AUTHOR’S
NOTE
BEFORE THE START OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring amassed an art collection sourced from within Germany and Occupied Europe. Almost exclusively this comprised works confiscated or ‘bought at gunpoint’ from Jewish owners, galleries, museums, and private collections. He traded items with other collectors and his network of agents successfully exported paintings to Switzerland where they were stored before being sold to private collectors.
According to officials at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, in August 1939 the portrait of Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini, the wife of prominent Florentine citizen Francesco del Giocondo di Zandi (better known as the Mona Lisa) was placed in a crate and taken to safety. Official papers from other European nations place it in the Altaussee salt mine in Austria.
There was never a U-boat numbered U-1500. During the war the German Navy converted a number of its Type IX submarines to carry cargo, removing all six torpedo tubes and designating them Type IXD2 boats. Official records show the Nazi regime did not allocate the number 1500 to any U-boat, leaving a gap between U-1407 and U-2321.
Escape by U-boat at the end of the war was not unknown. When Germany surrendered to the Allies, Kapitänleutnant Heinz Schaeffer put ashore all married men and sailed from a Norwegian Fjord in U-977 in defiance of Kriegsmarine supremo Admiral Dönitz’s radio instructions for U-boats to surrender. The boat arrived in the Rio del Plata in South America in August, no doubt unaware that in the meantime, Argentina had declared war on Germany. He and his crew were arrested and sent to Washington, where they were interrogated about the whereabouts of Adolf Hitler who was rumoured to have escaped from Berlin. They were eventually shipped back to Germany.
Throughout the war the SS built an industrial empire based on slave labour. Forced labour and prisoners of war built the Monowitz industrial complex and others just like it. Those Jews, and other minority groups abhorred by the Nazi State, who were considered fit enough to work, were selected for slave labour. The remaining six million were destroyed inhumanely.
On 15th January 1945 an aircraft of the US 15th Reconnaissance Squadron photographed the camps at Auschwitz. The aerial photographs show a covering of deep snow. The crematoria had been dismantled, though they were intact when photographed by a Mosquito aircraft of the South African Air Force the previous June. Photos from this aircraft also show the massive Buna synthetic rubber and benzene plant at Monowitz, at that time still under construction.
On 18th January, fearful of discovery by the advancing Allied troops, the camps around Auschwitz despatched more than 5,000 children, women and men to Germany on foot in sub-zero conditions without food, proper footwear or clothing. 2,720 died on the journey, many beaten or shot. 1,300 died during the first 100km of the forced walk.
On 28th April 1945 Göring’s mansion, cleared of its treasures, was blown up by Göring’s personal troops to prevent it falling into the hands of the advancing Russian Army. Today, its location is marked by a block of rough stone on which is carved the name ‘Carinhall’.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel could not have been written had it not been for the patience of my family, the tolerance of staff in various coffee shops in and around Edinburgh (you know who you are!) and my mentors over the years, especially Stan Cox, Dr Gwyn Thomas, Don Cooper, Pat O’Connell and John Beswick.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Matthew and his team at Urbane Publications for having confidence in me as a writer and for publishing and promoting my work.
Richard Whittle believes that he discovered the power of the novel and his love of writing at the age of eleven when he read Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose and Jenny. On his overseas trips many years later he armed himself with an excess-baggage mix of paperbacks that did not include crime novels – as an ex-policeman he had vowed never to read them, let alone write them. Now, years later, he no longer feels that way. His central characters, people like you and me, find that they have been dragged into situations beyond their control and from which there seems little chance of escape. For them, crimes are most definitely involved.
Richard has been a policeman, a police marksman and police motorcyclist, a diesel engine tester, professional engineering geologist and Chartered Engineer. He has worked in civil engineering, geothermal energy, nuclear and mining industries in seventeen countries in Europe, Africa and the Americas and is able to draw on a wealth of personal experiences. Well known in his field as a technical writer, he spent time as a book reviewer for technical journals and regularly contributed to professional publications.
As a spare-time novelist he had several short stories published. In 2002, writing as Alan Frost, he was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association’s Debut Dagger Award. More recently, his self-published novel, Playpits Park, has been downloaded as an eBook more than 4000 times.
Richard has been a trustee of a Scottish Charitable Organisation, acting first as its project manager and then its technical advisor. He now writes full time. He currently lives in the Scottish Borders, not too far away from Edinburgh.
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The Man Who Played Trains: The gripping new thriller from the author of Playpits Park Page 55
