Neutral War is a
compelling novel of World War II, based on
historical incidents and characters,
including Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto, the
Harvard man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Unit 731, the secret
Japanese army germ and chemical warfare operation responsible for gruesome human experimentation, and for using the weapons that resulted from this evil in the cause of the Japanese empire.
The war wasn't merely a black-and-white saga of the good fighting the bad. Sweden bought and maintained its "neutrality" by providing the Nazis with a mighty river of top-quality steel -- the steel that went into the top-quality weapons that allowed the Nazis to surge forward and conquer Europe. Switzerland bought its neutrality by financing the Nazi war effort, often with the money of Jewish victims of that effort. America was not so pure, either: FDR enticed the bumbling Japanese leaders into attacking a purposely undefended Pearl Harbor. And at war's end almost all the real war criminals in Japan -- those who developed and used chemical and germ warfare instruments of mass destruction -- were quietly pardoned and recruited into U.S. weapons programs. Their knowledge ultimately formed the basis for the biological weapons programs of the U.S., the Soviet Union, and, ever since, all the countries in between that have not been able to resist the lure of cheap weaponry.
Neutral War explores the war from the viewpoint of a Swedish diplomat stationed in Tokyo, walking the thin, dangerous line between helping the Allies (who didn't really want the help) and trying not to further endanger his own country and the people of good heart he encounters along the way in performing his duties.
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