Ludovic Kennedy (1919–2009)

A meticulous and well-written book, Ludovic Kennedy's The Airman and the Carpenter is a fine introduction for those wishing to learn more about the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping of 1932. Charles Lindbergh was one of the most famous men in the world at the time and the kidnapping of his son from his crib generated a media circus, a headline-grabbing ransom demand and, eventually, the tragic discovery of the body of poor young Charlie Jr. not far from where he went missing.

All this is well-told by show more Kennedy, but the raison d'être of his true-crime book is what followed: the arrest of one Richard Hauptmann and his trial for what was dubbed the 'Crime of the Century'. Kennedy's conviction, for which he brings receipts, is that Hauptmann was completely innocent of the crime and was railroaded by a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances. Much of what is low in America is on display in these events: the media circus and the preening, grasping fame of even the case's bit-part players, the greed, pigheadedness and unreflective ruthlessness of both law enforcement and the lawyers, and the same sort of public thirst for celebrity, blood and mob outrage that has made 'true-crime' an often unedifying genre and the justice system an insular self-mockery, with the courtroom a bloodsport between two implacable 'sides', a game to be won at all costs rather than a process by which truth is arrived at.

Kennedy is an ideal guide through this shoddy terrain, for being a British journalist he stands apart from some of the American craziness on display and shows restraint even when some of the behaviour on display is unforgivably contemptible. I knew a bit of surface-level knowledge of the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping prior to reading Kennedy's book, but I had never got into the weeds of it. I had never known that it was so shamefully inept.

One much acknowledge, of course, that this is Kennedy's take on it, and no doubt I could read other books which reach a different conclusion, or present the same evidence with a different emphasis. But the interpretation Kennedy builds is compelling, convincing and detailed. In fact, if there is a drawback in reading the book it's that Kennedy is almost too earnest, too sober in his depiction of the case. There's little to nothing on who might have committed the crime if not Hauptmann, for Kennedy deals in facts, and his estimation of the facts, rather than speculation. Whatever evidence and leads there might have been were squandered – and sometimes actively extinguished – by the ineptitude and corruption of the police at the time, and cannot be revived decades later. Who killed the baby will almost certainly never be known, and because of the lack of any solid knowledge Kennedy does not indulge hypotheticals.

Those looking for such titillating speculations will have to look elsewhere. (I believe there's a non-zero chance that Lindbergh Senior – a deeply shady character behind his mask – did it himself, perhaps one of his cruel pranks gone wrong, and was arrogantly willing to let an innocent stranger get the chair to cover it up. It fits the known facts, survives an encounter with Occam's Razor, and the fact that the family dog did not bark on the night-time of the 'intrusion' (pg. 113) is surely a 'curious incident' that would've made Sherlock Holmes raise an eyebrow.)

Instead, the conspiracies Kennedy relates here are not those of the unknown kidnapping gang or of any inside-job cover-up, but the very real and provable ones that saw law enforcement, reporters and prosecuting lawyers plant fake evidence, hide exculpatory evidence, beat and intimidate Hauptmann and witnesses, and just all around make a mockery of 'justice' under that extremely dangerous logical fallacy that they 'knew' Hauptmann was guilty and were therefore willing to do anything and everything to ensure he was executed for it, never once stopping to consider they might be wrong and being too prideful to admit it when others stopped them and asked them to reconsider. One hopes that when they too eventually passed from this life and found themselves facing Judgement, that St. Peter stood aside and allowed Hauptmann to be the face that greeted them at heaven's gate, their entry to be weighed by his hands.

While it is long and detailed and takes a good while to get going, Ludovic Kennedy's The Airman and the Carpenter is a great introduction to a case that proved even more tragic than I had thought it was. As Governor Hoffman recognises at the time (he was one of the few to believe in Hauptmann's innocence, and did what he could to temporarily grant the man a reprieve – for which the mob tried to impeach him), the injustice is not only in the taking of the life of the child and the anguish of his mother, and not even in adding the injustice of condemning an innocent man, but in allowing those who actually did commit the crime to escape punishment (pg. 383). The real killer, or killers, got away with it. All that was achieved in the Crime of the Century, aside from some false catharsis for the mob and some base copy for the media, was unnecessary misery. As Hauptmann himself said while on Death Row (pg. 394), the case is not solved; all they did was add one more dead. show less

Rétegklasszikus a történelemtudomány és a történelmi regény határvidékéről. Tényekből gazdálkodik ugyan, de lényege mindazonáltal az irodalomból kölcsönzött drámai ív, ami egy végső kataklizmában csúcsosodik ki – ez esetben abban, hogy a kor legnagyobb csatahajója, a Bismarck sok izgalom után végül (bluggy, bluggy) csak elsüllyed. A második világháború pedig amúgy is jó sok lovagi csörtét kínál feldolgozásra – az atlanti csata egyik show more kulcsmomentuma pedig külön alkalmas az ilyen „lovagias bajvívás”-jellegű* átiratra, mert (csakúgy, mint az észak-afrikai hadmozdulatok) hiányzik belőle a háború legmocskosabb oldala: a civil áldozatok (már ha a kereskedelmi hajók legénységétől eltekintünk), a városok porig rombolása, vagy a holokauszt. Csak a nagy hajók vannak face to face, a böhöm nagy ágyúk, meg a hegymagas hullámok. A macsóság.

Mellesleg ez a könyv rekviem is a csatahajókhoz, amelyek azóta már boldogabb (boldogtalanabb?) vadászvizeken kergetőznek egymással. Merthogy a Bismarck üldöztetése és pusztulása önmagán túlmutató esemény**: egy lenyűgöző fegyver hattyúdala. Itt vannak ugyanis ezek a döbbenetesen nagy acélmonstrumok (én már azt sem értem, hogy egyáltalán hogyan maradnak fenn a vízen), hihetetlen tűzerejükkel és páncéllemezeikkel. Az ember rájuk néz, és legyőzhetetlennek hiszi őket. Örökkévalónak. Aztán egyszer csak megjelennek a színen azok a picike repülők, és kiderül, hogy tulajdonképpen milyen sérülékenyek – egy szerencsésen elindított torpedó, és annyi, a mesének vége. Ez az epizód tulajdonképpen a tengeri háború paradigmaváltásának jele: hogy a nagy csatahajók ideje lejárt, és lassan átveszik a helyüket az anyahajók.

Azoknak ajánlom, akik néha még ólomkatonákkal álmodnak. (Vagy Counter-Strike-kal. Mit tudom én, mi van most.)

* Itt megjegyezném, hogy azért húztam egy kicsit a szám, mert Kennedy pöttyet mintha túlhangsúlyozná ezt a jelleget. Én elhiszem, hogy a német haditengerészet a többi fegyvernemhez képest mentes volt a náci ideológiától, csak azt nem tudom, hogy ennek miért kéne olyan nagyon örüljek, ha ettől függetlenül magas szakmai tudásukat latba vetve mindent megtettek azért, hogy a führer valóra válthassa terveit. Nem nagyon látom, mi a különbség aközött, hogy valaki „Heil Hitlert”-t kiáltva, vagy anélkül süllyeszti el a Harmadik Birodalom nagyobb dicsőségére a szövetségesek hajóit.
** Mint ahogy amúgy a második világháború majd minden eseménye önmagán túlmutató… de hát megbocsátható, ha egy szerző az épp általa feldolgozott eseményt kicsit túlmutatóbbnak gondolja a többinél. show less

Re: the battle of the Denmark Strait and the loss of HMS Hood, it is said that Admiral Lutjens hesitated for almost three minutes, while his ships were under fire, before finally ordering a return of fire, because his mission orders did not allow for action with Allied "heavy units". Lutjens was lucky indeed to come out of this battle with a victory given the indecision he demonstrated. All this Kennedy describes in acute detail, crossing every t and dotting every i as he takes the reader show more through the story. It matters to him because he was involved in the search for the enemy ship, in a British destroyer. Someone once calculated that a hit to Bismarck's rudders was a 1 in 100,000 chance. A real Achilles heel in the real world. show less

I have lost count of how many times I have read this book, but two dozen would be a light estimate.

When my Grandma asked me (I was about 7 or 8) what I wanted to be when I grew up the first thing that came into my head was "captain of a ship", and it stuck with me all through my childhood. Not that I particualrly had an interest in the sea at that time, it was just a way to get her off my back - I was eight! I did have an interest in war stuff I s'pose...

Anyway, sometime during school, I show more think I was in Standard 3 from memory (Year 6 I gues in today's language) I read the book "Battleship Bismarck: A Survivor's Story" and was instantly hooked on naval history, specifically WWII, and no more than the ship that would influence me for the rest of my life, KM Bismarck herself. Never has a warship (since Nelson's Victory) been such a thing of legend - a song, books, documentaries and a search by Dr Ballard. And there was a typical Brit movie which funnily enough I have yet to see.

Some years later while serving in the New Zealand Navy (RNZN) in a ship that impressive in its own way yet hardly Bismarck, I purchased a copy of Kennedy's book which has become my favourite book since. I think I read this one in a couple of days and read it at least once a year every year after. I still have that copy, it is dog-eared to hell, the pages held in with yellowed sellotape, and in fact I think I lost some of the photos out of the middle spread. But out it came, like clockwork to be read again, and everytime I wished the Bismarck would escape (sorry for revealing the outcome!) and was hugely saddened and disappointed each time.

A few years ago my wife went to the States and got me a brand new copy of the book which was part of the US Naval Institute's series of books, in hardcover this time, and updated to include a few more photos and footnotes, plus a whole new prologue and epilogue. And finishing it for the first time (I still continued to reads the old copy which is now formally in 'retirement'), this time in four days I am still on both a high from such an exciting tale and a low because of the outcome.

While this ditty (naval term for story) is true you get to experience every emotion and peak and trough that exists in fiction, and ther are moments when you grieve for the uncessary loss of life, applaud heroics and skill, and, dare I say it, cheer on the 'baddies' (I use the term baddies as history does in fact record Nazi Germany as 'bad', but not all who served her were necessarily so).

So without really going into it too much, and being a man who has read many, many books, articles, stories and watched every possible doco he copuld on Bismarck, get this out. You don't have to have a knowledge of naval warefare, nor of history, and the proof in that is I got Katie to read it which she did and in quick time. I did hwoever give her the benefit of my naval learnings but all that is needed is written in the book (eg. port and starboard etc).

There was a rumour some years back that James Cameron, the genius behind the movie "Titanic" was looking at making one on the Bismarck, and was involved in a CGI documentary about her (Expedition Bismarck), but I have yet to have any confirmation on it. He would probably ruin it by putting in some random love story anyway...

...and still the debate rages on about who sunk her... show less