Carl Hiltbrand
Published: 2005-01-14
Total Pages: 641
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Germany in 1930 is in a state of chaos. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles force Germany to pay reparations that are bleeding the country dry. The political climate is ripe for a revolution. The people feel a mixture of hatred, hopelessness and despondency. ADOLPH HITLER is about to step onto the world stage to lead the country out of the oppressive situation. HAROLD ANDERSON and his wife MARY, who is seven months pregnant with what she believes is one child, arrive in Bremerhaven, Germany from the United States during that bleak year. . Unknowingly, the Andersons are thrust into a political cauldron, which will affect their lives forever. Mary’s labor pains start unexpectedly. One twin son is born as Mary faints from pain and exhaustion. Another identical twin son is delivered by the German doctor, using caesarean surgery, while Mary is still unconscious. Unknown to the parents, he is taken immediately to a German specialist, EMIL VON HOFFEN, who saves his life but plans to secretly separate him from his twin brother and American parents. Harold and Mary are never made aware of their second child, and they return to the United States. The second twin is adopted by Doctor von Hoffen, who plans to use him, along with other sets of twins, in experiments to develop the perfect Aryan German. Eric von Hoffen, the German twin is raised as a Nazi youth. At age fifteen Eric is honored by Hitler personally. He becomes part of the elite guard force at the Fuherbunker in Berlin near the final end of the ‘Third Reich’. Eric actually witnesses the burial and burning of the corpses of Adolph Hitler and EVA BRAUN. Meanwhile in the United States, Harold Jr., while in college, rescues a girl, DONNA COX, from the influence of the worst of the night world, prostitution. The brown-haired beauty and Harold fall in love and marry following his graduation from the University. . . . Their idyllic life is interrupted when Harold Jr. is drafted into the military in early 1953, during the Korean War. He is shipped to West Germany where he discovers the existence and identity of his twin brother and the intrigue that led to the separation of the twins at their birth. It is now 1988. Harold Anderson Jr. is voted president-elect of the United States. Eric plots the kidnapping of his brother and is successful in usurping the presidency. The deception fails later when Harold is rescued and confronts his brother in the oval office of the White House. All the indoctrination and brainwashing by the Nazis during his youth could not blot the love von Hoffen held secretly for his brother all those years. He perhaps did not realize it himself as he made the instantaneous decision to leap in front of a bullet meant for his brother. In a climactic scene near the end, the president holds his dying brother in his arms as life ebbs from him. “As Abel would have forgiven Cain, I forgive my brother. He was a casualty of a ruthless society and belief. Let’s hope he truly is, the last Nazi.”