The novel “Nuremberg: The Reckoning” by William F. Buckley, Jr. is a gripping piece of literature that takes the reader through some of the worst parts of American history.
Buckley, the founder of National Review and the host of “Firing Line,” is also the author of 14 other novels, and many other books. He resides in Connecticut.
He uses fictional characters, along with the actual participants in the Nurember trials to take the reader into the depths of the trials and tribulations that came as a result of World War II.
Buckley tells a story of an actual historical event through the lives of Axel, Annabelle, Henrietta and Sebastian. He weaves an intrigal path out of their lives, and places them right in the middle of the Nuremberg Trials; each in his or her own way.
Sebastian takes becomes Buckley’s protagonist as he grows and matures into a young man. Born in Germany before the start of the war at age 13, he and his mother move to America at the urgence of his grandmother, Henrietta. Once in America he gets drafted into the Army, and with his fluent German becomes an interpreter and interrogator at the Nuremberg Trials.
The novel is not only about the struggles faced by those involved in Nuremberg, but it is also about the trials of a young man learning of his true identity through his family’s history.
Buckley transports the reader in to Germany during the war and just after the war ended through graphic descriptions of the surrounding devastation and the struggles faced by the German people after the war ended. It also takes the reader through the Nazi concentration camp known as Joni, as well as Warsaw, Berlin, Lodz, Munich, Hamburg and various other places in the German landscape.
One flaw in the book is the reader never gets a real feel for the atrocities committed at the camps. He takes the reader through the conception of the camp at Joni, to the end when it is order to be destroyed, but never goes into detail about what really went on there.
I think it would have been beneficial to have that perspective to give the reader background on the charges brought up against the Germans. And how horrible it was for the Jewish people and the others who were kept there.
He makes the relationships between the characters seem natural and as though they really took place. He used the invented characters as tools to show the way history happened.
One of the main character in the book, Amadeus, is a fictional character brilliantly devised and interwoven into the story by Buckley. He is one of the pivotal characters in the story.
The novel looks at an event that changed history for the whole world. The Nuremberg Trials were the first time in history when people stood trial for their actions during war time.
Buckley took an event in history and turned it into a fictional masterpiece.
