Set just before and during the Tehran Conference in 1943 between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, this thriller looks at the possibility that Germany and Hitler were attempting to sue for peace and end the War, using the Conference to make their case.

Willard Mayer, one time philosophy professor and analyst for the OSS, is now working directly for the President helping to unravel the complex web of deception, double-cross and treachery aiming to sabotage the Conference, destroy any hopes of an early peace or, even to use the event to assassinate the key Allied leaders.

This is an excellent thriller with plenty of action, plot twists that the reader never sees coming and a very clever ending. Mayer is a wonderful character, half Rick from ‘Casablanca’ and half Charlie Allnut from ‘The African Queen’.

Highly recommended. ( )

A marvellous historical thriller. A lot of this fine thriller is based on fact. Have no hesitation adding it to my To Be Read Again List. ( )

Not really such great writing; but perfectly interesting. Hard to put up with novelization of these characters (I just had dinner with Adolf!), but I understand much is factual, so, on I go ... .
Turned out to be perfectly interesting. Three interesting plots going on, the "hero" becomes more and more interesting, and the places and people are certainly very interesting. Worthwhile. Very. ( )

Philip Kerr is a wonderful writer who speaks with great authority on one of the darkest and most fascinating periods in modern history - the Mid Twentieth Century - in which Fascists, Communists and Capitalists played chicken with one another, culminating in the defeat of Germany and the erection of the iron curtain.
Kerr's Bernie Gunter series looks at the world, and specifically Germany, from the early 1930s to the 1950s, through the eyes of a decent man caught up by circumstances. Hitler's Peace operates on an even wider scale, examining the mechinations of ambitious Nazis fearful of the direction the war was taking, and the real-politiking of President Rooseveld's circle.
The protagenist is a half-Jewish philosopher. Willard Mayer, who studied in Austria and even joined the Communist Party briefly in protest against the Nazis and, amongst other things, their anti-semitism: now a writer and a well-respected Academic, he is part of the American intelligence community when Rooseveld asks him to accompany them to talks in Cairo with the Chinese.
Willard realises en route that there is a spy among their party when his cabin mate disappears: in Cairo he himself is at risk and arrested before the Americans get him out of jail and into Teheran for the talks with 'The Big Three', ie Rooseveld, Stalin and Churchill, where he acts as an interpretter.
A surprise fourth party arrives and for a while it seems as if there will indeed be peac in Europe before Christmas - until Willard lets slip a report he has recieved about the conditions under which Germans suffer in Russian POW camps. There is also the spectre of the Katyn Forest Massacre looming which makes him distrust Stalin.
When peace talks fall through, the Big Three meeting goes ahead as planned and the rest is history. Interesting, anecdotal history which imparts every bit as much information and arguements as a dusty textbook but is vital, thought-provoking and very entertaining.
Several real characters appear centre stage - Rooseveld, Stalin, Himmler, Hitler, Walter Schellenberg, Lina Heydrich and many many others. Hitler's Peace is a good standalone and would have recieved a higher rating were in not that it suffers in comparison the the supurb Bernie Gunther series. ( )

Not as good as I hoped let down by the hero. The premise is interesting of the allies separately still contemplating a peace with Germany in late 1943, but having an American Philosopher who always has the most glamourous girl as the main narrator doesn't work and his "adventures" feel too contrived. You also can't help thinking of Bernie Gunther when reading him and this also detracts. ( )