by Kate Quinn
What moved these women to do such terrible things? The question is unanswerable. Petri was defensive, saying that she had been conditioned to Nazi racial laws and hardened by living among SS men who carried out frequent executions—she admitted wanting to show she could conduct herself like a man. Braunsteiner was self-pitying, weeping, “I was punished enough.” Both women faced justice, but only after a long slog of legalities and paperwork: it took seventeen years for Braunsteiner to be extradited, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. I wanted The Huntress to have a swifter climax than a decades-long legal battle, and I certainly had no wish for my fictional characters take credit from the very real journalists and investigators who brought Petri and Braunsteiner to justice, so I made the decision to create a fictional female war criminal from both women’s records.
Mention the term “Nazi hunter” out loud, and most real Nazi hunters will wince. The term conjures a Hollywood vision of pulse-pounding adventure, and the reality is very different. The first war crimes investigation teams were hard at work before the V-E Day champagne corks had even started popping; they took testimony from camp survivors and liberators, tracked the guilty down in POW camps and escape bolt-holes, and sought out the civilian murderers of downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners as well as perpetrators of the Final Solution. Men like William Denson, US Army chief prosecutor at the Dachau trials, and Benjamin Ferencz, chief prosecutor in the trial of the Einsatzgruppen killers, were overworked heroes responsible for prosecuting hundreds. But after the Nuremberg Trials there was an overwhelming public sense of “Well, now that’s done” as far as Nazi war criminals were concerned. Even though only a tiny percentage of the guilty had been prosecuted, there wasn’t much interest in further war crimes trials—the Soviet Union had become the enemy to fear, not the defunct Third Reich. By the seventies and eighties, as the Cold War waned and people realized time was running out as World War II veterans and witnesses aged, there was a surge of renewed interest in bringing Nazis to justice, but post-Nuremberg investigation teams had a real fight on their hands.
Such teams might be government funded, run through refugee documentation centers like those begun by Tuviah Friedman in Vienna and Simon Wiesenthal in Linz, or conducted privately. There was no common strategy or agreement on tactics, and such groups often disagreed (or even feuded!) Perpetually underfunded and overextended, they tracked war criminals through the tedious cross-checking of records, wary interviews with a suspect’s neighbors or family who had no legal obligation to cooperate, and long hours following a suspect’s friends and acquaintances, often attempting to make positive identifications with nothing more than old photographs and outdated witness testimony. Much depended on bribery, charm, guile—and patience, because most hunts took months or years.
Catching a war criminal was only the beginning. There was no guarantee an arrest would lead to a trial: in Europe, many former Nazis still held positions of power, and war crimes trials were stymied by everything from passive resistance to outright death threats. Pursuing criminals overseas was even more of a nightmare, and some teams resorted to illegal means in such cases: either a kidnapping job to circumvent extradition (Mossad’s black-bag snatch of Adolf Eichmann, bringing him from Argentina to Israel where he was tried and executed), or outright assassination (the killing of Herberts Cukurs, called “the Eichmann of Latvia,” in Brazil).
Ian and Nina Graham are fictional Nazi hunters, though they were inspired in part by the famous husband and wife team Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, whose partnership is both a moving postwar romance and an inspiring dedication to human justice—their most famous catch was Klaus Barbie, “the Butcher of Lyon,” and they’re still tirelessly dedicated to the fight against fascism although now in their eighties. Tony Rodomovsky is also fictional, as is his Boston center and Ian’s Vienna-based one, though such centers were invaluable not just in hunting war criminals, but in documenting the testimony of Holocaust survivors. Without their work preserving witness statements and camp evidence, much information about Nazi atrocities would have been lost. Fritz Bauer, on the other hand, was a very real man: a Jewish refugee who returned to his homeland postwar and tirelessly prosecuted war criminals despite hostility from a West German government that wanted to forget its past crimes. Times have changed since those days, and in a modern Germany that has taken responsibility for its horrendous history, Fritz Bauer is now honored as one of the first Nazi hunters.
In writing The Huntress, I realized I needed a link between my team of Nazi hunters and their elusive quarry—and as soon as I read about the Night Witches, I knew I had found my link. The Soviet Union was the only nation involved in the Second World War to put women in the sky as fighter and bomber pilots, and what women they were! Products of the Soviet aviation drive of the 1930s, these young fliers were championed by Marina Raskova, the Amelia Earhart of the USSR. The day bombers and the fighter pilots (among the latter, Lilia Litviak, seen in cameo at the Engels training camp, was killed in an aerial dogfight during the war, but became history’s first female ace) eventually integrated with male personnel . . . but the night bombers remained all-female throughout their term of service and were fiercely proud of this fact.
The ladies of the Forty-Sixth Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment went to war in the outdated Polikarpov U-2, an open-cockpit cloth-and-plywood biplane, achingly slow and highly flammable, built without radio, parachute, or brakes. (It was redesignated the Po-2 after 1943; I was unable to pinpoint an exact date for the change, and continued to use the term U-2 for clarity.) The women flew winter and summer, anywhere from five to eighteen runs per night, relying on stimulants that destroyed their ability to rest once off-duty. They flew continuously under these conditions for three years, surviving on catnaps and camaraderie, developing the conveyor belt land-and-refuel routine that gave them a far more efficient record than comparable night bomber regiments. The women’s relentless efficiency waged ruthless psychological warfare on the Germans below, who thought their silent glide-down sounded like witches on broomsticks, and awarded them the nickname “die Nachthexen.” Such dedication took a toll: the regiment lost approximately 27 percent of its flying personnel to crashes and enemy fire. The Night Witches were also awarded a disproportionately higher percentage of Hero of the Soviet Union medals—the USSR’s highest decoration.
Nina Markova is fictional, but not her exploits. Lieutenant Serafima Amosova-Taranenko was born in remote Siberia, saw a Pe-5 perform a forced landing, and swore to become a pilot. Senior Lieutenant Yevgeniya Zhigulenko finagled her way into the training group by pestering a random colonel in the aviation department until he gave her an appointment, then refusing to leave until he referred her to Raskova. Navigator Irina Kashirina successfully made a one-armed landing, taking the stick with one hand while holding her wounded pilot off the front-cockpit controls with the other. Captain Larisa Litvinova-Rozanova described the way pilot and navigator would trade naps to and from the target, as well as the horror of watching three planes before her and one plane behind her shot down by a night fighter (the regiment’s worst night of losses). Major Mariya Smirnova was pushed out over the Sea of Azov by low cloud cover, and nearly drowned. Several Night Witches described such experiences as climbing out on a wing to knock off a bomb stuck on the rack, being chased down by pursuing German planes, singing and dancing and embroidering during airfield waits, hazing from the male pilots, and—worst of all!—the indignity of wearing mass-issued men’s underwear.
Yelena is also a fictional character; it isn’t known if there were any romantic relationships between women of the Forty-Sixth. In the oppressive atmosphere of the Soviet Union, no one would have spoken a word of any such liaison had it existed. Pilot memoirs and interviews are similarly close-lipped about criticism of the ruling regime—even after the fall of the Soviet Union, only one Night Witch openly admitted hating Stalin and his rule. Undoubtedly there were others who were less than ardent Communists even as they fought to defend
their homeland, but like Nina, they would have remembered the listening ears of the secret police and kept quiet. There is no record that any woman of the Forty-Sixth defected on a bombing run, but the Red Air Force was evidently afraid such things could happen, since they made a point of refusing posthumous honors to any deceased pilot whose body was not recovered. Soviet superiors were clearly aware of the danger that some resourceful pilot might take his or her plane in the opposite direction to find a new life in the West.
Poland, where Nina crashes in August 1944, would have been a hellish place to survive. The doomed Warsaw rebellion was in full roar, the Soviet army pushing from the east as Nazis began to flee west. Poznań, renamed Posen by the Germans, was a place steeped in tragedy: many Polish citizens were displaced, arrested, and executed as German settlers moved in to make a new Aryan province. Lake Rusalka was created using Polish slave labor, and though there was no Huntress living in an ocher-walled mansion on its shores, the lake was the site of several massacres. Memorials to the dead stand today in silent witness among the trees around an otherwise beautiful nature spot. Poznań was also the site of a prisoner of war camp, Stalag XXI-D, home to many Allied prisoners sitting out the war in idle frustration. Many had been captured during the retreat to Dunkirk, including members of the Sixth Battalion Royal West Kents in whose ranks I placed the fictional Sebastian Graham. Escape attempts from behind stalag walls were common; most escapees were recaptured or killed, but at least one man—Allan Wolfe, referenced by Sebastian—walked to Czechoslovakia and managed to survive living rough in the countryside until the war’s end, so survival in the wild was possible, if difficult.
The pretty spa town of Altaussee was a bolt-hole for any number of high-ranking Nazi officials in the war’s immediate aftermath, including Adolf Eichmann. His wife continued to live at 8 Fischerndorf with their sons—in 1952, a few years after her fictional interview with Ian and his team in this book, the real Vera Eichmann quietly packed up her children and joined her husband in exile. Had anyone been keeping watch on her, Eichmann would likely have been caught years before his eventual capture in 1960.
As always, I have taken some liberties with the historical record to serve the story. I wasn’t able to confirm if there was an air club at Irkutsk, though there were hundreds across the USSR by the time Nina learned to fly. It isn’t known if representatives from the female aviation regiments were present at Marina Raskova’s funeral in Red Square, or if Stalin himself was there—but given the deep affection in which both the “Boss” and the women pilots held Raskova, it seems likely. (Besides, I couldn’t resist the opportunity of showing Stalin, along with his very real habit of doodling wolves on documents!) The occasion where the Night Witches had to scramble their planes into the sky when they had just sat down to breakfast happened in the Crimea rather than in Poland and is combined with a separate occasion recounted by Lieutenant Polina Gelman, who recalls getting extremely tipsy after an unaccustomed drink at a holiday dinner, then flying a bombing run while completely hammered.
Ian Graham is fictional, and so is his presence as a war correspondent at historic events such as Omaha Beach and the Nuremberg executions. He is based on several journalists like Ernie Pyle, Richard Dimbleby, and war photographer Robert Capa who spent the war jumping between the front line’s hottest danger zones in search of the news. Such men might not have been soldiers, but they risked their lives parachute-jumping from bombers, running with guerrilla troops, and wading onto the beaches of Normandy armed with nothing but notepads and cameras. Their bravery was astounding, and after the war many suffered as badly from PTSD as any soldier. Among the male war correspondents and photographers were some truly heroic women as well, including Jordan McBride’s heroes Margaret Bourke-White (star photographer of LIFE magazine), and Gerda Taro (the first female photographer to cover a war zone). Jordan is fictional, but her heroines are not, and deserve to be remembered.
The SS Conte Biancamano which brings Ian and his team to the United States was a real passenger liner running the Genoa-Naples-Cannes-New York route, but exact sailing dates have been adjusted for the story. Eve Gardiner, Ian’s acquaintance from British Intelligence with whom he shares a drink on that voyage, might be recognizable to some who have read my novel The Alice Network. Ruby Sutton and her newspaper column, quoted by Eve during the Blitz, comes from Jennifer Robson’s Goodnight from London, with permission of the author who was on tour with me at the time of writing.
Finally, a word about lakes and lake spirits. There is no Selkie Lake in Massachusetts, but Altaussee, Lake Rusalka, and Lake Baikal are all very real. This story began for me with the idea of lakes, the water nymphs rumored to inhabit them (some benevolent and some malevolent, depending on the folklore), and the three very different women who begin this story standing on vastly distant shores. It would take the tides of war plus one determined Englishman and his Jewish partner to find the connections between these women, and it leads them on perhaps a more pulse-pounding adventure than real Nazi hunters usually faced. But that’s how the muse gave me the story, and I rarely argue with the muse. (Because I always lose!)
I owe heartfelt thanks to many people who helped in the writing and researching of this book. My mother and my husband, always my first readers and cheerleaders. My wonderful critique partners Stephanie Dray, Annalori Ferrell, Sophie Perinot, Aimie Runyan, and Stephanie Thornton, whose insightful red pens saved this book from being utter rubbish. My agent, Kevan Lyon, and editor, Tessa Woodward—thank you for giving me that extra month to finish; you have the patience of saints. Brian Swift for his expert advice on firearms malfunctions, and Aaron Orkin for his expert advice on the kinds of wounds that result from firearms malfunctions—here’s hoping we didn’t all end up on FBI watch lists for those long email chains. Jennifer Robson for answering questions on the ins and outs of journalism, and her father, Stuart Robson, for his patience untangling complicated questions about World War II army rank and POW structure. Anne Hooper for her insights on children learning the violin, and Julie Alexander, Shelby Miksch, and Svetlana Libenson for their lessons in Russian slang (especially the swearing!). Huge thanks to Danielle Gibeault, and to Janene and Brian “Biggles” Shepherd of Fun Flights in San Diego for fact-checking all my aviation details and answering countless questions about flying. And finally, thank you to Olive—not just a fictional aircraft, but a very real WWII-era Travel Air 4000 who took me for a ride through the clouds above San Diego, with Biggles at the stick. Olive showed this ground-bound author exactly how thrilling flight can be!
Reading Group Questions
All the characters begin the book standing on different lake shores—Nina at Lake Baikal, Anneliese at Altaussee, Jordan at Selkie Lake, and Ian at the lake in Cologne. Nina and the Huntress clash for the first time at Lake Rusalka in Poland, and everyone comes together ultimately at the lake in Massachusetts. Discuss how the idea of the lake, and the rusalka lake spirit, weaves through The Huntress as a theme.
Ian states that the life of a Nazi hunter is about patience, boredom, and fact-checking, not high-speed glamour and action. Do you agree with him? What preconceptions did you have about Nazi hunters?
Jordan’s drive to become a photographer clashes with the expectations of her father—and almost everyone else she knows—that she will marry her high school boyfriend, work in the family business, and relegate picture-snapping to a hobby. How have expectations of career versus marriage changed for women since 1950?
The Night Witches earn their nickname from the Germans, who find their relentless drive on bombing runs terrifying, but the men on their own side haze them, mock them, and call them “little princesses.” How does prejudice and misogyny drive the women of the Forty-Sixth to succeed? Did you know anything about the Night Witches before reading The Huntress?
Nina calls herself a savage because of her early life in the wilds around the lake with her murderous, unpredictable father. How did her upbringing equip her to succeed, first as a bomber pi
lot and then as a fugitive on the run? Does her outsider status make her see Soviet oppression more clearly than Yelena, who accepts it as the way things should be?
When Jordan first brings up suspicions about her stepmother at Thanksgiving, her theories are quashed by Anneliese’s plausible explanations. Did you believe Anneliese’s story at Thanksgiving, or Jordan’s instinct? When did you realize that Jordan’s stepmother and die Jägerin were one and the same?
“The ends justify the means.” Ian disagrees strongly, maintaining he will not use violence to pursue war criminals. Nina, on the other hand, has no problem employing violent methods to reach a target, and Tony stands somewhere between them on the ideological scale. How do their beliefs change as they work together? Who do you think is right?
Ian and Nina talk about lakes and parachutes, referencing the bad dreams and postwar baggage that inevitably come to those who have gone to war. How do Ian and Tony deal with their post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor guilt, as opposed to Nina and the Night Witches?
Throughout The Huntress, war criminals attempt to justify their crimes: Anneliese tells Jordan she killed as an act of mercy, and several witnesses tell Ian they were either acting under orders or ignorant of what was happening. Why do they feel the need to justify their actions, even if only to themselves? Do you think any of them are aware deep down that they committed evil acts, or are they all in denial?
Jordan sincerely comes to love Anneliese, who is not just her stepmother but her friend. After learning the truth about Anneliese’s past, Jordan is perturbed that she cannot simply switch off her affection for the one person who encouraged her to chase her dreams. How do you think you would react if you found out a beloved family member was a murderer and a war criminal?