By H.W. Crocker III
Rod Dreher is hard at work on a book about “Weimar America.” The disturbing trends that trouble Dreher—the rise of antisemitism and social alienation, the decline of Christianity, and the prospect of civilizational war—are also the subject, in another context, of Kruger’s Korps, my latest book, which I would like to discuss because there is more to it than its cover of spiraling Lugers might suggest.
At first glance, Kruger’s Korps is a fast-paced World War II action-adventure tale about American spies infiltrating the German Afrika Korps. On that level, I would like to think it offers first-rate entertainment and has everything a reader would expect from the genre: battles, mystery, a beautiful woman, and shocking plot twists.
And it has some things—indeed, many things—that one would not expect to find, including references to Nietzsche and Ernst Jünger; a cameo appearance by Fr. Marcel Lefebvre (!); and a good dose of humor.
But it is also, in a sense, a tragic book. Fatherland plays a role in it, of course, but so does fatherhood: both the nobility of fatherhood and its tragedy. Without giving too much away, the plot turns, at least in part, on the misdeeds of a prodigal son who grew up with every advantage and was well instructed in duty, honor, and piety, in a family that lived those virtues, and who nevertheless went astray—astray in a grave and perverse way to an extraordinary degree.
I imagine this part of the story will be painfully relevant to many Catholic parents.
The prodigal son of Kruger’s Korps is a German who grew up in a time of extreme pressure, spanning the First World War, the Weimar Republic, and the Nazi regime. If we think raising young people today is difficult, consider raising them then.
The hero of the story is another young man, Rolf Kruger, born in Germany but raised in the United States—in Hollywood, no less—where his father works as a carpenter/set designer and Kruger himself works as an extra and fencing instructor.
The contrast between these two young men born in Germany—the prodigal son and Kruger—is a central theme of the book. The prodigal son has rebelled against the best of German culture (and against his father, who represents it; “a man of the Habsburgs, not a man of Hitler” is a recurring phrase), while embracing the worst, losing his moral compass entirely (and, with it, his reason).
If America is going through its own Weimar moment, it is important not to make the common but serious categorical error of taking Adolf Hitler for a “traditionalist,” as, for example, the former CEO of Daily Wire, Jeremy Boreing, recently did on his podcast.
Hitler was anything but a traditionalist. He was a radical modern, an atheist and anti-Christian (he much preferred Islam), which is why Evelyn Waugh could say that the Hitler-Stalin pact represented “the modern age in arms.”
It is a point I make not only in Kruger’s Korps, but in my history of the Catholic Church, Triumph, where I quote the great historian John Lukacs, who notes that “the greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler. . . His greatest reactionary opponent, Churchill,” was the traditionalist.
The prodigal son of Kruger’s Korps rejects traditionalism and his inherited Catholic faith in favor of political radicalism, first National Socialism and then communism (an evolution not uncommon, though it usually went the other way).
The young German-American Kruger, by contrast, takes another path. He remains Catholic and clings to the traditional values of his father. He becomes an officer in the United States Navy and then a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (and never stops praying his rosary). He embraces all the heroic virtues that Hollywood once proclaimed in its films and becomes a hero himself.
For a book that seems like a mere adventure story, the intention is to give the attentive reader much to think about. Some historical characters have walk-on roles, and great themes—politics and religion, loyalty and morality—emerge amid the gunfire, the speeding jeeps, the panzers, the challenges and dangers that drive the plot.
Nothing I fear more than boring a reader, so the pace is kept at full throttle, and I trust no one will find Kruger’s Korps didactic or preachy. But it is something of a parable—brief, concise, and, I hope, memorable—in an unexpected form: a novel about Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps and a secret mission that could change the outcome of the Second World War.
As a war story, it is about panzers and airplanes, yes, but also about individual courage and conscience, and about doing the right thing even in the face of temptation, pointed Lugers, and desperate enemies. If it finds its way into the suitcase of a son heading off to college, it might offer some inoculation against conforming to popular evils, including some of the same ones students face today (such as resurgent communism).
Kruger’s Korps is written to appeal to a broad audience. It is very cinematic in its presentation, and the narrative tension is kept high (as virtually every reviewer has noted, including here, here, here, and here).
Even in these post-literary times, I hope it finds a wide readership because it is, in its own way, all about the Good News.
About the Author
H.W. Crocker III is a popular historian and novelist. His classic history of the Catholic Church, Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church – A 2,000 Year History, updated and expanded, has just been reissued in hardcover, and his classic history of the United States Army, Don’t Tread on Me, updated and expanded, has been reissued in paperback.