The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis And The Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked The World, Macintyre - A*

             "The underlying forces that produced the crisis in London more than forty years ago still agonize and destabilize our world. Britain had never before faced an international hostage-taking incident on this scale, and the siege changed forever the way terrorism was perceived, and dealt with."

              At a little after 11 in the morning on April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen entered the Iranian Embassy in Kensington, and quickly gathered up the twenty six people in the building. The police were there in minutes and the gunmen handed them a statement. They were Iranian Arab opponents of the new theocracy, who had been helped, financed and trained by Iraq, and demanded the release of 91 prisoners held by the secret police in Iran. Police, paramilitaries, firemen, medical professionals and special forces, all from different security entities, soon surrounded the building. There was limited contact between Salim, the nom de guerre of the leader, Ibrahim Towfiq, and the police hostage negotiators over the course of the day before the embassy settled in for the night. On the second day, anxieties rose as the deadline of noon for Iran to release the prisoners approached. Salim kept extending the deadline while changing his demands, and eventually asked for twenty five hamburgers and released two hostages. At day's end, little had changed and the SAS was deployed for immediate action if necessary. The third day saw the hostages and the gunmen becoming more friendly and beginning to care for each other's well-being. As the days wore on, Salim was exhausted and frustrated by the British media's failure to publish his demands and political statements. Late on the fourth day, the authorities allowed the BBC to release Salim's demands leading to a joyous celebration among the hostages and the gunmen. The release of two more hostages led to the delivery of a celebratory meal. The fifth day saw no movement or change and the authorities decided that they would enter the embassy on the sixth day.

            At 12:55 pm on May 5th, the gunmen killed an Iranian hostage who was a member of the Revolutionary Guards. Six hours later, the SAS was ordered to take the embassy. At 7:23, with the tv cameras rolling, explosives blew the skylight on the roof and the commandos entered the building. Tear gas grenades smashed through the windows and the gunmen began shooting at the hostages. Salim was the first killed when he pointed a submachine gun at the commandos. Four more terrorists fell in the melee. The youngest hostage taker was the only one captured alive. Only one hostage died. It was over in eleven minutes. 

           The British people were terribly proud and patriotic and the new PM, Margaret Thatcher, was ascendant. John Le Carre proclaimed it a triumph. The SAS was praised around the world, and was used extensively two years later in the Falklands. Saddam Hussein continued his war against Iran in an eight year grind that killed a million men. The young Fowzi Nejad was tried and sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2008. This is a truly superb book by an excellent writer, and has been totally fascinating - because I had no idea this had happened.

A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention Into The Russian Civil War, Reid - B+

            "The operation was substantial. Some 180,000 Allied  troops from sixteen countries took part, in half a dozen theatres ranging from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic, and from Poland to the Pacific. It ended two years later with fewer than two thousand Allied lives lost and one not insignificant gain - independence for the Latvians and Estonians. But as to overthrowing the Bolsheviks, it completely failed." The war was not very bloody as battles were few and far between, but the violence perpetrated against civilians, particularly Jews, was extensive.

           Almost immediately upon assuming power, Lenin asked Germany for an armistice, and signed the Best-Litovsk Treaty in March, 1918. The Allies considered the treaty a "heinous betrayal and the Bolsheviks traitors in German pay." That summer, Wilson  agreed to Britain's and France's request to intervene in Russia. When the British landed in Baku and Archangel and the US and Japanese  in Vladivostok, the Bolsheviks realized the counter-revolution was at hand. Thousands of counter-revolutionaries were executed, and British and French diplomats were expelled. In the closing months of 1917, British and American forces moved south from Archangel and engaged the Russians in light skirmishing before winter set in. The British occupied Baku for six weeks before the Bolsheviks repulsed them. In Vladivostok, the Americans sat tight with no orders from home, the Japanese occupied Manchuria, and the White Russians formed a government under Adm. Kolchak. At war's end, the Royal Navy sailed through the Dardanelles to the Crimea bringing men, supplies and money for the Whites.

         "The 1919 campaigning season was when the Civil War reached its climax." Kolchak was the first to move, with 130,000 men, into western Siberia. He was spectacularly successful and by April was near theVolga. Just to his north in Perm, the Reds pushed back a British-Russian Brigade that retreated north on the Kama River. Both the US and UK concluded that there was no real strategic objective in the Arctic north and began withdrawing their troops from Murmansk and Archangel. General Denikin led the White forces in the south north to Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad, Volgograd), and to Kiev. As the Whites advanced, they sanctioned and participated in a vast number of pogroms labelling the Jews as Bolsheviks. "For the British government, Denikin's massacres and mass rapes were a side issue, only of serious concern in so far as they caused political embarrassment." 

           In the Baltics, the British asked the occupying Germans to stay on after the Armistice. Intervention came in the spring of 1919 as French, English, and Baltic Germans came together to fight the Reds.  They marched on Petrograd and reached to within twelve miles of the former capital. They were pushed back and fled south. Soon, Estonia and Latvia reached accords with the Bolsheviks and achieved their independence.

         At this point in 1919, the Whites still held all of Siberia and much of what had been the Russian Empire in the south. In September, Denikin began his bid for Moscow. His forces quickly ran out out of supplies, and began to fall back. Trotsky now had Kolchak retreating to the east and Denikin to the south. "The Whites were failing, the British could not support them forever." Kolchak's flight to Vladivostok ended in Irkutsk when the Reds captured and executed him. In the Russian heartland, the Whites and the remaining Allied troops fled to the Black Sea ports hoping for British evacuation. By March 1920, the Crimea was in Red hands. 

        The intervention was a colossal failure causing Churchill to lose his seat in Parliament in 1922, and was conceded by many to have contributed to the instability in Germany and Czechoslovakia. For the US, it is believed to have fed the appetite for isolationism and cemented the USSR in its anti-western beliefs.  It appears to me that it was a knee jerk reaction to communism, and that the US had no real sense of why it intervened and no strategy at all. At least we had the sense to not get as deeply committed as Britain. This author lambastes Churchill as borderline delusional in his enthusiasm. Interestingly, decades ago, George F. Kennan took Wilson to task.

      

Our Nazi: An American Suburb's Encounter With Evil, Soffer- B+

         In December 1982, Dr. Jack Swanson, the principal of Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF), read in the Chicago Sun-Times that the US was seeking to deport Reinhold Kulle, his chief custodian, for his membership in the SS and his role in a Silesian slave labor camp.

         A teenager and member of the Hitler Youth, Kulle joined the Death Head's Division in 1940. He was seriously wounded in Russia in early 1942. Unfit for combat duty, he was assigned to Gross-Rosen. He served there for two-and-a-half years. During his time there, he met and married Gertrude, who gave birth to a daughter, Ulricke. They escaped to the American sector at war's end, their son Rainer was born in 1949, and they received a visa for the US in 1957. Thousands of former Nazis made it to America, and Chicago was a favored destination. In 1959, Kulle obtained employment at OPRF even though his marriage certificate referred to his SS rank. A hard worker with many skills, Kulle was promoted as he and his family enjoyed life in suburban America in the 1960's. He became the "staff and faculty members go to," and was known throughout the community as someone who always performed his job well and helped others. His supervision and management of the department,  as well as his work ethic, led to the school being considered one of the best maintained in the area.

         In the 1970's, the US increased its efforts to find and deport former Nazi's and their collaborators. The Supreme Court ruled that the deception in the obtainment of a visa was enough to deport someone, it was not necessary to prove specific wrongdoing. In 1981, a cross-referencing evaluation of German documents and US visa records surfaced Kulle's name. When questioned, he acknowledged lying on his visa application. As his deportation hearing took place in a federal court, it garnered little attention in Oak Park, where the school board decided to say and do nothing until the court ruled. Nonetheless, the issue was beginning to cause a crack in the community's proud belief in its diverse and welcoming philosophy as the supporters of the widely admired custodian lined up against the much smaller Jewish community. The school's faculty weighed in requesting Kulle's dismissal. After colleagues, his Jewish daughter in law, and Hispanic grandson testified about his character, Kulle took the stand. The essence of his defense was that he was a combat soldier who marched on guard duty, did not persecute the prisoners and indeed, didn't even see them from where he was stationed. And there was no question on his visa application asking about the SS. The school board met with Kulle and at the end of the discussion, he stated, "I feel very, very bad. I just wish we had won the war." In January 1984, Kulle was placed on terminal leave, and would no longer work for the district effective the end of the academic year. The majority of people in the community opposed his separation. That May, two hundred and fifty people came to his retirement party to honor and praise him. That summer, the deportation order was issued, and after an appeal, Reinhold Kulle was sent to West Germany in 1987. He died in 2006.

         This is a very well done micro-history shared on a broad canvas of the war, the Holocaust, SS practices, US's postwar immigration policies, and the shocking amount of antisemitic, Nazi supporting deplorables in the Chicago area and on a national level. Patrick Buchanan stands out as particularly disgraceful. It should be noted that the author currently teaches at Lake Forest High School.

The Detective Up Late, McKinty - B+

                  Duffy strikes a deal with the RUC. Because a double agent being run by MI-5 is more reliant on Sean than anyone else, he negotiates an understanding whereby he can move to the safety of Scotland and come back to Belfast seven days per month. He'll  be  able to work part time for three years, reach twenty and retire. Beth has a teaching position across the water and Emma is as happy as a toddler can be in their new home. He only has to work one more case, a missing person matter involving a teenage traveler girl. He and Sgt. McCrabban push very hard and find the killer. On his last day, Duffy kills two IRA hitmen going after the double agent, hops the ferry, and leaves Northern Ireland.

A Punishing Breed, Frost - B+

                This debut novel is very good and features LAPD Detective DJ Arias. A murder at a small liberal arts college brings in Arias and his team. The womanizing VP of Development is found stabbed in his office, and a few days later, so is his secretary, who maintained a blue notebook tracking his many conquests. Privilege and the institutional protection of a sexual predator is the theme. How this turns out as a series is not quite obvious, as some of the people working at the college are better drawn and more interesting than the detective. 

Sherlock Holmes The Affair At Mayerling Lodge, Lawrence - B

             In early 1889, Britain's PM calls on Holmes at 221B Baker Street and asks him to go to Vienna to assist the Emperor Franz Joseph. The emperor in turn asks Holmes to ascertain the loyalty of his son, the Crown Prince Rudolph. The next day, Holmes is on his way to Mayerling Lodge to investigate the deaths of Rudolph and the young baroness found in bed with him. Both had died from a gunshot wound from Rudolph's pistol and left suicide notes. After his examination of the Prince's room, Holmes declares it was not suicide. As he interviews people in close proximity to the royal family, he creates a lengthy list of suspects. He further concludes that Rudolph, who has sympathies for the Hungarians and who was beyond bored, was intriguing to assume the Crown of St. Stephen. Upon completion of his investigation, Holmes speaks to the assembled royals to advise them of his conclusions. He asserts that the young Baroness indeed killed herself, but that Rudolph was assassinated by a cabal led by the Archdukes, the emperor's brothers. As they begin to defend their actions, Mycroft Holmes steps up, tells his younger brother to cease and return to London, and admonishes Watson to not write about this investigation. Watson puts pen to paper thirty years later and his story is found a century later.

           I believe I've read everything Conan Doyle wrote, and I'm certain I have read many of the wonderful modern era speculations and additions to the canon. I'd have to grade this a weak addition that is more history than mystery. Speaking of,  history is certain that it was a suicide pact and not the archdukes.