His Majesty's Hope(111)
To research the Children’s Euthanasia Program, also known as Operation Compassionate Death (renamed Aktion T4 after the war), I relied on War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, by Edwin Black; The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, by Christopher R. Browning; Eugenics and Other Evils, by G. K. Chesterton; Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and People with Disabilities, by Suzanne E. Evans; The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, by Henry Friedlander; A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen; The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930–1965, by Michael Phayer; Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust, by Richard Rhodes; and Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience, by Gitta Sereny.
In researching the Special Operations Executive’s spies and the XX Committee, I relied on the following: Secret Agent’s Handbook: The Top Secret Manual of Wartime Weapons, Gadgets, Disguises and Devices, introduction by Roderick Bailey; The Insider’s Guide to 150 Spy Sites in London, by Mark Birdsall, Deborah Plisko, and Peter Thompson; SOE Agent: Churchill’s Secret Warriors, by Terry Crowdy; A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII, by Sarah Helm; Sisterhood of Spies, The Women of the OSS, by Elizabeth P. McIntosh; Agent ZigZag: The True Story of Espionage, Love and Betrayal, by Ben Macintyre; Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War, 1941–1945, by Leo Marks; Christine: SOE Agent and Churchill’s Favorite Spy, by Madeleine Masson; Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs, by Patrick K. O’Donnell; and How to Be a Spy: The World War II SOE Training Manual, introduction by Denis Rigden.
To research Bletchley Park, I’m indebted to Bletchley Park People: Churchill’s Geese That Never Cackled, by Marion Hill; and Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, edited by F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp. For an overview of code breaking, I cannot speak highly enough of The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh.
Many films and documentaries were also helpful with research, including Operation Barbarossa; Legendary Sin Cities: Berlin; Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will; Bonhoeffer: Hanged on a Twisted Cross: The Life, Conviction and Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and The Ninth Day.
Father Jean Licht is a fictional character but inspired by a real priest, Father Bernhard Lichtenberg. Father Lichtenberg was a German Roman Catholic priest at St. Hedwig’s Cathedial in Berlin during World War II. After Kristallnacht, he was known for praying publicly for the Jews every evening: I pray for the priests in the concentration camps, for the Jews, for the non-Aryans. What happened yesterday, we know. What will happen tomorrow, we don’t. But what happened today, we lived through. Outside, the Synagogue is burning. It, too, is a house of God.
Lichtenberg protested against the Aktion T4 by writing a letter to the chief physician of the Reich: I, as a human being, a Christian, a priest, and a German demand of you, Chief Physician of the Reich, that you answer for the crimes that have been perpetrated at your bidding, and with your consent, and which will call forth the vengeance of the Lord on the heads of the German people. He was arrested, tried, sentenced, and sent to Dachau. He died in transit.
In June 1996, Pope John Paul II, during his visit to Germany, beatified Lichtenberg (meaning that, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, he has entered into Heaven and has the capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his name). The process of Bernhard Lichtenberg’s canonization (to declare him officially a saint by the Catholic Church) is still pending. His tomb is in the crypt of St. Hedwig’s in Berlin.
Cardinal Konrad von Preysing and Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen (bishops during the war and elevated to cardinals after) were also real people, who both spoke out against the Nazis’ Aktion T4 program, despite intense pressure to stay silent. Cardinal von Preysing was the Bishop of Berlin during World War II and was an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, saying: “We have fallen into the hands of criminals and fools.” In a homily in March 1941, Bishop von Preysing reaffirmed his opposition to the killing of the sick or infirm.
Cardinal August Graf von Galen was the Bishop of Münster during the war, and an outspoken critic of Hitler and the Nazis. He also spoke publicly against the Aktion T4 program. In his homily on August 3, 1941, von Galen spoke against the deportation and murder of the mentally ill. These are people, our brothers and sisters, he said. Maybe their life is unproductive, but productivity is not a justification for killing.