The research process for The Nazi’s Son was a fairly lengthy one and proved fascinating. I know that many of my readers like to check out some of the sources I have drawn on and do their own background reading into the factual backdrops I use for my fictional stories, so here is just a flavor of some of the main websites, books, and articles that proved useful to me.
To get an overview of the fall of the Soviet empire and the domino-style collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, there is no better starting point than a Pulitzer Prize–winning book by David Remnick entitled Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. It is a combination of history and modern journalism by a writer who was a Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post. You can find it on Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0679751254.
Another good overview can be found in The Fall of the GDR: Germany’s Road to Unity, by David Childs, available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00M9AR1I8.
A thorough and interesting review of Childs’s book can be found here: https://archives.history.ac.uk/history-in-focus/cold/reviews/palmowski.html
At the time of the 1989 revolutions, Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer in East Germany, based in Dresden. There has been speculation that the spectacle of the USSR’s empire crumbling has been one factor that has driven his current hard-line stance toward former Soviet countries. This includes the Ukraine, where during 2014 Russia took military action to annex the Crimea. The Crimea crisis features in The Nazi’s Son and the Putin theory is featured in The Guardian newspaper here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/01/putin-power-east-germany-russia-kgb-dresden
The strong links between the Stasi, the KGB, and various terrorist groups operating out of East Berlin during the 1970s and 1980s is a theme that is closely examined in a number of articles that are easily found online.
One of these is in The Washington Post, headlined “East Germany’s Dirty Secret.” The article includes an interview with an unnamed former Stasi agent who describes the way in which the Stasi and the KGB protected and assisted a variety of international terrorist organizations. You can find it at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/10/14/east-germanys-dirty-secret/09375b6f-2ae1-4173-a0dc-77a9c276aa4b/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4b3fb186aaf1
This feature tells how the head of the Stasi until 1986, Markus Wolf, had responsibility for the department that was most closely connected with Arab terrorism. The unnamed agent confirms how the Stasi and the KGB both knew that La Belle discotheque was to be bombed by the Libyan terrorists and did nothing to prevent it happening.
A book that also describes this scenario is Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, by John O. Koehler, which can be found at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0813337445.
A good review of Koehler’s book by Frank Bourgholtzer, entitled “The Agony and the Ex-Stasi,” can be found in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/055004017
An insight into how the Soviet Union effectively acted as a state sponsor of terrorism during that period can be found in The Atlantic here: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/how-the-soviet-union-transformed-terrorism/250433/
And The Times has reported how the Stasi acted as a proxy consultant, facilitator, and provider of weapons and training for the KGB, delivering on the anti-American and anti-Western projects that the Kremlin wanted to implement during the Cold War period. These may have included the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988. See: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lockerbie-reveals-stasi-s-history-of-exporting-terror-6rwvmq5fh
The bombing of La Belle itself is detailed in many news articles available online. For example, the New York Times coverage can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/06/world/2-killed-155-hurt-in-bomb-explosion-at-club-in-berlin.html
There is a YouTube video that shows footage from the time, including all the damage outside the nightclub. Ignore the propaganda text below the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpNcZVepLKw
And the BBC’s website carried a flashback in 2001: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1653848.stm
There is a short summary of the La Belle bombing and its aftermath on the Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_West_Berlin_discotheque_bombing
One issue that is not in doubt is that the attack on La Belle led directly to President Ronald Reagan ordering the US bombing of Libya on April 15, 1986. This strike, involving F-111 strike aircraft based in the United Kingdom, hit a Tripoli airfield, an army barracks in Tripoli, and a frogman training center. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had a residence at the barracks, but managed to escape after receiving advance warning.
Moving on to other issues, it came as a surprise to me to find that large numbers of former Stasi employees had been able to obtain jobs in the German civil service—and we are talking about thousands of people. So it should not come as a surprise to you that a key character in The Nazi’s Son, Reiner Schwartz, is working in a senior role for the German Ministry of Defense. More detail on this topic can be found in this article in the German news magazine Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/desk-jobs-for-secret-police-thousands-of-ex-stasi-still-work-for-german-civil-service-a-635230.html
Another article, about ex-Stasi staff working at the archives department of the former East German secret police, appeared in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/27/stasi-officers-still-employed-east-german-secret-police-archives
Those who enjoyed my account of Joe Johnson’s desperate escape from Russia into Finland via the Saimaa Canal and decide that a similar boat trip sounds appealing will find that it is actually quite feasible to achieve. A lot of leisure boats traverse the canal alongside the commercial traffic. Try these two videos to get a feel for how the waterway operates and the surrounding terrain.
The first is at: https://secure.action.news/watch?v=AMJ99WajV-A
The second, on YouTube, can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWHTetb2Ugw
There actually is an issue regarding the smuggling of illegal migrants through the canal from Russia into Finland, with the Finnish Border Guard taking action against the owners of boats used for this purpose. See this news story: http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/15165-hs-family-of-three-suspected-of-smuggling-over-70-people-to-finland.html
The Nazi’s Son is largely set during the weeks following the annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014, and most of the steps taken by NATO countries to send naval vessels into the Black Sea happened as described in the book. Perhaps the most dramatic incident during that period was when a destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, was repeatedly buzzed over a ninety-minute period by a Russian Sukhoi SU-24 fighter aircraft. This episode features in the book. However, in real life, the US president did not visit the ship and was not on board at the time—I invented that aspect for dramatic effect.
For an account by Reuters of that incident, see: https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-russia-blacksea/update-1-russian-jets-passes-near-u-s-ship-in-black-sea-provocative-pentagon-idUSL2N0N60V520140414
A number of other NATO ships were also sent to the region, including French and US vessels, as described in the book.
Yuri Severinov is described in the book as owning the fictional Krasnodar oil refinery near Tuapse, on Russia’s Black Sea coast. There actually is a real oil refinery in that area, the Tuapse refinery, owned by Russian oil and gas giant Rosneft. See: https://www.rosneft.com/business/Downstream/Neftepererabotka/OilRefineries/TuapseRefinery/
There were, of course, many other sources that I drew on while compiling The Nazi’s Son. I could not possibly list them all, but the ones I have listed above represent a reasonable selection and might form a starting point for any readers who want to investigate the details in this book further.
I hope all that is of use and of interest. Please e-mail me if you have any questions at andrew@andrewturpin.com
Published by Andrew Turpin