Hotel Berlin '43

SET in the German capital, Hotel Berlin ‘43 covers the incidents of twenty-four hours in a smart hotel where Gestapo agents rub elbows with anti-Nazis, officers on leave pursue pretty women, and the next air raid is seldom mentioned, but never forgotten.

The story does not move out of the hotel, but the people who meet there reflect the whole cruel, bewildered, tottering society to which they belong. There is Lisa Dorn, the actress, who saves a member of the Underground from arrest, because no stage heroine ever turned a fugitive over to the police, and who presently finds herself seeing the Nazi world through the eyes of this Corporal Richter, and thinking about the Party, for the first time in her thoughtless life. There are Lisa’s lover, General Dahnwitz, a Prussian militarist for whom nothing remains but death with dignity; the slick, cheerful Gestapo officer, Helm; Oberleutnant Kauders, hysterical, adolescent, and a hero; Tilli, the prostitute, whose chief desire in life is for new shoes; Nichols, the English writer who broadcasts Nazi propaganda in exchange for the medicine which keeps him alive; the shrewd brat of a page boy, whose mother mistakenly named him Adolph; and policemen, officials, party war horses, foreign bankers, and the decorative members of the Rumanian Military Mission.

These people, honest or opportunist, cynical or disillusioned, living in fear of the war and each other, unravel their affairs between the nightly visits of the Allied bombers. Or rather, Miss Baum unravels their affairs, dovetailing chance, luck, and character with an expert hand. The hotel houses violence within, and is battered by violence from above. With each raid, Herr Hitler’s portrait falls off its nail in the lobby. But regardless of murder and a sharp drop in the quality of the liquor, the Hungarian orchestra plays on.

Although Miss Baum makes an occasional attempt to explain “the German people,”the chief interest of Hotel Berlin '43 lies in its profusion of incidents and coincidences. It may be argued that too many people have too violent crises in their affairs. Perhaps the escape of Richter, in a comic-opera uniform, is excitement enough for one book. Perhaps one spiritual awakening a day is all that can be expected in any group. But Miss Baum maneuvers her people with such skill, and relates their adventures with such energy, that only the most ungrateful of readers would refuse to be entertained. Doubleday, Doran, $2.50.

PHOEBE-LOU ADAMS