Book Review - 'HHhH' by Laurent Binet
This is Laurent Binet’s first novel, written in French, translated by Sam Taylor.
‘Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Gestapo.
This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Nazi secret services. His boss is Heinrich Himmler but everyone in the SS says ‘Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich’, which in German spells out HHhH.
All the characters in HHhH are real. All the events depicted are true. But alongside the nerve-shredding preparations for the attack runs another story: when you are a novelist writing about real people, how do you resist the temptation to make things up?’
Despite having read a good amount of WW2 history, I know there’s still loads I’ve yet to discover.
This was a prime example; if I had come across mention of Operation Anthropoid before this book, I don’t remember it. And I certainly didn’t know any of the details.
Even though the book is labelled a ‘novel’, it’s also a work of non-fiction in that it tells of actual historical events.
The plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich is told in thoroughly researched detail.
But, unlike other works of historical non-fiction I’ve read, here Binet also shares his internal struggle writing about characters and events that actually existed.
In the opening lines of the book, Binet introduces the Slovak parachutist, Jozef Gabčík:
“Gabčík – that’s his name – really did exist… His story is as true as it is extraordinary. He and his comrades are, in my eyes, the authors of one of the greatest acts of resistance in human history, and without doubt the greatest of the Second World War.”
He then reveals his dilemma:
“For a long time I have wanted to pay tribute to him. For a long time I have seen him, lying in his little room… listening to the creak of the tram (going which way? I don’t know)… But if I put this image on paper, as I’m sneakily doing now, that won’t necessarily pay tribute to him. I am reducing this man to the ranks of a vulgar character and his actions to literature: an ignominious transformation, but what else can I do?... I just hope that, however bright and blinding the veneer of fiction that covers this fabulous story, you will still be able to see through it to the historical reality that lies behind.”
Binet tells us he’d been aware of the story behind Operation Anthropoid since he was a child when his father had told him about it and the fascination stayed with him into his adult years.
While working as a French teacher in a Slovakian military academy, he learned more details, which only served to whet his appetite. And while in Slovakia, he realised that the two parachutists – Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, who was Czech – were “part of the historical landscape.”
Instead of immediately delving into the lives of the two heroes, Binet first spends time detailing, from childhood, the life of Reinhard Heydrich, born in 1904.
By the time we get to the end of the First World War, Heydrich is in his mid-teens and “enrols in the Freikorps, a militia that wishes to take over from the army by fighting everything to the left of the extreme right.”
Instead of laying out what Heydrich’s life might have been like in these years, Binet gives us a few pertinent details:
“During this time, the Freikorps spread all over the place. One of them came from the ‘white’ navy brigade led by the famous Captain Erhardt. His insignia was a swastika and his battle song was entitled ‘Hakenkreuz am Stahlhelm’ (‘Swastika on a Steel Helmet’). For me, that sets the scene better than the longest description in the world.”
What I particularly appreciated about this book was the wealth of interesting detail. For example, apart from being Labour Day, May 1st is also the anniversary of the founding of the SS, not something anyone wishes to celebrate…
“On May 1, 1925, Hitler founded an elite body of troops, originally intended to protect his safety. A bodyguard made up of overtrained fanatics corresponding to strict racial criteria. This was the ‘protection squadron’, the Schutzstaffel, better known as the SS.”
By 1931, no longer in the navy, Heydrich enrols in the SS, a “tall blond in black uniform: horsey face, high-pitched voice, well-polished boots.”
He impresses his boss, Heinrich Himmler, enough for the man to send Heydrich to Munich to start working on forming the “SD: Sicherheitsdienst, the security service. The least-known and the most sinister of all Nazi organizations. Including the Gestapo.”
I have to admit, that gave me chills – an organisation even more sinister than the Gestapo.
In relating the events leading up to the signing of the Munich Agreement, Binet’s use of simple words adds awful poignancy to the “death sentence of Czechoslovakia”.
“Chamberlain, on a balcony in London: ‘My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.’
Krofta, the Czech foreign minister: ‘They have put us in this situation. Now it’s our turn; tomorrow it will be their turn.’
Churchill’s words… ‘We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat.’… ‘You had to choose between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour. You will have war.’”
By the time we get to this stage in the story, Binet is no longer scared of Heydrich, “the target, not the protagonist.”
He knows his “two heroes are late making their entrance.” They are the ones he finds intimidating.
Binet gives the impression of wanting to get the introductions of Gabčík and Kubiš right; his worry is obvious when he realises he’s made some mistakes.
At the end of the day, the men end up in England and, in a way, that’s really all that matters.
The Czechoslovak president, Edvard Beneš, who had resigned after the Munich Agreement, continues with a Czech government-in-exile.
If the Allies are victorious, the exiled president has to make sure Czechoslovakia will be in a strong position to be taken seriously. What better way than to launch a powerful strike against the Nazis in the form of an assassination.
Binet is pretty sure that it was President Beneš who decided the mission must be carried out by a Czech and a Slovak, “two men to symbolize the indivisible unity of the two peoples.”
Despite the dearth of information on the two men compared to Heydrich, they come across as real men. It’s almost as if its enough to know that they willingly accepted the mission, to parachute back into their homeland, now enemy territory, knowing it would, most likely, lead to their deaths.
Their target? Reinhard Heydrich, “interim Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Hangman of his people, Butcher of Prague… the Blond Beast…”
In the SS, they refer to him as “‘HHhH’… Himmlers Hirn heist Heydrich – Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich…”
Once the men are in enemy territory, the tension gradually intensifies. I had to stop myself reading too far ahead.
More characters are introduced, the brave souls who put themselves in harm’s way to help Gabčík and Kubiš accomplish their mission.
Binet agonises over these people, knowing he cannot name them all and tell us of their bravery and sacrifice.
When it comes to the actual mission and its aftermath, there’s no need to insert any extra action. The simple daring and courage of our two heroes and their cohorts are enough to carry the narrative forward.
And what bravery they show as they carry out their mission. The way the events play out only serves to underline the cliché of truth being stranger than fiction.
Although I wasn’t sure to begin with, it didn’t take me long to settle into Binet’s style of interspersing his thoughts with the story. Shared in first-person, it felt as if we were having a face-to-face discussion about his constant worries as to whether he was doing the story and characters justice.
Some might find that off-putting, but I found it added to the experience. I welcomed his ‘interruptions’ as the subject matter is pretty heavy-going.
Binet includes examples of Nazi atrocities, including the Lidice massacre. His unembellished style somehow emphasises the awfulness.
I appreciate his determination to keep to the facts and not insert bits of fiction simply as a means to enhance those facts.
I must admit, I’ve never given it much thought, the ease with which real events are changed simply to fit the plot of a story or film.
Binet speaks of a visit from an old university friend who, like Binet, is also passionate about history. His friend reads the early chapters and, as they discuss them, Binet realises his friend is under the impression Binet has invented events that actually took place.
He rages to the reader, “Everyone finds it normal, fudging reality to make a screenplay more dramatic… It’s because of people like that, forever messing with historical truth just to sell their stories, that an old friend, familiar with all these fictional genres… accustomed to these processes of glib falsification, can say to me in innocent surprise, ‘Oh, really, it’s not invented?’ No, it’s not invented! What would be the point in ‘inventing’ Nazism?”
In writing about Operation Anthropoid the way he has, Binet has done a sterling job in paying tribute to Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, true heroes of the Second World War.