Jan EliasbergCritiques

During WWII scientists in both Germany and the US were working on creating nuclear bombs to destroy each other and others.

This forever life-changing, dangerous research didn't begin randomly. Centuries of poverty, deprivation, failure, abuse, extreme hatred, xenophobia, superstitions, anti-Semitism, bloody wars, misinformation and propaganda led to even larger, far more heinous, vile, abhorrent, diabololical and unstoppable ideas for evil. All with the goal of killing millions!

Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists are working frantically in a hidden desert laboratory in New Mexico. This is where Jack meets Hannah. A brilliant and beautiful German Jewish scientist who worked in Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under the thumb of nazi scientists. She was protected from deportation as long as she was useful. And she was until they tired of her Jewishness. Stefan Frei, a close friend, spirited her to safety.

Because she sent and received coded postcards to and from Frei from New Mexico, Jack interrogated her believing she was helping the nazis. To save Frei she omits key information from Jack which infuriates the US Government's intelligence personnel. They arrest her as a traitor and spy. But it is Jack who goes to Germany and learns the truth.

This novel highlights the glaring hypocrisy of the US, described as the land of the free, for its very own brand of ingrained hatred of Jews, minorities and foreigners. And this 'great' country which could have modeled peace chose NOT to abort the Manhattan project once it was learned that hitler was dead.

Sad.

Good read.

I've read a few historical novels centered around the Manhattan Project, but this one definitely stands out. The author pairs an engaging narrative with the dramatic history of the atomic bomb. I was delighted to find a bibliography at the end (yes, I'm that person!) and I hope to learn more about Lise Meitner and the other researchers who contributed to the Manhattan Project.

In April 1945, U.S. intelligence has uncovered a security leak at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the Manhattan Project is building the atomic bomb. Suspicion falls most heavily on the scientists who’ve circulated a petition demanding ethical constraints on the weapon they’ve worked to invent, whose destructive power remains theoretical. What’s more, one signatory has just sent a telegram to her German counterparts in Europe, presumably to convey military secrets.

Said scientist, the only woman at Los Alamos with a high security clearance, is Dr. Hannah Weiss, an Austrian-Jewish physicist. She’s beautiful, brilliant, and tough to corner, a job that falls to Jack Delaney, superspy and seasoned interrogator. He has seventy-two hours to find out what, if anything, Hannah has told her friends in Germany.

Eliasberg tells this story in two narratives. With the Los Alamos story, she seamlessly integrates Hannah’s prewar work at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where, despite her exceptional gifts, she’s consigned to a basement laboratory, her findings ignored. “Jewish science” can possess no truth in Nazi Germany.

Eliasberg says that she has based Hannah on Lise Meitner, who received no credit for discovering nuclear fission, because Otto Hahn, with whom she had worked closely, left her name off the paper they published in 1939 so that their research would be taken seriously. Further, at his Nobel address in 1944, he conveniently omitted mentioning her. That in itself is a story, and though the novel follows a different path from her actual life, the Berlin narrative raises similar historical issues and derives tension from them.

Unfortunately, the Los Alamos sections don’t measure up. To be fair, Eliasberg, a screenwriter, keeps the pages turning rapidly throughout, and her dialog punches hard. When Jack and Hannah square off, the verbal jousting sets off sparks.

Better yet, the cat-and-mouse contest does more than furnish the necessities of thrillerdom; the interrogation covers questions of science and morality, the power of life and death, responsibility to individuals versus society at large. I also believe the re-creation of Los Alamos, with its hard partying, personal rivalries, and the tension and desperation of discovery with the world’s future at stake.

But I don’t accept the premise. They’re too quick in Los Alamos to slap handcuffs on Hannah and string her up, the stated justification for which runs as follows: Why would a Jewish refugee collaborate with the enemy? Because she must have slept with that enemy. I’m sure such sexist, anti-Semitic logic had its followers; General Leslie Groves, who commanded the Los Alamos installation, was a nasty piece of work, bigoted and ambitious, as the author portrays him here.

But that army or intelligence brass would rush to try Hannah before a military tribunal, threatening to hang her before you can say, “Albert Einstein,” stretches credulity. They would certainly have done more to figure out which secrets she’d passed, and what they were worth.

Are her friends working for Germany or the Soviets? The narrative waffles, and faced with that vagueness, the American spymasters plan to kill off famous German scientists right and left, a hasty, perplexing verdict. It’s also puzzling how, even in April 1945, everyone assumes the European conflict will go on forever, ignoring how Germany was in its last gasps.

In reality, battles still took place, but the Reich posed a greater threat to its citizens judged defeatist than its foreign enemies, and was certainly in no condition to develop or deliver an atomic weapon. Yet, somehow, the Los Alamos scientists greet the news of Germany’s collapse as a surprise.

With the exception of Groves, the army and intelligence characters feel flat, and the way they strut and shout gives the impression that they’re trying not to admit how empty and wrongheaded they are.

Even Jack, who receives more authorial care, strikes me as a stock character, the rough, tough guy with the usual manly trappings, who needs the right woman to let him be vulnerable. His role in the novel’s resolution, a clumsy, predictable section, wraps the story briskly but, like the rest of the Los Alamos plot, remains forgettable.

Compare that to the Berlin narrative. As before, surprises and twists abound, but the people seem natural, deeper, more complex. Special kudos to Eliasberg for creating characters whose Jewishness feels real, not a matter of convenience, as evidence of which they spend time and effort trying to practice their faith and cope with anti-Semitic decrees.

But the non-Jewish scientists who believe they have their handlers by the tail, only to find out the opposite, make an impression too. As a result, the tension feels higher here than in the other narrative, even though the bomb hasn’t been built yet, and the threats against Hannah are only potential.

Given all that, would the Lise Meitner/Hannah Weiss narrative have made a thriller by itself? It’s a great story, that’s for sure.

Wenn es um Kernspaltung geht, kennt wohl jeder den Namen Otto Hahn. Doch kaum jemand weiß, dass Lise Meitner an der Entdeckung beteiligt war. Da sie jüdisch war, wurde ihr nicht nur die Anerkennung verwehrt, sie musste auch fliehen.
Die Geschichte dieser Frau inspirierte die Autorin Jan Eliasberg zu Ihrem Roman. In ihrer fiktiven Geschichte steht die Physikerin Dr. Hannah Weiss kurz vor der bahnbrechenden Entdeckung der Atomspaltung. Aber unter dem Regime wird ihre Arbeit schwieriger und si gerät in Gefahr und muss fliehen.
In New Mexico soll der CIA-Agent Jack Delaney innerhalb kürzester Zeit einen Spion enttarnen, der geheime Informationen an die Deutschen verrät. So gerät Dr. Hannah Weiss unter Verdacht.
Erzählt wird diese Geschichte auf unterschiedlichen Zeitebenen. Mich hat die Geschichte gleich gepackt.
Frauen haben es in den dreißiger Jahren nicht leicht, einen anspruchsvollen Beruf auszuüben. Dazu muss Hannah als Jüdin in Deutschland miterleben, wie Angst und Repressalien um sich greifen. Als die Gefahr für sie zu groß wird, flieht sie. Später dann gerät sie aufgrund ihrer Herkunft wieder unter Verdacht. Jack Delaney muss den Verräter finden und seine Befragungen zielen darauf hin, Hannahs Geheimnisse herauszufinden. Doch auch er hat seine Geheimnisse, die er auf keinen Fall preisgeben will, und so entwickelt sich ein Katz- und-Maus-Spiel. Er fühlt sich zunehmend zu Hannah hingezogen.
Es ist ein spannender und sehr fesselnder Roman, der mir sehr gut gefallen hat.

A gripping story about the German physicist who in Berlin 1938 is on the verge of splitting the atom. The is a book that is very hard to put down and you will be pulled into the mystery of who in the top-secret nuclear lab at Los Alamos has been leaking encoded equations to Hitler's scientists.
I recommend this book to all that love a fast paced story with remarkable characters and well research history. All historical fiction fans will love this one..

This complex and frequently confusing novel is an intricate tale of deception and divided loyalties, set in the waning days of WWII.

Inspired partly by life of an Austrian Jewish physicist, Lise Meitner, and partly by the post-war discovery that Nazi scientists were nowhere near being able to produce a working nuclear bomb, Eliasberg has spun a story of double and triple cross, of espionage and counter-espionage, and of an Allied intelligence network that retained an internal level of distrust as it attempted to navigate a shifting world order.

We’re never really sure who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, even after all the secrets are revealed. Good guys do bad things, bad guys do good things, good guys working for the bad guys do good things that turn out to be bad, and bad guys working for the good guys do bad things that turn out to be good. Sort of. Or maybe not. Eliasberg appears to maintain this moral ambiguity purposely as she traces the internal conflict between scientific advance and the ethics of creating a weapon which could potentially destroy the world.

Fictional characters carry the story, involving an American OSS officer sent to Los Alamos to find and plug a suspected security leak, possibly coming from a woman physicist working closely with Oppenheimer and his Critical Analysis team as they prepared to construct and detonate the world’s first nuclear bomb. The cat-and-mouse between Hanna Weiss and Major Jack Delaney drive the major portion of the novel, with frequent flashbacks to Hanna’s early career with the Nazi nuclear project and her growing unease with the possibilities opened up by the weapon. The plotting is intricate, the action sometimes confusing, and not everyone is who they appear to be.

Readers looking for a feel-good tale about how America Saved the World won’t find it here. What they will find are nagging questions about might and right and whether the end justifies the means when the end cannot clearly be seen.½

Based on history of an unknown woman physicist who helped develop the Atomic Bomb at Los Alamos after fleeing Germany because she is a Jew. Accused of giving Germans information she is pursued by an OSS Major intent on uncovering possible spying in the close knit team developing the weapon.½

This was interesting. Knowing that Hannah was based off of a real physicist (of a different name) is very cool, but other than that, the book is fiction. The reason for so few stars is because I disliked the "beautiful woman who everyone falls for" trope. Outside of that, the story was tragic yet hopeful and the writing was good. But also, pretty sure some of the German sentences in there were incorrect...
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I'd like to learn more about the real female physicist behind the story, Dr. Lise Meitner. She discovered nuclear fission and was effectively erased from history. I'm glad this book opened up a door for me to learn her name so I can delve into my own research about her life.

A multi-faceted WWII era suspenseful drama: Hannah, a Jewish nuclear physicist who fled Germany and is assisting Oppenheimer's team of scientists in the New Mexico USA desert, and Jack Delaney, an intelligence expert for the US gov't (serving in the branch that would become the CIA) who is assigned to the New Mexico super secret gov't facility to determine who is leaking details of the "gadget"- the first atomic bomb- to a scientist within the German scientists' community still serving the Third Reich. The prose is crisp but evocative, almost philosophical and Hannah's inner turmoil and her past unspool at just the right pace. The lure and challenge of splitting an atom - the physics involved with all things atomic - is also presented straightforwardly - the passion and amoral/apolitical approach by many of the scientists, as well as the eventual flutters of moral hesitation and horror are also given its due. The backstories of both Hannah and Jack are presented in alternate narrative voices, but never confusing - and build the romantic tension, as well as the suspense of what Hannah's "spying" is truly about - engrossing from page one til the end!! From the sensory descriptions of the camp's rough, military structures, the desert climate, sunsets, and wide sky night-times, to the realistic delivery of give and take of military types, scientists, Jack's intelligence officer sidekick, and historical figures like Oppenheimer and Groves - well this has Hollywood written all over it.
If I recall, this is a first fiction for the author - I hope she does more!

WW2, science, historical-figures, historical-novel, historical-places-events, historical-research
*****
An exiled German scientist who is an anathema to the nazis because she is a Jewess is brought to Los Alamos to work with other scientists on a very secretive project. There she works with others in a very secret place and seems to be hounded by a suspicious war veteran working for the internal version of the OSS. I am at a loss as to how to convey how excellent this book is both on the fiction and historical research levels without going into spoilers. It is compelling and the imagery of persons, places, and emotions are spot on. I will be buying the audio when I can so that I can reread it when so motivated.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Little, Brown and Company via NetGalley. Thank you!

Hannah’s War is a historical fiction inspired by two scientists, Lise Meitner and Wener Heisenberg. Jan Eliasberg was intrigued by the oblique mention of Meitner in the New York Times story about the Manhattan Project. Her work was pivotal and some have called her the mother of the atom bomb. However, neither Meitner nor Heisenberg are characters. This is a fictional story about a Jewish physicist who fled Germany in 1938 and then joined the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.

There are two timelines in this story. In 1938, Hannah and Stefan Frei are falling in love as they search for the solution to nuclear fission in Nazi Germany. In 1945, Jack Delaney is falling in love with Hannah even as he becomes increasingly certain she is a traitor sending nuclear secrets to Nazi Germany. The story is full of romance and suspense.

I was engrossed by Hannah’s War from Hannahs’ arrest on the first page. How did she get to this place where she is facing execution. It does not make sense, why would a Jewish scientist help the Nazis? What hold do they have on her?

While this is Hannah’s War and she is the most important character, the two men in her life are also important and complex characters. Jack Delaney, the spy-catcher who falls in love with her is transformed and tested by this investigation. Stefan Frei, the German physicist, is also tested by his love for Hannah and the demands of being a German in 1938. There is an urgency to the tests they face, do they go along to get along or do they act against injustice.

Eliasberg also brings an honesty to the conflict, not pretending for one moment that the United States was also anti-Semitic while never making moral equivalencies. She makes clear the moral tests facing the scientists and the politicians and the high stakes they faced. It’s an excellent book, rich in historical detail with a thrilling espionage thread.

I received a copy of Hannah’s War from the publisher through Shelf Awareness.

Hannah’s War at Back Bay Books | Little, Brown, & Company
Jan Eliasberg author site
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2020/01/11/9780316537452/