Authors: Jason Hewitt
While none of the characters portrayed really existed and some of the geography and environment of the camp has been altered, some of the smaller events did occur. German nurses brought in to
assist were indeed ravaged by hospital inmates; ninety-six London medical students volunteered to assist in the evacuation of Camp 1; former inmates such as Nurse Joubert, many of whom were
themselves recuperating from typhus, were drafted in to help in the hospital barracks; and a delivery of lipstick indeed took place, causing consternation among those desperate for medical
supplies. In fact, the lipstick proved to be a considerable turning point in the recuperation of many of the patients, returning to the women a sense of worth and humanity – which their Nazi
incarcerators had been hell-bent on eradicating.
For more information on Belsen I highly recommend Ben Shephard’s
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945
.
The second camp featured in the novel is at
Ż
aga
ń
, western Poland (formerly Sagan in eastern Germany before the borders were realigned). Anyone with much knowledge of
World War II or Hollywood war movies will recognize it as Stalag Luft III, the location of the Great Escape. Although the camp was evacuated at the end of January 1945, in reality it was taken over
by the Russians when they arrived the following month and, in a stroke of irony, used to house German POWs. That said, many other camps were left abandoned by the Germans and so the sight that Owen
finds himself facing was not at all unusual.
Stalag Luft III was one of many POW camps run by the Luftwaffe and used to hold captured aircrews. Camps run by the Luftwaffe were rather more relaxed than their Wehrmacht counterparts. At
Stalag Luft III there was a theatre, library, and the opportunity to play sports, and from spring 1943 captured airmen were allowed to keep their uniforms. If you want to find out more about Stalag
Luft III there are countless books available on the Great Escape, and I would recommend
Stalag Luft III: The Secret Story
by Arthur A. Durand.
Leipzig suffered aerial attacks by the Allies in July 1944, with the United States First Army capturing the city on 19 April 1945, just over a fortnight before Owen’s
arrival. In autumn 1944, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union had agreed to divide Germany into occupation zones for administrative purposes come the end of the war; however, when peace
was at last declared, the US Army had pushed far beyond the boundaries that had been agreed. In July 1945, the US Army was forced to withdraw from the city and the Russians moved in.
A word or two should be said about Hawkers. The company had originally been named Sopwith Aviation Company (founded in 1912) with its premises, even back then, in
Kingston-upon-Thames, on Canbury Park Road. The firm became H. G. Hawker Engineering Co. Ltd. in 1920 and Hawker Aircraft Ltd. in 1933. Sydney Camm joined the company in 1921 as a draughtsman.
However, by the time Owen was there, Camm would have been Chief Designer. It was during this period that Camm designed some of the most innovative aircraft of the twentieth century, including his
most famous fighter plane, the Hawker Hurricane. Owen would have been in the Experimental Drawing Office during the development of the Hurricane, which went on to defend England during the Blitz.
Indeed, on 18 February 1941, an article in the
News Chronicle
went so far as to claim that Sydney Camm was the man who had saved Britain. The company closed its doors in 1992. It is sad
that its significance in British history and the defence of England is almost forgotten; if you would like to know more about the history of Hawker Aircraft I thoroughly recommend you visit the
Kingston Aviation website: www.kingstonaviation.org
Janek says to Owen of the British people: ‘You give Czech land away.’ There is an element of truth in this. Since the formation of the first Czechoslovak republic
in 1918 there had been tension over the border regions where a significant German population lived, and whether the areas should be part of the Czechoslovak republic or affiliated to Germany. One
of these border regions was known by the Germans as the Sudetenland. The situation there was exacerbated in the 1930s by the rise of the Sudeten German Party, and in a congress of the Nazi Party in
September 1938 Hitler accused the Czech government of suppressing national rights and promised to ensure the liberation of the Sudeten Germans and the annexation of the Czech border regions to the
German Reich.
What happened in Munich on 29 September 1938 will be well known to most readers – the four-power conference instigated by Neville Chamberlain and the French prime minister Édouard
Daladier, along with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and the German Führer. Wrongly thinking that the Munich Agreement would appease Hitler and that all he wanted was the reclamation of what
he considered to be German lands already populated by Germans, Chamberlain and Daladier signed an agreement on the ceding of Czech border territories. Chamberlain famously stated to the British
people that the agreement meant ‘peace for our time’. How wrong he was. Representatives of the one government this most concerned – the Czechs – were not invited to the
talks, and, as a result, they felt they had no choice but to capitulate. On 1 October 1938, the Czech army evacuated the border areas and the German units moved in. Then, on 15 March 1939, Hitler
finished what he had started: the German Army moved into the rest of the country and the next day an order was issued on the formation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Underground resistance groups quickly formed, leading ultimately to the assassination of the acting Protector, Reinhard Heydrich, in May 1942, and the resulting reprisals, including the terrible
destruction of the village of Lidice. After that the resistance groups fell quiet but the spirit was never lost. Acts of sabotage and revolt still occurred, while the Czech government-in-exile
continued to do what it could from London and Czech pilots joined the British RAF. If you are interested in reading more about the plight of the Czech people, I highly recommend
Prague Winter:
A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937–1948
by Madeleine Albright, or
Border Crossing: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance
by Charles Novacek.
Unbeknown to Janek, the day after he meets Owen an uprising occurred in Prague, while elsewhere in Bohemia, US forces moved in. The Soviet Union told the US that they would begin their Prague
operations the following day and asked the US to halt their advance, which Eisenhower agreed to. On 9 May, as Owen, Irena and Janek join the hordes of refugees on the road to Leipzig, the first
Soviet tanks entered Prague. Three years later, in 1948, the Communist party took control of the country in a coup supported by the Soviet government. Czechoslovakia would remain under Communist
control for forty years, until the Communist government was finally overthrown in the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
There are many excellent books available about the immediate aftermath of the war. Two that I found invaluable are
Endgame 1945: Victory, Retribution, Liberation
by
David Stafford and
The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War
by Ben Shephard.
By 1944, there were reportedly 11.5 million people displaced in Europe, 7.7 million of those in Germany.
Devastation Road
is about just a handful of them.
I would like to thank Jessica Leeke for her early encouragement and invaluable feedback on the first draft of this book. I am also hugely indebted to my subsequent editor Rowan
Cope for her hours of work, advice, support and scrutiny, and, most of all, for her patience. Huge thanks to the rest of the team at Scribner, including Jo Dickinson, Dawn Burnett, Elizabeth
Preston, Jamie Groves, the production and sales teams, and everyone else who has been involved, including Natalie Braine and Nancy Webber, my eagle-eyed copyeditor and proofreader, and Matthew
Johnson for the wonderful jacket design. Thanks also to Will Francis for his endless enthusiasm and tireless work on my behalf, as well as everyone else at Janklow & Nesbit.
If you’ve come this far you will no doubt have noticed that not all of the novel is written in English, so I would like to thank Sophie Hardach, Justina Hernik and Jeanne Corcos-Conisbee
for assisting with the German, Polish and French; as well as special thanks to Terezie Holmerova for not only translating the Czech but also teaching me the basics of a language that I have grown
to love.
I am greatly indebted to Bill Downey, who provided a wealth of information on Hawker Aircraft and showed me around the site on Canbury Park Road in Kingston. Thanks to David Hassard for
providing some of the finer detail on the history of Hawkers and putting me in touch with the right people; and to Dave Betteridge, who welcomed me into his home and gave me a fascinating insight
into what life was like as a draughtsman in the Experimental Drawing Office under Sir Sydney Camm.
Thanks to Jeremy Bright for providing hours of documentary footage on the RAF Avro Lancaster, and to the staff at the British Library, the Imperial War Museum, the London Transport Museum, the
Museum of Allied Prisoners of War in
Ż
aga
ń
and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial; as well as Ewan Eason, and his family, who allowed me to read the diary of his grandfather – a real-life
survivor of Stalag-Luft III who made the infamous Death March. Also to my early readers: Sam, Karen, Jenny, Becky, Anthea and Pam, and to Kathryn Race, who has lived every bump and jolt of this
journey with me, and has been the endless provider of cups of tea and moral encouragement.
Finally, and most importantly, my most heartfelt thanks go to my family and friends, who have supported me more than I could ever have hoped for; in particular, my parents, whose belief in me
seems to show no end, my adorable nephews William and Henry, sister-in-law Helen, and brother Jonathan – this one is for you.
Jason Hewitt is a novelist, playwright and actor. He was born in Oxford, and lives in London. His debut novel
The Dynamite Room
was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott
Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award.