Amerikan Eagle (54 page)

The novel was published posthumously, as Senator Long was shot on September 8, 1935, in the statehouse in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and died two days later. At the time of Senator Long’s death, President Roosevelt considered him one of the most dangerous men in America.

The public statements made herein by Huey Long, Winston Churchill, Charles Lindbergh, and Father Charles Coughlin are factual. Only the time and place of their comments have been fictionalized.

Walter Tucker’s recollection of the visit to Harvard in 1934 of its alumnus, Ernst Hanfstaengl, Nazi Party member and head of the foreign press operations for the Third Reich, is based on a true event.

Even though refugees and escapees told of the true nature of the holocaust during the 1940s, their stories were not believed by government officials and the media until the Allied victory in 1945 and the subsequent liberation of the Nazi death camps. One of the little-known stories about the holocaust was the Madagascar Plan, a proposal by the Nazis to deport the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. In May 1940, in his book
Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East
, SS head Heinrich Himmler declared: “I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony.” The Madagascar
Plan was abandoned after 1940, since Great Britain remained undefeated and its navy was still a formidable foe to German shipping.

The mostly unsuccessful attempts by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., to convince the government to admit more Jewish refugees to the United States is a matter of historical record. So, too, is the bloody Memorial Day massacre of the Republic Steel strikers in 1937.

The city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is real, as are the naval shipyard and its vital role in the peace treaty signed by Japan and Russia in 1905 that led to President Theodore Roosevelt receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. However, certain geographical and historical aspects of Portsmouth and its police department have been changed for the purpose of this novel. Any errors of geography or history are the author’s.