sanctuary, Sister, is for the guilty. We may not like it, but there it is." So remarks an American monsignor, Kevin Deane, who’s working to provide relief to Italian Jews, even as others in the Vatican are seeking to extend that sanctuary to their Nazi persecutors. Into this conflict comes refugee coordinator David Warburg, a confidant of Henry Morgenthau, who has warned him that "[o]nce Mark Clark captures it, Rome will be the nerve center and the escape hatch both." If Morgenthau only knew how deeply tunneled that escape hatch was….Helping Warburg—or is she?—is a Red Cross worker named Marguerite d’Erasmo, who "came of age as if she were a nun" but who has hidden resources, to say nothing of secrets. Marguerite is a person of faith much shaken, for this is a time in which "the Madonna seemed indifferent to everyone but her Son," while Warburg is a coolly efficient explorer of the surprising alleys his quest takes him down—not just the Vatican "ratline" that sweeps Nazis out of the path of the conquering Allies (Rome, as Warburg sees it, is "halfway between Vienna and Buenos Aires"), but also a complex storyline that finds highly placed elements within the Vatican opposing Jewish immigration to Palestine on the grounds that by doing so, they are helping to preserve the Holy Land, even as others are aligned with the revived cause of Zionism. Carroll blends a solid command of modern history with a sense for the varieties of evil that have inhabited it—not just the villains, but also the bureaucrats who have self-servingly helped them along and the apologists who have made the world safe for both classes of people.
Though without the white-knuckle tension of Graham Greene’s The Third Man, a yarn that’s of a piece with it—and a worthy successor."--Kirkus Reviews
"Warburg In Rome creates the atmosphere of a thriller with deeply serious historical undertones - the immediate aftermath of the German occupation of Rome. And the laying down of the infamous ratlines that allowed Nazi principals to escape allied capture with aid from the church. And Roosevelt's belated plan to save Jews still in Nazi territory. That's the history part. Fiction enters with a main character named David Warburg, a secular American Jew from northern New England. Roosevelt has charged him with directing the U.S. War Refugee Board and sends him on a mission to Rome, just after the Nazi retreat. Plenty of other strong characters gather around Warburg - some to help and some to disrupt. There's American priest, whom New York's ambitious Cardinal Spellman has assigned to advance his purposes, while in Rome and 24-year-old Marguerite D’Erasmo, a half-French, half-Italian beauty, whom Warburg finds both attractive and useful for his own plans. She's been working in tandem with a group of resisting priests and local Jewish leaders to save the lives of Jews still in fascist captivity. A long struggle ensues to find justice and love in the wake of the war. But the novel remains consistently entertaining, never didactic - even as a reader moves along, hip-deep in the history of the period."Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered
"Former priest Carroll (An American Requiem) returns with this complex and compelling novel of the Vatican and morality during World War II. The happenings here are dark indeed, and it’s often difficult to believe that the novel is based on real-life events. Lawyer David Warburg comes to Rome to help set up and direct the new U.S. War Refugee Board, an effort that aims to help European Jews rebuild their lives as the war comes to a close. In the course of his humanitarian work, he meets Marguerite d’Erasmo, a Red Cross worker who is motivated by much more than meets the eye. Soon David learns of the Vatican ratline, a system that the Church used to smuggle Nazi war criminals to safety in Argentina. No longer sure whom to trust, he turns to U.S. Intelligence, only to find that the ratline isn’t much of a secret after all. VERDICT This is a fresh look at a scandalous chapter of history, and one that reminds us that even when the war was over, the horrors were not. Sensitive readers should beware, as there are some graphic and extremely unsettling scenes. This book deserves a wide readership, and should especially appeal to readers interested in political and religious history."--Library Journal
"James Carroll’s 'Warburg in Rome' has many of the ingredients of a great spy thriller: a high-stakes battle between good and evil; a plot full of twists and turns; a cultural capital both seductive and corrupt; characters caught in ethical thickets; and a moment of existential crisis when all the world’s troubles seem to converge on a single point on the map, bringing out the best and the worst in all who happen to find themselves at the fractured center of civilization."--The Boston Globe
"A gripping political thriller set in a world of troubling moral complexity."--WBUR"James Carroll has written a novel with the breathtaking pace of a thriller and the gravitas of a genuine moral center - as if John LeCarre and Graham Greene collaborated to produce Warburg in Rome."
2014-06-18
A well-paced thriller from longtime Vatican watcher Carroll (Crusade, 2004, etc.) set in post–World War II Rome, with the Catholic Church athwart a tangle of scandalous politics and incriminating deeds.“Sanctuary, Sister, is for the guilty. We may not like it, but there it is.” So remarks an American monsignor, Kevin Deane, who's working to provide relief to Italian Jews, even as others in the Vatican are seeking to extend that sanctuary to their Nazi persecutors. Into this conflict comes refugee coordinator David Warburg, a confidant of Henry Morgenthau, who has warned him that “[o]nce Mark Clark captures it, Rome will be the nerve center and the escape hatch both.” If Morgenthau only knew how deeply tunneled that escape hatch was....Helping Warburg—or is she?—is a Red Cross worker named Marguerite d’Erasmo, who “came of age as if she were a nun” but who has hidden resources, to say nothing of secrets. Marguerite is a person of faith much shaken, for this is a time in which “the Madonna seemed indifferent to everyone but her Son,” while Warburg is a coolly efficient explorer of the surprising alleys his quest takes him down—not just the Vatican “ratline” that sweeps Nazis out of the path of the conquering Allies (Rome, as Warburg sees it, is “halfway between Vienna and Buenos Aires”), but also a complex storyline that finds highly placed elements within the Vatican opposing Jewish immigration to Palestine on the grounds that by doing so, they are helping to preserve the Holy Land, even as others are aligned with the revived cause of Zionism. Carroll blends a solid command of modern history with a sense for the varieties of evil that have inhabited it—not just the villains, but also the bureaucrats who have self-servingly helped them along and the apologists who have made the world safe for both classes of people.Though without the white-knuckle tension of Graham Greene’s The Third Man, a yarn that’s of a piece with it—and a worthy successor.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940175640800 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dreamscape Media |
| Publication date: | 07/29/2014 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Name
DAVID WARBURG HAD received the notice the evening before, an order to appear, setting this early appointment. He'd come downtown just as the sun was turning the dark city pink. From the window of his office on the third floor of the second most stately building on Pennsylvania Avenue, he'd watched the morning ease fully into its own. The Washington Monument took the light, a garment. At five minutes before the hour, he set out.
The broad, polished corridors would be bustling soon with Treasury Department functionaries, but not yet. He strode to the central marble staircase, a gleaming gyre below the soaring translucent dome. One hand in his trouser pocket, his jacket back, one hand riding the railing, he skipped down two steps at a time, coming to the grand second floor, which was dominated by the diplomatic reception room and, adjoining that, the secretary of the treasury's suite of offices. Cool it, he told himself. Swinging left toward the ornate double door, he slowed his pace.
Last night, Janet had been certain that this meeting with the secretary himself promised something, as she put it, "really good." But Warburg was wary. It had irritated her that he'd declined to match her high spirits at the news of this summons. In the past, pointer in hand, he'd briefed Mr. Morgenthau on debt security legislation and congressional vote counts, but he'd never been formally introduced to him. This summons had come without explanation, which was enough to spark Janet's wishfulness — another steppingstone toward the day they would get married.
Warburg couldn't acknowledge it to her, or to anyone, but he was appalled to find himself a seat-of-government paper pusher as the war built toward an inevitably savage climax. The latest report was that German troops were marshaling on Hungary's border, Budapest another morsel soon to be devoured in a Nazi rampage that was not impeded by the Red Army offensive on the Dnieper. Warburg was that rare, able- bodied man of twenty-eight not in uniform. Dancing at midnight on the Shoreham terrace thrilled Janet, but it embarrassed him to be seen there, even with such a beauty. She was happy just to rest her cheek against the lapel of his suit coat, as they softly swayed to the orchestra's mellow rhythm. He felt tenderly toward her, but tenderness was a flimsy bridge across the yawning gulf that had opened between them, whether she knew of it or not.
On his office wall, where Janet did not see it, Warburg had posted a floor-to-ceiling map of Europe, with yellow pins denoting General Mark Clark's stymied army in southern Italy, still the only Anglo-American force on the continent. There were also pins to the north and east, red ones, marking the Soviet offensive lines. Green pins, concentrated between the Danube and Vistula Rivers, marked places reported or rumored to be the Germans' forced labor, transit, and prison camps. Warburg had been tracking the Nazi killing sites for months, though it had nothing to do with his official work.
The war, darling, he'd say as they were dancing, by the time it's over, Europe will be a charnel house. Did you hear me? No, of course she didn't, because he'd said it to himself. It was not Janet's fault that he'd become obsessed with the slaughter lands to the east, nor was it her fault that he found it impossible to speak with her of his obsession. And, later, the face powder on his lapel would not come out.
Right out of law school, Warburg had been conscripted like most men, though the draft, in his case, was not into the Army. When, in the spring of '42, the law school dean, a former New Dealer named Harold Gardner, had taken the job of general counsel at the Treasury Department, he had taken a handful of newly minted lawyers with him, including Warburg. "Don't be ridiculous," the dean had said to Warburg, swatting away his initial demurral. Warburg had already filed enlistment papers, effective at the term's end, itching to join the fight. But Gardner was insistent: "Washington is where your country needs you, David." Warburg still refused, but Gardner chided him: as a lawyer in uniform, Warburg would never see service overseas in any case. He'd be a JAG mandarin, bringing acne-faced AWOLs to court-martial, at Fort McClellan in Alabama or someplace worse. In fact, Gardner had promised to see to it.
And so Warburg had joined the fray in Washington, becoming one of the samurai bureaucrats in the thick of the vast legislative reinvention of federal finances made necessary by the explosion of war spending. The rolling congressional authorizations for the war bond program was Warburg's particular portfolio. As it turned out, he'd already been central to the raising of more than half a billion dollars in war funding, which helped keep inflation down and the war economy booming. Not bad service, that. But alas, judging by the markers on Warburg's wall map, Hitler wasn't as yet much hindered.
At the treasury secretary's reception area, a primly dressed woman promptly showed Warburg into the ornate inner office. Harold Gardner was there, sitting with Morgenthau in matched leather wing chairs in an alcove where one large Palladian window overlooked the White House. There was a clear view of the President's mansion because only the faintest pale lime of early buds tempered the stark black-and-white branches of the late-winter trees. A third man was seated on an adjacent sofa.
The three men came to their feet at Warburg's arrival. Henry Morgenthau Jr., a slim figure whose tanned baldness struck an elegant fashion note, was nearly as tall as Warburg. Yet Gardner was the first to stretch out his hand, putting his responsibility for this meeting on display. He let his affection for Warburg show, saying as he turned to Morgenthau, "David was the best we had in New Haven." But before the secretary could reply, or even grasp Warburg's hand, his desk buzzer sounded, and he went to the telephone.
"Friendly greetings to you, Felix," Morgenthau said grandly into the mouthpiece. Gardner and the other man resumed their seats, but Warburg remained standing, as if holding a hat.
"Thanks for calling back," Morgenthau said. "Too early? Of course not. I've been at my desk for an hour. Same as you." Morgenthau listened, then laughed. "How is Frieda?" He paused, then added, "Give her our love." There would be a performance aspect to this conversation. "The reason I called — I have one of your young relations here with me right now." Pause. "That's right. I'm about to brief him on the job I'm giving him. A very important job, and I wanted you to be the first to know. Yes. In Rome, once liberation comes ..."
Listening, Warburg thought, Whoa, what's this? He exchanged a quick glance with Gardner, catching his all but imperceptible nod. Rome? Gardner had insisted more than once that Warburg was indispensable on Pennsylvania Avenue, with three new bills a month coming off his desk. "The Appropriations Committee," Gardner had barked repeatedly, "is clay on your potter's wheel. Can't do without you."
"... the War Refugee Board," Morgenthau was saying. "My War Refugee Board. Once Mark Clark captures it, Rome will be the nerve center and the escape hatch both. And your young man will run things."
Warburg took this in with apparent calm, but it was shocking news. The absolute opposite, he realized at once, of what Janet was hoping for.
War refugees. Everyone in Treasury was aware of Morgenthau's having badgered Roosevelt into long-overdue action on refugee relief, such as it was. "Refugee" was a generic euphemism, since those in the know — certainly including Warburg, whose gaze drifted to his wall map dozens of times a day — understood full well that the urgency applied to Hitler's particular target. Jews.
For months, Morgenthau had been sounding death camp alarms inside the government, finally forcing Roosevelt's hand by threatening to go public with the still secret cables coming in from Geneva. Elsewhere in Washington, and even in certain hallways at Treasury, the War Refugee Board was seen as the product of a Jew's special pleading for Jews.
In Warburg's own shuttling between Treasury and Capitol Hill, the WRB was not much discussed, and overseas operations of every kind were beyond his purview. Hell, overseas operations were beyond Morgenthau's purview, but that had not stopped him. Picking up on the secretary's spirit, Warburg had made a point to get his name added to the special cable circulation list, the weekly Geneva reports with their growing drumbeat of transfers, deportations, and disappearances. Green pins, to Warburg. Jewish pins.
And now what was he hearing? He himself to be appointed to the work? Rome? Warburg could not —
"David," Morgenthau said abruptly, but into the phone. "David Warburg," in answer to the other party's question. Morgenthau's tanned face had gone white, the skin at his mouth so taut it barely moved when he repeated, "Yes, David."
All at once Warburg realized with whom Morgenthau was speaking — Felix! — and what was happening. A feeling of alarm made him momentarily lightheaded. He had to stifle the impulse to interrupt, to explain. It was an old feeling. Glancing again at Gardner, he saw the pleased expression on his mentor's face begin slowly to darken as he, too, realized from the change in Morgenthau's demeanor and voice that something was wrong.
"Really? No, I'm quite sure. David Warburg. Yale Law School ... highly regarded. Our man on the Hill ... about thirty, I would say ... I see, but ... Well, let me look into it. Yes. Right away. No chance, you say? All right, Felix. I apologize for the confusion. I'll clear it up ... Of course. Thank you."
When Morgenthau placed the receiver in its cradle, he pressed down on it for a long moment as if to cancel what he had just heard. Then he looked up at Warburg. "He's never heard of you. Felix Warburg has never heard of you."
Warburg knew how important it was to meet Morgenthau's gaze, to return it steadily. He said, "I've heard of him, of course."
"'David is not one of our names,' he said." Morgenthau looked at the man on the sofa. "Do we do that, Rabbi? Establish a roster from which family names are taken? Jacob? Moses? Moritz?"
"I would think 'David' is a good name," the man said.
Morgenthau looked back at Warburg. "I approved your appointment thinking you were of the Warburgs."
"I am, Sir." He smiled pleasantly. An old trick. The way to be at ease is to be at ease. "But the Burlington Warburgs," he said, "not the New York Warburgs. My father was a butcher. Not a banker." A line Warburg had used before. In fact, he'd used it with Janet's parents.
"Did you know this, Harold?" Morgenthau asked Gardner.
"No, Sir. I just assumed ..." Gardner met Warburg's eyes, and his expression said, You let me assume.
"Burlington?" Morgenthau asked. "Burlington, Vermont?"
"Yes, Sir."
"How'd you get to Yale Law School?"
"Middlebury College. Basketball scholarship. It wasn't until I got to New Haven that I even knew about the New York Warburgs." Quite pointedly, Warburg refused to meet Gardner's eyes. Was the imagined elite family connection why the law school dean had made him his favorite? Of course. Nor had Warburg been so naive as to have been ignorant of that. Warburg, like Oppenheim or Lehman or Loeb — the exception Jews. Rich. But David Warburg had not established those rules. "I never pretended to be what I am not," he said. Again Warburg's easy smile, a stance that cloaked what his seniors might take as rebuke.
"I'm not suggesting anything like that, young man," Morgenthau said. "But damn. We need Warburg's money. It seems crass, I know. But there it is. We need his influence with the community. I'm in a box here, you know that, don't you? The President gave me the Refugee Board — and no independent funding. I can't sign a canteen chit without State and War cosigning. Damn!"
"But are you a Jew?" the man on the sofa asked Warburg.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Are you a Jew?"
Unaccountably, Warburg thought of the prayer shawl his father had offered him when he was sixteen, white wool with black stripes. His father had called it a tallit, said it had been his own grandfather's, and that it was time for David to have it, for his bar mitzvah.
"Were you bar mitzvahed?" David had asked his father.
"Yes. I wore it." He had held the shawl out to his son.
But David had stepped back, saying, "Have you been to temple since?"
His father had shaken his head no, all at once mute with what could only be read as shame.
"Well, I can't do that," David had said — the fierce integrity of youth.
His father forced his shoulders into a shrug, unable to hide his disappointment. "No matter, I suppose," he said, and again indicated the cloth. "Maybe the stripes are black as a sign of mourning." He then turned and walked away. His father never mentioned the tallit again.
Now Warburg shifted to look down at the man on the sofa, saying nothing.
"This may work whether or not you are a Warburg," the man explained. "It won't work if you're not a Jew."
Silence thickened the air. What was this? The WRB postings abroad were staffed from Treasury, three from the legal office alone. Istanbul. Lisbon. Algiers. Warburg doubted that any of them were Jews. There simply weren't that many Jews in the department. Why would Rome be different? Why, for that matter, was Warburg being brought into this now at all? Weeks earlier, when the President had first approved the rescue project, Warburg had asked to be a part of it, but Harold Gardner had said it was out of the question. Warburg, with his credibility on the Hill ... his potter's wheel.
Morgenthau left his desk to return to the alcove and sit. He gestured for Warburg to sit beside the third man. "Forgive me. The phone rang before introductions were complete. Warburg, this is Rabbi Wise. Rabbi, Warburg. David Warburg. One of our names, if not theirs." He laughed, dispelling the tension.
But the rabbi's name was what registered with Warburg. Stephen Wise was the head of the American Jewish Congress, famous as the leader of the "Stop Hitler Now!" rallies that had helped Morgenthau push Roosevelt off the dime. Warburg joined him on the sofa, extending his hand. "It's an honor, Rabbi. We all appreciate what you've been doing. I read Gerhart Riegner's cables." World Jewish Congress cables that Wise had steadily funneled from Geneva to Washington. Indeed, Warburg had copied out lines from one of the Riegner cables and placed it under the glass on his desk. Without prompting, he could have recited it there and then: "Never did I feel so strongly the sense of abandonment, powerlessness and loneliness as when I sent messages of disaster and horror to the free world and no one believed me."
"So are you?" Rabbi Wise was not deflected.
Warburg answered, "I'm too tall to be a Jew. Jews are no good at basketball — so I was told growing up. At Middlebury they forgave me my name because I had a deadeye set shot. I told you my father was a butcher. But he did not keep kosher. He was called Abe, but he was not a temple-goer. I was not bar mitzvahed, because neither of my parents was observant and I didn't see the point. My parents did not insist. So what does that make me?" Warburg asked. "Once I'd have said it makes me plain American, but what would Hitler say? Hitler, of course, makes the difference." Warburg let his gaze drift to Gardner. "I didn't know it for certain until I got to Yale, but yes, I am a Jew."
"Temple-going doesn't matter," Morgenthau said. "Hell, I raise Christmas trees on my farm in Dutchess County. I wouldn't know a Seder from a sedan. No offense, Rabbi." Morgenthau, too, looked at Gardner. "I like your young man."
CHAPTER 2The Files
IT WAS WELL after midnight when the tall, dark-haired woman used the cast-iron key to unlock the stout wooden door of the Villa Arezzo on the Aventine Hill. She had found the old key in one of her father's boxes. The click of the lock made her wince. She pushed the door inward, but slowly, hoping to dampen the creak of the hinges. Since before her father's time, the palazzo had been the Rome headquarters of the Croce Rossa, the Red Cross, and as a child she had played here, although never in the thick of night. Now, for a long time, she stood in the once grand foyer, not moving. Her own breaths seemed loud in her ear, but otherwise, no sound. No one here.
Marguerite d'Erasmo was the twenty-four-year-old daughter of a French mother and an Italian father. He had been the director general of the Croce Rossa. He had died before the war broke out, but he was still revered here, and it had been the most natural thing in the world for his daughter to don the blue uniform, and she'd been wearing it since the war began. By 1943, last year, she was head of the Women's and Children's Committee for all of Italy.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Warburg in Rome"
by .
Copyright © 2014 James Carroll.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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