The Song Before It Is Sung (25 page)

For some time I had known that von Trott, a Rhodes Scholar, had been hanged for his part in the bomb plot of July, 1944. I
was in the early stages of researching a book on Oxford, when I was looking at some footage of von Trott's show trial and
I was struck by his apparent calm, almost serenity, facing the prosecutor, Roland Freisler, although the outcome had already
been announced and the defendants had been tortured. It seemed to me that von Trott was aware that he was sacrificing himself
for some greater good.

Seeing that astonishing film in the Imperial War Museum in London, and knowing that von Trott had been repudiated by his Oxford
friend, Isaiah Berlin, I was gripped by the desire to write the story of their friendship as a novel, particularly as Isaiah
Berlin has long been a hero of mine.

A novelist's job is to imagine conversations, motives and states of mind which is, of course, what I have tried to do. But
I have also been very conscious of the obligation to the known facts of these terrible events - and an obligation to those
who have helped me - to be true at the very least to the spirit of what I have discovered in London, Oxford and Berlin. The
events of that day, 20 July 1944, and Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg's heroic attempt to rid the world of Hitler, I
have reproduced as faithfully as I was able. But for me the most interesting part of the whole enterprise has been to try
to understand how it happened, firstly that the German people and their traditional leaders were unable to rid themselves
of Hitler even as he was leading them to their ruin, and secondly how Nazism could have taken hold and then subverted so quickly
all Germany's institutions in the process, in what is routinely described as one of the most civilised countries in the world.

I imagined that there was something in the estrangement of Isaiah Berlin and von Trott that would give some clues, but of
course a novel is an act of the imagination and I am not claiming - if there is such a thing - any incorrigible historical
truth.

In Berlin, Bengt von zür Muehlen has given me films, booklets and advice: nobody knows more than he does about the films
of the Third Reich. He has filmed and documented the families of the resisters, and I have found these films both moving and
enormously instructive.

In Oxford, Henry Hardy of Wolfson College, Isaiah Berlin's editor, has pointed me in the right direction and often corrected
my mistakes. The Bodleian Library has been more than helpful.

My agent, James Gill, has gone far beyond the call of duty, and has helped me enormously, both with his warm and sensitive
suggestions and much more.

At Bloomsbury I must thank Michael Fishwick, my editor, who was extraordinarily perceptive, Mary Tomlinson, copy editor, who
spotted many mistakes and tactfully corrected them, and all those, including Rosemary Davidson, Tram-Anh Doan, Arzu Tahsin,
Colin Midson, Katie Bond, Liz Calder, Nigel Newton, Minna Fry, Will Webb and David Ward, to whom I am indebted in many ways.

Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa and lives in London.