I have always been fascinated by conspiracy theories: the Roswell UFO incident, JFK’s assassination, the moon landings, Princess Diana’s car crash, all come to mind. But they don’t come much bigger than the one surrounding the apparent deaths of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. It’s a highly controversial topic that has generated many books, articles and documentaries and the truth is that, even today, views differ on what really happened.
As a student, I studied Hitler and the rise and fall of the Third Reich at London University, where I completed a degree in history and modern politics. Part of my academic research included reading Alan Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny and Hugh Trevor-Roper’s The Last Days of Hitler. I always had a gut feeling that Hitler wasn’t the kind of man to take his own life, but, then again, there is a great deal of compelling evidence, and eye-witness testimony, to suggest he did. For the purposes of writing The Counterfeit Candidate, I went with my gut. I couldn’t help wondering, what if …
What if Hitler escaped from Berlin at the end of the war and sixty-five years later his grandson was in the running to become president of the United States?
Now you’ve read the story, I thought it might be helpful to try and separate what we know to be fact from fiction. Firstly, let’s look at the facts that are in the common domain.
It’s well recorded that in July 1945, just three months after Hitler’s supposed death, Stalin threw doubt on the official story, speculating he had escaped from Berlin and was possibly hiding in Spain or Argentina. The genie was out of the bottle and the conspiracy theory was born.
In 1945, and in subsequent years, we know many high-ranking Germans fled to South America, including infamous Nazis such as Mengele and Eichmann, who make cameo appearances in my story. It’s also an open secret that the Argentine regime at the time welcomed dozens and possibly hundreds of Nazis, looking for sanctuary, into their country in return for significant payments.
Between 1943 and 1945 Bormann, in his elevated role as party secretary found himself in total control of the Nazi government’s purse strings and it’s believed he transferred huge amounts of money to banks and businesses all around the world, including millions to banks based in Switzerland and South America.
For The Counterfeit Candidate, I created a fictional account of Hitler’s escape from Berlin. The early morning drive, heading north from Berlin, through Russian lines to the Baltic port of Kiel and the confrontation with the Red Army soldiers, is an invention. As is the dilapidated cargo boat, Santa Cruz III. It never existed. Neither did its German captain, Hans Küpper, or the plastic surgeon Dr Friedrich Hipke.
However, El Calafate in the province of Santa Cruz, in Patagonia, is a real city, but El Blondi, the Argentinian farmhouse is another invention. I liked the conceit that the name of Hitler’s new home would be a permanent memorial to his beloved dog, who he left behind in the bunker. I tried my best to get inside Bormann’s head and those creations were the end result. I spent a great deal of time researching Bormann and concluded he would never have left his Führer’s side, so I made him part of the three escapees, along with Hitler and Braun.
In reality, most historians believe Bormann died in Berlin, on 2 May 1945, trying to escape the Red Army. As I mention in the story, in 1972 a skeleton was discovered in Berlin and DNA tests appeared to prove a match with Hitler’s notorious deputy.
The idea of Hitler and Bormann creating and building one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world seemed plausible to me. It would provide them with a huge multinational vehicle, perfect for laundering the vast sums of money they had taken out of Germany. It would also give them a platform of power and respectability for Hitler’s son, enabling him to set up a new home in the United States, where he could father an heir, who could go on to become a world leader, achieving the ultimate prize of the presidency.
The Franklins and the Franklin Pharmaceutical Corporation are of course another fictional creation, but I suspect if Bormann and Hitler really did escape together, they may well have looked at the United States as being the obvious location for a future Fourth Reich.
The basic idea for The Counterfeit Candidate has been buried inside my head for over forty years, but it took the totally unexpected arrival of a three-month lockdown to turn it into a reality. Like millions of other people, when the virus struck and the world shut down, I lost all my work and found myself at home wondering what to do. I was a television director with nothing to direct, so I decided to finally have a go at writing the story. I had no idea if I was capable of doing it and, trust me when I say, no one was more surprised than me that the book finally got written.