I read this book for the European Reading Challenge
The Spies of Warsaw
– Alan Furst
Pre-World War II Warsaw becomes an arena of intense international
rivalry. In almost every embassy an intelligence cell operates, spies of
Western and Eastern powers feverishly collect information about preparations
for war, both those carried out by opponents and by allies. Warsaw is full of
secret agents who create a colorful society, operating under the
guise of the embassies of their countries. Poles, French, Germans, Russians -
everyone knows that in the war is coming and that you have to prepare for it or
be destroyed. Everyone believes that by their intelligence activities they will
save their countrymen from being lost or that they will ensure victory for the
homeland.
Our hero Jean-François Mercier, the French military
attaché, also knows that armed conflict is inevitable. At 46, he has already
participated the Great War and the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1920. He has performed long and dedicated service, and he would like to leave for a well-deserved
retirement, but a sense of responsibility for the fate of millions keeps him on
post. He skillfully navigates in a narrow diplomatic world, but does not avoid
a direct, even painful clash, with an opponent, worthy or not. His strength is certainly increased
by the warm feeling of a beautiful French-Polish woman working for the League
of Nations that she met at a boring official reception. Mercier discovers that
first of all he is not so old, and secondly - that he is not only ready for
retirement, he is ready to go to extremes.
The book details Mercier’s activities in episodes. He
runs agents and even saves one from being kidnapped and forcibly repatriated to
a certain death in Germany. He sneaks into Germany to observe tank exercises.
On his travels, in hotels and restaurants, a foreboding sometimes comes over him, “What
is going to happen to these people after war comes.” He meets ordinary people
who are fighting the forces of evil – literally – because it is the right thing
to do.
The settings all have evocative details of Silesia and
the countryside of Poland (think rural New Jersey). Furst is also effective at
getting across the mundane details of regular people doing their best in
trying circumstances. We readers need the romantic angle as a break from the
suspenseful intrigue and tension of Nazi cruelty. We readers also know what the
characters do not: Poland is doomed to Nazi occupation and will be the most
damaged country staggering out of World War II.
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